Tag Archives: test

NHS in Wales to trial new test to revolutionise lung cancer diagnosis | nation.cymru

This seems pretty good going, for a health service that the Tories would say is on its last legs:

A major study of a new blood test which could speed up the diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer is being carried out in Wales.

By increasing the use of the new non-invasive liquid biopsy (blood sample) test at an earlier stage, targeted treatments can be decided and administered more quickly, improving patient outcomes and survival rates.

The new test, which has been made possible through the All-Wales Medical Genomics Service (AWMGS), Illumina technology, Life Sciences Hub Wales, and investment from multiple partner organisations, can detect multiple cancer markers without the need of an invasive tissue biopsy.

Apparently, Wales has been leading the way in saving lives by detecting and treating cancers earlier – and of course this should have a knock-on effect, reducing waiting lists for treatment.

And then the Tories won’t be able to use it as a stick to beat Wales with.

Source: NHS in Wales to trial new test to revolutionise lung cancer diagnosis


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The rumours about the emergency alert system were wrong, says the Cabinet Office

If you read this story after 3.23pm on April 24, you’ll know that the Cabinet Office has denied any connection between the new emergency alert system that was tested the day before, and Infosys, a company in which Rishi Sunak’s wife has shares.

That’s the government line and we have to accept it.

This Writer has to admit doubts. It seemed the contract for providing the service was originally awarded to Fujitsu, which partners with Infosys on some projects, despite it being involved in the fiasco over the Horizon system in UK post offices – but the Cabinet Office provided this link to a debate about it in the House of Lords.

In it, Cabinet Office Minister Baroness Neville-Rolfe said, “Fujitsu has had a small role in the development of the UK’s emergency alert system, initially providing a subject matter expert to support early development by DCMS.”

So the counter-claim is that the Department of Culture, Media and Sport developed the emergency alert system, and Fujitsu only provided an advisor.

Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom – also a Conservative – pointed out that awarding any contract to Fujitsu after the Horizon system “caused the sub-postmasters of this country to be shamefully accused of things that they had not done” seemed unreasonable, and the company should have been taken off the government’s procurement list altogether.

He said: “Some went to prison, some took their own lives and all those accused were humiliated in the eyes of their own communities. Fujitsu, which knew perfectly well what it was doing, has said not a single word of apology. This is already costing the Government hundreds of millions, potentially more.”

Baroness Neville-Rolfe responded that “all government contracts are awarded in line with procurement regulations and transparency guidelines, and that goes for the contract on the alerts”.

Considering what happened with Horizon, it doesn’t seem very convincing, does it?

Add to that the fact that Fujitsu has had a working relationship with Infosys since 2003, and in 2009 Infosys teamed up with Australian firm Telstra to create an emergency alert system in Australia, and it seems odd that Fujitsu would not employ any expertise in this field that its partner had.

Then again, the UK’s Tory government is not exactly known for making rational decisions.

That’s the best This Writer can say about it.


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Why are top-rate taxpayers able to claim benefits from April under means-testing Tories?

Rishi Sunak: he likes giving money to rich people who don’t need it as much as the poor people he ignores.

I have a question. Read what follows and when you get to the end, I’ll tell you what it is:

From next month, people will start to pay the 45p rate of income tax when they earn more than £125,000 – down from £150,000 at the moment.

The change was announced by the Chancellor in November.

The reduction means many people paying the top rate of tax will still be eligible for Universal Credit (UC), according to an analysis by Policy in Practice, a consultancy group.

They found that people earning up to £148,000 could technically be allowed to claim UC if they had children, rented and had high childcare costs.

My question refers to the fact that the Conservative government means-tests people claiming most benefits. Forgive me if there’s a really obvious reason that I’ve missed. It is this:

Why are people with £16k in savings denied money they need to live, but those earning almost as much per month can now claim benefits on top of that cash?

