The Productive Pessimist

Today, 12th November 2024, marks one year since our first "problem solving post" on this blog; you can read that post  here . Our very first post as The Productive Pessimist on this blog was a general intro post, published on 5th November 2024, and The Productive Pessimist Ltd was formally registered as a company in February 2025; however, writing, and helping teams, people, and organisations achieve their potential are central to how I undertake my responsibilities with The Productive Pessimist Ltd, and so I choose to mark the one year anniversary of the first "how to solve a common problem" post on this blog. I've also put out a YouTube video - which you can  watch here  - I hate  doing videos, I have no  skills or competence in doing videos, my sight loss causes significant practical challenges with doing videos - but, every so often, I'll do a video, because we never get better at things by avoiding them, and because the videos provide a nice contrast to

  "Well, obviously  no one here is 'financially excluded' - they're all employed, and everyone in the same salary band is paid the same! This isn't relevant to us! " If you're an employer, that's likely your first reaction to the idea that working people can be financially excluded - yes, even when they work for your  company, which pays above  the minimum wage, and has salary review points every three years, and  six months fully paid  maternity leave (which is quite burdensome for you to offer, actually, and you really wish people would be a bit more appreciative...) While the ways in which demographics which are excluded from employment - the aged, those with significant-impact disabilities, those with full-time kinship care responsibilities, asylum seekers, those who seem to have no barriers, but "just can't get a job for some reason" - are also excluded from the very real and obvious benefits of financial security - better mental and

There are 551,000 more people unemployed than there are available jobs.  Clinicians are EXCEPTIONALLY resistant to the idea of providing routine medical appointments outside of working hours. Bus companies just shrug their shoulders as able-bodied mothers take over the lone wheelchair bay on each bus with their buggies, tourists yeet their wheeled suitcases into it, and bored teenagers sprawl there, because schools refuse to provide their own bus services, and bus companies are allowed to take more passengers than there are available seats. In the UK, there is an average of 37 reported hate crimes against disabled people every single day. That's an average of a crime against a disabled person every single hour of every single day. It's not an "epidemic of worklessness" - it's an epidemic of intolerance for anyone who isn't 100% "normal" and "on the ball" 100% of the time.  It's an epidemic of intolerance for any period of absence, and a

  One of the  services  we offer at The Productive Pessimist is public speaking, remotely or in person, both as sole speaker and as panel members. One of the topics we offer public speaking on is that of living car free.  This topic is covered in depth by myself - Ash  - and centred in the 20yrs I have been obliged to spend living car free, with half that time spent living in small villages in rural Norfolk , travelling up to 40miles each way for work, in full time employment. How It Started When I was 19, I took my third - and, as it turned out, final - driving test. I failed, and in such a way that I was referred for a fitness to drive sight test. I failed this, as well, with the commentary that my peripheral vision was very limited, and I therefore wasn't considered safe to drive. When I'd failed the driving test, I had a severe panic attack, and expressed to my instructor that "My parents are going to kill me" - I paid for my driving lessons , but my Dad paid for

                                            On Friday 20th September 2024, it was revealed that the UK’s national debt was equal to the income the UK was able to generate; in short, debt was at 100% of GDP. This last occurred in the 1960s - and resulted in the following decade, the 1970s, being extremely difficult for ordinary people, with standards of living declining sharply across all demographics, something which, inevitably, hit those who were already experiencing poverty the hardest. The 1970s saw a massive loss of manufacturing in Britain - historically, the one sector that had been able to pull Britain through the downturns of economic cycles, because the UK used to be known, and respected for, exceptional quality of its manufactured goods, and many countries around the world were keen to purchase what were considered premium brands from Britain.   Manufacturing is also a very forgiving and open sector for employment, with low barriers to entry for those entering the workforce