…and what do you do?

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David Littlefair in a recent article for The New Statesman suggested a minimum standard for selecting the deputy leader of the Labour Party:

How about these, most of which would strike the public as incredibly normal but are embarrassingly hard for Labour MPs to leapfrog over:

Is not a landlord
Has had a job outside of politics and lobbying
Is not an Oxbridge graduate
Did not go to private school
Is not the third generation of a political family dynasty

And, for good measure, given Labour’s strategic struggles:
Did not vote to defecate on disabled people from a height

All splendid suggestions but it is the never having had a proper job that most often troubles me. By a proper job I mean doing something that if it was not done people would notice. If doctors and nurses stopped doing their jobs people would die. If shop workers stopped filling shelves we would rapidly descend into a state of anarchy as people tried to feed their families. If delivery people abandoned their vans modern life would grind to a halt. If refuse collectors did not arrive regularly we would soon start to drown in our own crap. Basically people who continued working during the Covid pandemic, who were described as Key Workers, because what they do needs to be done.

From Jeremy Corbyn rightwards we struggle to find MPs who have ever done a day’s work. Both of the likely candidates for the deputy leader post would certainly fail.

Regarding the landlord requirement; Rivkah Brown catalogued all the perks they receive. So we arrive at people who’s only earnings have come from public funds operating multi-million pound property empires.

Whilst I have no time for Mr Farage and his band of buffoons it is easy to see why voters are growing tired of such people and are looking for something else. It is like looking in on another world from which we are excluded; will always be excluded, and one that most decent people would be too embarrassed to be a part.

NHS/Accurx – privatisation and missed appointments

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Back in June I happened to read through some unimportant looking mail before it was dropped in the recycling. It informed me that an NHS appointment had been made for me on Saturday July 12th. Why and by whom was a mystery. It certainly was not me. There has been much made lately of the cost to the NHS of missed appointments – some (make up a number) millions/billions of pounds. Perhaps they are missed because people are unaware that they exist.

Fortunately today we can rely on technology to save us. It was a simple matter to cancel my appointment via the services of Accurx and their “easy-to-use platform where patients and healthcare professionals communicate“.

Alas communicating the cancellation did not progress any further than the Accurx box ticking exercise. Two text messages arrived, on the Wednesday and Friday, reminding me of the pending appointment. On the evening of the 12th a lady called to ask why I had not attended. I explained I had cancelled the appointment and she apologised in a manner that suggested this was a frequent occurrence.

This failure came as no surprise to me. In the past I have been advised about the results of a blood test – for someone else. I have been invited to partake in some research – for which I did not qualify.

My experience seems to be a common one given all the one star reviews for Accurx. Although medical professionals seem to love it.

The Accurx Principles are hosted on a Notion site (Notion being some ‘AI’ nonsense) and is full of the vacuous drivel one would expect: “If we disagree, we commit and champion”.

Looking into who these people are we sink into the dark and depressing waters that is the gradual privatisation of the health service. Early investors seem to be Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat and Atomico making Irina Haivas – “My passions remain rooted in deeply disruptive technologies, the people who drive them and the opportunity to create meaningful impact at scale — especially in Europe.” a director until she left Atomico in 2025. Laurence Bargery, a co-founder of Accurx, has moved on to Healthtech 1; a UK division of the American corporation Healthtech X.

Accurx, despite having millions invested, have yet to make any money. Of course making money is not the objective. With the whole world (and beyond) becoming little more than a playground for billionaires just getting a foot in the door is enough for now. Keep Our NHS Public maintains a database that catalogues the millions of pounds we pour into these private companies.

While they are busy innovating and disrupting we are left paying for an increasingly inefficient and ineffective health service.