Indymedia readers may recall some months back that Glaxo Wellcome (now half of GlaxoSmithKline) once threatened to move their large UK ops to the US, citing UK govt's lack of tax breaks for research, the National Institute of Clinical Excellence recommending against the NHS adopting Glaxo's new flu drug on grounds of poor value for money, bunfights over NHS pricing agreements, etc. Several of Glaxo's competitors actually went to the press with Glaxo, singing the same sad song of extreme poverty. Sickening.

It's a safe bet that enormous pressure was brought to bear on Blair and co by these companies, with more threats (in private this time) to pull partly or all out of the UK. This could mean research labs out of the south of the UK, and, even more disastrously for UK workers, pulling manufacturing out of the north at plants like Barnard Castle (Co. Durham) where few alternative jobs exist.

So it would appear that some sort of deal was done. Was Blair right to knuckle under to these bastards? Who knows. But one can only guess what kind of payback is changing hands to enable a decision like this to be made so close to a general election.