Almost 400 medicines are vulnerable to shortages in the UK, according to a new list produced by NHS England and Medicines UK. Among the drugs on the list are treatments for blood clots, stroke, and several cancers.

The medicines were identified as at-risk because they have either a single supplier, or no supplier at all. Often, drug companies stop producing specific medicines because they no longer see them as commercially viable.

Having identified this vulnerability, NHS England and its partner organisations are taking steps to mitigate the problem. They’re calling the initiative ‘Project Revive’, providing incentives for drug companies to manufacture the medicines on the list.

Whilst undoubtedly an important step towards ensuring the resilience of the medical supply system in the UK, this is a treatment for a symptom, rather than a cure.

We’re in this mess in the first place because we treat drug manufacture as a commercial market, where companies can compete, patent, price gouge, and drop drugs when they stop making money. That commercialisation of healthcare costs lives.

NHS shortage of ‘products of critical priority’

In total, NHS England identified 378 drugs on its list of vulnerable medicines. Of these, around 80 no longer have a supplier at all, meaning that the currently existing supply is all that remains.

The medicines on the list include bendamustine, a chemotherapy drug used for several cancers; flupentixol, which is used for schizophrenia; and urokinase, a treatment for pulmonary embolism. The prices that the UK pays for these drugs could soar if demand starts to outpace supply.

NHS England produced its list alongside Medicines UK, a trade body representing manufacturers of generic medicines. Mark Samuels, Medicines UK’s chief executive, said:

The list includes products of critical priority and the ambition is to target those medicines representing the most serious risk to supply resilience, which could lead to shortages affecting patient care.

Drugs which have faced shortages across the UK in recent years include estradiol, an element of hormone replacement therapy; lisdexamfetamine, an ADHD medication; and Creon, which is used to treat cystic fibrosis.

Project Revive

However, NHS England, Medicines UK, and the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) plan to tackle the problem of shortages through ‘Project Revive’. This scheme will provide incentives like fast-tracked license approvals to enable manufacturers to supply the 378 drugs on the list.

The pilot of Project Revive will run for 12 months. Then, in 2027, coordinators plan to instate a long-term iteration of the same scheme. Samuels explained that:

We have long stated that medicine shortages cannot be solved in isolation, and this project shows what can be achieved by working together. By working with NHS England and MHRA, we hope that this new model provides more certainty to enable companies to produce and supply medicines for use in the NHS.

Fiona Bride, interim chief commercial officer for NHS England, echoed that sentiment:

Ensuring a resilient and stable supply of medicines is fundamental to delivering patient care, with pharmaceuticals being the most common healthcare intervention in the NHS, and this collaborative pilot initiative aims to strengthen that supply chain by incentivising more companies to become NHS suppliers, or deepen existing partnerships.

Treating the symptom

The news of Project Revive comes after medicine pricing issues hit the headlines last year. Several of the world’s biggest drug manufacturers announced that they were ditching their UK projects.

Critics from within the industry blamed uncompetitive prices for new medicines, low levels of government investment, and Trump’s tariffs adding to supply prices.

Then, in September 2025, science minister Patrick Vallance argued that the NHS would have to pay higher prices for medicines to prevent pharmaceutical investors from abandoning the UK.

This is a problem inherent to introducing a profit motive to any aspect of healthcare, all across the world. Treating medicine as a capitalist exercise creates a host of problems for patients, who should always have been the center of the issue.

Meanwhile, the global pharmaceutical industry has raked in profits at higher margins than practically any other sector.

Profit over patients

As NHS England showed in the Project Revive research, drug companies can cease supply of individual medicines if their profits aren’t high enough. This can leave patients without crucial medications that they need.

Likewise, manufacturers can also raise their prices artificially if they aren’t faced with competition from other companies, or if other countries are willing to pay higher prices. Patents and intellectual property rights for individual drugs can also allow companies to create artificial scarcity.

Even beyond this, the profit motive causes problems with the development of new medicines. Companies aim to develop medicines in profitable sectors, particularly cancer and rare diseases. This, in turn, sees less-profitable diseases neglected in terms of research and development.

Likewise, even the idea of curing a disease can be anathema to a profit motive. In a choice between being paid once to cure a patient, or being paid again and again to treat a disease without curing it, the latter is the profitable choice. For example, one damning Goldman Sachs report stated that:

The potential to deliver ‘one shot cures’ is one of the most attractive aspects of gene therapy, genetically-engineered cell therapy and gene editing. However, such treatments offer a very different outlook with regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies…. While this proposition carries tremendous value for patients and society, it could represent a challenge for genome medicine developers looking for sustained cash flow.

