Health
Health news.
SHAC Prepares For National March & Rally
21-06-2008 12:17
On the 12th July, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) will be holding a national march and rally to show the mass opposition to the fraudulent vivisection industry and the vile 'experiments' at Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS). SHAC is an international campaign aiming to close HLS, the largest contract testing laboratory in Europe.
The rally in the park will include info stalls and food/drink from Veggies before campaigners march through Peterborough. There will then be a demonstration in Alconbury to meet the animal abusers who kill 500 animals every day of the week to test products such as weed killer, food colourings and drugs.
Details: Webpage for the rally, march and demo - Info and times | Rally in the park - Map and meeting point
Newswire: Dispatch from Andy Stepanian (SHAC 7) | HLS Supplier DHL trashed for Active Slaughter | Novartis Global Week of Action Roundup | Time For Action 4 - SHAC Need Your Footage + Trailer | Last Primate Lab in Austria to Close! | Staples lies and beagles die | Message from SHAC: May Raids Anniversary | SHAC May Raids Anniversary | ALF torch Staples trucks | PIA Stop Beagle Flights | Sciencelink animal lab has been abandoned | Novartis HQ painted and smashed (Video) | Previous march (Novartis): SHAC Report | Barriers dismantled
Previous features: Victory for animal rights campaigners | Activist Imprisoned for Shouting | Fisher Scientific Embarrassed Over Links with HLS | SHAC World Day for Lab Animals | Asahi Glass Protesters Harassed by Police | "March Against the Murderers"
Links: SHAC-UK | SHAC-UK Prisoner Support | Veggies | Antispeciesist Action | Animal Rights CopWatch
Full article | 2 additions | 14 comments
Scientology's Corporate Exploitation Hurts People
05-04-2008 00:00
Scientology is a totalitarian, mafia-like organisation, which silences its critics by extreme intimidation and harrassment, claim thousands of Anonymous during their series of worldwide protests. About 8000 people picketed the institution in 17 countries and 108 locations on 10th of February, and on 15th of March they embarked on "Operation Party Hard". With "Operation Reconnect" on 12th of April protesters want to expose the brainwashing cult's disastrous effect on families with their "Policy of Disconnection".
Despite countless reports of members forced into bankruptcy, broken families and suicides, Birmingham City Council has endorsed the sinister Cult. There are also reports that Scientology's second biggest base in the UK will be established in Moseley Birmingham and there are protests against a Scientology exhibition in a shopping centre in West Bromwich.
Campaign groups:
[ BritLulz | Edinburgh | Manchester | Birmingham | London ]
UK-wide summary of protests against Scientology:
[ London 15th of March and 10th of February | Birmingham | Edinburgh | Glasgow | global summary of protest on xenu.net]
Reports:
[Scientology shuts down alternative news site | CoS operation manual leaked | The Censored film "The Profit" appears on Internet | Scientology given direct access to E-Bay Database | Scientology Injunction Denied Against "Anonymous" ]
Background Info:
[ Xenu.net | Wikipedia | Operation Clambake | theunfunnytruth | scientology lies | The scandal of scientology |
Newswire:
[ Bristol's Evening Post a front for Scientology? | The war on scientology | Scientology - what it is and why we fight it | Scientology's Gulags: inside the Rehabilitation Project Force | Fighting Scientology - an anarchist perspective | Scientology as Sci-Fi Fascism (corrected) | What's wrong with Narconon | Narconon off Southwark Council site]
Full article | 1 addition | 2 comments
Council Under Fire From Campaign To Save Leisure Centre
21-02-2008 00:25
Nottingham City Council were under fire this week from campaigners trying to prevent the local authority from closing one of the city's oldest and most cherished public services, the Victoria Baths leisure centre. A move to rush the closure this spring has been greeted by uproar from local residents, who gathered for a protest at the Council House.
Over a hundred people mounted a vocal and insistent protest that the recently announced intention to force the closure is unacceptable for the residents of St Anns and Sneinton. Dozens of children from William Booth infant school, one of the schools who regularly use the pool for swimming lessons, bore placards they had drawn and coloured, and chanted 'we want swimming!'. The next demonstration is planned for Saturday 1st March, 11.30am in Market Square.
