Ben Carter

Has this just been released?

should say multinational, not US

Drug development has utterly stagnated in the three decades since TRIPs provisions granted large US pharma companies extensive IP protections for every tiny slice of the drug development process. Revoking lengthy IP protections so drug development can develop elsewhere would be a massive start

Good media launch and I'm pleased with many of the answers, looking forward to going through the #ipbes12 SPM and seeing how the report is taken up

👍 and even asked a "provocative" question...

A redacted version of a popular political cartoon showing a man with many cookies pointing out a man with none to a man with a single cookie. Above the cookie-laden man a speech bubble says, "Careful mate, that foreigner is going to steal your cookies". In this version, the man with many cookies is drawn over crudely in black marker.

Ask your MP to help stop companies suing over climate action A fossil fuel firm is suing the UK for halting a controversial coal mine, using a secretive corporate court. We’ve been calling on the government to scrap these Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS...

The UK is being sued for stopping a coal mine. Ask your MP to help stop the fossil fuel industry’s secret weapon: act.globaljustice.org.uk/stop-fossil-...

I hope BBC or @theguardian.com send someone up to Manchester for the assessment release at least

Google search of the domain 'mirror.co.uk' for occurrences of the term "IPBES" in the past week, showing no results

Google search of the domain 'thesun.co.uk' for occurrences of the term "IPBES" in the past week, showing no results

Google search of the domain 'theguardian.co.uk' for occurrences of the term "IPBES" in the past week, showing no results

Google search of the domain 'bbc.co.uk' for occurrences of the term "IPBES" in the past week, showing no results

Why does the IPBES meeting this week attract such little press interest here? A UK-co-founded IGO that plugs away through thousands of papers and comes to seismic conclusions on nature eg one of the underlying causes of BD loss is conc. of power and wealth. And they're here in the UK right now!

It's that magical time of year when private jets descend on a Swiss mountain village to discuss climate change and poverty! Anyway, here's my annual reminder. I'll stop posting this when they stop avoiding the real issue: their own massive tax avoidance 💰

At the root of all our problems stands one travesty: politicians’ surrender to the super-rich | George Monbiot There are many excuses for failing to tax the ultra-wealthy. The truth is that governments don’t tackle the problem because they don’t want to, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

It is the source of so many of our evils: the astonishing concentration of wealth in the hands of a very few, and the immense political power that gives them. We cannot solve our problems until we tackle it.
This week's column.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

People will spend anything on their loved ones and, as ever, that sort of sentiment will have others rubbing their grubby hands with glee

Even independently owned vets are having to jack prices because their suppliers are pushing up costs. We need to question the role of private equity in vet care and more widely in society because currently they're largely off the hook

Yes!

Trump may be the beginning of the end for ‘enshittification’ – this is our chance to make tech good again | Cory Doctorow The US president is weaponising tech, but his tariffs and Brexit provide a surprising opportunity to gain back digital control of our lives, says science fiction author, activist and journalist Cory D...

Trump’s economic warfare presents us with an opportunity - let’s take back control from the Big Tech monopolists.

Brilliant by Cory Doctorow 👇

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

What do us feeble-minded public need to be protected from that outweighs all other potential public interest arguments?

Screenshot from the Information Commissioner Office website: "How do we define what is in the public interest? To carry out the public interest test, it is necessary to understand what “the public interest” means in the context of FOIA. The public interest can cover a wide range of values and principles relating to the public good, or what is in the best interests of society. Public interest can take many forms. For example, there is a public interest in: - transparency and accountability, to promote public understanding and to safeguard democratic processes, - good decision-making by public bodies, - upholding standards of integrity, - ensuring justice and fair treatment for all, - securing the best use of public resources, and - ensuring fair commercial competition in a mixed economy."

I'd think most of these "forms" of public interest would apply here ("the best use of public resources"?) (from ICO)

Given the FOI Act is meant to favour the release of information on principle, I'm wondering how they've qualified the exemption here

If you go on vinted/gumtree/ebay you'll find 10, 15 year-old, older tech with swapped out, modern parts. Gameboys with modern LCDs, older mini PCs with SSDs, game controllers with Hall effect sticks - better and cheaper than the original

Very happy to see the #circulareconomy promoted by @green-alliance.org.uk . Refurbished products are often better than new. Could often be called 'upgrades' instead - repair/refurbish almost a misnomer sometimes.

"For new products that come through from our vendor base, they only actually test a sample of those...For the refurbished products, every single product is tested"

Is Climate Change an Externality? Environmental harms are often cast as externalities, even by those seeking to emphasize their urgency. Yet the major modern environmental statutes, written before America'

Today, @madisoncondon.bsky.social makes the case that we should stop thinking of climate change as an externality.

The latest in our series on @alybatt.bsky.social's *Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature.*

I think large companies suing their government is enough to boil anyone's blood

Agreed ISDS not a sexy term. But the crux of it - that companies are able to sue governments - incensed me enough that I went into global health as a result. Specifically Phillip Morris moving their headquarters to Hong Kong so they could sue the Aussie government over a plain packaging law

There's a reasonably well-known adage, in global health law at least - 'it's not rule of international law, but rule of international lawyer'

Some of the best paid lawyers in the world are experts on treaty/trade law and paid enormous sums to help multinationals extract concessions and payments from nations using ISDS, TRIPS+ etc. (And send a message to other nations with the temerity to consider laws to protect public health)

ISDS is the tip of the iceberg of the structural power that's been granted through democratically unaccountable, complex legal bullshit

It must have been difficult to imagine a more unjust international trade system to follow the WTO. But now, as the WTO dies a slow death, the "spaghetti bowl" of overlapping bilateral and multilateral treaties has somehow outdone it

Hello, foreign oligarchs and corporations! Please come and sue the UK for billions | George Monbiot The case of a planned Cumbrian coalmine shows how governments around the world are being threatened by litigation in shadowy offshore courts, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

Sovereignty? Democracy? Sorry, but we can't afford those anymore. We'll be sued if we try to defend them.
This week's column is about a massive but scarcely-covered scandal.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

If Spain can do it, why can’t we?