The Productive Pessimist

  Image shows the acronym NHS in white on a mid-blue background Sir James Mackey, the head of NHS England, has said something that is true, but unpopular: The NHS doesn't need more money. Almost no established business needs more money. Very few new  businesses need a lot  of money. When you throw money at a problem, or even a series of problems, you don't actually solve  anything. Instead, you add a new problem - decision paralysis. The more money you have to solve your problems, the more things you could  do, and therefore the more choices you need to make. Humans typically aren't that good at making choices - just think about how common the complaint of "But how am I supposed to decide what to have for dinner every day for the rest of my life?!" is.  When, especially if it's just you, that should be effortless - you know whether you enjoy a lot of cooking or not. You know what food you like. You know how many stove burners and pans you have. You know how...

  Split image on a blue background. Left side shows a white woman with long red hair, wearing a pinstripe suit, sitting at a desk with her head in her hands. Right side shows a man slumped forward with his head in his hands, setting across a table from an older woman. Tony Blair's centre-left think tank wants people with conditions like ADHD, depression, and anxiety to be actively prevented from claiming welfare assistance for unemployment. These conditions, the think-tank believes, are "not work-limiting."   As someone with lived experience of severe depression with suicidal ideation, generalised anxiety disorder and social anxiety, who has never claimed any of these conditions mean I "can't work", and who generally takes the view that you "may as well go to work depressed and anxious - at least you get paid for it", I'd like to agree.  I've been into work the morning after a failed suicide attempt. I've had a full on psychotic episode...

  Image shows an elder man in a turquoise shirt sitting at a wooden table, working on a laptop The UK Parliament - not simply the current party of government, but the majority of the House of Commons - are, according to an unnamed whistleblower, and the I Paper of Thursday 16th April 2026, all in agreement that the  UK State pension triple lock  - the requirement that UK pensioners with at least 35 years' National Insurance contributions benefit from increases in the amount of pension they receive as a taxpayer-funded benefit rises each year by whichever is highest; inflation, average earnings, or 2.5% -   needs  to be reformed, but are equally  all afraid to come out and talk about even the concept  of reform, much less how it could look in practice. UK State pension provision currently accounts for 55% of the UK welfare bill, at £146.1billion per year. This is nearly double the £77billion pounds annually spent on supporting disabled people through St...

  Life being stressful isn't  an illness.  That's entirely correct. But "life being stressful" also  isn't acceptable to employers, either. It's not going to be the case, in the UK, in 2025, that if people "just stop going to doctors and claiming mental health issues and getting signed off because life is a bit hard, then we wouldn't be spending so much on welfare!" . "People don't like you" . "You're impacting your colleagues' morale" . "It's unfair of you to make your colleagues worry about you by being clearly upset" . "You can't talk about feeling burnt out when there are people dealing with far higher workloads than you - everyone is burnt out, but we have to keep going" . "If you aren't happy to be here, f-k off and get a different job" . "I'm sick of you coming in here looking like you want to k*ll yourself - why don't you just f-king do it, so the rest ...

  End of the road for economic growth in the UK? The UK government - and most Western European governments - hyperfixate on economic growth  as a measure of political success: If growth is strong, the claim goes, then the government of the day are doing things right, regardless of how popular their policies are with the public.  If growth slows, the government has clearly made the wrong decision, and needs to alter course, and prove that they deserve  to be in charge. This is something that has become a sacred truth in government.  "This will destroy  growth!"  "This risks crashing  UK growth prospects!" have become ever-more aggressive reactions to policy suggestions from opposing parties, or individual politicians.  Initially, I assumed this was deliberate fear-mongering; because the public associates "economic growth" with " my  individual life improving, me as an individual  having more money for less work, and everything gettin...

  The Bank of England is expressing significant concerns about Britain's "ageing and ailing workforce", harmonising to the government's tune of how the long-term sick are responsible for the UK economic challenges, and how "necessary" raising the State pension age is. Those two songs have been a more or less constant refrain from various shades of UK governments since 1997 - almost 30years.  Pretty much my whole life, and the entirety of my life as someone old enough to vote. Of course, work is necessary.  Countries have essential core services which require vast workforces to provide and administrate. Governments should be generating national income by exporting from the manufacturing, STEM, creative, and knowledge economy sectors, all of which require their own skilled and specialist workforces, and the workforce of their respective administrative and marketing functions. Continuous income, to cover the unavoidable payment lags in exports, is necessary fo...