patience scientific culture professor stephen hawking given permission to challenge fraser maze policies on health at the high court will now not see the results of the judicial review he and others sought jordache with shadow health secretary the labor party which set up the n.h.s. was not available for comment so we went to a noisy green outside the palace of westminster to talk to former tory shadow health minister lord mccall he was parliamentary private secretary to prime minister john major and a member of parliament long term sustainability of the n.h.s. committee britain's parliament is due to debate his report and the sustainability of the n.h.s. . mccall welcome to going on the ground on this relatively cold they had cited as a bit of warmer than it was well i think i'm going to need the n.h.s. and if it goes it. does tell me just quickly before we get on to more specific matters what the long term sustainability of the n.h.s. committee is because that's quite

a title suggesting that you could have said that the n.h.s. is no longer sustainable. the general feeling is that if it carries on as it is it may not be sustainable and learned to be changes and one of the big changes we suggest which is has already been adopted is to fuse social care with ordinary medical care and because there's no doubt there's been a neglect compound of. social care and of course the fusing of those two elements of care has been the subject of quite a lot of debate because the plan they were going to make of this week's announcement. that the nurses are going to get more money because already some criticism that whatever jeremy hunt is offering it still amounts to a four fourteen percent sixteen percent index linked since twenty ten well at least something i mean the problem has been and i've been looking back in the records and there was. statement from all the presence of the colleges the role cultures of

certain surgeons physicians and so on the n.h.s. is about to collapse and we'll soon reach a situation where recovery will be very difficult or impossible you know that's the sort of statement but the date of that statement thirty years ago she every so often they have these terrible sort of. things are terrible and that things are difficult and we have to cope with different changing circumstances but if you if you look at the thing that's really changed in this country over the last twenty years experience of beastie epidemic blisse going to be zero second leg zero s. just it's just britain is the worst in europe we we've not seen life expectancy falling in germany and yes we have it's falling in germany it's falling in the united states and it's falling here and what do those three countries have in common obesity that's why it's for you see there was

a paper published in one of the journals they found that thirty thousand people have died and we couldn't quite make out why that was so they blame the government government cuts so i wrote to the guy and said well what did they die of these thirty thousand people he didn't know what he didn't know i think it's two to government couple ok we do know that oh it s derived data says one hundred twenty thousand lives have been lost cut short by something austerity people talking about influenza the worst flu outbreak that wasn't obesity the excess winter deaths well wait a minute here how do you know it's not the beast because that's the worst epidemic for one hundred years that's what's killing people it's killing is killing millions it's costing billions on the cure is free less as simple as that. and then people say oh well it's multifactorial mitzvah. the difficulty is not multi-factorial it's

simply due to the fact that people are eating too much then they say our poor people can't afford the right food but if poor people ate less of the wrong food taste would be better off we've got to educate when it is in the context of hundreds of thousands not being able to eat to like without food back so obviously there premature deaths should there be them or not to do with obesity presumably were they do it or we have a we have two million. type two diabetics in the sky two million what's the cause of that overeating was the cure eat less and you can actually cure many of these cases if they would eat less maybe why this isn't made it more. in a bigger fashion and people look at the finances in the way it's affecting poorer communities is a fact that your apportioning it seems blame to these poor

a community are here other than sage of the food multinationals asked to blame no no i take that point entirely and i'm not in the business of blaming. poor people for being obese and i'm not blaming children for being culture potatoes are in for an insult to say that because in the activity it doesn't lead to obesity obesity leads to an activity that's different the other thing they blame israel people for getting older the old people have always been getting old and they've been getting older since the war when the health of the nation was at its peak but but now as you mentioned already longer to is beginning to tail off yet but it's not tailing off in japan as. we know the nerve expectancy continues to increase in other countries poor because they are not well they're not overeating yet but in africa it's not a big problem overeating and obesity i mean it's a crazy world. half the world is starving to death

a male office gorging itself today and you see it all round you. obesity ok was this some other elements of this. n.h.s. yes a moment you believe that there may be a conflict of interest if we can't talk about say the food industry always gonna talk about the food well that i'm always criticising them and they are to blame for a lot of this but they're beginning to change and instantly the press and the media in general have been very very good this last year in highlighting this problem of obesity and overeating and so on and they've highlighted also so wonderful things like you go into a hospital and there's a great stall selling all the food that's producing the diseases that they're teaching in the hospital and the press have been very good about highlighting that and all credit to them arguably that's to do with the creation n.h.s. trust in the ability to privatise those bits of the ground floor of hospitals for

