Tory lords, LibDem peers and MPs with interests in health companies

In the wake of today's shameful vote for the Health and Social Care (NHS) Bill 2011 in the House of Lords, here is a brilliant comprehensive list of politicians where there may very well be a conflict of interest due to their financial involvement with the private health industry.

Another must-read is Professor Allyson Pollock's papers laying out the arguments against the bill: ‘Commercial confidentiality’ trumps public right to know in England’s new health market'; 'a legal basis for charging and providing fewer health services to people in England'; 'services, charges, and exclusions'; 'A flawed bill with a hidden purpose'; 'How the Health and Social Care Bill 2011 would end entitlement to comprehensive health care in England'; 'changing data requirements of the market: implications for public health'; 'conflicts of interest'; ' abolition of the secretary of state's duty'; 'The final frontier: The UK’s new coalition government turns the English National Health Service over to the global health care market'.

UPDATE Tuesday 20th March: Harpy Marx writes to me:

When services become privatised one of the first things to go is accountability replaced with "‘commercial confidentiality’. This is happening with welfare reform, private companies becoming covered by "commercial confidentiality" and many of these greedy companies try and sue....and pressure blog providers, for example, to take a blog down if it criticising them. Bookbinder judgement in '93 stated (when local authority tried to sue a newspaper). "It was contrary to the public interest that organs of government, whether central or local, should have the right to sue for libel because any governmental body should be open to uninhibited public criticism and to allow such actions would place an undesirable fetter on freedom of speech." Freedom of speech is part of a functioning democracy privatisation erodes it democracy. Excellent book by Dexter Whitfield on "New Labour’s Attack on Public Services: Modernisation by Marketisation (2006)" Just replace New Labour with ConDems in the title...same process happening but at an accelerated force.

Peacock Power: male vanity in politics

Mahogany Men Sarkozy and Cameron

I've been a bit lax in posting my New Internationalist columns at my blog. So here's one I made earlier.

Vanity, vanity: why does just about every geopolitical headline that pops into view of late scream vanity? It’s wall-to-wall The Big I Am without a hint of introspection or self-critique; a solipsistic Me-fest of global proportions ready to rain down death and destruction because ‘I believed it to be true’, although what they really want to do is mutter like the robo-glamour pusses in the ads: ‘because I’m worth it’.

OK, that sounds a bit like me on a good bad day, but at least I’m not running the world so my powers of destruction are a tad limited. Unlike the regiment of boys who can’t wait to play with the toys as soon as they get into office, blowing up other boys to whom they’ve sold their toys, with the addition of spiffing new X-factor secret ingredients they’ll include in the next round of arms sales. A round which will be taking place as soon as the old stock’s exhausted, and then the circus can start all over again.

The chumps in charge insist there’s no money for useful stuff like my local library and the Trumptonesque fire station that gives my inner city high street a villagy feel, but plenty available for the live demonstration of our arms industry that is yet another liberal intervention. You can hear the ghost of Milton Friedman laughing like a drain — the sort that goes gurgle, gurgle as our collective money pours down it .

Who are these geniuses proving the adage that repeating the same mistakes without modifying your behaviour is a neon sign of rampant stupidity squared? Unless, of course, they do know exactly what they’re doing ...

Is it me or have they slid off the same conveyor belt? As slick and well-oiled as a middle-eastern despot’s back yard, with impeccable hair, teeth and wardrobe, they take naturally to cracking the whip over the rest of us.

As empathy and social connection disappears, vanity fills the void. ‘If they can’t love me, let them admire my three hundred dollar manicure.’

Exhibits A and B: Tony Blair and John Boehner (crazy name, boring Speaker in the House of Representatives). However, it could be Sarkozy, Obama, Berlusconi or Putin, or any overly made-over politician with plucked eyebrows, neat cuticles and a leathery complexion. Botox and lasered eyeballs … ye gods, once it was only male models and footballers who wore their insecurities so flagrantly on their cashmere sleeves.

Give me the fat-slob old progressives of yesteryear. Gravitas-laden politicians who knew war was hell instead of gravy-train opportunists who got their social awareness from shoot-em-up video games. Hirsute intellectual labour-movement veterans who’d rather be reading books than pumping iron in the gym. The soles of their vintage Doc Martens worn to a micrometer by endless marches rather than at the crosstrainer. Who’d choose working at the treadmill over running on one, or who’d rather spar with the powers-that-be than be power-housed in a spa. Who’d rather protest against a war for oil than be massaged with oil … And the same goes for the men.

Uber Tan Man
Your life is in their hands ...

Orange Tone: a poem about perma-tanned politicians

When I started to write this poem, I had in mind the startling image of a sleek well-oiled Philip Gould stepping out of a sliver limousine to attend a £600-a-head Labour dinner at the Grosvenor Hotel in Park Lane which was being picketed by us, the Socialist Alliance in its heyday.

If it is the remit of the artist to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, Gould got my impulse to do the latter cooking up a storm.

That was the original image that began this poem, along with a light-hearted thread on Facebook about whether there were any new rhymes for the word 'orange'. Along with 'silver' and 'month' (thanks, Ian S), I recognised this as a hard one ever since I watched Witchypoo sing 'Oranges, Poranges' in 'H.R. Puff'n'stuff' in the 1970s.

As it should, the poem took on a life of its own as I set out to write it. Images of other oleaginous politicians corrupted by their vanity — or their vanity expressing the inner rot — crept in. I'm sure they'll occur to you too as you read Orange Tone.

Oops, nearly forgot to thank Greg B and Ian W for 'sporange'. Heh!

Orange Tone
by Anna Chen 17 Feb 2011

I never could understand
Men who top up their tan with elan
Turn tangerine polished with Mr Sheen
The shiny surface of kidney beans
Looking mean as mahogany would

if no longer home for orangutans
Felled instead for rich men's dens
Men blasted red under UV rays
Glow in the dark, pulsate in the haze
Like zits preparing to pop

Like rotten tomatoes straining to drop
Their sporange burns orange, their blood turns to glop
It would be a fair cop if they weren't very tanned
Leather hides hiding how bland they am
Blancmange with a scab on the top

Unhinged by the heat, derailed in the raw,
Carapace of lies the colour of gore
No, that's not it,
The colour of shit when you've nibbled a week-old prawn
Caught at the arse of a waste pipe at dawn
'Let's diarise'
I like that hue
Not too, too ... ecru?
Remember, contender
It's 'tall, dark and handsome',
Not 'beige, bleached and winsome'

Winsome Losesome
Ditched his pallor for crimson
Flashed a smile that was toothsome
Exponentialised his income.
Travelled the dark zone
Split schizoid twosome
Nicotinised flotsam and jetsam
Oh farce in the mirror,
Who wouldn't want some?
His outsides were wholesome
His secrets were gruesome

What are you hiding apart from your skin
Is there some sort of sin going on you should bin?
How could you sweeten this little hand
Shoved in a blender with marzipan?
That red, that blood, it's not even yours
Extracted from virgins to tighten your pores,
Tighten your wallet exploding with wad
And now you've found god
Have you fallen in love with your maker?
Bully for you, Orange Tone, you foul faker.

Orange Tone can be found in Anna Chen's collection, Reaching for my Gnu, paperback and e-book from Aaaargh! Press.