LIZ KENDALL - MAD, BAD AND DANGEROUS
Trials of employment advisers giving CV and interview advice in hospitals produced “dramatic results”, Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall told the BBC.
The Secretary of State for the Department of Work and Pensions was referring to her experience of visiting a severe mental illness Individual Placement and Support (IPS) programme.
In the community.
Mental health patients are in hospital usually because they are incapable of living life in general let alone getting a job. Plus, mental health units are usually secure wards, so they can’t get out.
IPS works because people are in recovery, receiving treatment that makes them feel better and well enough to start thinking about work.
Factional right-wing neoliberal think tank “Labour Together":
The Budget is a Winner with Tories
Now we can all agree that Biden was a total failure of a president.
In other news, I got 25% off my Cornish pasty at Peterborough Services for wearing my Corbyn cap.
HATS OFF!
Sat on a bench in a children’s playground, a older couple approach me. The man is wearing a Union Jack bobble hat, points at my cap and says, “Were you in Vietnam?”
Now, I’ve heard this or similar many times online, always from Reform, but never in person.
“It’s The Clash”, I said. “London Calling.”
“And Jeremy Corbyn. For the many, not the few.”
“Oooh! Jeremy Corbyn! We wouldn’t be in this mess if he was in charge!” He said.
Then his wife asked me if I knew how to share a story about Chesterfield to all her Facebook friends.
My Mum’s cousin owns the local wool shop.
FAMILY CONNECTION RESTORED
Spent the day at my Mum’s, and a good portion of our final half an hour with her trying to fix the wifi connection on her phone.
Restarting her router slightly improved connectivity.
Just as we’re about to leave, she says, “I’ve got loads of new routers they keep sending me.”
Quickly set up her new router and now everything works perfectly.
When we got back to our caravan, I got a text. “You didn’t take the plum loaf I got you.”
One positive outcome of my immune system going into overdrive in response to the covid vaccine is that my psoriasis has (temporarily?) calmed down.
COPD
Last week I received confirmation of a diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) based on results of spirometry tests back in August (it took that long for my GP surgery to get the results from the test centre, and only after my own intervention after their repeated failures).
My GP helpfully seemed very keen to blame my twenty-odd year history of smoking.
I first smoked at about age 20. My parents were smokers (wasn’t everyone back then?). I was never a heavy smoker. The most I ever smoked was ten a day. It’s also true I smoked a number of other substances that didn’t come with filters. And then there was some vaping. I suspect that might have been the worst of the lot, but who knows? I haven’t smoked for ten years.
In my childhood, I remember several episodes of severe shortness of breath, e.g., when running around the sports field at primary school I collapsed gasping for breath, and unable to continue. I was never diagnosed with asthma. I was told to get up and stop being so weak.
As I got older, whenever the football season started, I could never get through a full game. I put it down to lack of fitness and stamina at the time, but whatever it was, the symptom was breathlessness. I was told to get fit and sent off on cross-country runs.
I had regular episodes of shortness of breath throughout young adulthood that were not triggered by exercise (I’d more or less given up by then, helped by a dodgy ankle). I thought it might be hayfever or a dust allergy.
Fourteen years ago, I needed a thoracotomy on my right lung after a chest infection went wrong. I developed pleurisy, a collapsed lung and an empyema. In the post-op, my surgeon said my lung was “as good as new”.
In the years before covid, I had frequent chest infections requiring antibiotics and time off work to recover. Then and now, I wonder if that was triggered by the Southall Gasworks remediation and air pollution?
I now see that studies show that exposure to volatile organic compounds (including benzene, naphthalene and toluene) is related to COPD.
The good news is that I had no symptoms of COPD, so it’s been diagnosed at an early stage. I’ve started with my new inhaler, and my wife reports that I’ve stopped snoring.
THE HANGOVER
I had my covid vaccine a week ago today. As expected I had a torrid night with violent shivers, nausea, headache and generally feeling like crap.
While that was the worst of it, I had a whole 48 hours of ‘mild flu symptoms’, followed by a whole week of feeling like the day after going on a massive bender.
I was hoping for a good night’s sleep tonight, in preparation for a long drive tomorrow, but it’s Diwali.
Which in our neighborhood means a non-stop onslaught of fireworks for several hours this evening.
THE SOUTHALL GASWORKS STORY
The story of how the remediation of Southall Gasworks highlights the environmental injustices faced by communities of colour.
The disregard for the health and concerns of these residents raises questions about the inequitable distribution of environmental burdens and the role of local government in protecting vulnerable populations.
It also highlights the potential conflicts between development, profit, and public health, and the need for greater transparency and accountability from authorities and developers.
(This is a Google NotebookLM creation, based on selected sources from my blog posts on Southall Gasworks.)
CHASING YOUTHS WITH CARVING KNIVES
How my journey into care work was a serendipitous outcome of my search for meaning and purpose beyond the confines of traditional work. At least, that’s according to Google NotebookLM, based on my Curriculum Vitae series of blog posts.
CLEAR AND OBVIOUS ERROR
After watching and re-watching the same three-second clip of nothing happening for so long that here in the UK we had to put our clocks back another hour just to have enough time to finish the game, the match referee (Ross from Friends look-a-like David Coote) turned to face what he knew would be a worldwide audience of millions of armchair experts like me yelling “VAR! WTF!” at the screen in front of us. You could see in his face and his body language that he knew just like us it was ludicrous. Another referee sat in a business park office just down the road from me had told him to review his original decision - that nothing had happened - because the ref had made “a clear and obvious” error of judgment.
