After 5 weeks of intermittent dial up speeds I am catching up on stuff but there’s always room for shimmery pop splendidness, give me a CH, give me an OOOOO give me an OON.

On The Hour 1992: Chris Morris hilariously prank sells fake Kinnock scandal to Daily Mail & Sun after Conservative central office direct him to ‘Tory Tabloids’. It’s audio only so if you prefer, soundcloud below.

This is a huge scandal and directly implicates the very nature of the government’s attacks on benefits for sick and disabled people, it is formulated upon deliberate carefully engineered systemic misdiagnoses that serve a financial and political agenda NOT a medical one-

Twelve doctors employed by the firm that is paid £100m a year to assess people claiming disability benefit are under investigation by the General Medical Council over allegations of improper conduct. The doctors, who work for Atos Healthcare, a French-owned company recently criticised by MPs for its practices, face being struck off if they are found not to have put the care of patients first.

The Observer has found that seven of the doctors have been under investigation for more than seven months. The other five were placed under investigation this year following complaints about their conduct.

It is understood that the majority of allegations concern the treatment of vulnerable people when the government’s controversial “work capability assessments” were carried out, but the GMC refused to comment on individual cases. The development will add to fears over the pace and radical agenda behind the government’s welfare-to-work policy, which led to protests in Westminster in May by thousands of disabled people. It will also raise concerns about ministers’ commitment to Atos Healthcare, which was recently granted a three-year extension on its contract.

Two doctors employed by Atos have already been taken by the GMC to an independent panel for adjudication on their fitness to practise. Dr Alexandros Mallios, who it was claimed had not carried out a proper examination of his patient during an assessment, was cleared by the panel last October. Dr Usen Samuel Ikidde, who qualified in Nigeria, was given a formal warning in January, to lay on his records for five years, after he was found to have worked for Atos while on sick leave from an accident and emergency department.

via Atos doctors could be struck off | Politics | The Observer.

Update: As requested here is a link to the General Medical Council (GMC) website A patient’s guide to making a complaint about a doctor

Please make your way towards Saturday in an orderly fashion.

I can understand the urge to burn everything down and steal what you can, and for many it appeared to be a reasonable option, why they felt that is the question a reasoned response would seek to answer.

The political response confirms however preening a law and order macho authoritarian mode, welcome to a new order of ghetto no go areas of millions of economically cleansed and Green Zone paramilitary protected rich enclaves. The Olympics, as in China, are the medal for achieving this, absolute lockdown level security to produce a glittering mask over a maggot eaten skull of societal failure. It’s odd people think disaffection would not manifest as looting after decades of intense consumer culture and a retreat of the political process to irrelevance for most people. We are reaping what we sowed but still living in denial.

That’s it, there’s already too much waffling about the riots because noise dampens the truth, we are headed into the authoritarian end stage of neoliberalism. I can’t get too worked up by looting, it’s just stuff, but the fear and the violence against people are reasons not to celebrate this breakdown. For two nights London was pretty well much an open city, yet Westminster, Downing street, Buckingham Palace, City of London remained untouched. No one looted the Crown jewels, or the Bank of England, such lack of ambition. The personal is political and the personal for millions is just survival, there was no revolutionary organising, this was a scream as the labour progresses, to birth a nation of unprecedented inequality. Anti-social criminal behaviour is likely in any circumstances that’s just part of the human condition, but rather than contend with that and minimise it, we are generating excess and pretending the reasons for this are somehow separate from the cultural milieu we live in.

A baby isn’t born a rioter, yet apprently a baby can born a future King, it’s odd that, as Thomas Paine said-

the idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of hereditary judges or hereditary juries; and as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man; and as ridiculous as an hereditary poet-laureate.

That was in 1791, so we’re like really cracking on with things eh? Wasn’t that Royal wedding nice? So the inequality of Royalty aside, what is acting upon people to send them hysterically into the night to loot and commit violence (oh cheer mindlessly for their own lack of equality)? I am only interested in that discourse all else is reactionary moralising drivel that brings the new order into being.

