#politics

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Meanwhile in the USA, the failure to roll forward the subsidies in the Affordable Care Act, means that for many medical insurance premiums could double, leading to many down-grading their car & a largish group of poorer Americans going without health insurance at all.

Anyone looking at the USA & thinking we can learn from that system, should see this and take the only lesson possible: it is a system to be avoided at all costs!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/14/aca-obamacare-expires

It's so American how the Sackler family caused a national which ultimately led to the crisis, & instead of imprisoning them the eventually went "Hang on, we can use this as an excuse to start a war with a country that doesn't even produce fentanyl."

So the UK has agreed to raise the price it pays for US-supplied medicines as part of a deal to avoid tariffs on UK pharmaceutical exports to the USA.... but the Treasury is not allowing for this price rise in its NHS budgetary settlement.

So, its one more mechanism to transfer NHS spending to the private sector while worsening the budget pressures on the health service.

Resident Doctors might also ask: if you can find £1.5bn for this, where's our money?


h/t FT

"In the dual digital enclaves of tech advocacy and political justice, the hope was that the two would come together at some point and champion digital and economic freedom for everyone.

I feel, with the interview of Cory Doctorow on a Novara Media IRL downstream event, finally the good ideas have gravitated toward each other! "

https://spelk.online/posts/magic-kingdom

Really good interview with @pluralistic and one that reassures me that there is a possibility of a better future!

The very fact that Keir Starmer can suggest that the European Convention on Human Rights should be modified to deal with the immigration 'crisis' is the very reason it shouldn't; the whole point of human rights is they recognise that humans should have rights that transcend & are more important than the day-to-day disputes that pattern politics.

Starmer either chooses to ignore this or has forgotten this & more importantly how such protection is key to the Rule of Law!

So qualified good news on the recruitment of new teachers, perhaps reflecting the more negative news across other areas of graduate employment...

However, expanding (this year, beyond targets) the recruitment of trainee teachers is only half the battle.

The Govt./DofE also need to resolve the crisis in retention of teacher beyond (around) five years.... and that is all around term, conditions & the management (both local & national) of teaching.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/dec/04/surge-in-graduates-becoming-teachers-boosts-recruitment-for-maths-and-sciences

Drawing together two themes from recent discussions in my timeline, its worth re-emphasising that:

In-work & housing benefits are not (in the last instance) policies that help the poor rather they are a mechanism to funnel state fund into supporting profits for low-wage employers, and landlords (whose rents are higher than they would be without housing & other benefits being paid to the poor).

So when people talk about 'benefits cheats' you might want to point this out...

I'm a Google Workspace admin, and a team member sent me a screenshot showing that a message they wanted to send was being blocked because it violated an organizational policy-- which was news to me-- I hadn't put in place to block messages based on their content.

Turns out Google Workspace now warns by default when the message content mentions gender identity.

Screenshot of Google Workspace content rules, Gender Identity among them.

i will say it really sucks how 'harm reduction' - a term that describes showing compassion to drug users & providing resources to make drug use safer - has been co-opted by people who couldn't care whether drug users live or die to defend politicians who also couldn't care whether they live or die

If Rachel Reeves really was looking for a source of revenue & wanted to enhance her party's dwindling environmental credentials, then she might have looked at imposing tax on aviation fuel... not increasing it; just imposing it.

As Anna Hughes points out:

'It’s ludicrous that the most environmentally damaging form of transport doesn’t pay fuel tax, especially now that Rachel Reeves is making noises about a tax on electric vehicles'!

Your article (Why are flights in the UK so often cheaper than taking the train?, 19 November) states that “it can still come as a surprise when getting on a plane looks like the money-saving choice compared with taking the train”. I don’t think it comes as a surprise to anyone, given that we’ve all seen eye-watering prices for rail travel and are bombarded with adverts for £20 flights to Nice. We’ve all read the stories of people who flew from one UK city to another via Mallorca or some such location because it was cheaper than getting the train. It does come as a surprise, though, that there’s no tax on aviation fuel. I’m the director of the charity Flight Free UK and I speak to a huge number of people about air travel. They are almost always shocked to discover that there’s no tax on the fuel. Taxing airline fuel is not the only answer to encouraging more people to choose low-carbon travel, but it’s a start. It’s ludicrous that the most environmentally damaging form of transport doesn’t pay fuel tax, especially now that Rachel Reeves is making noises about a tax on electric vehicles. If we’re looking for easy wins for revenue, just look to the skies. Anna Hughes Director, Flight Free UK