#nhs improvement plan

[winepresswrath]

trying to plot out a xichen/huaisang emma au solely for the purposes of slotting jin guangyao and nie mingjue into the already married siblings role. in theory this leaves us with no one to play emma's dad but no they're both emma's dad for maximum impact. and obviously jin guangyao is also the nanny. and it ends with huaisang vowing to be worse, actually.

[dandelionsresilience]

Dandelion News - September 8-14

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1. Pair of rare Amur tiger cubs debuting at Minnesota Zoo are raising hopes for the endangered species

“[The Minnesota Zoo’s] Amur tigers have produced 57 cubs, [… 21 of which] have gone on to produce litters of their own, amounting to another 86 cubs. […] “They’re showing a lot of resiliency, which is something that we work hard for in human care. We want these animals to have a lot of confidence and be able to adapt to new environments just as they’re doing today.””

2. Powered by renewable energy, microbes turn CO₂ into protein and vitamins

“The team designed a two-stage bioreactor system that produces yeast rich in protein and vitamin B9. [… The protein] levels in their yeast exceed those of beef, pork, fish, and lentils. […] Running on clean energy and CO2, the system reduces carbon emissions in food production. It uncouples land use from farming, freeing up space for conservation[… and] will help farmers concentrate on producing vegetables and crops sustainably.”

3. JCPenney Launches Apparel Collection Aimed At Wheelchair Users

“A major department store is rolling out a new line of clothing specifically tailored to meet the needs of women who use wheelchairs featuring options for both everyday wear and special occasions. [… The clothing have] modifications like zippers located for easy access, pocket positioning and extended back rises optimized for the seated position and shorter sleeves to limit interference with wheels.”

4. Snails bred in Edinburgh Zoo sent to re-populate species in French Polynesia

“Thousands of rare partula snails bred at Edinburgh Zoo are to be released in French Polynesia to restore the wild population of the species.The last surviving few of the species were rescued in the early 1990s[….] 15 species and sub-species [are being bred in zoos for repopulation], the majority of which are classed as extinct in the wild.”

5. [NH Joins 19 Other States] to Provide Essential Behavioral Health Services Through Mobile Crisis Intervention Teams

“[CMS] approved New Hampshire’s Medicaid State Plan Amendment for community-based mobile crisis intervention teams to provide services for people experiencing a mental health or substance use disorder crisis. […] The multidisciplinary team provides screening and assessment; stabilization and de-escalation; and coordination with and referrals to health, social, and other services, as needed.”

6. Recovery plan for Missouri population of eastern hellbender

“It is expected that recovery efforts for the Missouri DPS of the eastern hellbender will reduce sedimentation and improve water quality in the aforementioned watersheds, which will also improve drinking water, as well as benefit multiple federally listed mussels, sport fish and other aquatic species.”

7. How $7.3B will help rural co-ops build clean power—and close coal plants

“[The funds are] serving about 5 million households across 23 states [… to] build wind and solar power, which is now cheaper than coal-fired power across most of the country. […] Some of it will be used to pay down the cost of closing coal plants[….] federal funding could help co-ops secure enough wind, solar, and battery resources to retire their entire coal capacity by 2032, cutting carbon emissions by 80 to 90 percent and reducing wholesale electricity costs by 10 to 20 percent[….]”

8. Native-led suicide prevention program focuses on building community strengths

“[Indigenous researchers have] designed programs that aim to build up a community’s endemic strengths, rather than solely treating the risks facing individuals within that community. By providing support and resources that enable access to Alaska Native cultural activities, they hope to strengthen social bonds that build resilience. […] “In a Yup’ik worldview, suicide is not a mental health disorder, and it’s not an individual affliction, it’s a disruption of the collective.””

9. Another rare Javan rhino calf spotted at Indonesia park

“A new Javan rhino calf has been spotted in an Indonesian national park, the facility's head said Friday, further boosting hopes for one of the world's most endangered mammals after two other […] calves were spotted earlier this year at the park, which is the only habitat left for the critically endangered animal.”

10. Transparent solar cells can directly supply energy from glass surfaces

“[Researchers have] unveiled a method of supplying energy directly from glass of buildings, cars, and mobile devices through transparent solar cells. […] It has also succeeded in charging a smartphone using natural sunlight. It also proved the possibility that a screen of a small mobile device can be used as an energy source.”

September 1-7 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)

[ayeforscotland]

Honestly I'm not trying to start an argument and I'm sorry if this comes across as combative, but do you think that calls for Scottish independence echo the calls for Brexit in some frightening ways? The biggest issue for me is the idea that while there might be a plan in place for post independence it's not concrete enough to actually improve life in Scotland.

No worries if you don't answer, thanks x

It’s a fair question if you’re not super familiar with the contemporary independence movement.

But the comparison really falls apart when you look at the time and effort that went into the planning. I don’t think many people remember the promises of the Brexit campaign beyond the £350 million for the NHS which never materialised. I don’t think Brexit campaigners ever produced a substantial piece of literature.

Meanwhile the Scottish Government produced an entire white paper which covered every aspect of government. While I didn’t agree with all of it (particularly currency), it was much more than anything the Union side produced and certainly more than anything Brexiteers produced.

Liberals in England tend to be the ones saying “Ohhh Scotland, you can’t go independent because look at what Brexit did.”

But the reality is that with Scottish Independence we’d actually obtain full powers of an independent country. The vast majority of the Scottish independence movement champion progressive policies towards immigration and social security.

Brexit wasn’t to gain the powers of an independent country. The UK already had its own central bank and could pass whatever law it fancied. The main thrust of Brexit was one of xenophobia and racism, and everyone in the UK is reaping what Brexiteers sowed.

When I think of Scottish independence I think of what we can offer the world as an independent country. I don’t think of scapegoating immigrants and forcing disabled people into work.

[ms-demeanor]

Going off that post about nutrition and science, I'd love to hear what you think of the 5:2 diet/The Fast 800 and its creator, Dr. Michael Mosley. For context: in order to get an NHS-funded breast reduction (it's a gender thing, but also just a general quality-of-life thing), I need to be a certain BMI, so I've been referred to a weight management clinic. The lady I've been seeing initially just put me on a low-carb diet (130g or less of carbs per day, with an aside from her about how bullshit Keto and BMI limits for treatment are), but now she's said that, if I wanted to speed up the weight loss, I should include the 5:2 diet: 5 days in a week where I eat "normally", and 2 fast days in which I restrict myself to 800kcals. I did a little looking into it myself, and found that 5:2 - which I HAD heard about before - is now being sold as part of "The Fast 800", with Dr. Mosley being the creator of it. I was shocked by that, because I was already a fan of Dr. Mosley's work (he has a podcast called "Just One Thing" that I really liked, and thought contained reasonable-sounding advice), and yet having a diet plan that he's clearly making money off of does immediately make me feel suspicious. I've borrowed his "The Fast 800" book from the library, both to find out more about the diet I've been put on and to see if it's at all backed by evidence, and he does cite a bunch of scientific studies which seem to back up his ideas, but I don't know how valid they are, and I don't just want to accept them at face-value (especially since he's a "we got fat completely wrong in the 80s, therefore we should eat a Mediterranean diet!" types). Obviously I'll go with what my weight management lady suggests, since she's obviously more qualified to talk about it than I am, but I am curious to know what you think, and whether I'm right to be distrustful of all of this.

I am, generally speaking, against any diet for rapid weight loss. They're not sustainable so people gain the weight back (often with more weight getting added on).

