Labour First’s Abdi Duale is now a director of private health data company run by billionaire opposed to free healthcare
Labour National Executive Committee (NEC) member Abdi Duale – part of Labour First/’Labour to Win’, the hardest-right factional pressure group within the Labour party – is working for a giant private health data company, Private Eye has revealed.
In the same month he managed to get elected to the NEC, Duale was appointed as a director of FTI, a lobby company that advocates for US giant Palantir, known to want access to NHS patient data.
Palantir is owned by Peter Thiel, the Trump-supporting billionaire. The company uses FTI alongside the company owned by Tory election strategist Isaac Levido and Blairite Peter Mandelson’s Global Counsel. FTI also has deep Tory connections, both red and blue, according to Private Eye:
FTI has plenty of political connections: its London boss, Alex Deane, was David Cameron’s chief of staff, and Gemma Doyle, a director of key “moderate” Labour group Progressive Britain (formerly Progress), is a partner in the firm. FTI has increased its Labour links as the party gets closer to power… Critics worry that Palantir wants NHS IT contracts so it can get its hands on patient data which can be sold on to pharma firms…
Peter Thiel is not otherwise a health service fan: in January he claimed the NHS makes people Sick because free healthcare creates dependency.
The billionaire Thiel is deeply opposed to even the idea of universal free healthcare: earlier this year he claimed that the NHS makes people sick because free healthcare creates dependency.
Duale is close to, and a big fan of, Keir Starmer’s Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting who – like Starmer – has accepted large donations from donors with enormous investments in private health. Duale does not appear to have commented publicly on Private Eye‘s revelations.
In 2020, the UK government awarded a large contract to a subsidiary of United Health – the same company whose investor has donated to Starmer and Streeting – to use data to ‘divide NHS patients into high, medium and low risk groups and identifies “rising risk groups” such as those at risk of Type 2 diabetes’, raising concerns that NHS data will be used to discriminate against at-risk patients from treatment or to charge them. NHS campaigners believe that Palantir‘s interest in NHS patient data comes from similar aims.
Starmer and Streeting have repeatedly said that they want to use more private healthcare – and to ‘reform’ the NHS away from hospital treatment. The NHS, meanwhile, is collapsing after thirteen years of Tory spending and bed cuts and the closure of many hospitals – while ‘Labour’ figures accept cash from those who stand to profit even more.
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I expect that he an exceedingly loyal supporter. And avigorous opponent of anything smacking of anti-zionism. But wtf is a Peter Thiel agent foing in the Labour Party.
Is he looking for an invite to Trilateral Commission dos?
Abdi Duale should be ashamed of himself. Don’t ‘give Abdi Duale permission to contact you using the data you provided’. Let him wait until Starmer and Streeting give your NHS data to his boss, Peter Thiel.
Follow the Money and you find Starmer, Streeting and Duale’s bosses (spoiler alert: It’s not just Peter Thiel).
I’ll bet weasly’s a big fan of duale, too.
Off topic, but a thought came to me just now….
It’s widely reported that de piffle has, up to now, had the benefit of £250,000 of taxpayer-funded defence for his shithousery.
According to leeanderthal Anderson, one can make a meal for 30 pence.
By that logic, 833,333.3 people (equivalent to a population the size of Liverpool) who can barely afford to put food on the table have given up their tea, just so fatbollocks the meff (still being paid obscene amounts of moolah for fuck-all) can escape paying for his own defence.
What a fucked-up society we’ve allowed ours to become.
‘TheToffee’ : I understand though there is a silver lining and it may after all be a bargain for the taxpayer! My understanding is that if Alexander de Peffle or whatever his bloody name is had employed and paid for his own legal team, there would have been no duty on them to advise the Police. So who knows, his greed and avarice hopefully will have led to his downfall. I know there are so many other things he should be brought to account for, but as with Al Capone who was brought down with tax irregularities, whatever it takes…
Apparently he’s sacked those lawyers – and the new team will also be taxpayer-funded.
Meanwhile, there’s a shitload of people being denied legal aid up & down the country. Not only that, but I was denied union assistance for a constructive dismissal I wanted to bring against my former employers, who took my money but refused to take my case to tribunal, citing costs. They told ME to pay the £3k and they MIGHT assist me.