The YouGov survey of frothing shoot-the-rioters atavism and the environment on Twitter did reconfirm that many people’s liberalism is a mindless affect that is not earned but worn until their slice of the pie is under threat then it’s all hands to the water cannon of the state. I actually have most respect for people who were scared, reacted with anger, worked through that and were able to think of their own true response which was dismayed at the damage, the rioters but nevertheless knew simple authoritarian answers were worse than useless.

As it gets worse, as the tens if not hundreds of thousands migrate due to being evicted under the cuts to housing benefits, as the hundreds of thousands of sick & disabled are cheated of support by for profit computer programs, as the surveillance state monitors our social media, as the unemployed are further demonised even as 50 people chase every 1 job. Remember we have a right to self defence, as much as from a rioter at our door, the out of control TSG Met cop or the political financial complex that is looting us far more profoundly and effectively.

Moloko had some great choons, although their most well known hit the remix of Sing it Back is almost my least favourite, Indigo is a big rolling catchy pop fest. All together now- Rameses…Colossus!

A top-secret document revealing how MI6 and MI5 officers were allowed to extract information from prisoners being illegally tortured overseas has been seen by the Guardian.The interrogation policy – details of which are believed to be too sensitive to be publicly released at the government inquiry into the UKs role in torture and rendition – instructed senior intelligence officers to weigh the importance of the information being sought against the amount of pain they expected a prisoner to suffer. It was operated by the British government for almost a decade.A copy of the secret policy showed senior intelligence officers and ministers feared the British public could be at greater risk of a terrorist attack if Islamists became aware of its existence.One section states: “If the possibility exists that information will be or has been obtained through the mistreatment of detainees, the negative consequences may include any potential adverse effects on national security if the fact of the agency seeking or accepting information in those circumstances were to be publicly revealed.”For instance, it is possible that in some circumstances such a revelation could result in further radicalisation, leading to an increase in the threat from terrorism.”The policy adds that such a disclosure “could result in damage to the reputation of the agencies”, and that this could undermine their effectiveness.The fact that the interrogation policy document and other similar papers may not be made public during the inquiry into British complicity in torture and rendition has led to human rights groups and lawyers refusing to give evidence or attend any meetings with the inquiry team because it does not have “credibility or transparency”.The decision by 10 groups – including Liberty, Reprieve and Amnesty International – follows the publication of the inquirys protocols, which show the final decision on whether material uncovered by the inquiry, led by Sir Peter Gibson, can be made public will rest with the cabinet secretary.The inquiry will begin after a police investigation into torture allegations has been completed.Some have criticised the appointment of Gibson, a retired judge, to head the inquiry because he previously served as the intelligence services commissioner, overseeing government ministers use of a controversial power that permits them to “disapply” UK criminal and civil law in order to offer a degree of protection to British intelligence officers committing crimes overseas. The government denies there is a conflict of interest.The protocols also stated that former detainees and their lawyers will not be able to question intelligence officials and that all evidence from current or former members of the security and intelligence agencies, below the level of head, will be heard in private.

via UKs secret policy on torture revealed | Politics | The Guardian.

Please note if thousands of New Labour supporters had their way David Miliband would now lead the party-

Tony Blair evaded a series of questions over the role he played in authorising changes to the instructions in 2004, while the former home secretary David Blunkett maintained it was potentially libellous even to ask him questions about the matter.

As foreign secretary, David Miliband told MPs the secret policy could never be made public as “nothing we publish must give succour to our enemies”.

Blair, Blunkett and the former foreign secretary Jack Straw also declined to say whether or not they were aware that the instructions had led to a number of people being tortured.

So we have a white-wash and a collective ‘meh’ from an awful lot of ‘time to look forward’ labourites. I’m not going to even say ‘I hate to say I told you so’, I told you so, torture is a cancerous corruption whose contagion spreads and infects entire societies, starting with the leaders and their supporters. No effective enquiry leading to trials is another key step in failing to stop the tumour. In the BBC Four documentary to mark fifty years of Amnesty International (which was poor) they had Jack Straw on singing AI’s praises and he went unchallenged on his decision to release Pinochet or his involvement in torture, so there we see media is now hosting malignant cells.