Source: Top rate taxpayers to be able to claim benefits from April after Jeremy Hunt reduced threshold


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Are these the facts about Matt Hancock’s Covid 19 care homes blunder?

Matt Hancock: Blunderman strikes again.

The cache of 100,000 WhatsApp messages by Matt Hancock about Covid-19, from 2020, in which he discussed delaying or failing to test people going into care homes from the community, got a thorough airing on the BBC’s Politics Live and in Parliament during Prime Minister’s Questions.

PMQs focused mostly on the fact that information about the government’s behaviour during the Covid crisis is starting to drip out piecemeal, meaning it is now a matter of urgency that the independent inquiry into the response to the pandemic be concluded and report in good time.

The discussion on the talk show was more about the content of the messages – and did, in fact, touch on the fact that these messages all came long after the big decisions about testing for Covid-19 in care homes had already been made.

Hancock had known since February that year that people from the community, coming into homes, were infecting the people living there, and since March that people there were dying of Covid-19.

He chose to do nothing about it until April – and then, as the messages indicate, he didn’t do enough.

So, is this a storm in a teacup?

Judge for yourself:


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Matt Hancock WhatsApp leak rewrites history – but not the way you’re being told

Matt Hancock: the current WhatsApp controversy makes it seem he only considered testing people in care homes from April 14, 2020 – but existing information shows he had been ruling it out for around two months (since February) despite mounting deaths.

No wonder Isabel Oakeshott was so liverish on Politics Live – she was about to become the centre of a new Covid-19 controversy.

Ms Oakeshott is the person who leaked 100,000 Matt Hancock WhatsApp messages that seem to suggest he has not been altogether truthful about government plans for Covid-19 testing in care homes during 2020. She had access to them while “helping” him write his memoir.

Spokespeople for Hancock have said the messages have been doctored to present a false impression.

But my recollection is that the controversy at the time had little to do with what these messages say. I made my point on Twitter as follows:

You can read the relevant background information in these Vox Political articles from 2020:

Coronavirus deaths: ‘sorry’ is the hardest word for Hancock (April 29, 2020)

Is Johnson guilty of human rights abuses over coronavirus care home deaths? Could be! (May 3, 2020)

Care home deaths cover-up suggests Johnson and Hancock are guilty as sin (May 15, 2020)

If Tories really regret not testing for Covid-19 in care homes – is it because they were caught? (May 20, 2020)

Why didn’t Matt Hancock send vulnerable Covid-19 sufferers to Nightingale hospitals rather than care homes? (May 22, 2020)

Hancock denies claim about Covid-testing care home residents. What DID he mean, then? (June 6, 2020)

Hancock’s excuse for care home deaths changes with the wind – but doesn’t change the fact that HE LIED TO US (June 10, 2020)

Doctor launches court case against Tories over Covid-19 care home death of her dad (June 14, 2020)

Is Matt Hancock denying care homes Covid-19 tests to deliberately harm residents? (August 30, 2020)

So there you have it. Despite advice from SAGE in February 2020 that Covid-19 was already being transmitted between people in the community, Hancock put out official guidance saying there was no such transmission and nobody in a care home was likely to be infected.

Care home staff who moved from one home to another were also not tested, meaning they were able to catch the disease from patients at one home and transmit it to those at any others they visited.

This remained official advice until March 12, 2020, despite the fact that care homes had been recording deaths related to Covid-19 from March 2 onwards – 10 days previously.

The UK only went into lockdown on March 23.

Care homes did not start testing for the disease until April 15 (of people leaving hospital), and regular tests of all staff and residents did not start until July.

Now check this against the current story (I’ll use the BBC version as the Telegraph, which broke this story, is behind a paywall):

WhatsApp messages leaked to the Daily Telegraph newspaper suggest Mr Hancock was told in April 2020 there should be “testing of all going into care homes”.

Government guidance later mandated tests only for those leaving hospital.

