Jho

In other news: water is wet. I think we all knew that Charles wouldn't have to go through the same pains us common British folk do in regards to accessing healthcare. But nonetheless I think it's important to continue to highlight these ever growing class divisions in the UK, such as those between people who can afford private healthcare and people who have to rely on our public services. People in positions of authority and power in our country do not understand the struggles of everyday British people.

My TL;DR:

Charles is already receiving expert care for his cancer within days of diagnosis. His speedy treatment should draw fresh attention to the long cancer treatment waiting times that most British people experience with the NHS.

The proportion of patients in England waiting less than 62 days from an urgent suspected cancer referral or consultant upgrade to their first definitive treatment for cancer is 65.2%.

Amid growing frustration at NHS waiting lists, record numbers of people are paying for private healthcare. Nearly 300,000 people in the UK have paid for chemotherapy in the last five years.

Survival rates for cancer in the UK lag behind those of other European countries for nine out of 10 of the most common types of the disease.

Researchers said cancer waiting times across the country were among the worst on record, too many cancers were diagnosed at a late stage, and access to treatment was unequal.

Buckingham Palace has not specified whether the king is receiving private healthcare or being treated on the National Health Service.

My sibling has been working on this project for the last 18 months and it fully launched yesterday. It has now made the news! I'm immensely proud of them, their work will surely save many lives.

Anyone aged over 18 who has at least one Jewish grandparent is eligible for testing. If you meet this criteria you can order a test here: https://jewishbrca.org/

Article TL;DR:

The tests check for faulty BRCA genes. People with Jewish ancestry are far more likely to have inherited faulty BRCA genes than the general population. There is a 50% chance of someone who has a faulty BRCA gene passing it on to any children.

Those born with impaired BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes have a greater risk of developing breast, ovarian, prostate or pancreatic cancer.

The NHS England screening programme is part of a drive to detect cancer early. Tests can be ordered online and completed at home, by taking a sample of saliva and sending it off to a laboratory.

My TL;DR:

Photos mostly garnered from fishing industry social media accounts, show that trawling the seabed for langoustines to produce scampi also traps many other fish, including young white fish, flatfish, starfish and sharks.

Fishing for langoustines in Scotland is big business, with landings worth £91m in 2019, providing 43 per cent of the world’s supply.

But there have long been concerns about the fish accidentally caught in the nets of the langoustine trawlers.

One picture shows a critically endangered flapper skate, dead and allegedly dumped on the seabed.

The industry body, Seafish, insisted suggestions that bycatch made the langoustine fishery unsustainable were “incorrect”. Whiting, haddock and cod caught along with langoustines can be harvested and can together make up 80 per cent of catches, it said.

But Seafish accepted that “unfortunately, endangered, threatened and protected species can occasionally get caught in fishing gear”.

My TL;DR:

Downing Street is facing calls to explain why it has appointed an unelected shooting enthusiast as its animal welfare minister after it emerged he has backed the culling of seals and wild birds.

Robbie Douglas-Miller, who was last week given a peerage to allow him to become minister in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), owns a grouse moor in Scotland and has argued for the relaxation of rules on shooting wild birds that prey on salmon.

He is also on the board of a fishery which applied to obtain a licence to kill seals in 2021; last year he gained a licence to kill wild cormorants and sawbill ducks.

Furthermore, in September, he signed a letter with fellow grouse moor owners lobbying the Scottish government to water down new laws that bring in licences for grouse-shooting in an effort to address persecution of birds of prey.

Douglas-Miller was made a baron on Friday in a surprise appointment as an environment minister and given the portfolio responsibility for animal welfare this week.

My TL;DR:

Red squirrels are one of Scotland’s most beloved and most threatened woodland animals.

Red squirrels and their tree nests are protected under law. But in 2017 Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) was granted a licence by the Scottish Government’s wildlife agency allowing dreys to be damaged during forestry operations.

FLS estimated that the “theoretical maximum” of red squirrel babies killed when their nests were destroyed during tree felling between 2017 and 2022 was 1,976.

FLS’s estimates, however, were dismissed as “bullshit” by Dave Anderson, an award-winning wildlife expert who worked for FLS and its predecessor bodies for 43 years.

What was going on within FLS was a “disgrace”, with staff being put under increasing pressure to ignore wildlife so that more money could be made from selling timber, Anderson alleged.

FLS treated the deaths of red squirrels, birds and other wildlife as “collateral damage”, he told The Ferret.

Bradshaw is the chief caretaker of some of the country’s rarest flowers. She has spent seven decades obsessively studying the unique arctic-alpine flora of Teesdale, in the north of England.

Where once [these flora] were widespread in Britain, now only fragments remain, and 28 species are threatened with extinction.

“Everything about Teesdale is unique,” says Bradshaw with pride – and the authority of someone who has just written a 288-page book on the subject.

[...]

Since the 1960s, plant abundance has dropped by 54% on average. Some have essentially disappeared, such as the dwarf milkwort, down by 98%, and the hoary whitlow-grass, down by 100% (there is now just one recorded plant). Her data suggests these “shocking” declines are continuing.

Bradshaw sees those declines as British heritage disappearing. She says: “We’ve got various buildings in the country – Stonehenge, Durham Cathedral, and others; if they were crumbling away, there would be groups and money helping stop it, because people would say: ‘We can’t let this happen.’

Despite Bradshaw’s guardianship of this land, and the love and energy she has put into saving it, the future here is unknown. The last words of her book speak to this unrelenting loss. “This is our heritage, this unique assemblage of plant species, mine and yours,” she writes. “In spite of trying, I have failed to prevent its decline, now it is up to you.”

Campaigners fear the change of approach could lead to more pollution in England’s rivers and waterways if the new measuring methods are less rigorous.

Recent analysis found that many toxic chemicals and pesticides banned in the bloc since Brexit are not outlawed for use in the UK. Ministers are also attempting to rip up EU-derived sewage pollution rules for housebuilders.

In 2019, the last time the full water assessments took place, just 14% of rivers were in good ecological health and none met standards for good chemical health.

The Guardian can reveal that the government will be using its own, as yet undisclosed methodology to assess river health. Activists say this may make it harder to compare the state of the country’s rivers against those in the EU, and will leave the public in the dark over pollution from sewage and agriculture.