Fat scruffy gobshite should pay for his own defence, or have his sycophant donors pay it for him. I hope his arrogance over this is viewed as an aggravating factor – IF he actually cops for anything (which I doubt).
Didn’t Old Scarface have syphylis? Just asking.
On Palantir, Shoshana Zuboff observes:
Another, more prominent [than Geofeedia] surveillance-as-a-service company, Palantir, once touted by Bloomberg Businessweek as “the war on terror’s secret weapon,” was found to be in a secret collaboration with the New Orleans Police Department to test its “predictive policing” technology. Palantir’s software not only identified gang members but also “traced people’s ties to other gang members, outlined criminal histories, analyzed social media, and predicted the likelihood that individuals would commit violence or become a victim.”
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power; Profile Books, London; 2019; p.388.
People going bankrupt because of healthcare costs:
USA 500,000.
UK 0.
Cost of major heart surgery:
USA $200,000.
UK 0.
Save Our NHS.
Succinctly set out Bazza. The horror came home to me the other day when discussing with friends the cost of vet care – one story of a £15k bill, another of £60k over the lifetime of the animal. There is another discussion about the morality of owning a pet but the point here is that neither could afford the cost of insurance (around £1500-2000 per year per pet) so chanced it and got stung. These costs are, as your figures show, a drop in the ocean when compared to our own health and the premiums are likely to be multiples that many will not be able to afford and the result will be catastrophic. We already pay ‘healthcare insurance’ in the form of income tax but this is clearly insufficient irrespective of any supposed efficiencies or greater recruitment that might be forthcoming. Those baracking for lowering taxes can only be anticipating a move to private health care: taxes need to rise to provide comprehensive universal free healthcare.
Regards pet insurance, it seems to me that it only really started to become a thing about twenty years ago, and the number of people nsuring their pet or pets has steadily, but relatively slowly, increased since then. Anyway, I came across the following when I did a search:
According to the ABI, 4.3m pets in the UK are insured. That’s an increase over the previous year’s 4.2 million. But according to the PDSA’s 2022 PAW report, that still leaves 39% of dogs and 41% of cats uninsured in 2021.
BUT, what I ALSO came across, which I’ve never heard of before, is THIS:
‘The little-told story of the massive WWII pet cull’
At the beginning of World War II, a government pamphlet led to a massive cull of British pets. As many as 750,000 British pets were killed in just one week. This little-discussed moment of panic is explored in a new book.
The cull came as the result of a public information campaign that caused an extraordinary reaction among anxious Britons.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24478532
Also came across the following (US orientated) article regards pet insurance:
‘Pet insurance: Learning from the U.K.’
Pet insurance was first introduced in the U.K. in 1976 by a specialty, monoline insurance provider. The first of its kind, the product focused on accident and illness coverage……
As with many new products, adoption across the pet-owning community was slow, but also steady. It took a decade to reach one percent penetration. Thereafter, growth accelerated by approximately one percent per year. In just over two pet generations, one in four pet owners had a policy for their pets.
https://www.veterinarypracticenews.com/pet-insurance-learning-from-the-u-k/
According to a friend a typical family: two adults and two kids, full health insurance cover is around $4,000 a month, or £4,000 at recent exchange in the US.
Which might be ok for London based guardian columnists or the the editor-in-chief Kath Viner, salary £500,000 p.a, but for ordinary mortals, it’d be crippling new cost.
Don’t expect the BBC to criticise New Labour embrace of the private healthcare and donors though. Yesterday Skwawkbox pointed out Marianna’s Spring their so-called disinformation expert’s sketchy links. As a Twitter poster noted her bio in reply to her post, quote:
Head girl at Sutton High – £20,313 per year (6,771 per term)
Cambridge reading Russian
Year out to work at Moscow Times
MI6, it’s so obvious, it hurts
Fasttrack, though, she’ll be clueless…
I Hope Bunty doesn’t get caught in a vinegar trap. Ooh could be spicy.
Even with health care insurance your troubles may just be starting where the insurance companies dictate the amount available to spend on treatment.
