The Productive Pessimist

  This is the main text of an article raising a critical eye at the UK government's recently announced social care reforms - which, themselves, are essential to ensure robust resilience, and an ability to actually implement, the planned reforms to the NHS. Our response here is intentionally brief, and intended to serve as an introduction and invitation to health and social care organisations, and other businesses, in the UK to partner with us to solve the problems they perceive with necessary systemic transformation. The cart before the horse Labour’s burning desire to reform the NHS, reduce waiting lists, and give patients greater autonomy and choice, relies on social care reforms; social care reforms which won’t even begin to be considered - by the groan-inducing “Commission” - until April 2025, with a very slow burn to a potential action plan being available sometime in 2028 - just in time for another General Election, and, very likely - given Labour’s proven ability to alienate...

  ADHD. Autism. AuDHD. Autistic Spectrum Condition. Neurodivergence. The words have become a jumble. Social media influencers insist that so many  behaviours are "obvious neurodiversity traits!", that if you "did XYZ (relatively common) thing as a kid, you're definitely  neurodivergent as an adult!" that it's become a meaningless fog, with some people questioning whether autism and ADHD are actually "real" conditions at all. Whether it was their intention or not, the "Neurodiversity Influencers" have brought us right back to the "naughty kids who just need to be spanked more often" attitudes, only now they're expressed as "Self-absorbed Millennials and Gen Z who lack resilience and don't want to work".   (And sometimes still as "naughty kids who just need to be spanked more often.") There seem to be so many "behaviours" that are "clearly undiagnosed neurodivergence!" that, if we w...

Less than six months after taking office, Keir Starmer's Labour Party are proving every bit as "nasty" as the "Nasty Party" the Conservatives of the past 14yrs managed to become infamously dubbed; most visibly in their narratives around people who are currently unemployed owing to disability. Now, it is not unreasonable, to most people, to feel that "almost everyone can do something!" - but gainful employment isn't about whether people can  do something; it's about whether employers are happy to let people  "do something", and, more importantly, amenable to paying them a living wage   for  "doing something."   With Rachel Reeves' recent increase in Employer National Insurance contributions , and the persistent shambles that is the process of being able to secure funding for necessary workplace accommodations for disability via Access to Work , which is seeing people waiting up to nine months or more without the means to ...

  It can be easy to dismiss the memes that centre "we could be hibernating right now, but nooooo, we had to invent CAPITALISM and CUPS!" as "just more Gen Z whining", and further evidence that "people are lazy and just don't want to work", and sure, some people actually don't  want to have any  kind of job. That's a thing - people are allowed to feel resentful about the idea that they are obliged  to do something they find to be either very intrusive, or actually harmful to their wellbeing. A lot of people will just be posting those memes as 'engagement-scrapes'; complaining about work we don't really  have too much issue with is part of human nature, and probably has been since we first started engaging in planned, focused, longer-term-thinking activity, rather than merely surviving day by day.  People like to bond through sharing low-key frustrations, so these memes will generate a lot of comments, shares, and likes - all of which...

Along with  co-production , lived experience has become something of a buzzword in recent years, and, as with all 'trends', people are moving from engaged curiousity to wary suspicion. At The Productive Pessimist, we work exclusively from a position of lived experience - but what does that mean, and what, really, is  lived experience? What Working From Lived Experience Means For Us Working from lived experience means everyone on the Productive Pessimist team has been through what they're guiding others towards understanding of.   We didn't just take a 5hr course, watch a couple of YouTube videos, or read a bestselling book. For example, I (Ash) have the following lived experience: . 22yrs lived experience of managing all aspects of rural living, including travelling 30+ miles for work, without a car . 19yrs lived experience with serious pyschiatric conditions . 16yrs lived experience in trans masculine experience and identity . 9yrs lived experience of kinship care, ...