There have also recently been findings that suggest that BMI cutoffs for top surgery are detrimental to patients as patients in higher BMI categories are more likely to have minor complications like UTIs or to be readmitted, but are not likely to have major complications or be at risk of significant harm from having top surgery. I don't know if anybody will listen if you bring up that study, and I know that GCS is fraught in many places for many reasons.

I'm also just.

I'm so mad. I'm so fucking mad! I'm so mad about this!

One of my best friends is a guy who was pressured into a pattern of disordered eating and unhealthy exercise in order to qualify for top surgery; since then he has not been able to eat in a healthy way and has struggled with alternating between exercising to the point of harm and other destructive behaviors that make him unhappy and unsafe. And he didn't need that. He didn't need any of that! He needed a very safe surgery that had perhaps a slightly higher risk of minor complications at his size and instead he got top surgery and an eating disorder! I hate it! I'm so fucking mad about it!

Also as near as I can tell Michael Mosley qualified as a psychiatrist in the 90s, spent very little time working as a psychiatrist, and then became a media personality. From what is visible on his website and every biography I've found for him he apparently doesn't have any background in nutrition beyond whatever is standard for someone in medical school (which is NOT MUCH).

Hey I just looked at his website and this is straight-up fucked up.

Anybody recommending an 800 calorie a day diet for 2-12 weeks in a context that is not heavily medically supervised can fucking choke. That is *ridiculously* dangerous and the website says that this can improve insulin resistance but there are a shitload of studies about people on crash diets like this *developing* insulin resistance (oh hey like my friend who became prediabetic after his rapid significant weight loss).

Also in regard to the studies he cites on the website, the "two years later patients are still going strong in their diabetes improvements" it's really important to put shit like that in context

at 5 years 13% of the original intervention group were in remission from their type two diabetes; the average weight loss experienced by the intervention group as a whole was 6.1kg compared to 4.6kg in the control group. That's 1.5kg lower for the people who went through a twelve week medically supervised very low calorie diet compared. That's an average difference of 3.3 pounds between "starvation diet" and "no diet" for the Americans in the audience.

Yours is the second comment I've seen that has been leery of the Mediterranean diet, btw, and the Mediterranean diet is fine. It's very achievable and not super gimmicky and is based on very reasonable reassessments of fat, not the hardcore "you are fine to eat 100g of fat a day" kind of attitude that you get from the keto crew. There isn't really one Mediterranean diet and it certainly isn't low carb (which the bits from Mosely's website seem to indicate it is).

So, no, honestly I don't think much of Mosely and I'm very sorry you're in this situation, that sucks and I hate that they're refusing you treatment until you undergo an exceptionally difficult and potentially harmful weight loss excursion.

I know you're probably stuck with that and it's bullshit and I think it fucking sucks and unfortunately the medical advice you're likely to get is "eat in a significantly disordered manner at least until it is time for surgery" and it blows. That just fucking sucks.

If you're looking for rapid weight loss that you don't plan to sustain (and you shouldn't plan to sustain it, it won't stay off) you may want to look into body building forums for how they discuss cuts. It's still disordered eating and it's still not healthy, but at least they're effective and can tell you what supplements will keep you from becoming malnourished while you prepare for surgery. This is a terrible idea. I don't actually want to give this advice to anyone but bodybuilders are the exact kind of people who know how far and how fast they can push weight loss while having an awareness that it isn't really good for them and it won't stay off.

I cannot overstate enough how much I hate the thought that people are being encouraged to rapidly starve themselves in order to prepare to recover from surgery. I am so sorry and I'm so mad and

[bobbydagen24]

about the Headcannon/Fan Theory that Branch is Autistic.

I first started thinking it a few years ago after I watched TBGO for the first time I didn't used to interact much with the fandom online back then.

but after I started doing so I was kinda pleasantly surprised to find out there were other people who thought the same I mainly have the HC about Tv show Branch.

due to certain behaviours and Traits specific to the shows but there are still signs for the movie version as well someone even did multiple youtube videos pointing the signs out.

anyway I figured the easiest way to talk about this is to go over the most common signs of Autism as is stated by NHS on their websites that could apply to him.

tho obviously everyone's different someone not having a few of these signs doesn't mean they aren't autistic. Getting Anxious in social situations and finding it hard to make friends or preferring to be on your own plenty of examples sure its also in large part due to the amount of time he spent avoiding people in his youth but it easily can be taken as an A sign as well. in the episode "" Mr Glittercakes "" he invents a fake person just so he can have an excuse to blow off multiple social events and we see he tires of being social pretty quickly and easily. in "" Fun Branch "" hanging out with the snack pack in his Home proves to be too tiring and stressful not to mention him stressfully micro managing everyone at his party at the start of "" Bye Bye Bunker "" also in "" Two's a Cloud "" he was shown being pretty overwhelmed by spending too much time with people and also due to "" too much affection ""

I swear I will never get tired of that clip ����😂😂😂 anyway it also ties in to the next common sign. Aversion to Physical Contact. again not every person on the spectrum has it but it is fairly common Branch improves after the first film.

but during the first film he'd literally Rather go to Bergen town with Poppy and Risk being eaten than stay in his safe Bunker and have to put up with Hug times from the other Villagers 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

and in TBGO he's still fairly averse to them when they travel the multiple dimensions the others are all Horrified when they come across the universe where no one knows what a Hug is.

but Branch smugly suggests he's fine with the thought of them staying in that universe before the others drag him away lol.

also in the clip above he seems to have a mini freak out over too much Hugging and even stims a little from the looks of things.

Liking to plan things carefully before doing them.

bit fat yes in "" Peril Patch "" when playing Golf he planned out every minor detail obsessively before taking a single shot. in "" Branch Bum "" he carefully planned out every detail of their Trip and was only actually concerned with the journey there and the journey back lol.

Not understanding Various social Cues.

this one kinda depends since Pop Troll society is so different from our own but given how in that world its Technically the Norm it does make Branch's lack of understanding a social failing on his part.

such as suggesting cutting the Twins Hair when they were having a Disagreement and Poppy stating that was a Social Cue most people would know.

plus in "" Eye'll Be Watching You "" when Poppy said she needed to think about it first before he could put his safety plants around the village.

Branch mistook that to mean she would just think about it for a few seconds then and there and proceeded to stare at her with an adorable smile lol.

also just him doing generally odd stuff in public like screaming about how they will all die when the water dries up in "" Laugh Out Cloud "" and ya know Harvesting Baby Tears 😂😂😂😂😂😂

in "" The Makeunder "" where Branch Teaches Lownote how to act more like him so he can be less social and cool at Guy Diamond's party.

the things Branch tells him to do includes 1. avoiding eye contact during conversation and then overcompensating with an uncomfortable amount of intense eye contact. 2. talking on and on about your own interests not paying any mind to how Bored the other people who your talking to may be. 3. and doing things things such as laughing at inappropriate times when people are talking aka showing the wrong emotional responses to specific situations and interactions. all of which are things which could be signs in certain individuals.

having a very fixated keen interest in a certain subject and area of expertise.

I'd consider his whole love of safety and traps aka engineering as well given he also builds other stuff such as helping build the Train the "" Cakes on a Train "" episode of Trollstopia.

and various devices such as the machine to pick what their new Holiday will be all of his various complex traps and of course Gary.

Poppy literally Refers to him as a safety nerd in the Birthday episode where she throws him a party where he gets to be the lifeguard its so friggin cute 💖💖💖💖

sure in large part its also due to his past Trauma but it kinda works as both imo he deffo takes a keen interest in this stuff beyond just feeling the need to do it for safety given he actively enjoys it. also Trouble getting your tone of voice to match what your trying to say can be a sign. which we see in one of my favourite moments ever from the first episode of Trollstopia where he tries to be genuine and supportive only to sound like he's being Rude and Sarcastic. anyway those are some reasons and also moments that made me HC him as Autistic I'm not saying it was the writers intent or anything.