big multinational food manufacturers and you say well yes but we've got to get on to the food industry and unpressed them because after all it was the food industry aided and abetted by a lot of university people and n.h.s. people who said told the british people to have a low fat high carbohydrate high sugar diet which was there was really quite the wrong thing and then they said that all the calories we eat is expended on excise which isn't true it's only a fraction so you had hundreds of thousands of people pounding the pavement thinking they were going to lose weight because all they do is wear out their joint an exercise is good for your general health but not in terms of reducing your weight that's the problem we can of course blame our own governments here but do you think one element of that then was lobbying in brussels in strasbourg and that's our law going all over the place yes absolutely and lobbying here in brussels all of the food law. obvious very powerful but wouldn't you say that all

of this started then from the meiji years the blair years of this trying to copy a commercial environment within the n.h.s. well as a very commercial idea to get inspectors from head office look at the world we need to get rid of the tent need all the swarms of inspectors i mean a professional is an organization which should look after itself and police itself you see and in fact you see doctors much better at policing themselves than people coming out coming in from outside who don't know anything about the subject that say that but also as a beach head the royal colleges are saying it's never been as bad as it is fundamentally do you not think the problem with the whole of sustainability is the fact that we fund the n.h.s. and how as a percentage of g.d.p. that the united states doesn't way lower than germany or fraud well it's not all

that much lower than germany actually and frankly are there at twelve percent well it's a bit closer than months of matter of fact and actually we're probably more efficient over over zebra finch because where using far less money out of g.d.p. to pay for a public health far less it's only a few percent but it's really a few percentage points is after all the about we spend on the feds and we are there is quite a lot of money yes you can i just ask you finally about the jamie colby has written to the prime minister about new policies necessitating immigration checks on people for life saving treatment. what would you say about the checking of immigration status for life saving surgery that well obviously i think there's no problem with people who fall ill it's an emergency there's no problem there told them either where they come from we treat them. and indeed i've treated many people

from abroad that the problem is if they set out from abroad with the cold condition and the medical tourism yes it's medical tourism and that that is a problem and i think it's right to try and tighten up on that finally just think that one of the problems with the at least government introduction get h.s. was at allowing doctors to work private as well as for public and this is caused a structural problem with no i honestly don't think that because it's only a small percentage in fact i'm one of the advantages of allowing a little private practice is it kept them within the curtilage of the hospital where they were working so they did their private practice within the cartridge of n.h.s. hospital so they were wrong or they were on the premises but that's the important thing incidentally that they i was rather like that liam us has a new youngster at the time but you know once he said in in the commons we're going

to introduce prescription charges not to raise money because linda raised ten million and the total budget then was four hundred million can you believe it no he said it's to discourage people from using the n.h.s. excessively and unnecessarily so he hit the nail on the head that he shouldn't have put you on drugs should be put on going to see the doctor just chilling because if you pay for something you do value it more and i have to realise that if you're very poor fun or not if you're very poor don't have a shilling well that there are because there are exceptions if if you were poor you didn't pay you got your drugs free from billions attached to the n.h.s. that is well. but it's interesting that prime minister at they did actually see the point even then but they're not in.

when belong to the un for a noble goal thank you pleasure for the break while than six hundred british soldiers still in afghanistan after this week's ice attack they had called the university we investigate alleged lies from nato governments with a us state department head to get official for the captain matthew hoh tourism a says britain hasn't had it so good since what has he we have the world privatised up how old will soon was in power at this week's pm puce goal is a ball coming up what do you have going on the ground.

well you know the hard thing we've kind of adopted because we were called pirates for so long. i mean they're into small ball and sticks you don't harp on ships and you didn't. you might not be. the little self to big fish already ninety percent of the darned on any ball in the collar. cons of fifteen scoops seventy five tons true and they do it several times a day with the big screens so now you get an idea my coaching. we have to understand we can all still use to just. be with them this will be used we'll going to use our arms. i'm doing this because i want them to. future

world to the future can generations to have out and enjoy the ocean now we have. they are reality now people. and they're willing to trade their physical body in exchange for the promise of immortality because remember we've shifted from the physical to the. we've also lost value is associated with the physical plane they all respect for gravity dollars back for a plurality and. in a gravitational this ethical valueless back you moral turpitude which

is now the new reality or heaven as some may call it. welcome back while media and british cabinet ministers all but declared war on russia and facebook this week the leader of western europe's largest socialist movement jeremy coleman was more interested in what the u.k. labor party sees as collective economic punishment for the crash of twenty year wait this conservative government has slashed public services they cut funding and expect councils to pick up the pieces the result of this is children centers are closing schools are struggling to appraise on the streets older people being left without care or dignity and refuges tuning would be the way the tories only hear of local government says it's unsustainable and doesn't tell you everything you