Project Revive looks like an important step towards strengthening the UK’s drug supply chain. However, it’s a band-aid on a problem which will take far more work to heal.

In the UK, we fear the loss of socialised healthcare through the NHS, but the private sector already has its hooks in the system at every level.

There’s no easy fix for the problem of private profiteering in medicine. Capitalism itself is an enemy of good healthcare. It sounds glib, we know, but it’s also true. Failing to recognise that fact will mean that we’re trapped in a cycle of treating the symptoms, whilst neglecting their cause.

Featured image via the Canary

The US left mountains of high-tech weaponry behind when it fled Afghanistan in defeat in 2021 – now, those weapons have flooded neighbouring Pakistan. And the resulting instability might be stopping the US mining the very rare Earth resources it craves.

The US has its sights on vast copper mines just ten miles inside Pakistan. CNN reported that China is already accessing the nearby Muhammad Khel Copper Mine in northern Waziristan.

For a sense of the scale of that mine, watch this:

But nearby, in south Waziristan:

lies another copper mine that Pakistan says can yield almost ten times as much, equivalent to a fifth of the copper America uses every year.

CNN said:

The prospect is so appealing to a Washington administration also hungry for resources that it has put up more than a billion dollars to get things moving.

So what is stopping them? In short, the imperial blowback of vast amounts of lost US military gear.

Billions in lost US arms

The US and her allies cut and run from Afghanistan after two decades of occupation in 2021. Today the Taliban rule the country once again. But that US chaotic exit mean up to $7bn worth of weapons and equipment were simply left behind.

Remarkable footage emerged back then of US troops trying to destroy – or ‘deny’ –  military gear ahead of the US collapse:

But later Taliban footage made clear that weaponry, vehicles, and even helicopters were left behind:

The Foundation for Economic Education broke down some of the numbers involved. They said the giant arsenal included:

includes up to 22,174 Humvee vehicles, nearly 1,000 armored vehicles, 64,363 machine guns, and 42,000 pick-up trucks and SUVs.

There were mind boggling amounts of smalls arms – and even artillery:

the list of allegedly abandoned weaponry includes up to 358,530 assault rifles, 126,295 pistols, and nearly 200 artillery units.

Since the US was forced out the abandoned arms have been sold on – potentially fueling other conflicts.

In April 2025, the BBC was told:

Half a million weapons obtained by the Taliban in Afghanistan have been lost, sold or smuggled to militant groups

A UN report also warned that group including Al Qaeda:

were accessing Taliban-captured weapons or buying them on the black market.

But what are the implication in Waziristan with its rich resources?

Blowback again

As well as copper, CNN reported there were other minerals and metal in Waziristan which the US craves:

Pakistan says there is much more wealth beneath its soil –– an estimated $8 trillion in copper, lithium, cobalt, gold, antimony and other critical minerals.

This mineral reality has:

oiled an unlikely friendship with US President Donald Trump, who has put mineral acquisition at the heart of US foreign policy.

But CNN reporters who went to the region say they were shown:

hundreds of US-made rifles, machine guns and sniper rifles –– all leftovers from Washington’s war next door, and all seized from a new breed of jihadists and insurgents.

In fact, the reporters claimed, following a recent attack on a Pakistani military college 50 miles from the Muhammad Khel Copper Mine:

a colonel laid out a blood-soaked bandana and three M-16 rifles recovered from the militants. Written on the bandana, in Urdu and English, were slogans indicating the wearer’s readiness for martyrdom.

And:

stamped on the rifles were the words: “Property of US Govt. Manufactured in Columbia, South Carolina.”

In Peshawar, CNN recorded images of dozens of American weapons captured after raids:

And US weaponry has also been found in Balochistan in the hands of local insurgents.  Defence analyst Muhammad Mubasher told the outlet American arms were now involved “in almost every encounter that happens”.

Following a recent suicide attack in Balochistan which killed 33 people provincial minister Sarfaraz Bugti said there was:

 no doubt that most of the weapons used were US made that originated from Afghanistan.

Past US imperial adventures seem to be hindering new ones…

Trump’s Pakistan charm offensive

Despite the instability in the region – instability fueled by US blowback- President Donald Trump and Pakistani leaders have been getting cozy over potential mineral deals.