Reports from the 17th February demonstration: audio | video
More audio: Featured in #2 'the March Show' on Riseup Radio | Public Meeting 1st March
Photos: Victoria Leisure Centre Public Meeting to Oppose Closure | Save Victoria Baths from closure, Demo at the Council House | Council propose to shut Victoria Baths, Sneinton
Articles: Council propose to shut Victoria Baths, Sneinton | City Council intends to Close popular leisure facility
Links: Save Victoria Baths! Campaign | Sign the online petition | 1st March poster | City Council online consultation
A Planning Disaster
03-08-2007 12:57
Campaigners representing “Planning Disaster” [1], a coalition of Britain's leading environment organisations, today drew up a spoof planning notice for a new nuclear power station to be developed on the current site of Nottingham Forest Football Club. The action was to highlight the Government’s proposed changes to the planning system.
The current planning system allows people to be part of the decision making process. They can have their say on proposals for major developments such as new roads or nuclear power stations. But reforms proposed in the Government's White Paper on planning will remove the public's democratic right to challenge projects at public inquiry. Planning decisions will also be taken out of the hands of accountable politicians and handed over to an unelected, unaccountable new body called the Infrastructure Planning Commission.
Links: Planning Disaster Coalition | Nottingham FOE | Planning for a Sustainable Future: White Paper: website or PDF | House of Commons debate on the issue on 21 May 2007
Britain is GMO free again
22-07-2007 17:30
On the night of Friday the 6th of July, a group of activists converged on Britain's only GM trial site just outside Cambridge. They scaled the security fences and destroyed the crop of genetically modified potatoes.
This was the only crop of GM potatoes being grown in the UK, after the chemicals giant BASF abandoned plans for a GM potato trial in Yorkshire this year. There have been multiple protests at the Cambridge site [video] and at the Yorkshire site (where organic potatoes were planted [video]).
However BASF have permission lasting until 2011, so this may not be the end of the story ...
Background : GM back on agenda | sabotage promised | detailed talk report | audio interview re victory and protest 1st july
Campaign links : Mutatoes | Hedon Against GM | Cambridge GM Concern
Full article | 1 addition | 1 comment
Anti-GM Victory : One down, One to Go!
25-06-2007 18:18
It seems there are not often victories to celebrate so it's strange when they occur seemingly unnoticed. That's exactly what's happened regarding the news that the chemicals giant, BASF have abandoned plans for a GM potato trial in Yorkshire this year, despite government consent.
Back in April there was an action in Hedon near Hull [1 | 2 ] to demonstrate public opposition to the first GM trials in the UK proposed in three years. Taking action before the trial began, the protesters planted their own organic spuds in what they thought was the field earmarked for the GM variety [1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6]. The aim was to invalidate the experiment before it was even started and while it turned out that they had picked the wrong field they did successful demonstrate that public opposition to GM crops is as strong and militant as ever [audio | video].
The planting of the other trial, located in Cambridge [1 | 2], went ahead despite local opposition and protests but campaigners say that it's not too late to drive home the message that "there is still no future for GM in the UK".
There is a national call out for a 'potato picnic' announced for Sunday 1st July near the site of the Cambridge trial. [flyer | directions]
Background : GM back on agenda | sabotage promised | detailed talk report | audio interview re victory and protest 1st july
Campaign links : Mutatoes | Hedon Against GM | Cambridge GM Concern
Murdering Medical Careers - and the future of the NHS?
20-03-2007 11:39
To find out more about the background, read MMC: an explanation for patients [parts 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 ]. Other sites of interest include the MTAS debacle, as witnessed by the junior doctors of the Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital, and various artistes of the blogosphere such as Dr. Rant, Professor Scrub and Junior Doc. Maybe there will be an NHS in 10 years time, after all.
