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This is a commentary on Gilbert and colleagues' (1) paper on morality and markets in the National Health Service (NHS). Morality and values are not ephemeral qualities and universal healthcare is not simply an aspiration; it has to be enshrined in law. The creation of the UK NHS in 1948 was underpinned by core legal duties which required a system of public funding and delivery to follow. The moral values of the citizens in support of social solidarity were thus transformed into a political and legal contract for citizens. The NHS still survives in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland but the coalition government abolished it in England in 2012, reducing the NHS to a funding stream, a logo and a set of market regulators. This paper describes and explains the Health and Social Care (HSC) Act 2012 in England and how the NHS is withering away and health services are being remodeled along US Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) lines. There was nothing moral about this extraordinary act of savagery and violence against the public in England, and against common values and widely held beliefs in public ownership funding and provision of universal healthcare. The public health consequences will be catastrophic which is why after the election on May seventh a new Bill is required to Reinstate the NHS and the Secretary of State's legal duty to provide listed health services throughout England.

Introduction -- Part 1 Bodily Damage and Pre- and Early Industrial Sport -- 1 The Perils of Rewarding Toughness: Honor, Injury, and Death in the Athletics of the Ancient World -- 2 'Beastly furie, and exstreme violence': pain, injury and death resulting from football and other ball games played in the British Isles before the Reformation -- 3 Violence, injury, and the politics of the evolving football codes -- 4 "Though he was evidently suffering great pain, he bore it well:" Public Discourse on Benefits, Risk, and Injury in North American Wrestling, 1880 to 1914 -- Part 2 The NFL: Politics, Injury and American National Identity' -- 5 Inflaming the Civic Temper: Progress, Violence, and Concussion in Early American Football -- 6 A Problem That Cries Out For Standards: Football Helmets, Conceptions of Risk, and the National Commission on Product Safety, 1961-1970 -- 7 Lights Out: Concussion Research, the National Football League, and Employer Duty of Care -- 8 Race and Injury in American Football -- Part 3 Sporting Females, Sexuality and the Politics of Injury -- 9 Injury at the Extreme: Alison Hargreaves, Mountaineering and Motherhood -- 10 Gendered Bodies, Gendered Injuries -- 11 The Not So Glamorous World of Women's Wrestling -- 12 Pride, Prejudice and Death: The Emile Griffiths Story -- Part 4 Sport as Transport: Horse, Cycle and Motor Racing and the Politics of Safety -- 13 Runners, Riders and Risk: Safety Issues in the History of Horseracing -- 14 "Dishing out the pain" in professional cycling -- 15 It Was Ironic That He Should Die in Bed: Injury, Death and the Politics of Safety in the History of Motor Racing -- Part 5 Sport, Injury and the Culture of Late Capitalism -- 16 The Death of Jordan McNair: The Inevitability of the Avoidable Life-Threatening Injury -- 17 From Body Snatchers to Brain Banks: The Cadaver as Commodity and the Sports-Concussion "Crisis" -- 18 On the Front Lines: Black Boys and Injury in Basketball -- 19 All Power to Your Elbow? Injury in US Baseball and the Politics of 'Tommy John Surgery' -- 20 Is Injury "On Brand"? Examining the Contexts of the CrossFit Injury Connection -- 21 'This must be done right, so we don't lose the income': Medical care and commercial imperatives in mixed martial arts -- 22 Vanguards on The Starting Line: Race, Work, and Dissent in Sport Dystopian films from Rollerball to The Hunger Games -- Part 6: Sport and Injury – Case Studies -- 23 Injury and Olympics Politics, 1896-1988 -- 24 Fits and Starts: Re-examining the Mystery of Brazil's Ronaldo and the Rumours Swirling Around his Controversial Role in the World Cup final of 1998 -- 25 The Cricket Pitch as 'Unsafe Workplace': Sports Culture and the Death of Phillip Hughes -- 26 Muhammad Ali, Sport Celebrity and Perceptions of Parkinson's Disease -- 27 'Snipers Stop Play': The Israeli Defence Force and the Shooting of Palestinian Footballers -- Part 7 Sport, Harm and the Politics of Wellbeing -- 28 The politics of safeguarding and protecting children in sport in England -- 29 Sidelined: Boys, Sport, and Depression -- 30 Injuries in Schools' Rugby: Occasional Niggles and Scrapes?.