CNN reported that

Pakistan’s prime minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir took an unusual prop on their first joint visit to the White House in September [2025] –– a chest containing a trove of rare earths they said had been dug from Pakistan’s soil.

Adding:

Trump was charmed. The following month he praised Munir in public –– naming him: “My favorite field marshal.”

Pakistani politicians have been schmoozing ever since: they vocally supported Trump’s failed Nobel Peace Prize bid in July 2025, calling him a great peacemaker after recent India-Pakistan clashes. And their first shipment of rare earth minerals arrived in the US just a month after their September 2025 meeting.

Trump wants Pakistani resources. And the Pakistani government seem more than willing to give them up. The problem is that the war in Afghanistan has flooded the region with high tech US-made arms and equipment, fueling a new set of insurgencies. Trump proclaims himself a  ‘Peace President’, but he clearly isn’t getting off the imperialist carousel quite yet.

Featured image via the Canary

BBC News reported yesterday that the US Department of Justice has had to remove thousands of documents related to convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, as they have compromised the identities of women who have been victimised by the elite-run web of sexual violence, abuse, and exploitation.

The outlet further stated that the “flawed redactions” of the Epstein Files have made nearly 100 survivors vulnerable, with the women’s lives “turned upside down.” However, the mainstream media circus around the release of the files is conveniently diminishing both the horror and scrutiny of these atrocious crimes, as well as the accountability of the powerful figures responsible for them.

One thing is clear. The release of the Epstein files was certainly not to protect the victims and survivors of Epstein’s depraved network. The women and girls who bore the brunt of these atrocities have been sidelined even in the official reveal of their experiences.

Epstein files: accountability should be in the interests of victims, not their abusers

According to BBC News, on Friday 30th January two lawyers for Epstein’s victims insisted that a New York federal judge order the DOJ to remove the website holding the files. They stated that the negligent release was:

the single most egregious violation of victim privacy in one day in United States history.

At the Canary, we agree wholeheartedly.

This US-led failure to redact identifying images and names of victims has made the complete removal of such content the only viable response. Once again, women around the world are left feeling exposed and vulnerable, while so-called efforts to ‘protect women’ operate instead to shied powerful perpetrators of abuse. Yet again, a manipulative and abusive system has retraumatised the very women it was ostensibly meant to serve.

Given US President Donald Trump’s appearance in the files, photographed with Epstein’s so-called “harem” of young girls, too little attention focuses on the fact that rich, powerful men once again seem able to deter and deflect true accountability. Anyone who has experienced abuse knows this all too well: men often act without recognizing – or admitting – the harm they cause.

Abolish the Monarchy. https://t.co/yyNBmVlN6z

— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) February 1, 2026

Advertisement

Women have had enough

Unfortunately for those powerful patriarchal arseholes, many women see straight through it and are at the end of their tether. They remind us that unless we dismantle the structures and hierarchies of power, the abuse will never end. As a white woman, I believe it is essential that white Western women confront our complicity – whether intentional or not – and come together in solidarity against all abuse. This means rejecting the Western patriarchal scapegoating of ‘brown men’ and confront the reality that white men have inflicted – and continue to inflict – vast harm. Abuse is about power; not race.

We wrote recently on the practice of Nazi-like eugenics amongst Epstein and his ilk of superior, privileged rich boys. Discussing the characteristics of the men who have assumed powerful positions in politics and business, our own Robert Freeman wrote:

All this is ultimately the product of an economic and political system that practically guarantees the most poisonous humans imaginable rise to the top. Capitalism rewards the most ruthless and domineering among us, not the kindest and most compassionate.

Those attracted to being a CEO — with the ability to control potentially thousands of lives — are unlikely to be good people. Once there, wealth grants them the ability to evade the law and control the political realm. With greater power comes greater impunity, and an already degraded soul rots still further. It’s a system that selects for, then refines, the worst traits of our species.

The Epstein documents have produced an outpouring of fury, and an increasing clarity to the realisation that an entire system needs to be dismantled and reconstructed into something less misanthropic. We’ve had enough warnings by now of “Nazi like” reprobates controlling our lives. An imminent return to something akin to Nazism looms unless an alternative course is pursued urgently.

Advertisement

Not all men: But it is all women

There is a reassuring factor for women that yes, it is not ‘all men’. Nevertheless, many women with platforms have demanded that we no longer center reassuring men that we aren’t ‘demonising all of them’. Instead, they insist that we finally center the very valid truth that whilst it might not be all men (thankfully), it is all women and girls.

