Wales: Labour MP against Blair and Pfizer

From icWales:

Labour MP: our candidate was a ‘drug pusher’

Dec 7 2006

Martin Shipton, Western Mail

A WELSH Labour MP has gone off message [really?] by describing his party’s unsuccessful Blaenau Gwent by-election candidate [Blairite] Owen Smith as a “drug pusher”.

Mr Smith is a top lobbyist with the pharmaceutical firm Pfizer.

In an interview with the cultural magazine Planet, Newport West MP Paul Flynn also took issue with those in the party who had described the [Left anti Blair] Independent candidate who beat Mr Smith as lacking “validity”.

Mr Flynn said, “The lobbyists are a curse, a cancer in the system. It’s insidious.

One of my main interests in politics is areas in which lobbyists used their wicked wiles to get access to government.

One example is the pharmaceutical industry, who are the most greedy and deceitful organisations we have to deal with.”

Interviewer Patrick McGuinness then said, “Some of their lobbyists end up as candidates in Welsh Labour. Blaenau Gwent for instance.”

Mr Flynn responded, “Indeed – I wasn’t too pleased by the fact that we had a drug pusher as a candidate.”

Mr Flynn also said, “The thing that made me angriest [about the Blaenau Gwent by-election campaign] was when one of my colleagues said that [independent candidate] Dai Davies lacked validity.

Well he’s got a hell of a lot more validity than Baroness Maggie Jones [the seat’s defeated Labour candidate in last year’s general election] has got.

She’s got no validity at all, and it seemed to turn democracy on its head to have a candidate who’s been rejected by the people in the safest constituency in Britain and send her to the House of Lords.”

See also here.

In the Netherlands, Pfizer was the main financial contributor to the far Right Edmund Burke Stichting, who want to bring US style Bushite neoconservatism to Dutch politics.

Surprising, then, their link to Labour in Britain?

Not really. As the Blairite clique within Labour are neoconservative, not Left.

Miliband: Cameron is a cheerleader for Pfizer takeover of AstraZeneca. Labour leader writes to PM calling for public interest test on takeovers, saying Pfizer has ‘dubious record’: here.

OxyContin Big Pharma scandal: here.

Pfizer scandal in Nigeria: here.

A US Senate investigation has said that pharmaceuticals transnational GlaxoSmithKline had known of heart attack risks tied to a diabetes medication years before the evidence became public: here.

Related articles

• Pfizer and Flynn Pharma accused of overcharging for epilepsy drug
• Advair, Symbicort charge Americans 5x what they charge Europeans
• GlaxoSmithKline fined £300 million over cash bribes
• Merger Would Let Pfizer Duck A Billion Dollars In U.S. Taxes Each Year
• How Parasite Corporations Like Pfizer are Chucking U.S. Citizenship to Escape from Taxes
• One of Big Pharma’s Most Disastrous Drugs Destroyed This Man’s Spine
• Hawaii hospital charges Canadian family $1m for baby’s birth
• University of Minnesota Blasted for Deadly Clinical Trial