OfE Virtual Meeting 28 September 2020
Click here to watch the video:
Oxford For Europe held a successful online meeting on Monday, September 28th, 7-9 pm.
It featured Peter Geoghegan and Dr Philippa Whitford MP. Both speakers are prominent friends of our cause, born in Ireland and living in Scotland. The theme was the darkening political situation in the UK, with a government which pays fast and loose with the truth and sees nothing wrong with breaking its international obligations, while a combination of Brexit and coronavirus threaten the future of British industry, the economy, and the NHS.
Peter Geoghegan is an Irish writer, broadcaster and investigations editor at the award-winning news website openDemocracy. He led openDemocracy‘s investigations into dark money in British politics that were nominated for a 2019 British Journalism award and the Paul Foot award. His journalism has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, the London Review of Books and many other publications. He has made documentaries for BBC Radio Four, worked on investigative TV programmes for Channel 4 and regularly appears on British and international broadcast outlets.
He has reported from a range of countries including Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia, Mongolia, China, Argentina, Lesotho, Egypt, Namibia, Zambia and Iceland. He has written extensively on Northern Ireland and the independence debate in Scotland and elsewhere in Europe.
His most recent book, Democracy for Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics, was published in August 2020 by Head of Zeus. His previous book, The People’s Referendum: Why Scotland Will Never Be the Same Again, was nominated for the Saltire First Book Award. He is co-founder and current chair of Scottish investigative website the Ferret and lives in Glasgow and London.
Peter’s book is available from Blackwells: click here. More details here.
Website: https://www.petergeoghegan.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PeterKGeoghegan
Dr Philippa Whitford MP: Originally from Belfast, Philippa trained mostly around the West of Scotland. She spent two years working as a medical volunteer in the Middle East. Most of this time was based at a UN sponsored hospital in Gaza, Palestine with a few months in Lebanon planning development projects after the war. Philippa’s interest and involvement in patients with breast cancer developed early in her career and her Doctorate research was on Breast Cancer Immunology and monoclonal antibodies.
She was a consultant breast surgeon for just over 19 years in Ayrshire and Arran and during that time she was Lead Clinician for that health board and she was Lead Clinician of the West of Scotland MCN from 2006 to 2009.
Philippa was involved in the first SIGN guidelines for breast cancer and chaired the breast cancer project groups of the Clinical Standards Board for Scotland and, later, NHS QIS. Her special interest has been in improving services through peer reviewed audit, service redesign and the development of clinical standards.
Elected in May 2015, she is the Member of Parliament for Central Ayrshire and sat on the Health Select Committee. Philippa is the Shadow SNP Westminster Group Leader (Health) and this year also became SNP Spokesman on Europe. She is on the Committee on the Future Relationship with Europe, chaired by Hilary Benn. She is committed the the European cause and her husband is a doctor from Germany.
Philippa became involved with the Yes campaign during the Scottish independence referendum in 2014, and strongly believes that independence would be beneficial for the Scottish NHS.
Website: https://www.snp.org/your-team/philippa-whitford/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/p_whitford_mp
Click here to watch the video