All women and girls are likely to experience abuse or its consequences at some point in their lives. This truth is depressingly clear: the Epstein scandal proves that abuse does not occur in isolation – it spreads widely, thrives systemically, and men carry it out overwhelmingly. Even women and girls who never experience abuse firsthand live alongside its effects: they support survivors, navigate fear, and adapt their lives to avoid risk. The problem does not lie in individual morality alone; power structures actively enable abuse to continue and minimise its consequences, leaving no woman untouched by its impact.

It is time we empathise and choose to empower women and girls, not continue this toxic cycle of even the reveal of abuse not centring the abused.

The Canary’s Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu put across this argument powerfully and poignantly in a post on Instagram:

Dr Shola: ‘we will shut this shit down’

Where are the white women? I’m looking, but I can’t see. Let me put my glasses on. I still don’t see them. You see, my shattered eye, we’re just wondering where the white women are following the release of the Epstein files. Because I don’t see white women protesting on the streets. I do not see white women collectively, undeniably being visible and vocal in exercising their white power, white fragility, and white tears to hold to account powerful white men that have subjected and deliberately targeted white women and white girls for rape, sexual molestation, sexual abuse, and sex trafficking. Where are the white women? How are white women so collectively silent and performatively powerless.

Let’s break it down. Where are your bastions of white femininity? The protectors of the white female body? Where are your white female politicians and your white female media personalities? White female commentators? You know, those advocates of anti-Muslim, anti-Islam, anti-immigration because we have to protect the women and children where they are right now because everything seems quite crooked. We’re the white women who take to the streets protesting and demanding that white women and children be protected from the asylum seekers and the refugees and the immigrants and they do not even give an iota of that same energy to powerful white men who pose a greater significant risk to their bodies than asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants.

Where are the white women whose white peers have unjustly sent black men to their deaths by state execution, either by the police or by the state because they have lied? Huh? Oh my God, I’m just as scared to say black man. Where are your white peers against a powerful white man that have targeted you for rape and sexual abuse? Where are the white women who exercise white power on a daily basis to say to black men, no, you don’t work there. No, you don’t live there. You don’t belong here. Where’s that white power now against a powerful white man? Now I’m not talking about the white women who’ve been doing the Lord’s work, speaking out against these powerful white men and have endured all kinds of persecutions including character assassination, who’ve been actively anti-racist, who’ve been unequivocally against the patriarchal power structure. Now I stand with them in solidarity.

Now I’m talking to you multitudes of white women who excuse the inexcusable, defend the indefensible because you’re telling us it was never about protecting white women and children. You see the stats don’t lie. White men commit the most sexual crimes, rape, sexual abuse of children, and sex trafficking. That’s the fact. The fact also is that the problem are men. Yes, not all men. But you see, if we work together collectively, white, black, and brown women, against a patriarchal power construct that protects the men who commit these crimes, we will shut this shit down.

As Dr Shola powerfully states, it is time for women and girls everywhere, regardless of ethnicities or religion, to come together.

We must find our humility and refuse to continue being the continual playthings of patriarchal men.

Featured image via the Canary

Veterans Aid (VA), the UK’s frontline charity for veterans in crisis, has become the latest charitable partner of the Honourable Artillery Company (HAC), the oldest regiment in the British Army.

VA has been operating since 1932 and enjoys an externally validated success rate of 90% in terms of transforming broken lives. For the next three years it will be the beneficiary of fundraising events and other support from the HAC in acknowledgement of the two organisations’ shared commitment to those who have served, and their families.

CEO of Veterans Aid Prof Hugh Milroy said, “We were delighted and honoured to have the value of our work acknowledged in this way by the HAC. VA deals with the consequences of crisis and poverty; issues that don’t sit comfortably with the public image of military heroism and glamour. In fact, we operate in the real world, practicing the real values of the military family where ‘man down’ is a call to immediate action. As an organisation that spends hardly anything on advertising or self-promotion, we are singularly mindful of how valuable support from organisations like the HAC can be in helping us reach donors and – more importantly – those who so desperately need our help.”

Marcus Simson, CE of the Honourable Artillery Company said, ‘’We are delighted to support Veterans Aid as our sponsored charity. We have a shared commitment to those who have served and value the vital and tailored services Veterans Aid provides. Many are not available elsewhere. They include mental health care, housing assistance, job training, and peer support. These programs restore dignity, stability, and purpose, helping veterans and their families thrive rather than merely survive. Too often they are the only thing that prevents tragedy. The HAC is clear that all of its support to Veterans Aid will go directly to helping those in need. For the HAC, contributing time or resources is a tangible way to express our gratitude, uphold our shared values and ensure that those who protected our freedoms are never left behind and remembered with respect – always, everywhere.’’

