Slashdot Mirror
UK Labour Party's Support For Homeopathy Grows
An anonymous reader writes: The UK's Labour Party is currently led by Jeremy Corbyn, who has shown support for homeopathy in the past. So has Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell. (So-called 'shadow' posts in the UK government essentially comprise an alternative Cabinet with positions held by party members in opposition to the party in power.) Now, homeopathy seems to have additional support from the newly-appointed shadow health minister, Heidi Alexander. "I know lots of people who know about benefits of homeopathy. Whether it's the right use of public money is another thing altogether. I'm open to hearing the argument as to why people may think it appropriate."
This is an interesting development. Senior Conservatives (in government) have expressed similar views, including Jeremy Hunt I think. Corbyn's not necessary anti science - here was his pitch on science to scientists who support Labour http://www.scientistsforlabour... homeopathy is still a controversial issue in the UK, with many politicians keen to show support for it because their constituents probably come to them with compelling stories of its success in their cases...
I was reading the Metro (a 'free' paper that's given away at a lot of UK train stations), and it was filled with wall-to-wall criticisms of Corbyn's shadow cabinet choices. In the run up to the leadership campaign, there was nothing but smoke blown in Jeremy's direction. And now this post on Slashdot of all places.
Makes you wonder what the establishment is afraid of.
Is that the official position of the party or of individual members? What the "anonymous reader" forgets to point out is that the letter signed by members of the labour party was also signed by conservative party members as well as liberal democrats and a bunch of others.
As for Heidi Alexander, here's a quote from the linked buzfeed article
“I must admit I’m not totally convinced at the moment but I’ll have to look at it. I know my own parents are great believers in homeopathy. It’s not something that I would immediately support but I’m going to have to look at a whole range of issues. It’s not something that I have given hours of consideration to.”
Oh yeah, definitely a *huge* backer.
How nice of slashdot to become a place for anonymous political shills. In this case I guess it's a Tory sympathizer.
This smacks a lot of the continuing media smear against the new labour leadership - which is getting tiresome for pretty much everyone (whatever their political views).
From the second paragraph of TFA : ... It’s not something that I have given hours of consideration to.”
She added: “I must admit I’m not totally convinced at the moment but I’ll have to look at it.
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
I for one am a strong supporter of an alternative to alternative medicine: sociopathy. The practitioner of this method, called a sociopath, can treat sufferers more effectively than homeopathy ever could, and would suggest that people who believe in homeopathy should try seeing a sociopath too for increased effectiveness. Although unaware, when they go to a homeopath they might be seeing a sociopath too, at the same time, and think it's really homeopathy that helped them.
Corbyn also blames the Ukraine crisis on the west and ticked off Poland by saying that they never should have been allowed into NATO and instead "should have gone down the road Ukraine went in 1990". He thinks Britain should leave NATO, but recently backtracked, saying that there's no "appetite" among the public to do so at the moment and he'll respect that. Russia basically endorsed him today.
"This administration is so incompetent that they cover their tracks with bigger tracks." - Seth Meyers
So now even Slashdot lazily swallows and unquestioningly regurgitates a smear against Labour? Whoever you are, Samzenpus, you've just lost Slashdot a reader.
The Ukraine crisis IS as much a fault of the west as that of Russia. NATO is also an organization that was created to oppose an enemy that no longer exists, and provides very good ammo for Putin to point out how the west would like to corner them..
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
You know nothing about the NHS, or indeed state healthcare. Keep swallowing the misinformation and lies fed to you by the commercial interests in US healthcare and you get the health system you deserve.
The ridiculousness is not limited to the Labour party; the Conservatives actually put a deluded believer into an *actual*, not shadow, ministerial position and to top it all it was minister for health.
The UK press has been full of negative comments about Corbyn, more so since he became leader this weekend, so why is Slashdot joining in? Why don't you run articles on the front pages of the Daily Mail, The Sun, etc. for today and yesterday? During the leadership campaign it wasn't just the right-wing press either since many Labourites didn't want him since they think that they can only regain government by being more like the Conservatives to the point that they are now frequently referred to as the "Red Tories".