'Defend the NHS' National Day of Action
06-03-2007 20:24
Saturday, 3rd March, saw a national day of action to defend the National Health Service (NHS), called by NHS Together, an alliance of health service unions and staff associations together with the TUC. Demonstrations and rallies took place across the country, in Birmingham, Cambridge, Hackney (London), Leeds, Preston, Sheffield and other places. The aim of the protests, according to the organisers, was "to send a powerful message in celebration and defence of the NHS" against more cuts and privatisation. Almost three quarters of NHS trusts in the UK are reported last year that financial deficits are forcing them to make massive cutbacks; wards are being closed down, hospitals shut and jobs cut. Billions are going into 'restructuring' the service along market lines, with millions going on management consultants and financial advisers and millions more, in massive PFI payments, to shareholders and bankers.
Reports and pics: Defend the NHS Day: Sheffield Demonstration [photos] | Demo against the privatization of the NHS in Preston | Hackney Save NHS Demo | Leeds General Infirmary For Sale!
Previous Indymedia Features: Is Britain ready to defend its NHS? | The NHS in Crisis | Sheffield Children's Hospital: Save Ward S2 | Local Trusts Take Scalpel To NHS | Indymedia UK's Health topic page
Links: NHS Together | Keep Our NHS Public
Now Look Here, Sonae!
11-01-2007 07:05
Full article | 1 addition | 4 comments
Is Britain ready to defend its NHS?
03-10-2006 13:48
The National Health Service is in a huge crisis. Crisis can be an over-used word, but in the case of the NHS it’s difficult to get across the scale of the problem without using it. Three quarters of the NHS trusts in the UK are reporting that financial deficits are forcing them to make cutbacks. Massive cutbacks that is. Wards are closed down, hospitals shut and jobs cut around the country. Billions are going to restructure the NHS along market lines, with millions going on management consultants and financial advisors, and millions more in massive PFI payments to shareholders and bankers. In one example venture capitalists have pocketed an extra £81m million in profits from the £220 million PFI scheme to build the Norfolk and Norwich hospital. Billions more are being diverted into a new, expanding private network of profit-seeking 'Treatment Centres', which are paid at enhanced rates, and select out the profitable treatments and patients, leaving the unprofitable behind in the NHS.
Over the last few months unions, patients, activists and campaigners have hit back in a wave of protest to halt the NHS reforms around the country. Thousands of people took part in public meetings around the country: [1] [2] [3] [4]. Protestors took to the streets in Birmingham, Cambridge [1] [2], Huddersfield, Liverpool, Manchester [1] [2], Oxford, Sheffield, Shropshire and Stamford. Other protests have happened in Morecambe Bay, Bristol, the Costwolds and Wolverhampton. The largest demonstration took place in Nottingham and was joined by over 3,000 people. After the announcement that the government has awarded a £1.5 billion NHS contract to Germany-based courier DHL, NHS Logistics staff walked out at their depots.
See also: UK Indymedia Health Pages
Previous feature articles: The NHS in Crisis | Sheffield Children's Hospital: Save Ward S2 | Local Trusts Take Scalpel To NHS
Other media: Bad Medicine | NHS To Be Reformed By Using A Hybrid Approach | Unison wins over Labour on NHS reform
Links: Keep Our NHS Public! | Unison | British Medical Association | Wikipedia on the NHS | The history of the NHS | Wikipedia on Private Finance Initiative (PFI) | Community Hospitals Association | Save Townlands Hospital Campiagn | Save Bridlington Hospital Campaign
The NHS is on its knees. Get on your feet to save it!
13-09-2006 12:49
Defend the NHS! March and rally - Sat 23rd Sept - 11am Forest Recreation Ground (assemble 10am) Nottingham.
This year the East Midlands faces 5,000 job losses (with 1,200 to go in Nottingham), £200 million worth of cuts, the sale of NHS Logistics, hospital ward closures, a review of NHS Direct and Patient Transport Services, and operations undertaken by private health firms run solely for the profit of shareholders. We say it's time the Government stepped in to stop thee cuts and end privatisation of our local NHS. Join us!
Links: Unison website | Download flyer | UK Indymedia health topic page | NHS England | Download 'Nottingham Trade Union Solidarity - Issue 5' | Mischief Makers build giant syringe in support of NHS march on Saturday