I think its more likely just a happy accident that he was written in such a way that some of the fandom interpreted him as having Autism.

anyway thanks for reading if your a fellow fan who has this HC I'd be curious to hear what it was about Branch or what specific moments made you start Head cannoning him as such?

[danmei-confessions]

We're told that the Watchtower project, if successful is a) a big deal for JGY's personal prestige and b) does meaningfully extend Jin influence and power. That's part of why there are so many detractors in the first place. I'm not saying that he couldn't have had pure intentions and been a net positive as a leader but it's not at all unambiguous. JGY is also happy to do things like continue to work with Xue Yang as he murders his way through the countryside (they clearly reconciled at some point, that's why Su She is on cleanup duty) and wipe out his political opponents' entire clans because they allegedly murdered a son who he later told his wife "had to die." It's not impossible he was making the best of a bad situation and they technically had it coming because collective punishment, but I just don't think that the most plausible interpretation is always the most generous one, and it's certainly not the only possible take. There is a deliberate level of ambiguity baked in. The general improvement in atmosphere has to be at least partially attributed to the absence of Wen Ruohan and Jin Guangshan, which JGY does absolutely deserve his flowers for. However I think we can all agree that a) he was not primarily motivated to kill those men because he hates tyranny and wants people who are not him to be free of them b) consequently we can't extrapolate that he's a very principled tyrant killer whose dedication to the people will shine through in his other endeavours. I think it is likely that the watchtowers are a similar case. The end of the novel suggests that NHS is surprising everyone with his sudden competence (albeit in public speaking) the Jin are less prominent so the balance of power is more even and Jiang Cheng is going to stop the other Jin from deposing Jin Ling before he can grow up. I really don't think we're supposed to think JGY was a big win as a leader so much as that his legacy was complicated and it is in fact unfair or at least sympathy inducing that because he did do some good things and sometimes had good intentions and no one will ever recognize that in light of the crimes. That doesn't mean that actually he was an amazing people-first leader who was primarily motivated by public good. Which matters because when he wants something that is not in the public interest he's going to pursue that (for example, when he kidnaps a bunch of children to lure most of the cultivation world to their deaths so he can survive and stay in power. Not a lot of people left to man those Watchtowers if that plan works out for him).

.

[myalgicencephalomyelitiscfstom]

“To truly transform NHS care for people with ME and long COVID, the government must take bold and decisive action. This includes not only increasing funding for research and improving clinical care but ensuring that the voices of long COVID and ME patients are central to health service planning and policy development.”

[raveneira]

I just don't get why Ikemoto is drawing AND writing at the same time..... Like it would've been better if Kodachi stayed and wrote the story, Or Kishimoto continues it (which btw he wants vacation lol). Kodachi/Kishi wrote the better story and they had the vision, on the other hand, Ike's writing is literally a fanfiction lol.

Btw, do you think we still have hope for KawaSara, cuz it's looking too rough now? Don't get me wrong, I still ship it, but Idk what to expect lol....

Yeah, whats worse is its not even Ikemoto's fanfiction, he's literally taking actual fanfic/fan theories and makin em canon, and you cant even say its impossible because in the interview he literally gets off track from answering a question to address complaints he was seeing online to defend himself 😭 so this man DOES look at fandom feedback, so theres no way you can say its totally a coincidence that so many fan theories became canon EXACTLY as they predicted it, theres just no way.

Once or twice you could say that it was a fluke, but this is way more times than one, and the fact that he pretty much confirmed that regardless of fans justified complaints about certain things he will ignore them because 'he likes it that way' so ppl will just have to deal with it.

Meaning having any hope of him taking any of the valid criticism to improve is gone, whatever he likes is what hes gonna do, even if it goes against what even Kishimoto himself wants/wanted because it is HIS story now and Kishimoto has no intention on intervening since hes happy spending time with his family now and isnt ready to let that time go again yet, which is understandable and I hope he takes as long a break as he wants or needs, I just hate that his legacy is being tarnished in the meantime because greedy higher ups WOULDNT let the series die and Kishimoto get a break like he asked for.

The story really did peak under Kishimoto and Kodachi's writing direction, the second the story shifted entirely in IKEMOTOS direction you saw the quality DROP and the story become a directionless convoluted inconsistent mess.

As for if I still have hope for KawaSara...to be honest I dont know anymore, the reveal that Ikemoto is 100% writing and that Kishimoto himself doesnt even know where the story is headed anymore and is just as much a reader as the rest of us, and even if he does give input, he lets Ikemoto have the final say, has gotten me unsure of what to expect anymore.

Under Kishimoto and Kodachi's writing they were pretty strongly hinting at building more on Kawaki and Sarada's relationship, his bond with team 7, to really drive home his betrayal later so that it'd have some real weight and impact from all their build up. So the potential for KawaSara was very high from what they were setting up.

But Ikemoto? yea I dunno what to expect from him, but if where the story direction changed is anything to go by [which Ikemoto confirms was all his doing and its a completely different direction than the one Kishimoto and Kodachi had planned] its safe to say hes tryna push bsa, either that or troll like a mf just to keep those viewers engaged since this manga is tanking more and more every chapter and the biggest supporters are shippers who just wanna see Boruto and Sarada get together for eugenics.

I wont say KawaSara has lost yet or that its hopeless, the ship hasnt been definitively killed off yet, theres still a possibility this is just another NS situation, teasing what the ppl want just to keep em readin till the very end where he finally says alright now for the real endgame once he no longer has anything to lose by pissing off bsa lol

Even if Im unsure about KawaSara at this point in time, Im still fairly confident in BoruSumi even tho alot of ppl have written her off just cuz she doesnt have a hug scene [NH doesnt either anywhere in the manga but NS does] or a reckless attempt at saving the other [according to KK Sarada and Boruto both would've died if not for the other shinobi arriving when they did so she didnt even save him fr so this argument is invalid]

They also downplay her feelings just because shes more reserved and rational than Sarada, which is kinda the point of opposites attracting and balancing eachother out [Minato being the quiet calm level headed one while Kushina is hot headed and loud] whereas Sarada and Boruto are both portrayed as hotheaded rebels apparently, their kinda the same person atp but thats another topic for another day.

Point is KawaSara is up in the air, but BoruSumi shouldnt be counted out yet, lack of screentime and interaction didnt mean jack shit for NaruHina, SaiIno, or ChoKarui, so lets not pretend its the ship killer for BoruSumi.

Lets also not pretend that SS didnt also go through one hell of a rough patch cuz they did, and they still became canon in the end, so again lets not pretend these things are ship killers alright because they aint, the real meat of the story hasnt happened yet, and Kawaki is supposed to be getting more development soon so lets see how that goes and who its with first and judge further from there.

[kimboo-york]

It's been speculated before that Mo Xuanyu was encouraged by NHS to do the soul summoning ritual, either directly or indirectly.

I matched that up to my own hc about NHS, which is that he was less a "director" and more a master at improv — my imagining of him is that he just put a lot of things in motion and waited to adjust the fallout in his chosen direction.

Think about it: there is just so much of his eventual revenge that was circumstantial or pure luck. There were so many moving parts, any three of which could fail. I think he simply threw everything but the kitchen sink at JGY and waiting for something to click.

His manipulation of LXC to stab JGY is a great example of that, IMHO. Did he always plan for LXC to kill JGY? Doubtful, and certainly he did not plan for that specific set up. But he was ready for it when the opportunity arose, and that is a special kind of brilliance.