As a case in point, eye drops for glaucoma can become very expensive if more than one medication is required, or just a single one needs to be preservative free — both of which has been so in my case.
Preservative free are at least 4 times the cost, which the insurance often won’t cover. This can, and usually does, lead to much earlier than necessary sight loss, as well as potential permanent damage to the eye itself.
I had an article from the USA on it but can’t find it just now.
PW, If your glaucoma has not been diagnosed as ‘secondary glaucoma’ (i.e. your doctor has not identified an underlying cause), and because most eye drops approved by NICE are primarily lubricants and/or antioxidants you should discuss with your doctor a possible use of antioxidants as adjunct. It’s surprising how many ophthalmologists are well informed about ortho-molecular and herbal medicine nowadays (despite their training).
My glaucoma (primary open angle) is well under control presently. My treatment began 8 years ago with eye drops — although laser treatment is now being seen as preferred first-line treatment. It did get to the point where eye drops (3 at one point!) would not control the pressures and I also developed an intolerance to BAKs so (thankfully) was put on preservative free around 5 years ago.
Since cataract surgery in 2020, only 1 BAKs free PGA eye drop is now needed at night, which I tolerate well and the fields are still very good apart from one very small area of damaged optic nerve.
Because my father had glaucoma, I have had regular free checks since age 40, so the condition was detected early and, thanks also to a very good clinic, hasn’t become a problem in any way.
Sadly, since there are no physical symptoms with POA (unlike closed-angle, which is treatable), still too many people don’t get themselves checked for the condition before it becomes harder, if not then impossible, to control.
I also keep up to date with some of the latest developments as a member of Glaucoma UK.
Glaucoma UK runs some impressive clinical trials. Good luck with your treatment.
The hard right have infiltrated every layer of the Labour party.This man is simply a disgraceful example of what passes for a Labour politician under Starmer.
I only hope people will look and him and then have the wit to read between the lines of Starmers and Streetings briefings about the NHS. It is absolutely clear where they are going – the NHS founded by a Labour government will be abolished by a ( faux) Labour government.
NEC election results imply the membership are sadomasochists. For the right only dominate because members back them. I mean, Luke Akehurst?! Seriously, do those voting know this man’s hard Likudite aligned views…and people like this guy above? The unions have taken leave of the senses too by remaining silent as the party loses its political identity to this New Labour, part deux, upper middle-class privately educated nouveau riche takeover.
With anti-socialism establishment stooge Sir ‘happiest mingling with the jetset at Davos’ Keir Starmer leading the party, and a grinning Rachel Reeves channelling Gordon Gekko, promoting Wall Street’s ‘greed as good’ mantra. The two party turned uni-party no choice coalition is making a farce of elections to the point where the UK is a democracy in name only.
The Labour party is riddled with RW Pox, the madness is incurable, only a new party and the mantra ‘never again’ will suffice
The Socialist group should stay for as long as it takes to put Red Tories out of power in a year’s time
Would love one of them to resign and call an election, then stand against them
JC and Diane could do that now
Bur they won’t
I’d love it too, Doug. It’d be very useful to everyone :
– a yank on the chain of the party’s warmongering / anti left ‘leadership’;
– a test for electoral appeal ‘the left’ in independent guise; (as SteveH calls it) and
– a valuable experiment to see the MSM’s true/ultimate objective (do they fear left wing incumbents more than they follow order to ‘support’ Starmer’s globalists.?).
Starmer’s ‘all digital’ NHS proposals, promoted in a piece in the guardian fell completely flat. With the comments btl, including some from NHS staff, incl. doctors, pointing out NHS computer infrastructure simply isn’t up to the task; with old XP running PC’s and outdated networking equipment (servers, routers, switches) needing to be replaced first. Another problem being how many UK citizens are either IT illiterate (many older people) don’t have smartphones or tablet access; or are offline, and don’t have broadband (something Corbyn’s 2019 manifesto recognised and sought to remedy).
