The Productive Pessimist

  In the past two days, two UK non-profits - Access Community Trust in East Anglia, and Well Women Wakefield, based in Yorkshire, have collapsed.  Access Community Trust had been in existence for 50 years.  Well Women Wakefield, for forty. Across the UK, and globally, non-profits are struggling. Many are very close to failing.  That means shut doors, withdrawn support for those basically abandoned by the UK government, and facing insurmountable barriers across every single path to even the smallest success, lost jobs, and unpaid wages. It means questions, suspicions, accusations - not just against these organisations and their Trustees, but against their service users. The most vulnerable in society. Accusations that, maybe, they "didn't really need" the help they were getting.  That maybe they were "scroungers", "skivers".  People who, somehow, were taking things they weren't "entitled" to. The slurs start, even if only in peoples' m...

  In a recent  i paper article , Suzanne O'Sullivan opines about "seeing 20-year olds with 20 diagnoses".  I saw the headline, and read the article expecting to see at least one   example  of these people with "20 diagnoses", so that this article could have been exploring co-morbidity, and linked chronic conditions (eg, where multiple impacts often or always occur together, but are diagnosed separately because of the way the healthcare system functions, or where one condition triggers a cascade health impact, which can result in multiple diagnoses, although in reality, the cascade impacts are more so symptoms of  the original, initially diagnosed, condition.) There were no  examples of these people with "20 conditions". Not even examples of the kinds of conditions which are being seen in the same person. Conditions, in fact, were never actually mentioned, except as something of "questionable value", especially if they "require constant v...

  Personal Independence Payment, or PIP, is a working-age benefit which individuals with recognised disabilities can apply for to support them with meeting the additional costs which those disabilities can incur in daily life, and in accessing employment. While PIP is "not means tested", this doesn't  mean it's "just handed to anyone who says they're disabled" - non means-tested just means that an individual's income and savings are not considered when their application is being assessed. This is often the first issue that comes up when PIP is being discussed in media, both mainstream and social - "non means-tested" is frequently thrown around media discussions very casually, allowing the assumption  that "they're just handing it out to anyone!" rather than, in contrast to the unemployment and under-employment benefit that is Universal Credit, which brings income restrictions for those in part-time or gig-economy work, as well...