Okay, okay, so what am I getting at?

Mo Xuanyu was not the first person NHS pushed toward the soul summoning ritual, just the last.

A soul summoning ritual going wrong might just kill the person dead, but also might not. It's demonic cultivation and it's "untried science" (so to speak) so let's say more than a few cultivators tried it for various reasons and things did not go as planned.

(After all I'm sure there were plenty of miserable people out there willing to sacrifice themselves to resurrect the Yiling Laozu for their revenge.)

It's just too bad they got OTHER bad evil beings answering their call instead. Whoops.

Or simply went insane because of the power they couldn't control eating half their soul or smth.

Now add:

Jiang Cheng, running around killing demonic cultivators because they might be Wei Wuxian.

Or, more specifically, because they ARE NOT Wei Wuxian.

No, this isn't Jiang Cheng apologetics, necessarily. It's canon that (reportedly) he was really out there viciously, cruelly torturing people to death because they were demonic cultivators.

Demonic cultivators who tried to resurrect Wei Wuxian...and failed.

Meanwhile, Lan Wangji is out there "where the chaos is" and you gotta wonder maybe how he always knew where the chaos was?

NHS and his ITTT recipe: If soul summoning ritual is enacted, then kick off function "get Lan Wangji to the area before Jiang Cheng wildcard is activated".

[ukrfeminism]

Women dealing with severe mental illness are still being jailed despite prisons being “ill-equipped” to offer suitable care, a major review has warned.

Many women and health providers view the prison environment as “unfit for purpose”, while six in 10 inmates said the “inconsistent” health and social care services across England’s 12 women’s prisons needed improvement, the long-awaited NHS and Prison Service review found.

Despite figures suggesting nearly 60 per cent of female offenders have experienced domestic abuse, the review warned of a “gap” in mental healthcare and specialist support for women who have experienced trauma, including sexual and domestic violence.

The review – which was due last March – is touted as involving potentially the largest-ever engagement of women with lived experience of prison, drawing on more than 2,250 responses from group discussions, one-to-one meetings, letters, postcards and drawings.

Its findings underscore heightened concerns around women’s prisons, after the number of self-harm incidents rose by 63 per cent to hit a grim new record of 20,248 in the 12 months to June – three times higher than a decade earlier – despite the number of women self-harming remaining relatively stable in recent years.

The “absolutely staggering” rise could reflect issues with understaffing and a lack of suitable training, HM chief inspector of prisons Charlie Taylor told The Independent last month, adding: “These are often the most vulnerable, very unwell women, some of whom should quite frankly be in secure hospital, not in prison.”

Experts have long highlighted that mentally unwell women are being imprisoned unnecessarily, with MPs warning last April that legislation handing courts the power to remand people in prison “for their own protection” should be repealed.

While the government’s draft Mental Health Bill proposed this, and introduced a requirement to remand people to hospital when the only ground is concern for mental health, Rishi Sunak did not include the Bill in the King’s Speech – leaving it off the parliamentary agenda for the year ahead.

“This is a missed opportunity to right a grave wrong, and means women as well as men in crisis will continue to be sent to prisons which are unfit and unequipped to meet their needs,” Prison Reform Trust chief executive Pia Sinha told The Independent.

The newly-published review also highlighted that women’s reception and early days in prison are often “traumatic, deeply distressing and bewildering”, especially for pregnant women and mothers separated from their children.

“I didn’t know where I was, I didn’t feel like I could ask, I felt completely away from everything,” one woman told the researchers. “When they told me, I didn’t have a clue, I couldn’t picture it, then I found out I was hours from home and it really hit me how far away from my kids I was.”

Only around half of women said their immediate healthcare needs were met during the first 24 hours in custody. Vital services are also often not gender-specific, researchers found, leaving further gaps in care for women.

“Not one person has spoken to me about incontinence, menopause, what are healthy bowel habits, my boobs,” said one woman, while another told researchers: “Managing your periods in prison can be a nightmare. Some women don’t even know the pill or coil can help. They just assume because they’re in prison, they aren’t entitled to this sort of help.”

Women with reduced mobility, who are neurodiverse and who are older appeared most disadvantaged by a poor environment in prisons, the revew found, with one woman saying: “You’ve got more chance getting around prison on a flying carpet than you have in a wheelchair.”

The report also highlighted that not all staff are trained in trauma-informed care, with one respondent quoted as saying: “‘There are so many mental health ladies and ladies with learning disabilities that should not be here. 

“The prison is not a mental health hospital. Staff are not trained to deal with the complex needs, so those people do not get help to do anything or get what they need.”

Another said: “Officers don’t always get it, sometimes how they talk to us makes it worse. They need better training; they need to learn how to see it when a woman is in crisis.”

Meanwhile, in the 2019/20 year, some 45 per cent of women did not attend planned outpatient appointments, compared to 22 per cent in the general population – with “complex” reasons for this including there being no prison staff available to accompany them, according to the Nuffield Trust.

The Ministry of Justice has pledged to deliver on the report’s eight recommendations, and has earmarked £21m for a three-year delivery plan jointly led by the NHS, and Prison and Probation Service.

Urging an “ongoing multiagency commitment” to delivering the recommendations, the Prison Reform Trust warned that the review “cannot be reduced to yet another bureaucratic process”, adding: “Its success needs to be measured by the impact it has on improving the health and social care needs of women in custody.”

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Good news, everyone! Excellent news. It turns out Ed Night is good at stand-up comedy. I have been waiting several years now to find this out, suspected but with no way to confirm it. But now I can finally say, I have found a way to artistically justify my decision to watch Roast Battle. Wouldn't have heard of Ed Night otherwise as he's not been on anything else I've seen, and therefore I wouldn't have have seen a very good stand-up show last night. Success! It was all worth it!

Anyway, yesterday was probably my most perfectly planned day if this festival. Look at this:

What a solid few hours. Kept exiting the venues and then going right back in, didn't have to travel anywhere, and four really really strong shows in a row. Eleanor Morton's took a little while to get going and at first I was a bit disappointed in it, but it really built up from a routine about seeing the Edinburgh Fringe as an Edinburgh native, then just kept going, second half better than the first and I loved it by the end.

The other 3 were pretty well perfect, all 3 of them. I'm so glad I saw Sarah Keyworth, after almost skipping them because I saw it filmed for Access Festival. Firstly, it was more than good enough to be worth seeing in person even though I'd heard the material before, same as Nish Kumar and Tom Ballard. Secondly, it's been 8 months and a major Australian championship win since I saw the show, obviously the material has developed. It was so, so much fun to actually see.

As was Laura Davis, they're another one who's so compelling it's just worth getting into the room to experience it up close. This started strong but was another one that really built and by the end was... look, I try to be very sparing with a word like "Kitsonian" and not just compare anything good to him, but that was all I could think of with the way they got complex and poetic in throwing everything in the show back at us at the end. Reminded me of the ending of Impotent Fury of the Privileged pr Something Other Than Everything, in the best way (not in a "Laura was being unoriginal" way, Kitson doesn't talk nearly this much about dead birds so safe to say they carved their own territory). And Tom Ballard was also doing stuff I'd heard before but it sure was worth being in the room for that. Being in the room made me both enjoy it even more, and better understand why a different person might dislike it so strongly. A divisively shouty presence.

