Saturday 15th & Sunday 16th March 2025

[Frog222]

J Pie -- that man again !

[Frog222]

Much of the Times Radio output is only good for listening to while doing the dishes .

Nice change ! Michael Weiss knows his Russia, good on US politics too.

Accurate on the nutty nature of the Trump Team .

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Well you can't say Scotland didn't give it a go, but besides a few refereeing gripes France were worthy winners of both the game and the tournament.

Bravo Les Bleus.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Downing Street considers U-turn on cuts to benefits for disabled people

https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... led-people

Ministers have left the door open to a humiliating U-turn on their highly contentious plans to cut benefits for disabled people, amid mounting uproar over the proposals across the Labour party.

We shall see. I notice there's no mention of the cut in LCWRA rate which is every bit as bad as what they were planning for PIP, and if as stated they're going to scrap the WCA what the hell are they going to replace it with? What an absolute farce. What kind of fool puts Liz Kendall in charge of anything more complex than picking her nose?

[AnatolyKasparov]

To be fair to Miss 4.5% on this occasion, we all know it isn't her driving these "demands" even if she doesn't overly disagree with them.

This is, of course, primarily a product of HM Treasury.

[Frog222]

https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... led-people

One million people would see their benefits reduced under the government’s ­proposed reforms, according to the Times.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation said that it would be the biggest cut to disability benefits since the Office for Budget Responsibility was created in 2010.

Ministers are said to be examining changing eligibility for Pip in such a way that it would not be available for people who need someone else to help them wash below the waist, or need to be reminded to go to the toilet to prevent them having an accident.

The new rules would, in effect, mean that only the most severely ­disabled would receive Pip, while those with mental health conditions would not.

UGH, and that's an understatement !

From the longer Times article --

Britain’s rate of economic inactivity has increased by 1.1 percentage points since the pandemic while France and Germany’s have fallen by 2.1 and 2.3 points respectively. This has contributed to a rising benefits bill in the UK. Total spending on working-age incapacity and disability benefits has risen by almost two thirds since 2018-19, to £45 billion in 2023-24.
https://archive.ph/hussb

Both articles use the emotive '£Billions' which is of course large amounts of money , but for some reason avoid the %age of GDP .

The international comparisons need more study, one probability is that tho life elsewhere is hard enough for many, the UK has considerably more precarity resulting (just one example) from lower unemployment benefits with knock-on effects from that alone . So a shock to the system from a Financial Crisis or a Covid hits harder because the society is so lacking in resilience . It's already on the 'edge'.

In the end it all comes back to inequality. Wealth increasingly concentrated in trillions of offshore capital and the billionaire class calling the political shots .

[Frog222]

[Frog222]

First LOL of the day goes to Simon Tisdale

" Boomeranging US tariffs – which are to American prosperity what the Titanic was to ocean travel – are the tip of the unintended consequences iceberg."

Second one -- " Single-handedly, Trump has revived the fortunes of Justin Trudeau’s Liberal party. Under the new “elbows up” leadership of the former Bank of England chief Mark Carney, it has a good chance of winning this year’s election on an anti-Trump platform. That was not the plan."

Still chuckling, must finish the article .............
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ar-tariffs

[refitman]

Would you look at that, the Health Sec is trying to harm even more people

Mental health conditions are overdiagnosed, Streeting says
He told the BBC: "Here's the other thing, mental wellbeing, illness, it's a spectrum and I think definitely there's an overdiagnosis but there's too many people being written off."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd7ejvr3y0zo

[refitman]

It's weird that the BBC have a report on protests in Serbia, but absolutely nothing about what's happening in Turkey, or the protests that happened in Argentina last week.

[refitman]

Would you look at that, the Health Sec is trying to harm even more people

Mental health conditions are overdiagnosed, Streeting says
He told the BBC: "Here's the other thing, mental wellbeing, illness, it's a spectrum and I think definitely there's an overdiagnosis but there's too many people being written off."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd7ejvr3y0zo

I do wonder if he’s banging on about this, due to the number of trans people that are having mental health issues – mainly due to the stress imposed on them, by the policies of this government?

[Frog222]

[AnatolyKasparov]

Well done to Newcastle, well deserved. 56 years of hurt at an end.

[Frog222]

He's also reported from Kherson, where RU drone pilots publish the videos of themselves targeting civilians, killing or wounding them . Every day for months now .

[refitman]

This is hilarious (and a little scary)

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Right so let me get this straight. We've gone from not talking about mental illness and seeing it as a stigma, to being told to talk about mental illness as if it were the equivalent of a physical illness, to now being told we're talking about it too much, it's being over-diagnosed, and it's costing too much money.

A mere 8 years ago one of Theresa May's 'burning injustices' she pledged to address was the huge disparity between physical and mental health spending in the NHS yet nothing has changed. Waiting times to see a psychiatrist are 6 months at best (it's supposed to be 18 weeks maximum) and as I found out last year just seeing a specialist counsellor for OCD took 5 months. I mean sure you can refer yourself to see one of the ever increasing number of talking therapy/CBT counsellors but they're useless. Not the counsellors themselves, they're well meaning good people in my experience, but they're simply not trained to deal with anything beyond a limited range of conditions using a set range of methods. I've been through it twice. Turned up for the first session, been asked what I'd like fixed (as it were), explained the difficulties I'd been having with my OCD, then been told on both occasions 'we're not trained to deal with that'. On both occasions I decided to continue with it because to be honest it was nice to chat to a sympathetic attractive lady once a week even if they were trying to cure my anxiety with some neo-hippy wellness bollocks.

CBT/talking therapy is like putting a plaster on a compound fracture. It's doing something for the sake of saying you've done something no matter how ineffectual it may be. It's cheaper and quicker than the alternatives which looks good on a treasury spread sheet. No wonder the Tories loved it and Labour have offered even more.

What the poor counsellors themselves will think soon though is another matter. When they're faced with psychotics and schizophrenics denied benefits, angry fucked up people, and all they have to offer is a pamphlet on meditation.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Well done to Newcastle, well deserved. 56 years of hurt at an end.

Oh yes let's celebrate the success of Geordie Arabia, only in that final due to funding from some of the most despicable people in the world who only managed to buy the club at the second attempt after an intervention by Boris Johnson.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Well done to Newcastle, well deserved. 56 years of hurt at an end.

Oh yes let's celebrate the success of Geordie Arabia, only in that final due to funding from some of the most despicable people in the world who only managed to buy the club at the second attempt after an intervention by Boris Johnson.

Yeah yeah we know, and I sort of agree.

Still have a soft spot for them from my student days there, despite that.

(let's not forget who they beat either, shall we)

[refitman]

What an amazingly self-righteous prick

[Sky'sGoneOut]

To be fair Nina Simone was as self righteous and grasping as Wes.

The only good thing about her was her voice.