Personally, I didn't care about the Labour leadership election because I think that the sooner Scotland can get away from the rest of the UK the better.
He is one of those rare creatures, an honest man with no motivation other than to make the world a better place. I would venture that he has very little dirt to leak, and is probably the most selfless politician in a generation.
This all makes him incredibly dangerous.
Someone asked her about homeopathy, she ducked the question. She was far from enthusiastic about it, but said she would be open to hearing arguments about it - which is what politicians say when they have no clue what their policy is and don't want to answer the question. She should have been decisive and said that the NHS should not ever fund anything that does not outperform a placebo and has no plausible theory of action, but she didn't, yet. This failure to respond to the question is now being spun, and slashdot is getting in on the action too. Maybe if she ever actually takes a position on homeopathy then there will be a story to report, but right now, @heidi_mp has not really done anything other than duck a question.
Nobody was talking about letting Ukraine join the EU. They're way far away from meeting the standards, and as it stands, a lot of people think that even letting states like Hungary in was a mistake. What was being offered was a trade pact.
Here's a quite detailed history of the negotiations and where things went awry, from both sides. Basically, the EU handed Yanukovych a set of economics calculations showing the huge amount of money that would flow into Ukraine, and the conditions they had to meet to get it. They were never really open to negotiation, convinced that the amount of windfall was all that mattered, and they'd fall in line on the conditions. "Vast amounts of money flowing into the country" certainly appealed to ostrich wrangler Yanukovych, but the main sticking point early on was his political prosecution of former prime minister (and Princess Leia impersonator) Yulia Tymoshenko. The EU was quite confident that he'd fall in line in order to get the windfall from the trade membership, and they also didn't see how it was any matter of Russia's what Ukraine, a sovereign state, decided to do on its own, and thus how they even were relevant to the negotiations. It was a pretty haughty position, but if was a quite passive position. Everything Yanukovych tried to change about the deal was rebuffed - it was a "take it or leave it" situation, with the EU fully convinced that the "take it" answer would arrive any day. Russia first tried imposing counterpressure on Ukraine with an economic carrot and stick approach, but this approved not enough to derail the negotiations - although left the Ukrainian side increasingly rebuffed trying to get further concessions from the EU to compensate it. However, the sudden and unexpected reversal came after a relatively brief meeting between Yanukovych and Putin. What was said at that meeting is anyone's guess - although how far Russia was willing to go to keep Ukraine from drawing closer to the EU has been made abundantly clear since then.
"This administration is so incompetent that they cover their tracks with bigger tracks." - Seth Meyers
Islet cell neuroendocrine tumor has very long average survival time if caught early (like Jobs' was) and treated properly (which Jobs' wasn't). Not just a couple years - over a decade. And that's for regular folk, not for people who count among the wealthiest individuals on Earth and can afford the best care on the planet. These tumors are so passive that 10% of autopsied patients in the general public are found to have had a gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumor without ever knowing, and 30% of the tumors are so good at maintaining their original function that there's debate over whether to even call them "cancer". Insulinomas are anything but a virulent form - but they can spread if left to fester. Jobs' cancer was caught very early on, and by all standards he should have had a very long life expectancy had he actually gone with actual medical treatment advised by his doctors (as well as his friends and family). Instead, he committed "suicide by woo", letting it fester until it become something actually bad and hard to remove completely. Something that he deeply regretted later.
"This administration is so incompetent that they cover their tracks with bigger tracks." - Seth Meyers
Note the frauds who sold him, and a million others, known ineffectual treatment in place of real treatment, are not rotting in jail.
That is the problem.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
As opposed to the US system where she wouldn't have been able to afford to pay and the insurance company would've found an excuse to void the policy she'd been paying into for a decade and so she couldn't even get on a list in the first place?
Great. That's much better.
Sacrificing an individual to keep costs down is exactly how the US healthcare system works, that's exactly what happens when you throw capitalism and profit into the mix - you have to grow profits by maximising the amount of people who pay and how much they pay and minimising the amount of people you actually treat in practice.