I even managed to briefly speak to Tom Ballard after the show, if nothing else just to prove to myself that I could, after the disaster of last week. And it went okay! I wasn't smooth by any means, stuttered at the ground about how I loved his show in Montreal last year and thought this one was even better and big fan of his older specials too and all his stuff, and I absolutely could not look at him while I spoke, but I think I managed to make the words I was saying understood. Managed to sound like a very nervous person who likes him, rather than whatever I sounded like when I met Kitson last week, which was nothing, because I could not remember any words. So I'm glad I managed that improvement. He was very nice, asked me my name, said he appreciated it, a sort of amusing contrast to the on-stage shoutiness.

Then I ran off to the Assembly Rooms to see Josie Long's husband (if the genders were reversed it would be problematic to define her by her relationship to him but I'm pretty sure it's fine this way around, also I'm not 100% sure they're actually married) meticulously document the destruction of arts funding and the NHS across 14 years of Tory rule, via the medium of a musical performed in what appeared to be a circus tent. That's what we some to the Fringe for, isn't it? That is exactly what I wanted out of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It was a lot of fun.

Then back to the Monkey Barrel to see Ed Night, a guy I'd been Googling ever since I saw him on Roast Battle in 2021, convinced that I like this guy and I just need him to release something so I can see to prove it. I've said several times on this blog that I'm supporting his career like it's a sports team, wanting him to get big just so I can see his stuff from Canada. He didn't so I had to go to him, and finally, decision to watch an awful thing like Roast Battle has been justified! I found Ed Night out of it! Seriously I thought he was fantastic, dark and sharp and packed with jokes that you could miss if you didn't pay attention because they fit so clearly into the narrative. And it helped that it was my sort of thing in terms of subject matter, he covered OCD and queer identity and some political stuff and the frustrating mental health system, talked shit about content creator algorithms. At one point he got a Pokemon reference into what I think was a suicide joke - how perfectly tailored to my comedy taste is that? He also picked some more specific targets, like (spoiler alert, I guess, spoiler alert for everything on my blog all the time) going after Tom Binns for a while, earning every bit of that edgy material (edgy, to be clear, just because it's an intense topic to bring up - he didn't try edgily defending him or anything) by being very funny about it.

He hung out somewhere in the general vicinity (not nearly as far, but the vicinity is still impressive) of Dan Rath levels of presenting himself as a fucked up low status character (though it didn't seem like a that much of a character). I remember seeing someone compare his stuff to Frankie Boyle once, which I think is apt, though more personal than I've heard Frankie Boyle get, and obviously not as developed in the craft, but it was that level of dark. I also think Chortle robbed him, with only 3.5 stars, given some of the stuff that's got 4. I'm just relieved that he was good. I got so invested in the idea of him being good, based on so little. Picked one non-famous comedian, several years ago, to decide I bet that guy is good, based on about 8 minutes of the TV show Roast Battle. And it was by no means a guarantee that I'd like him. I feel like this blog must make it seem as though I like pretty much all comedy because I mainly write about stuff I like. When in fact I hear or see plenty of comedy that I dislike, I just try not to be a dick about it online too often. So I'm glad this wasn't like that, because I really hate being wrong.

Then I ran off to the other side of the castle for the first time, to see Natalie Palamides at the Traverse Theatre. This was one I booked because it seemed important to take the opportunity to see in person while I can. I've seen her previous shows - Laid and Nate - on video, and I liked them, could see they were very good, but I also knew I was missing parts of it, because it doesn't translate fully to film, and I just don't have the theatre kid background to appreciate that level of clowning. Also the puppet in Dave freaked me out. I don't like puppets. Also, you know, nudity. Sex scenes (only with puppets). Artistic violence. It left me feeling weird and uncomfortable and wanting to curl up into a ball, in a sort of good but probably overall more bad way. But that left me feeling like I should try harder to develop the ability to appreciate this sort of thing. And I think it's the sort of thing that really needs to be experienced live.

So I went to see Weer live, and I had a great time. It was so much fun, probably helped that the subject matter was lighter, at least at first. More nudity (spoiler alert, I guess, for all of this, in the unlikely event that anyone planning to see Natalie Palamides is reading this) but I was prepared this time! Managed to not turn into quite such a prudish teacher from a movie, at the sight of a body displayed in the name of art. I mean it was still weird, but not quite such a shock as I'd seen it before. The violence was a bit more difficult, but it very quickly got too absurd to be scary. And the puppet stuff was mercifully extremely short.

Otherwise, I thought it was incredibly impressive. I don't have the theatre knowledge to really understand how impressive it was, but I can still recognize something really cool and incredibly complicated done very well. It was fun, it made me laugh, I could not believe the number of (literal and figurative) layers that went into it. It was very, very cool to see, definitely worth taking the chance to go in person.

So that was my day yesterday. Woke up early this morning and thought I'd go through the day. About to go back to town for my last day of shows. Which is fine, I'm not feeling any predictable rising anxiety that the only thing I've been looking forward to for a year is almost over. It's okay, I'll have another little bit in London after this and that's nice as meeting my London friend in person has been one of the best parts of this, sorry that's a weird thing to say given that he reads this. But it's hardly the most overly personal thing I've ever communicated via a Tumblr post because I don't know how to actually talk to people. Except Tom Ballard, I did a great job of talking to him.

And aside from talking to Tom Ballard, yesterday was a slower day for comedian spotting, which was probably for the best (talking to Tom wasn't so much comedian "spotting", as comedian "awkwardly waiting around until everyone else had left after his show"). Jordan Brookes was in the audience at Sarah Keyworth's show. And here's a left-field one - Dominic Maxwell, the dick from The Times who once called Andy Zaltzman "[John Oliver's] left-behind sidekick", was in Natalie Palamides' show making notes for a review. Which I only know because she called attention to that when giving him an audience participation part, she turned it into something quite funny.

Okay, now I'm going into town for the last day. I've saved some of the established Fringe veterans for last - Seymour Mace, Mark Watson, David O'Doherty. Mat Ewins, another one where I thought it important to take the chance to see in oerson since he doesn't translate to recordings well. I didn't divide it up this way intentionally, but the identity-based demographic diversity of my Fringe schedule looks a lot better if you leave out the last day.

[sourcreammachine]

REFORM PARTY "MANIFESTO" 2024 SUMMARY

they say it ain't a manifesto even though it is. they're tryna pretend they're not politicians even though they are. their reasoning is that they know they won't be the next government, so this is what they'd push for as opposition members - just like in the manifestos of the greens, SNP etc. but anyway, this "contract" of theirs is scant and they're running a vibes-based campaign. you don't need to see any actual policies, no no no. you already know if they're for you or not. oh, and if you think they're for you - just like all far right parties, they ain't: they're for capital, they're for vested interests, they're for cruelty. they're for the classic quasi-accelerationist burnout cycle that'll weaken the base of society and the economy and ruin fucking everything. but hey, at least there won't be no immigrants. i'm so sorry if you see them as the future: they're taking you for a ride just as you've been used time and time again, because there is no clearly accessible political solution to improving your material conditions as current politics stand, i'm sorry - that is, within the paradigm you know - there're answers just outside the tunnel-vision you've been forced into. why not take a look sometime. who knows, you might find some hope.

i'm not shitting you, though. the manifesto is not long. go read it. see for yourself the draconian horror they advocate, and will push for these five years, and will endorse with the hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of Short Money coming their way after they get into parliament. this isn't a 2015 UKIP moment, a single-issue agenda that'll flame out. even if they fail in their 2029 campaign with no votes against the tories to count on, these ideas and their influence are here to stay for the medium-term now. even if we remove the rosethorn it'll keep bleeding and bleeding and bleeding

yeah, on account of the scantness, these policies are vague. they're much more like ideas rather than proposals. the general nonsense of them has been fact-checked time and time again so i won't bother. here's just a summary of their rambling ephemeral suggestions