The late penalty awarded by VAR and converted by West Ham and England’s Jarrod Bowen should duly result in the termination of the losing manager’s contract. That’s football. This VAR rubbish isn’t, but we have to live with it for now.
This particular fiasco neatly sums up the entire ETH tenure. A clear and obvious error, if ever there was one, and yet we are forced to watch repeat after repeat, week after week of him getting it wrong. Team selections, tactics, transfers, substitutions. A bald man somehow getting balder every time the full time whistle blows.
If only United had a VAM. A Video Assistant Manager. Another (more capable manager) sat in a nearby office watching the game on a screen like you or me, who could intervene at key moments during the build-up to the game (team selection), during the game (tactical changes and subs), and off the pitch (transfers, man-management) to a whisper into Ten Hag’s hairless ear: “Hold on, Eric. I think that signing Antony for £80m is a clear and obvious error” or “Hi Eric, Maguire’s a fucking liability mate” or “Eric, pal. We need to talk. Onana?” I could go on but you get the drift.
Now, I know everyone rightly hates VAR for ruining the game, and it would be unfair to blame ETH for ruining United. But VAM would make it much more entertaining.
I thought I’d done great with these pizzas, but big kid ate only three slices (he can usually eat all eight) and spat out his salami, little kid said he doesn’t like the sauce (it’s out of a tin, the same he usually eats), and the missus said hers was burnt and inedible (although she still ate it).
Every word speaks the brutal truth.
Following on from our expensive old and new door catastrophes, our washing machine has given up. Another £169.
ANOTHER DOOR CLOSES
Our twenty year old fridge door failed. It refused to stay closed anymore. Hinges had gone.
After a couple of weeks battling with adhesive magnetic door locks designed for something else, I did the most manly thing I could think of. I called an engineer.
The NEFF man arrived and did the job in a matter of minutes for £172.
It’s been an expensive couple of months fixing doors, old and new.
PALACE MATCH REPORT
Watched the United game (on my laptop) yesterday, having missed the Southampton and Barnsley games.
A big improvement on the Liverpool debacle, especially in the first half.
Dalot playing as a LB, DM and playmaker/midfield general all at once was as unexpected as it was impressive.
Eriksen starting, to maintain the creative link he made with Mainoo against Barnsley we’re told, was also unexpected, but it too somehow worked. Drifting left to cover Dalot rather undid his link with Mainoo, though.
Rashford benched, supposedly for “rotation”, went against all known football management laws about not changing a winning team and playing players who are in form and scoring goals.
It almost worked as Garnacho (who always looks like he has a goal in him, if nothing else) replaced him, but hit the bar with a thunderous effort from wide of the penalty box.
When the subs came, they undid all our tactical and positional advantage, perhaps as much due to Palace’s positive changes as United’s later nearly self-defeating swaps. Ugarte was a downgrade on Dalot and less of a creative menace or goalscoring threat than the unfairly maligned Casemiro might have been. Rashford, and then Hojlund, couldn’t hold the ball up or link up the play like Zirkzee did. But by then our shape had gone and Palace were on top.
Lucky to come away with a draw in the end, thanks to an incredible double save from Onana and wasteful finishing from Eze, although we should have won the game in the first half an hour.
I can’t opt-out of LinkedIn’s new AI data gathering exercise, and neither can I delete my account, because I can’t login (got a new phone, 2fa linked to old phone, fucked).
Hopefully their AI will be richer and more fully rounded as a result of my content.
DIGITAL LEADER
Hoping we found a good solution to help big kid’s Digital Leader application.
He found it difficult to focus and get his head around answering the questions in a sensible (let alone helpful) way.
Instead, I recorded him speaking about the devices and tech he uses, how he helps his little brother and his parents to play games, and how using new apps like Duolingo has helped him to learn Spanish (when previously he hated Spanish lessons).
Google automatically transcribed his speech and copied it to Google Docs. There I edited out the ums and ahs and pasted it into his Discord chat with me. Then he copied it out by hand on to the application form.
🤞
I don’t understand why they have seized (now mouldy) courgettes as evidence but then again I don’t understand how they can justify arresting us for wanting to make soup.
IMPOSSIBLE DEMANDS
Starmer is cynically setting up the NHS to fail in order to present private healthcare as the fix.
Starmer: a man way of his depth when dealing with the NHS https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/09/13/starmer-a-man-way-of-of-his-depth-when-dealing-with-the-nhs/ Starmer's speech on the NHS yesterday offered view of a man unprepared for office who sends out incompetent messages to those who now work in the organisation he leads and who has no comprehension of the economic environment in which he must manage healthcare.
It's not surprising that now the UK public is seeing Starmer in action that his popularity is falling.
DEATH CULT
OBR: We have to kill old people and starve the children of the poor in order to keep funding our expensive wars and ensure the rich get richer.
Labour: Let’s get to it!
The Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecast for the national debt is a worthless exercise by economically illiterate fantasists https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/09/13/the-office-for-budget-responsibilitys-forecast-for-the-national-debt-is-a-worthless-exercise-by-economically-illiterate-fantasists/ The Office for Budget Responsibility has forecast that UK debt will rise to 300% of GDP in 50 years because they think it impossible that taxes can rise above current levels, even though state spending will reach 60% of GDP in their opinion. All they prove is their own lack of imagination and competence by doing so.
Bunk beds built.
