Prospects for Friday, 7 March
- 7 Mar 08, 10:34 AM
Today's programme producer is Robert Morgan - here is his early email to the production team.
Good morning everyone,
We've got a strong investigation from Meirion and Martin Shankleman about Gaviscon. Who would have thought the makers of Gaviscon would have been The company is Reckitt Benckiser which makes everything from Dettol to Neurofen and Cillit Bang to LemSip. It made a billion pounds profit last year. A whistleblower from Reckitt came to see Newsnight and showed us internal emails and secret business plans which should have been shredded. They explained how they planned to block cheap generic copies of their medicine. We showed the papers to a top competition lawyer to see if what they were doing was illegal. He described them as "smoking guns".
I've put in a bid for the Public Health Minister, Dawn Primarolo and the head of the NHS. Let's discuss other possible bids too.
Other stories worth looking at include the aftermath of the . Will there be retaliation from the Israeli government? What about the diplomatic reaction from Libya at the UN? Michael and Hugh are at the Lib Dem Spring Conference. There's more on the Jersey story today.
Any other ideas welcome.
Robert
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Wow, sounds like a good show!! Is Gavin presenting tonight? He's not been on for ages!
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Remember this?
/blogs/theeditors/2007/10/blog_problems_1.html
What happened? This is still a most unreliable and vexing forum quite a lot of the time.
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Dear Newsnight
well done for the story you intend to run tonight but...
What worries me is that if you took away all the dishonesty, unethical behaviour, informal cartels, lying unscrupulous marketing, price fixing,
.....from the British economy
what would be left?
Perhaps one angle to this story might be the power of huge companies over the UK Government, for example the Pharmaceutical industry wields enormous economic power and I bet if challenged too much will simply discuss 'future investment plans in the UK' with hapless Ministers, what can they do but squeak in reply, what else can a mouse do when faced with a big angry cat?
squeak squeak eeeeeeeeeeeee
re the Ethical stance of the country and Government, please could you ask the Goverment when it intends to set a deadline for Ratification of the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (ECAT)
best wishes
Bob
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With regard to this evening’s piece on Gaviscon, may be the NHS should consider adopting the Canadian model whereby all medications that are available over the counter may be recommended but are not allowed to be prescribed by a doctors. By the UK adopting this policy change will result in a significant cost saving to the NHS and the taxpayers. This Canadian policy applies to all people including seniors and welfare recipients.
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BLOG PRICING
Payment for posting is charged in hours. I am retired and sad - I have all the time in the world. Good god;
I AM A WINNER!
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If Gaviscom was coming to the end of its patent why do you not ask why the NHS did not arrange to contract one or more generic manufacturers to supply the medicine. You cannot blame Recketts for commercially doing what they could to retain their supplier's position when the NHS seems to have neglected to act in the interests of the public.
regards - David Webb
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If Gaviscom was coming to the end of its patent why do you not ask why the NHS did not arrange to contract one or more generic manufacturers to supply the medicine. You cannot blame Recketts for commercially doing what they could to retain their supplier's position when the NHS seems to have neglected to act in the interests of the public.
regards - David Webb
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