💷ECONOMY

revoke benefits after four months, MANDATORY acceptance of the second job offer on pain of benefit revocation, make all eligibility capability assessments in-person, mandating medical assessments, to catastrophically reduce disability benefit entitlements

raise the personal allowance to §20k/a, cutting individual taxation by §1600/a. raise it to §25k for the married

raise the second band of income tax from about §50k to §70k cutting an ABHORRENT amount of tax from the upper-middle class, far far far far far more than the tax cuts on §20k-earners

leave the World Economic Forum, plummet corporation tax from its already international tax-haven low levels, abolish any business tax for "high-street based" small businesses to create a new class of fat cat burghers, VAT refund for businesses making under §150k/a profit no matter what it is they're flogging

revoke european trade agreements and collapse trade with the mainland

massive tax breaks for defence contractors

'frontload' the child benefit system, plunging it after the child turns four

pour money into giving tourists a full refund on VAT

surge the inheritance tax threshold to §2m BUT "allow the money to be donated to charity instead" (ie allowing massive loophole scams)

massive deregulation, including on the regulation of business and employment laws as "we must make it easier to hire and fire". the manifesto also whines about "6700 eu laws" that still stand, but whines and moves on, implying a mass unbounded deregulation of industry

🏥PUBLIC SERVICES

abolish the NHS and replace it with a private voucher system

catastrophic austerity: every government department to be removed of a 5% of its funding that it must account for itself, reducing spending across the board without central planning or oversight

catastrophic statecapture: abolish civil service leadership and replace them with politicised government appointees "from the private sector"

catastrophic hike on university entry requirements and mandate many be cut to two years

catastrophic privatisation of the remaining public healthcare with surge in outsourcing and contracting, 20% total tax relief for private healthcare

statecapture the BBC with full nationalisation

comprehensive curriculum audit to impose "patriotic education": mandate "any teaching about a period or example of british or european imperialism or slavery must be paired with the teaching of a non-european occurrence of the same to ensure balance", teach children about "their heritage"

public inquiry on "the harm of vaccines"

leave the WHO

end the exemption private schools from the 20% VAT. wait, wait no hang on i've got that wrong. oh right yeah, that's labour's policy, sorry. reform says to impose a 20% TAX RELIEF ON PRIVATE SCHOOLS. sorry peasants, your tax money is funding Eton now

🏠HOUSING

catastrophic tax breaks for small landlords

revoke the renters reform bill

abolish stamp duty (the tax on the buying of homes) under §750k and plummet it above that mark, allowing obscene wealth transfers, massive property buyup, catastrophic housing supply saturation, and the annihilation of first-time buying

🚄TRANSPORT ?

ban and abolish low emission zones

ban and abolish low traffic neighbourhoods

ban and abolish all 20mph zones except outside schools

lower petrol tax

👮FORCE

abolish the human rights act

abolish the equality act

leave the european convention on human rights

freeze "non-essential immigration", and they do not elaborate what they mean or what the policy definition is to be. so they're just gonna be rambling about ephemera to kingdom come. that's the game they're playing

10% HEAD TAX ON IMMIGRANTS via additional national insurance charge

REVOCATION OF CITIZENSHIP FROM IMMIGRANT UK CITIZENS COMMITTED OF CRIMES, without specifying whether or not this applies only to dual-citizens, meaning reform supports the mass imposition of STATELESS status, A GRAVE AND ABHORRENT CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY

invade france. i'm being serious. they'd intercept and arrest small-boat crossers and 'take them back to france', violating french territorial sovereignty on both land and sea via the use of force, gravely violating international law against our neighbour

FORTY THOUSAND new police in five years, around 25% more, massively prioritise pipelining ex-military officers and enlistees into the police, abolish PCSOs and make them regular broken-windows police

labour camps for young offenders

create a US-style coast guard and begin routine patrols for migrants or foreign fishers

surge armed forces funding by the highest amount proposed by any party

"stop Sharia law being used in the UK", ie draconian monitoring of mosques, muslim community organisations, the palestine movement, and any muslim

absolute prohibition on asylum applications from "safe countries", sentencing desperate seekers to political persecution and death by mere categorical definition

increase stop-and-search powers, mandates and centrality in policing tactics, pursue broken windows policing,

MANDATORY MINIMUM OF LIFE for second violent/serious offences or ANY drug dealing, new offence for 'substantial possession of drugs'

catastrophically demolish the legalised definition of hatecrime to de facto prevent its use for any prosecution

mass prison building, convert disused military bases into prison camps

bad internet bill: massive inquiry into 'child social media use' (under their watch requiring catastrophic restrictions), renew the online safety bill as "social media giants that push baseless transgender ideology and divisive critical race theory should have no role in regulating free speech"

abolish the northern ireland framework, seemingly unilaterally, paving the way for a hard border and blowing the starting whistle on The Troubles 2

speaking of which: exempt the armed forces from human rights law

catastrophically plummet the number of student visas and prohibit international students with dependents

end funding for european defence programmes. sorry estonia looks like you're lost. oh also "the west provoked putin" so there's that

require the licensing of foreign trawlers in the eez, beginning a cold war with iceland

halve international development / foreign aid funding from its already tiny budget, with specific mention of "global quangos" (literally how many centuries has it been and antisemitism is STILL invoked by these pillocks)

🌱ECOCIDE

repeal every penny of green investment

abolish all emissions targets including for all public services

abolish all renewable energy subsidies

mandate the use of fertile land for farming, ban natural england from protecting 'farmland' land, end and ban all rewinding programmes

abolish environmental levies

catastrophic surge on oil/gas licensing and open new lithium and coal mines, and support biomass/biofuel

🗳️DEMOCRACY ?

begin trumpist restriction on the ability to vote

abolish all postal voting apart from the elderly and disabled

keep voter ID

"legislate to stop left-wing bias and politically correct ideology"

proportional commons and elected senate

🏳️‍⚧️REACTIONARY AGENDA not otherwise covered

for all transgender schoolchildren who have not been permitted a gender recognition certificate: prohibit the use of correct pronouns by any teacher, prohibit the recognition of social transitioning by any teacher, and require mandatory outing to their parents

ban all unisex toilets

"cut funding to universities that undermine free speech", with no clarification, meaning they get to bully anyone they chose

abolish the public health observatory on racial health disparities

look, yeah. the manifesto is short, their purview is open. the door is not shut. everything is on the table. their one, two, three or more MPs are going to be using your tax money to advocate anything and anything that harms migrants, queer and trans people. nonwhite citizens and any annoying political movement can and will be fair game for total attack and political annihilation. wherever the transphobic tornado goes next they will join in. it is going to be a dangerous time for us. they are going to push for absolutely anything they can to harm trans people. your country. your money. your responsibility to fight them. that is what democracy is

[awesomehoggirl]