need to know does indeed tell you everything you need to know about this government thirty demands households and businesses possible to get business in the minority government needed to raise a male during a prime minister's questions appeared to ignore inflation in her own government is spending more on our schools and our n.h.s. than. able to see that because of. balance approach we take to our economy because of the strong economy we see under the conservatives and i notice that the right honorable gentleman in six questions does not mention today's unemployment for god employment is a joint record high unemployment hasn't been no one since nine hundred seventy five interesting she brought up nine hundred seventy five when britain was led by a labor government run by harold wilson and i'd like to raise a mayor when it came to government expenditure will soon wasn't as interested in expenditure on us wars that arguably and in failure we don't know as.

we have no plans for expenditure in the. howard wilson was inversely not convinced by the us war in vietnam which killed around four million civilians trey's or me though is convinced the british expenditure in blood and treasure should still be deployed in afghanistan let alone syria and let alone income from the war on yemen in a week with at least one hundred killed or wounded in the afghan capital of kabul all the publics of nato nations still being lied to about how winnable the war there is in the fiftieth anniversary week of the british labor governments bombing of iraq i'm joined by matthew hoh a u.s. state department and pentagon official who was part of the iraqi occupation and who resigned over afghanistan matthew welcome to going underground you resigned your position for the pentagon over alleged lying by the hillary clinton state department your allies of the trunk now i think it's just about the same the deal

with you've got trump now. different than obama but the thing that has remained the same or the same career minded people at the state department at cia at the pentagon who are dedicated to their own careers and dedicated to the empire basically but is drawn buggy relistening less to there's a line we don't know whether we can take michael wolff seriously in his book on drugs and there's a scene in it. we're trying tells off all the generals in the situation room about this suggestions as to what to do with afghanistan this year does that ring true is a little drum saying we need to make money like the chinese out of afghanistan we shouldn't be in regime building or training or whatever it is if you're someone like donald trump who you know always say about him he is an intelligent person he has accomplished a lot look he beat seven thousand people in the republican primaries he built be hillary clinton he does have a brain in his head as if i mean we shouldn't underestimate him and if you're

explained for the first time what's happening in afghanistan any reasonable sensible person is going to say this is insane get out so i do think that wolf comment rings true however what we've seen in afghanistan is an escalation of the air war is the escalation of commando strikes look american special operations conducted in six months two thousand raids on afghan homes and villages just in six months american commandos did that so there has been an uptick a big uptick in the american war in afghanistan now trump sensibly may have said i'm not sending more ground soldiers there but that fits in with the rest of the american war plan throughout the greater middle east through the muslim world we're going to use proxy armies we're going to use american air power train transition to like allied air power like the saudis saying yemen firepower like artillery and mortars like we saw used say in mosul or rocka and we're going to use commandos like the iraqis did or the afghans are now dead then backed up by american

commandos or british commandos and that's the way of war that's the way of maintaining these borderlands in the empire this perpetual war that so many of the generals including mattis who is sector defense are kelly who is the white house chief of staff believe is necessary to again maintain the empire i think the british ministry of defense calls him because of the rather. than soldiers but britain is indeed on the ground some type of british shooting will boots on the ground you talked about all of that what is the actual a move all of this look if you look at what's a general mattis or general kelly. talked about if you go back and look at their speeches they view america the u.k. the west as the apex of civilization they view themselves as modern day legionnaires who are protecting the republic who are defending the empire and what they need to do is necessary in terms of warfare being a constant state of humanity and that these forces are just there to

maintain the base level of order they've called in the special operations community or the cia for years now they've called it mo in the grass not they idea that you have to do maintenance that you have to continually do these strikes on these lawless areas on the areas that you can't subjugate or bring under control and this is what the greatest differences between the trump war plan and say obama or bush's war plan is there is no outcome to it i mean say what you will about the bush and obama war plans they were criminal they were immoral they were not going to work. but they had political objectives they tried to have elections they tried to do economic development they tried to have negotiations or bring in parts of the populations to be inclusive in the government under the trump war plan which again is really a madison kelly mcmaster war plan there is none of that if you actually want to say