In one message, dated 14 April, Mr Hancock reportedly told aides that Prof Sir Chris Whitty, the chief medial officer for England, had conducted an “evidence review” and recommended “testing of all going into care homes, and segregation whilst awaiting result”.

The message came a day before the publication of Covid-19: Our Action Plan for Adult Social Care, a government document setting out plans to keep the care system functioning during the pandemic.

Mr Hancock said the advice represented a “good positive step” and that “we must put into the doc”, to which an aide responded that he had sent the request “to action”.

But later the same day, Mr Hancock messaged again saying he would rather “leave out” a commitment to test everyone entering care homes from the community and “just commit to test & isolate ALL going into care from hospital”.

“I do not think the community commitment adds anything and it muddies the waters,” he said.

A spokesman for Mr Hancock said this followed an operational meeting, where he was advised it was not possible to test everyone entering care homes.

When the care plan was published on 15 April, it said the government would “institute a policy of testing all residents prior to admission to care homes”, but that that would “begin with all those being discharged from hospital”.

It said only that it would “move to” a policy of testing everyone entering care homes from the community.

From March 2020 to January 2022, there were 43,256 deaths involving Covid-19 in care homes in England, according to the Office for National Statistics.

There’s a big discrepancy, isn’t there?

The WhatsApp messages have it that Hancock was only advised to start testing everybody going into care homes on April 14.

But in fact, SAGE had warned him in February – two months previously – that Covid-19 was already being transmitted in the community, and it is clear that community transmission was considered likely to cause infections within care homes from the government advice that was published on February 25.

And death figures from care homes clearly showed that Covid-19 had caused deaths there from March 2 onwards, so Hancock had no reason to believe that these homes were unaffected.

But he waited nearly two months before doing anything.

The lack of testing kits in sufficient numbers has been blamed for the failure to test everybody who needed it – but this is not an acceptable response. The government had known of the threat since late 2019 but had not bothered to take timely action, and this is the reason too few testing kits were available.

And more than 43,000 people died.


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Tory MP Lee Anderson has been talking rubbish – and expecting us to eat it

Lee Anderson (right) with his leader Boris Johnson: Anderson was talking rubbish (as his boss often does) – and expecting the rest of us to eat it, too – according to an expert chef

After Tory MP Lee Anderson claimed it was possible to cook “nutritious meals” for 30p, professional chef Gareth Mason tried it.

The chef, who has 19 years’ experience, set himself the task of cooking seven basic meals that fit within the 30p budget.

Mr Mason made crab stick salad, burgers, spaghetti Napoli, beans on toast, a jacket potato with beans, and a ‘spam fritter’ made from cheap luncheon meat.

His verdict? They were not nutritionally balanced or big enough to sustain an adult:

“I’ve come to the conclusion it’s a load of rubbish,” the head chef at Absolute Bistros in Westhoughton, Lancashire told HullLive.

“These meals I’ve done, as soon as you put any protein or dairy into them, it’s not feasible to do it for 30p.

“If you eat beans on toast for every meal, it might work, but even if you did cheese on toast, the cost of cheese would be more than 30p on its own.

“And you have the cooking cost on top of the cost of the food.”

That last point is right on the nose.

At a time when the cost of the energy needed to cook is rocketing, this overprivileged MP didn’t even have the intelligence to include it in his claim.

And Mr Mason had another thought about Lee Anderson’s disproved theory:

Gareth said while Mr Anderson’s 30p figure may be achievable using batch cooking methods in a professional kitchen, there aren’t many people who have the space or storage required to make it work.

“Has this guy ever eaten a 30p meal in his life? I doubt it,” Gareth asked.

“He’s contradicted himself by having chefs cook the food in a big kitchen with an industrial oven.

“Where does he expect the average person to cook all this food and then freeze it all?”

Where indeed? And freezers don’t work for free.

