What Do You Think Today?

[peter]

More eloquently put in a sentence than I could manage in half a volume!

Shocking report on the Independent website today about the shredding of reports the details of over fifty people known to have killed themselves following the swingeing cuts made to their benefits post the introduction of Ian Duncan-Smith's reforms of the system. Typical examples are of people with existing mental health problems deemed fit for work and having their payments cut accordingly, who then found themselves simply unable to cope with the fallout. In one example a partially sighted man with a history of illness and attempts to take his own life was found by his sister, dead in a house with no food, no money on his person or in his bank account, and a letter threatening eviction from his landlords.

This is what happens when benefit entitlement is reduced to box-ticking with no flexibility for human judgement to take its part - when a one size fits all approach is levied against individuals, each with their own story to tell. That the DWP should attempt to cover up their complicity in these people's deaths by expunging their records on the cases from the system speaks volumes about the guilt they know that they bear for the unfolding of these most tragic of tales.

[Skyweir]

Pretty awful

[Avatar]

Well, glad it got out.

From a devil's advocate point of view, it's very hard for the state to create millions of individual plans in order for everybody to have one tailored for their individual needs.

Some amount of hammering round pegs into square holes has to happen.

That said, a terrible execution and outcome. If you can bear it, this was our own (sorta) similar shame: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_Heal ... ni_Scandal

--A

[peter]

Yes Av - we had a similar one with our "Care in the Community" program; double speak for turning thousands of people out of psychiatric care facilities, often straight onto the streets and into homelessness. Of course it was followed by the predictable spike in prison admissions due to crimes, petty and otherwise, being committed by those no longer being cared for in the institutions they so desperately needed. That was back in the eighties or nineties if my memory serves me...... another Tory brainwave to save money and 'empower people' by giving them the 'opportunity' to take responsibility for themselves!

[Avatar]

At least you'll get care in prison. These poor buggers just died in institutions not equipped to care for them. *sigh*

Still, this is modern life right? Living under the aegis of the government. As callous as it can be, it's still better now than it used to be, what with modern medicine and tech and all.

--A

[peter]

I have a degree of sympathy for the health trust being sued by a 23 year old in Tavistock. The man, who born a woman and having decided at age 16 to transition to a man - a process which she embarked upon and saw through to completion following several investiatory sessions with the NHS assessors in her area - has now decided that he/she was not given the counseling that could have dissuaded her from what she/he now thinks was just a passing youthful phase.

The trust have responded to their decision to follow the procedure in individuals of such a young age that they save huge amounts of suffering and even lives and I think that this is a fair argument. If someone comes demanding the procedure at this age, demonstrating that their birth gender is causing them distress, then they, the trust, cannot be held responsible if in providing the transition service, the new gender at a later point becomes equally intolerable to the recipient individual. Our NHS trusts deal with such cases with the maximum amount of sympathy and judgement possible: ninety nine percent of the time the individuals are happy with the transition and go on into their new life without problem. Some individuals are fated never to be satisfied, with their gender or a million other things that pertain to existence and the NHS cannot be held over a barrel for trying to do it's best for such people. At some point people have to take responsibility for the decisions they make themselves.

[Skyweir]

Oh boy thats a tricky one.

I agree about taking personal responsibility ... and the facts youve shares suggest they, the Trust did all they could and will continue to do so.

If you are born into the wrong gender, which some are, a few years here nor there wont make any difference.

[Skyweir]

Plus cant you be your you ... regardless of the anatomical plumbing? Genuinely not entirely sure but it would seem on the face of it, to me to seem reasonable.

I mean Im female but that isnt dictated by my plumbing, or even what I do ... its an inner distinction too I think

[Avatar]

Pretty much agree Peter. You can't have it both ways. If you make that choice and later change your mind, you can't blame people for not dissuading you.

--A

[peter]

Hi Sky! Lovely to see you back in the fold (after your work in respect of the recent Australian tragedy). Power to you!