AbstractChildren have been disproportionately affected by the response to COVID‐19 despite having a negligible risk of morbidity and mortality. Moreover, the response to COVID‐19 has magnified the inequalities generated by the decade‐long austerity regime imposed by the coalition, and current government. The numbers of children living in poverty are rising: some 30% of children, amounting to over four million children, are living in relative poverty in the United Kingdom. Poverty will deepen due to rising levels of unemployment, and with 25% of private sector workers experiencing a reduction in hours, this will disproportionately affect families with young children. The stage is set for deepening and more entrenched inequalities, superimposed on the pre‐existing inequalities of austerity. A comprehensive and radical set of policies is needed to address this and will require full government commitment at the highest level.

The Indian government suspended research in April 2010 on the feasibility and safety of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine in two Indian states (Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat) amid public concerns about its safety. This paper describes cervical cancer and cancer surveillance in India and reviews the epidemiological claims made by the Programme for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH) in support of the vaccine in these two states. National cancer data published by the Indian National Cancer Registry Programme of state registry returns and the International Agency for Research on Cancer cover around seven percent of the population with underrepresentation of rural, northern, eastern and north-eastern areas. There is no cancer registry in the state of Andhra Pradesh and PATH does not cite data from the Gujarat cancer registries. Age-adjusted cervical cancer mortality and incidence rates vary widely across and within states. National trends in age standardized cervical cancer incidence fell from 42.3 to 22.3 per 100,000 between 1982/1983 and 2004/2005 respectively. Incidence studies report low incidence and mortality rates in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh. Although HPV prevalence is higher in cancer patients (93.3%) than healthy patients (7.0%) and HPV types 16 and 18 are most prevalent in cancer patients, population prevelance data are poor and studies highly variable in their findings. Current data on HPV type and cervical cancer incidence do not support PATH's claim that India has a large burden of cervical cancer or its decision to roll out the vaccine programme. In the absence of comprehensive cancer surveillance, World Health Organization criteria with respect to monitoring effectiveness of the vaccine and knowledge of disease trends cannot be fulfilled.

This article outlines and critiques the main fiscal and economic rationales for the Private Finance Initiative – by far the dominant form of public‐private partnership in the United Kingdom (UK) – and examines the impact of the policy on the long term financial viability of the National Health Service. It shows that the interest rate on private finance contains a significant element of 'excess return' to investors, and there is no evidence that this 'excess cost' to the public sector is offset by greater efficiency through the contracting process. It concludes that the private financing of public capital investment is highly problematic – and can have a serious impact on the finances and capacity of public authorities.

This article provides an analysis of the Scottish Government's approach to the use of private finance in public services. It examines the budgetary drivers behind the policy in Scotland and assesses its cost-efficiency. In doing so, it considers first the standard private finance initiative (PFI) model, and then turns to the 'non-profit distributing' (NPD) model – a variant of PFI developed in Scotland and one that is, at the time of writing, unique to the country. It concludes that, while NPD provides the Government with an important political benefit, in being seen to safeguard the 'public interest' while working within UK-wide budgetary constraints, the decision to continue with private finance carries a high economic cost.

This article outlines and critiques the main fiscal and economic rationales for the Private Finance Initiative and examines the impact of the policy on the long‐term financial viability of NHS trusts. It concludes that the PFI funding of capital investment is highly problematic. Its high costs can have a negative impact on the finances of health systems.

The government plans to continue using NHS funds to contract with commercial healthcare providers in the second phase of the independent sector treatment centre programme, but Allyson M Pollock and Sylvia Godden argue that no good evidence is available to support this policy

The neo-liberal assault on the welfare state has not always been direct. The acknowledged popularity of the UK NHS has resulted in governments using covert means to undermine its core principles, namely universality and equity. Long-term care with its vulnerable client base is an important example of how care has become a private responsibility with little or no debate or discussion. Using the social security regulations, the Conservative government of the early 1980s pumpprimed with public funds the massive expansion of private nursing and residential care, to the extent that the past 20 years has witnessed the evolution of a significant new economic market sector. This article charts the trajectory and structure of the market in long-term care provision, from its 'cottage industry' beginnings to increasing dominance by generic, often publicly-quoted multinational corporations. It shows how the privatization of funding was accompanied by transferring responsibility for payment of care from central government to local authorities in 1993, and how the introduction of eligibility criteria and the shrinking of public provision has made care a private and personal responsibility. Government is now encouraging companies to diversify into higher-cost specialist areas such as diagnostics, acute psychiatric care and acute hospital and intermediate care, with long-term care increasingly seen as a lower profit 'core' industrial package predicated on basic services and casualized, low wage labour. The commodification of the care process is now being extended to other parts of the NHS and has serious implications for the health and well-being of the whole population and not just for the most frail and vulnerable.