“You could just about feed yourself, but it’s not going to be healthy or nutritious or get anywhere near the number of calories an average adult needs to function each day,” he said.

“He’s treating people like peasants. Energy prices are going up, people are struggling, the cost of living is on the rise, and what’s their solution? Eat for 30p?

“The cheaper you go, how much rubbish is in the food?

“It will be full of additives and preservatives and all sorts of junk. It’s not fresh, nutritious food that people need to have a healthy diet.”

So there you have it. Lee Anderson’s claims have been definitively disproved.

Remember that, next time a filthy rich Tory MP makes wild claims about what can be achieved with very little, when they’ve never had to face the same restrictions.

Source: Chef says Tory MP is ‘treating people like peasants’ after cooking 30p meals

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Covid isn’t over because Sunak says so; he’s fooling us with his call to end free testing

Rishi Sunak: after he served up this little howler he pushed up Covid-19 infections massively. Now it seems he wants to repeat this feat by cancelling free Covid testing for people with symptoms – and not even replacing it with tests you have to buy.

Take a look at this:

Latest Covid figures show 46,025 new cases and 167 deaths, and the UK is the least-vaccinated country in western Europe.

And those are the conditions in which the Tory government has decided it wants to stop free Covid-19 testing for people with symptoms.

The initiative is spearheaded by the Treasury, not the Department for Health – which indicates to This Writer that Rishi Sunak wants to give the money he’s spending on this to more of his big business friends, so they can hide it in tax havens instead. Am I right?

Public health leaders are said to have been “blindsided” by the surprise announcement of the government’s intention, and have argued strongly against it, as you can see if you read the article linked below.

But the current situation means that, after the end of March, people with Covid aren’t likely to know.

If they don’t know, the authorities will be able to deny it, and official numbers will plummet.

But what will the death statistics do? And who will take the blame?

Source: UK Treasury pushes to end most free Covid testing despite experts’ warnings | Coronavirus | The Guardian

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‘Record’ #Covid19 infection rate is probably a fraction of the total because: no #tests available!

I’m all right, Jack: like Boris Johnson, This Writer has now had the Covid-19 vaccine booster injection. It won’t stop me catching the Omicron variant so I’m still wearing a mask out and conforming with all the safety procedures recommended here in Wales.

Official figures show a record 183,037 Covid-19 infections were recorded on December 29.

Sadly, that number is likely to be a fraction of the total because the Conservative government that spaffed £37 billion of public money on a privately-run test and trace scheme (that didn’t work) is still utterly unable to provide enough tests – either lateral flow or PCR – for those of us who need them.

The government’s response has been to provide “out of office” messages.

And Boris Johnson disappeared for more than a week. Asked where he had been, he said “Inside the country” – instantly indicating to all of us that he has been raving it up in some foreign holiday destination owned by one of his friends and gifted to him on the sly (again).

(This next one is just for fun.)

Oh but hey! Johnson also offered reassurance by saying nine-tenths of people in intensive care have not had the booster jab:

Official policy is to do nothing, despite the fact that official infections are three times what they were just two weeks ago.

It might be reasonable to say that, if the number of hospitalisations and deaths has significantly dropped.

But with even official infection rates rising exponentially, there will come a day on which hospitals will be overwhelmed again – especially because medical teams are being forced to stay away from work because they can’t get a test result.

Which day, do you reckon? New Year’s Day? New Year’s Eve?

Today?

All because a bunch of media hacks told us Jeremy Corbyn was a wrong ‘un after he told them how Boris Johnson was planning to kill the NHS.

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Corruption: Tories employ firm involved in ‘Test and Trace’ fiasco – to rig public inquiry into it?

Tory corruption never ends; now they are trying to rig the findings of the forthcoming public inquiry into the mishandling of Test and Trace.

Government outsourcing firm Deloitte has been hired by the Conservative government to prepare a “strategy” for “evidence generation requirements” of the public inquiry into the fiasco.

