Just before Christmas I took part in a show about the threat to the NHS from the Tory-led coalition government (and from senior managers within the NHS) on the excellent community radio station Radio Free Brighton, which is based in Brighton, funnily enough, and was set up by my good friend Jackie Chase. I spoke about the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign, and its success, over the last 15 months, in preventing the government’s plans to severely downgrade services at the hospital as part of proposals for dealing with the debts of a neighbouring NHS trust, although it is impossible to talk about Lewisham in isolation, as the threats we faced in south east London are echoed around the country.

The half-hour show, which is available here, was presented by Davy Jones, the Green Party Parliamentary Candidate for Kemptown, and the other guest was Madeleine Dickens of Brighton Save the NHS (part of the “Keep Our NHS Public” network of campaigning groups). Jackie also provided some insights from her time as a nurse. What brought us all together was not only our concern for the NHS, which faces an unprecedented threat (from the Tories who are privatising it at an alarming rate, and from its own senior managers, who have talked themselves into believing that savage cuts to services can somehow improve clinical outcomes), but also our mutual interest in the role played in these developments by Matthew Kershaw.

When the plans for Lewisham were sprung upon us last October, just before Halloween, the suitably ghoulish figure elevated to the role of chief executioner (or the NHS Special Administrator, as he was known) was Matthew Kershaw, and when his work at Lewisham was done (and his proposals approved by Jeremy Hunt, only to be overturned in summer by a high court judge following two judicial reviews), Kershaw moved to Brighton, where he was appointed the Chief Executive of Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals (BSUH), which runs the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton and the Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath.

Unsurprisingly, given his experience of taking a hatchet to services, one of Kershaw’s first acts as the new CEO last spring was to announce £30 million of cuts, prompting widespread alarm in Brighton and Haywards Heath. Read the rest of this entry »

Listen here to my show with Omar Deghayes on Radio Free Brighton. And please sign the petition calling for the release of Shaker Aamer.

Last week, when I visited Brighton to take part in “Freedom from Torture,” an event organised by the University of Sussex Amnesty International Society, I stayed overnight with my friend Jackie Chase and her family, and, the following day, recorded a radio show about Guantánamo on Radio Free Brighton, with my friend, the former Guantánamo prisoner and Brighton resident Omar Deghayes. The 40-minute show is available here.

Jackie is a long-standing campaigner for justice, having been involved in the Save Omar campaign, to secure the return from Guantánamo of Omar Deghayes (who was freed in December 2007). Jackie then campaigned to secure the release of Binyam Mohamed, who was finally freed in February 2009, and now runs Under the Bridge Studios, a wonderfully busy community of rehearsal studios, which also houses Radio Free Brighton, which was recently recognised by Mixcloud as one of the 30 most popular online radio shows in the world. Read the rest of this entry »