FlyTheNest

Austerity blamed for life expectancy stalling for first time in century (Guardian)

Dave Penman, the general secretary of the FDA union, which represents permanent secretaries, said the suggestion of a hit list of senior civil servants is a “self-destructive low” for No 10.

“These cowardly briefings against officials – who they know are not allowed to answer back – do untold damage to the trust between civil servants and ministers, far wider than the ministries targeted in this round of back-stabbing.

“Civil servants will wonder what kind of organisation so publicly undermines its most senior and able staff for a quick headline, and potential candidates will wonder whether it’s the sort of workplace they want risk their reputation in,” he said.

HindleA wrote:https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -dems-pact

“Suffering is the condition on which we live. And when it comes, you know it, you know it as the truth. Of course it’s right to cure diseases, to prevent hunger and injustice, as the social organism does. But no society can change the nature of existence. We can’t prevent suffering. This pain and that pain, yes, but not Pain. A society can only relieve social suffering, unnecessary suffering. The rest remains. The root, the reality. All of us here are going to know grief; if we live fifty years, we’ll have known pain for fifty years. And in the end we’ll die. That’s the condition we’re born on. I’m afraid of life! There are times I — I am very frightened. Any happiness seems trivial. And yet, I wonder if it isn’t all a misunderstanding — this grasping after happiness, this fear of pain...If instead of fearing it and running from it, one could ...get through it, go beyond it. There is something beyond it. It’s the self that suffers, and there’s a place where the self — ceases. I don’t know how to say it but I believe that the reality — the truth that I recognize in suffering as I don’t in comfort and happiness — that the reality of pain is not pain. If you can get through it. If you can endure it all the way.”
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“I’m trying to say what I think brotherhood really is. It begins — it begins in shared pain.”

- Shevek
The Dispossessed
Ursula K. Le Guin