The two organisations also share a relationship with the church of St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate whose links with both are strong. St Botolph’s is home to the HAC’s Regimental Chapel, which commemorates members of the Company who died in conflicts. It also houses the engraving of Hogarth’s Good Samaritan gifted by Veterans Aid to the church, as a symbol of its own partnership with the church.

Campaigner and singer Feargal Sharkey has, once again, dressed down the privatised water companies.

Water companies: taking the p*ss

On social media, Sharkey said:

You’ll want to be sitting down for this bit. Water companies are currently £82.7 billion in debt, have paid themselves £85 billion in dividends, leak over a trillion of litres of water per year, dump sewage for almost 4 million hours per year, have been convicted of over 1,200 criminal acts since 1989 and an average of 35% of your bill goes on nothing but paying more interest and yet more dividends. And not a single company has ever lost their operating licence.

When the water companies were privatised in 1989 under Margaret Thatcher, they were debt free. Since then, they have accumulated £82.7 billion in debt, as Sharkey notes. At the same time, they have failed to invest in infrastructure to fix our dated sewage system. Instead, they dump sewage in our rivers and the ocean for millions of hours a year. And they haven’t just creamed cash rather than investing. Water companies sold off 35 reservoirs in just five years, making £26 million from flogging what were public assets.

On top of that, as Sharkey points out, a University of Greenwich study for We Own It found a “privatisation tax” of 35% on our water bills. In other words, we’re spending over one-third more than we need to every time we turn on the taps.

Privatisation: 140 years into the past

Water was brought into public ownership in the late 1800s. Even back then, people knew it was a natural monopoly and a daily essential for all humans. Selling it off just means one then rents it at higher cost.

Thatcher’s government and then the neoliberals in Labour, Reform and the Tories maintaining privatisation of water, have brought us 140 years into the past.

Sharkey is spot on to take down the polluting profiteers.

Featured image via the Canary

The number of children who are homeless and in temporary accommodation in Scotland has passed 10,000.

The latest figures from the Scottish Government show that, in the six months to 30 September 2025, 10,480 children were in temporary accommodation.

People experiencing homelessness increasing

In total, there were 18,092 households in temporary accommodation, a 9% increase from 16,634 in 2024. This is also a new record high. Households spent an average of 237 days in temporary accommodation.

There was also a 4% increase in the total open homeless applications. The figure now stands at 33,006.

The number of people sleeping rough has also reached its highest in over a decade – at 1,083. This means that one in 10 applicants was sleeping outside.

One notably higher figure is the number of households not being offered temporary accommodation. The number has risen from 7,565 in 2024 to 10,710 in 2025. Most of these were in Glasgow (6,815 out of 10,710). The local authority also reported high numbers in Edinburgh – with 3,585 instances over the six months.

A figure that has improved is the number of breaches of the unsuitable accommodation order. This states that:

the maximum number of days that local authorities can use unsuitable accommodation for any homeless person is 7 days and has the effect of ending stays in unsuitable accommodation, such as B&Bs, apart from in emergency situations.

In the last 6 months, there were 3,635 breaches, which is a 12% improvement.

Changing characteristics

Of the homeless applicants, 16% were from households that had been granted either refugee status or leave to remain. This allows non-UK nationals to stay lawfully in the UK following an application made from within the country.

In total, 2% of all applications cited “left asylum accommodation” as the reason for them being homeless.

There was also a decrease in the number of white applicants, specifically white Scottish applicants. Conversely, there was an increase in the number of African, Caribbean, Black, Asian, and Arab applicants.

This comes as the number of refugees experiencing homelessness across the UK has more than doubled in the last two years. In total, 4,434 refugees and migrants were accommodated from 2024-25, the largest number on record. Of these, 2,008 were refugees — a 106% increase on the previous year.

In September, Màiri McAllan, Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Housing, pledged funding for affordable housing, along with measures to support people in moving out of temporary housing.

Additionally, the Scottish government said it planned to invest up to £4.9bn over the next four years. This would help it achieve its target of delivering 36,000 affordable homes by 2030.

In a statement, McAllan said:

The figures do speak to the severe pressure that services are under due to the Home Office’s mismanagement of the asylum system, particularly in Glasgow.

Featured image via Centre for Homelessness Impact