Here's a rant i have wanted to post since january. 😊 content warnings for this post i am going to be raving about how the nhs treats eating disorder patients. LOL

i am so grateful for the existence of the NHS and so grateful that my experience has actually been a GOOD experience as far as seeking help for mental health problems goes in this dam cuntry. but god this process has been fucking soul crushing and it scares me so bad because i got lucky and hung on and so many others cannot. i was lucky that when i went to my gp in january and did the scariest thing i could possibly imagine and ask for help for my anorexia, i was taken seriously - most likely because i am a young white woman who was already at a severely low weight and therefore fit the 'profile' for restrictive eating disorders. i was lucky to get accepted for treatment at a local outpatient clinic and lucky for it to only take four months to get my first therapy appointment (tomorrow, and actually exactly four months to the day since i first asked for help). and it hurts that four months is lucky because without a shadow of a doubt these four months have been the worst period of my life. worse than when i wasnt set on getting better and was fully lapsed in anorexia. worse because i was strung along waiting for each appointment date and was essentially instructed to 'stay put' - don't get more disordered, per se, but don't get better. worse because every appointment was incredibly triggering and would set me back so far and by the time i did get to the outpatient clinic i was medically unstable enough to be hospitalised (but wasn't). my body was fucking shutting down, and i am one of the lucky ones. every day was absolute fucking torture and i was a complete shell terrified of doing 'too well', getting dropped from the process, and being sent back to square one - more than i was afraid of the way things were getting worse.

and things didnt improve for me when i was admitted there. not that i was expecting them to wave a wand and cure my anorexia but essentially i was given a formal diagnosis, the minimum meal plan with the promise i would have one tailored for my needs asap (has still not appeared - it has been a month) and the promise of regular therapy (ditto) and more details on my treatment to come (ditto). things didnt even marginally improve until i went home for a month and basically let my parents take over and teach me how to take care of myself again. they didnt improve until i picked up books on the biological basics of anorexia and taught myself what the fuck i was even going through. i could have died from refeeding syndrome during the months i was waiting and i would have had no idea what was happening! it makes me insane to think i am one of the lucky ones.

how can a gp look at someone who is dying and tell them to keep doing the thing that is killing them until theyre off a waitlist? i swear to god if any of them had to walk a single day in the shoes of someone suffering anorexia we would have an entire system rehaul because it is actual living hell. and god i haven't even touched on inpatient facilities - i haven't experienced one but the countless stories i've heard from people i've talked to are enough. the idea that shoving meals at someone with a severe mental health problem and discharging them the minute they're 'weight restored' (which is such a wavy idea anyway, and nobody can decide what someone's healthy set point is apart from their own fucking body) is such an insane misunderstanding of the disorder it seems actually stupid. with no work to neurally rewire the fear response to food or body changes they are setting people up for relapse and then deem patients 'treatment resistant' when they do. if i went into the way they look at binge eating and treat patients at higher weights this post would be a million miles long i can't even start lol

when i was on the bus to one of the appointments i was googling the outpatient clinic id been referred to and found the case of a girl previously in her care who went to the same uni as me, did the same course as me, was the same age as me, and unfortunately passed in her dorm room due to complications of her disorder which were not flagged because of negligence. she 'seemed fine' one week and was gone the next. i sat there on the bus and didnt even cry because i was too exhausted and sick, but i've cried over her since. i just think people with eating disorders are so misunderstood and the treatment is so wrong and needs to be rehauled so badly. i'm angry for that girl who died across the street from the doctor's office where i sat and was told to stay put in my disorder, wait it out, wait for help which just doesn't seem like it's coming at this point.

if any positive has come from my drive to fight for myself has never been stronger. all i want in the world is to go to america in august and even if my family and gp don't believe i'll be well in time, i believe in myself. i am proud of myself and scared for myself and angry for myself. for all the awfulness i have grown so much as a person and learned a lot about myself. it feels surreal to post about anorexia on my blog because it is so deeply shameful to me and something i have struggled with on and off quietly for years, but i am going to fucking get out of this and go to america and have the most awesome time. also tomorrow i am going to have a pastry at a cafe with my mum and yes i am terrified but i am also excited because it will be yummy. fuck eating disorders and fuck ummmm waitlists or whatever

[eaglesnick]

“The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses.”

Malcolm X

I’m no fan of Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves but the deliberate lies and distortions concerning her budget both before and after the event are derisible. For a society to flourish successfully the media must adhere to a certain degree of honesty. Different opinions, backed up by evidence and logical argument, are fine, indeed, welcomed, but the continual peddling of untruths and half-truths by the media is an existential threat to the very democracy many of these media outlets pretend they are defending.

Before the budget the Financial Times, one of the most respected mainstream economic newspapers in the UK had this headline:

“Bankers fear Rachel Reeves is preparing UK Budget tax raid on sector” (11/09/24)

 On the day after the budget we have this headline:

“Reeves spares banks from tax raid after lobbying”  (City AM: 30/10/24)

This glaring headline from the Express is another example of our dishonest media:

“Labour blasted as 'anti-motorist' as Rachel Reeves ‘set to raise fuel duty in budget." (18/10/24)

After the budget we get the true story.

“Rachel Reeves announces fuel duty freeze as motorists spared from Budget tax rises."  (Independent: 30/10/24)

The Financial Times spoke of the “fear” our honest bankers felt concerning Reeves pending budget. Quite why bankers were “afraid” is unclear, especially as Reeves had already promised:

“Banker’ bonuses: No cap under Labour. Says Reeves." (BBC: 31/01/24)

After the budget, when it was clear there would be no tax raid on bankers, it was because she had “spared" them. Spared them from what? She had already promised there was to be no cap on their bonuses. Despite record profits at the six largest British banks (£48bn) Reeves decided not to increase the bank levy introduced by the Coalition government in 2011, or the corporation tax surcharge imposed by a Conservative government in 2016. In short, the banking sector has been left untouched by Reeves budget and this whole notion of “fear" and bankers being “spared" is a non-story.

The same non-story concerning her "anti-motorist" policies was also described as the motorist being "spared" when the prediction she would raise fuel duty just didn’t materialise.

Since the budget Reeves has come under repeated attack for raising taxes. Her budget will result in less wage growth, fewer jobs, an exodus of businesses abroad, the closure of care homes and doctors surgeries, higher mortgages and rents, the collapse of British farming, etc, etc.

The sad fact is we all know our public services are on their knees, homelessness is endemic, child poverty is rising, the NHS is on the brink of collapse, and our children’s schools and some of our hospitals are quite literally falling down around us. UK absolute poverty has hit an all-time high, life-expectancy is actually falling and the nation is suffering a mental health crisis.

While her British critics continue to rant against Reeves budget it is  worthwhile, even enlightening, to see how other countries view her plans for the Britain.

“Britain targets the wealthy as it hikes taxes by $52 billion.” (CNN Business: 30/10/24)

And

“Britain’s Reeves targets wealthy and foreign income with big tax rises” Reuters: 31/10/24)

The question British media outlets have to answer is what do they think should happen to our failing public services and the continuing economic plight of so many working people?  Should we continue as we were under the Tories and just let a huge sector of our society  go to the wall as happens in America? Or should we, as a nation, try and repair the damage done to our public services thereby improving the lives of many ordinary citizens?

If the latter answer is the way forward then who is going to pay for the repairs that are so desperately needed to mend our broken society?  The fair and moral answer is, of course, those who can afford to pay a little extra in tax – the already wealthy.

This is what Reeves is attempting to do and this is what is recognised by foreign observers. We can argue who among the already wealthy should be paying the most in additional taxes but it is the rich who have to pay. After all, Statistica inform us “the UK’s rich are getting richer” (23/05/22) so it is only morally right they should pay a little extra towards the welfare of those less well off than themselves.

The blind loathing that the vast majority of the British media display towards the Labour party is truly worrying. Their genuine fear when Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader is understandable as his policies were truly transformative in nature. But social democrat Reeves budget is a far cry from the socialist plans of the Labour left. Yet the British media has this negative knee jerk reaction to all things Labour. The danger is that the day-after-day invention of “problems” that don’t exist will , over time, have a drip, drip affect on our perceptions, whereby we all buy into the lies being peddled.