There’s also the serious issue of privacy. Truth be told, Brits had more privacy in the 1980s and ’90s before mass digitalisation of records: medical, banking etc. Files were stored in a locked cabinet and those seeking unauthorised access had to break in and jemmy said cabinet with a crowbar. No doubt the dream of ‘national security ‘obsessed Starmer is everyone’s DNA profiles and comms with GCHQ, MI5. A true police state fit for a ZaNU Labour dictatorship
There’s also the serious issue of privacy. Truth be told, Brits had more privacy in the 1980s and ’90s before mass digitalisation of records: medical, banking etc. Files were stored in a locked cabinet and those seeking unauthorised access had to break in and jemmy said cabinet with a crowbar.
Yep. The monetisation of information is THE biggest scam of all time.
I will ONLY pay by card for interweb purchases and I make as few of those as I possibly can.
I refuse to have a smart meter.
I do not own any store ‘loyalty’ cards. WHY do supermarkets give discounts ONLY to those on the condition they allow the supermarket to see who’s bought what, how often they buy the product, and how they paid for it? It hasn’t kept the prices low. Quite the opposite.
And hancockup didn’t even sell our data (without our consent) to big pharma and healthcare parasites…He GAVE IT AWAY ffs.
Bastard should HANG, like the rest of them.
The Toffee
Authorities have repeatedly been found to be in breach of retention rules; legislation on DNA record retention and collected datasets. The govt’s response is to quietly cover it up.
Ministers , Tory and New Labour, appear to have more loyalty to the securocrats than they do the people who elect them. This again is due the two-party system the cross-party consensus; the fact they can never really be booted out with Tory A team and Tory B team. It’s bred a kind of arrogance towards the electorate. We need PR so we can remove both Labour and the Tories and get a party that wants to represent the people.
On another matter
JC’s legal costs were part of the agreement in court to discontinue the case
So he spent £1.4 million defending the case then walked away
Can someone clarify the logic behind this bizarre decision
Even Corbyn’s beginning to get on me nipple ends Doug.
The warning signs were there when he
should’ve bankrupted that gobshite Bradley and THEN donated any award to food banks.
It’s abar time he put
other people’shis money where his mouth is, instead of all this “bygones” business.People (perhaps some without a pot to piss on) chipped in so he can do something to bring about tangible change. Arl get’s sold them out.
They ought to remember that if there’s a repeat instance.
The logic is to bully and distract opponents. It’s how/why the rich and powerful use libel law to inhibit any challenges to themselves or their power system.
If you’re thinking about Jeremy’s numerous legal actions, Doug, even when we celebrate Ware or Millett or right wing tweeters ‘dropping’ their actions against Jeremy, they have already proven why the powerful use the British legal system’s libel laws as a control mechanism.
Disgusting, isn’t it Doug?
I see that Liam Byrne is in the news again.
Here is the lame excuse for not paying back the money in question:
“The report says the Birmingham, Hodge Hill MP will not be asked to repay the funds because of the difficulty in establishing the exact number of hours the staff member worked and also because of the delay in the investigation.”
The figure does not need to be exact.
“The authority (Ipsa) said the amount of work done on the mayoral campaign by the MP’s staff member was “conservatively” about 1,000 hours.”
By not having to re-pay the money, the green light is given to any other MP to do the same.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-65694307
P.S. I bet he won’t be suspended from the PLP.
That ratbastard byrne’d have people working for him under threat of dole *sanctions* (hate that term) if he could.
The sad part is, he’s far from the only one.
“Neil Coyle has had the Labour whip returned following his suspension last year after politics reporter Henry Dyer said the MP had made racist remarks towards him. Labour’s chief whip Alan Campbell informed the Parliamentary Labour Party’s parliamentary committee on Wednesday that the whip had been restored to Coyle – who has served as the MP for Bermondsey and Old Southwark since 2015. Campbell reportedly told the committee that he had made it clear to Coyle that his behaviour was unacceptable and is said to have met with the MP since and sought reassurances about future conduct. A party source also said Coyle had taken further actions to change his behaviour since and had accepted the seriousness of the matter and taken responsibility for his actions. But the chief whip will continue to monitor Coyle’s conduct for the foreseeable future, according to the source.
Selective justice in action.
If he were remotely left-wing in his politics he’s get no second chance. Surely, even you would accept that.
https://www.everydoctor.org.uk/map-of-nhs-privatisation