I agree: my gender is not something I ever consder. I don't "feel like a man" ......or like a woman either for that matter. I feel like - well - me. That's a beginning and end of it and it goes no further. But this is not to deny that others feel their gender much more than I do. Perhaps this is confined to those poor people who find themselves placed in the wrong box by their families and surrounding society (through no fault of these either) in terms of how they feel inside. But to return to this case - let's face it......if the health trust had decided the other way and not allowed the transition, they could equally well be facing litigation today for this decision as well. If however this plaintiff is successful in securing fault in the trust, it will have inevitable impact upon the decisions they make in future presenting cases, most likely to the detriment of the individuals and with the chance to avert much unnecessary suffering by future individuals being lost.

Thus do my sympathies lie with the trust; they are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

[Skyweir]

Yes ... I agree and it seems a great injustice .. surely a untenable position to have to operate from.

And sadly yes the losers will be those going forward the struggle with similar issues.

I find it hard to imagine a finding that the Trust failed in their duty.

[peter]

In these times it is worth remembering that in politics the end can never be used to justify the means used to achieve it. In fact it is the loss of the sight of this that remains the biggest danger to the populace under any Government - and the root cause of all of the evils that history has thrown up in terms of people being subjugated under regimes of terror and murder. No brutal and cruel tyranny ever started with the intention of becoming such; it is beyond doubt that even the most murderous and bestial of leaders, the Hitler's and Stalin's, began with good intentions for their people (if not for the other nations of the world). They did what they did ultimately on the basis of the end being justified by the means.

So when Johnson and Trump lie and dissimulate, when they muddy the waters to create the confusion that allows them to do the things they do and get away with them - when they do these things because 'the end is (in their view) justified by the means', they start, however unintentionally, down a path that history has shown us, can lead to some very nasty places.

[Skyweir]

Wise words Pete ...

[Skyweir]

Today I think humans are idiots.

So here there are people boycotting Chinese restaurants panic buying goods ... and turns out in post apocalyptic corona virus TP will be the new currency cuz they aint none left in stores People are stocking up on TP like THATS the most important commodity right now lol

Fun times

[peter]

Also in the UK Sky; loo rolls are flying off the shelves faster than we can put them out. And hand sanitizer is restricted to one unit per sale - when it is available. But most people remain philosophical about covid-19 and their chances of contracting it. The prevailing view seems to be "what will be, will be".

I'm old enough to remember the canine parvovirus emergence in (what?) the nineteen-seventies; the virus was incredibly virulent in it's initial period, but rapidly became less so as it passed from host to host. It is not in a virus 'interest' to kill the host species and the propensity to rapidly descale in virulence down to a more balanced level of coexistence with the host seems (if I have it correctly) almost hardwired into the class's makeup. Or perhaps I'm being overly optimistic, burying my head in the sand or whatever and this is indeed the "disease X" that epidemiologists have been waiting for that will course through the human population of the world, wreaking havoc in it's wake.

I have mixed emotions about these whole ideas, but it seems to me that sooner or later, as we are going, something is going to get us. We can't keep overburdening our world, both in terms of numbers and the resources we pull out of it/pollutants and waste we pour into it, without sooner or later some natural check rising up to levy the toll from us. Maybe this is it.

[peter]

Rachel Johnson, sister of the more famous Boris made me chuckle with her comment about the new baby shortly to arrive at No.10 courtesy of the PM's live-in girlfriend Carrie Symonds. She said it was the withdrawal agreement that Boris didn't manage to pull off!

[Skyweir]

Lols .. literal LOLS

[Skyweir]

Again the stupidity of hoomans lol

[peter]

What a balanced and sensible individual I am; in almost every way I find myself in agreement with what I say. In the rare cases where this is not so I invariably find that it is me who has the measure of it and am in the right anyway.

[Avatar]

It is not in a virus 'interest' to kill the host species and the propensity to rapidly descale in virulence down to a more balanced level of coexistence with the host seems (if I have it correctly) almost hardwired into the class's makeup.

Seems this has already happened, and that the new, mutated strain they have detected is, in fact, less aggressive than the original strain.

https://academic.oup.com/nsr/advance-ar ... 36/5775463

--A