[hjohn3]

Lest We Forget…

Lord Darzi’s NHS Report and the Damage the Tories Did

Source: The Telegraph

By Honest John

LABOUR WON the 2024 General Election for a variety of reasons, but one of the most significant was the state of the NHS after fourteen years of Tory mismanagement. In recognition of this, Keir Starmer’s government commissioned former Labour Minister, eminent surgeon and academic, Professor Lord Ari Darzi, to carry out a review of the state of the health service the new government had inherited and to make recommendations to form the basis of a ten year plan to restore the NHS’ capacity, effectiveness and public reputation. Lord Darzi turned his report around extraordinarily quickly. Wes Streeting commissioned the review just one week after the General Election; the Darzi report was submitted to the Secretary of State just two months later. The conclusions, if somewhat broad, are hard to argue with: Darzi confirms the wisdom of Labour’s stated prevention strategy and a renewed role for public health; he points out the dramatic fall in NHS productivity since the Covid pandemic and the urgent need to address this if Labour’s waiting list commitments are to be met; he recommends improved and focused management and less regulation and recommends significant structural reform, building on the more integrative principles of the 2022 NHS Act.

However the most enlightening and stark passages of Darzi’s review are those that analyse how far the NHS has fallen in terms of hitting performance standards it met relatively comprehensively during Labour’s last period in office and how public satisfaction in the service has collapsed from over 70% in 2010 to less than 30% by 2023. These passages lay bare what health commentators and those who work in the NHS have known for years: that the Conservative stewardship of the NHS since 2010 was an unmitigated disaster both in terms of preserving the resilience of the health service itself, but also with regard to maintaining the overall health of the nation. What makes this brief but forensic summary of Tory failure so powerful is that it appears in a document commissioned by the Department of Health itself, and that its prose is as objective as it is considered; as insightful as it is accurate. No longer is the despair at the clumsy restructuring, needless austerity, thoughtless neglect and systemic incompetence at the heart of Tory health “strategy” the province of think tanks, concerned journalists, NHS bodies and the poor benighted staff and patients themselves, but it is now “official”: a depressing account of insouciant policy failure at every level during the Tory years.

The assault began almost as soon as the Cameron Conservatives slid into power, their minority party supported in government by the useful idiots of the Clegg-led Liberal Democrats. Possessed of the conviction that only major public spending cuts could “save” the British economy, the Coalition inflicted on the U.K. the decade and more fiscal trauma known as “austerity”. Cameron himself was an ideological lightweight and easily bored, but he was surrounded by ideologues, principally his Chancellor George Osborne, but also by the uber-Thatcherite, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, convinced that more competition, extended internal market mechanisms and the opening up of clinical services to the private sector was the “reform” the NHS needed. His NHS Act of 2010 broke up commissioning bodies into geographically tiny replacements (thereby rendering them effectively useless); required NHS Foundation Trusts to compete for the provision of all services, including cancer care, mental health services and much urgent care, and encouraged commissioners to sell off community health services and diagnostic services to private sector providers, such as Virgin Health under an invidious policy known as “Any Willing Provider”. Along the way, Public Health was transferred to local authorities, fatally divorcing it from the wider health service, small hospitals privatised, and savings targets hiked up.

The NHS had been working within a simulated market for nearly a decade when the Tories took over. It was Labour’s Alan Milburn who believed internal competition and a target culture was key to increasing NHS efficiency and productivity. However, Milburn drew the line at outright privatisation and genuinely sought to turn commissioning into a lever to secure comprehensive health provision sensitive to local needs rather than simply a means to manage the health market. Crucially the Labour government had also pumped significant amounts of new funding into the NHS which enabled Milburn to state credibly that there was enough money in the system for all NHS providers to make a surplus, and that only those slow or uncompetitive would struggle. The Conservative government however turned off the funding taps at the very point at which Lansley was marketising every aspect of the service. This manifested as a decade of below-inflation financial settlements for services for which demand was growing due to demographic factors and whose costs were inexorably rising due to the ever-rising expense of drugs and equipment. All markets - simulated or otherwise- require injections of cash at regular intervals in order to expand and invest and to meet unavoidable costs. Austerity was always an unnecessary and witless strategy for the economy as a whole, but for a health model predicated on growth, the simultaneous marketisation of care with a radical downturn in funding, was catastrophic. The NHS entered a fiscal doom spiral from which it has yet to recover.

The damage inflicted on the NHS by the twin ideological impulses to commercialise public services while at the same reduce public spending was bad enough, but the imposition of a 40% budget reduction on social care over the period of austerity economics, effectively - in the words of Wes Streeting - also “broke” NHS emergency care. With social services defunded to the extent they were barely able to fulfil their statutory duties, the resultant inability of social workers to discharge elderly patients with long term conditions from hospital into other supported accommodation, resulted in over 30% of acute hospital beds being unavailable for patient admission from A&E. With so many beds out of action, waits in Emergency Departments spiralled. Last year, just 58% of patients met the ED waiting time standard of 4 hours; in 2010, 98% of patients had been seen, admitted or discharged from ED within four hours. The crowding in A&E Departments that resulted from this collapse in performance, has led to long ambulance queues outside hospitals and the subsequent terrifying failure of ambulances to respond to so-called “Category 1 and 2” emergencies within fifteen minutes in the community - in fact delays are now counted in hours.

Elective services have fared little better. When Labour left office in 2010, the standard of 92% of patients being seen and treated in secondary care within 18 weeks of a referral by a GP, was broadly being met. That standard has not been met since 2015, and by 2020 had tumbled to less than 75% of patients. Then came Covid - a pandemic for which the NHS was hopelessly ill-prepared thanks to systemic underfunding, a complete absence of planning and a reduction and detachment of Public Health from the core NHS. The panicky and chaotic response to Covid by the Johnson regime saw wholesale cancellation of elective procedures and cancer care to maintain acute and critical care capacity for the anticipated surge in emergency demand. Waiting list numbers have, as a result of this service shut-down, spiralled to 7m patients and waiting time is resembling the ghastly Tory legacy the Blair government addressed over 20 years ago. The fact that the hapless Sunak regime needlessly kept the junior doctors’ dispute running in the belief that being “tough” with medical care givers would somehow increase Tory popularity, only exacerbated patient waits, rubbing salt in the wounds.

These are just the headlines: Darzi could have written whole separate reports about the scandal of under-provisioned and demoralised mental health services trying to keep up with unsustainable demand; the dangers to our children created by a wilful neglect of the ever-increasing needs for paediatric intensive and high dependency care; the attested failures across the country in maternity services and the shambles of a privatised nursing and residential care home sector. The NHS was not perfect in 2010, but the damage wrought upon it over fourteen years of senseless fiscal squeeze, ludicrous ideological experimentation, catastrophic and corrupt responses to a pandemic and, most crippling of all, systematic neglect of British healthcare by the Tories, must rank as one of the worst examples policy failure in recent British history.

The Tory client media immediately accused Darzi of writing a biased and political report aimed at discrediting the Conservatives rather than describing the true state of the last government’s legacy. The real truth is that Darzi only scratched the surface in his description of a service brought to its knees by a cavalcade of ideologues, incompetents and unserious clowns who knew little and cared less about services on which the British people depend. Labour will justifiably be judged on the progress they have made in fixing the “broken” NHS in four years’ time, but let us never forget who broke it so comprehensively in the first place. There is barely an area of British public policy that the procession of ghoulish Tory regimes did not vandalise, degrade or take backwards, but for the crimes they inflicted on our health and social care services alone, for so long a source of collective pride and reassurance, the Conservatives must never, ever, be forgiven.

26th September 2024