Big Pharma's Team Starmer

Our first hundred-odd days of tough decisions for working people have been graced with two notable schemes for saving the NHS. One is the deployment of "advisers" to chivvy sufferers of severe mental health problems into gainful employment. The other is the initiative whereby people who are overweight and unemployed will be injected with drugs. Dr Wesley "Slimline" Streeting has now assured a grateful nation that fatty-jabbing is unlikely to reach dystopian levels within the current parliament, as he does not wish to create a dependency culture. He also acknowledged that drugs are not a substitute for good nutrition and exercise, or at any rate not so efficient a substitute as nagging and bullying the poor and the vulnerable. Meanwhile, the world's biggest pharmaceutical company has been requested to carry out real-world trials into the effectiveness of its own merchandise, which certainly ought to clarify matters.