the brad pitt film i think it's available now which has we have another. i mean that's realistic that's the kind of madness you're describing it's hard to come up with a better word than madness. is just absolutely look at the military you're trained to take the hill and then you take the next hill and you just keep going on there's no end state for it and that's what. you see you have these career minded generals who believe that there are more capable or better than the preceding general that's why we've had how many seventeen different eighteen different commanding generals all of which in afghanistan say the same kind of thing just give me some more troops and some more time and we'll win it was one undeniable of success or failure of afghanistan has been the massive increase in heroin deaths in britain in glasgow we have a death rate of one thousand three hundred fifteen percent higher than the european

union norm what does it feel like for you if we could only imagine the death rates of due to heroin in the us in the sunni areas you know in the united states we've had a three or four fold increase overall for the whole country in use and in deaths we've it's epidemic it's it is a national health crisis united states opioid epidemics it is horrific what is occurring that has occurred and yeah i don't think you can see it in d.c. i live in new jersey you see if you see it throughout the country it's it's getting a lot of attention because it affects the white communities when the when the crack cocaine epidemic occurred in affected the black or the african-american community didn't have this kind of attention you see the societal problems that drive so many issues but regarding the opioid issue yes no coincidence that we're having this opioid crisis and the opioid production the poppy production that produces these opioids heroines are going to whatever has increased exponentially i

mean each year there are record crops in afghanistan since the west invaded since we put this afghan government in power which is composed of the drug lords and what we have done for years in afghanistan is being in bed with the drug lords help the those who are in the afghan government those who are in the afghan military stomp out their competition root out their competition in that's why. when you were there when i was there absolutely it happened it was happening certainly we saw it we we rewarded afghan governors who were whose families had poppy fields of the rhone and then use the afghan police and the afghan military why do you do you work there at the yeah i mean like you saw you saw us occurring it was it was it was one of the reasons i resigned i mean because you're taking part you were taking part in the formal established drug trade the united states government denies it's complicit in

the drugs trade it wasn't as if the americans were loading up poppies or roping or heroin into our aircraft or was it like our soldiers are out there playing the crops and harvesting merry thing else but we were complicit with the people who were benefiting the most from the afghan drug trade sale akaka wali karzai who was president harman cars half brother who was the biggest drug lord in southern afghanistan until he was murdered i mean these are the men that were benefiting from our occupation when i was part of it because they were well before i'm sure his brother would deny it is brothers being on this show former president karzai made it even more worrying even more worrying accusations about u.s. policy on this program he said he saw in july that there were helicopters u.s. military helicopters being used by islamists in afghanistan would that ring true i don't believe that america that we americans would be so stupid as to actively use our helicopter say to ferry islamic state fighters however the fact that we did

things to try and manage to try and pick winners and losers to try and be smart and certainly know in syria that whereas american money may not have been gone directly to hide as nusra front or to the islamic state in syria or certainly saudi turkey is qatari money was going we are aware of this we have good faith with the united states as we we do not but we. have we have the reports from the defense intelligence agency the american defense intelligence agency that warn of this that warned of the backing of these islamist groups these backing of these extremist groups in syria we were managing and funneling money to win logistics and supporting the islamic state and al-qaeda in syria and we believe that the imaginary line that existed that boundary between syria and iraq would keep them out of iraq so in syria we're trying to use the islamic state to overthrow bashar assad but across the border across the sand boundary we are believing we can keep

them under control and in check and not have them threaten the government and baghdad i mean it just boggles the mind that we have people in power who would be so stupid as to think and i keep going back to this word and i apologize i can't be i'm trying to be a little more articulate but stupid is the only thing that keeps coming back to me because this is what happened and then of course in two thousand and fourteen islamic state takes mosul and now we've seen the complete destruction of sunni cities throughout the tigris and euphrates river valleys in iraq and this is a consequence of course of the american invasion occupation which the u.k. of course was completely complicit in and took part in but not just that but but also to it's all because we have people in power people in there are telling us operative says in the u.s. and also here in the u.k. who believe that they are smarter than their predecessors and certainly smarter than the people in the middle east and that they can manage in co-opting coerce

these people. thank you back to the show but we'll be back on monday when we speak to unicef about how british shopping trading and targeting has affected the poorest country in the middle east three years to the day that the saudi balding if you haven't began to let you know just by social media we'll see you on monday the birthday of a streetcar named desire a tennessee williams who protested the u.s. state department and he called me this witch hunt against fellow playwright and husband about all of the growth often. the. global war hawks sell you on the idea that dropping bombs brings police to the chicken hawks forcing you to fight the battles they don't want. to do sachs credit tell you that what we gossip the public by file for the most important news today. often advertising tells me you are not cool enough unless you fight their product.

all the hawks that we along with our audience will watch. thanks.

to. the wire.