But Deloitte was involved in Test and Trace. The firm was awarded huge government contracts worth almost £300 million. Consultants were paid £6,000 per day – apparently to do very little – and the company charged the government £1 million per day in fees.

It therefore has a considerable interest in ensuring that the Test and Trace system brought in by the Tory government receives a clean bill of health – even though it was an unmitigated disaster.

Fortunately, Labour Deputy Leader Angela Rayner is doing her job (unlike her boss Keir Starmer) and has written to Steve Barclay, Tory Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (who, one presumes, commissioned Deloitte to carry out the inquiry work), demanding answers.

As she points out in her letter, “The mismanagement, waste and failure of Test and Trace is well-documented. Up to £37 billion of taxpayers’ money has been wasted on a system that did not control infections and did not prevent future lockdowns.

“[Deloitte] was at the heart of Test and Trace’s operations, and therefore the failure of Test and Trace. It is clearly a conflict of interest for Deloitte to be awarded this contract.”

Here’s her tweet, publishing the letter to the world:

No matter what Barclay may say about Test and Trace (he’ll probably try to defend it), the central point of the letter is absolutely correct: as a contractor involved in Test and Trace, Deloitte should not have been even considered for a role in the inquiry.

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Tory corruption: North Shropshire MP Owen Paterson REPEATEDLY boosted companies that employed him

Master and servant: Owen Paterson with his boss, Peter Fitzgerald of Randox. Funny that… wasn’t Paterson supposed to be working for the people of North Shropshire?

North Shropshire’s Tory MP Owen Paterson has turned out to be as corrupt as they come – using his position as a public representative to boost the private interests of two companies. And it seems thousands of people may have died as a result.

Paterson is set to be punished for corruptly using his Parliamentary position to win contracts for two companies that employ him.

Yes, it is corruption. Yes, it is against Parliamentary rules. He should be booted out of the Palace of Westminster and told never to come back. In a proper, working democracy he would be arrested and sent to prison.

Would you like to know what will actually happen?

He’ll be suspended from Parliament for 30 working days.

That’s right – he gets a month’s extra holiday.

Here’s the report on Sky News:

And here’s the BBC:

The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Kathryn Stone opened an investigation into the MP following accusations he had lobbied on behalf of two companies who employed him.

Her report said he was a paid consultant to Randox and Lynn’s Country Foods and had made approaches to the Food Standards Agency and Department for International Development ministers about the companies.

The commissioner also found Mr Paterson had breached the MPs’ code of conduct by using his parliamentary office on 25 occasions for business meetings with clients between October 2016 and February 2020 and in sending two letters relating to business interests on House of Commons headed notepaper.

The report noted that there was no immediate financial benefit secured by the two companies-

Oh, really?

That would be Randox Health. Perhaps the Commissioner didn’t notice this significant fact because her report only goes as far as February 2020.

Randox was awarded its £133 million contract in March 2020 – and, yes, it was a closed process – unadvertised and with no other companies being asked to bid.

A month later, Paterson was a party to a call between Randox and James Bethell, then the Tory minister responsible for Covid-19 testing supplies.

Randox was hired to supply 2.7 million testing kits – but 750,000 of them were withdrawn after spot checks in July found that some of the kits, supplied by a Chinese manufacturer but sent out by Randox, were not sterile and could therefore be contaminated.

The failure delayed plans to provide regular testing for English care home residents and staff. We later discovered that Tory government failures to protect care homes resulted in around 30,000 unnecessary deaths.

But that was no concern for Randox – its contract was extended for a further six months in October last year. Again, the process was closed – unadvertised, with no other companies permitted to bid.

Much of this information may be confirmed by reading this Guardian article.

In fact, it should have been to safeguard the health of the people of the UK – especially, in this case, care home residents and staff. Instead, thousands died – possibly because he vouched for a company that provided substandard testing kits.

And his punishment is a 30-day holiday.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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