The replies I'm seeing to posts talking about welfare cuts has opened my eyes to just how many have absolutely NO idea how welfare works, what it is for, or what people have to go through to get any form of disability benefit. It's quite shocking.

Nadia Whittome says the EHRC guidance puts trans people in “increased risk of harassment and violence” attitude.co.uk/news/over-100…

There is major deception going on from politicians of every hue except Green at the moment. ALL say welfare must be cut by taking sick and disabled people off benefits and into work. NONE admit there are already more than twice as many people looking for work than there are jobs

The 50 richest families own more wealth than 34 million people. A handful have everything. Millions are struggling. End Rip Off Britain. Wealth tax. Now.

A new study of 445 adolescents treated at pediatric gender clinics in Canada found that after a mean 2.4 years, 94.6% still identified as trns. Of the 353 who started hormonal treatments, 1.1% discontinued them. jahonline.org/article/S1054-…

Did you know over 100,000 people a month in the UK are now crowdfunding to help others pay their rent? Rent-related crowdfunding is up 60% since 2022. April was the highest month for rent fundraisers GoFundMe has ever recorded. Andrew Foster's income dropped 40% after Brexit hit his ability to sell abroad. When his landlord raised the rent by 50%, he had no way to cover it, he crowdfunded just to afford moving out, and still had to take out a loan on top. GoFundMe calls this "community showing up." What it actually is: the state outsourcing the cost of its housing failures to strangers on the net. How much worse does this housing crisis have to get before something changes?

The disproportionate response to pro-Palestinian activism over a genocide raises questions about the lengths deployed, apparently to restrict a form of expression that is essential in a democracy. My latest for the Guardian theguardian.com/commentisfre…

He should be at The Hague. And it’s not a ‘Board of Peace’.

Thanks to @DailyMail for correcting a column which claimed welfare spending has overtaken income tax receipts “for the first time”. (Welfare, which includes state pensions, has been higher for years—although income tax may overtake it this year.) fullfact.org/economy/mail-bo…

There exists a permanent political class in the UK. If they're elected you can vote them out. If appointed they can be disgraced. But they never go away.

Why is it always rich people calling for the end of the Pension Triple Lock?

Rich people have gone from “let them eat cake” to “cancel their AIDS treatment and let them die”

"The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have someone write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long the nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was.” Milan Kundera

Haha

I saw a post on Reddit that said that “The underlying purpose of AI is to allow wealth to access skill while removing from the skilled the ability to access wealth.” And I don’t think I’ve ever seen AI described so incisively.

The debate about British military spending begins with a premise, hardly ever challenged, that too little is spent on defence. But the facts are very different. Britain spends more on the military than every large economy in NATO, except the USA.

Scope says disabled households face £13,560 a year in extra costs. Reform says welfare should be cut. Those two positions cannot both be true unless someone can explain where disabled people are supposed to find the missing money.

It isn't terrorism to oppose a genocide. It is terrorism to commit a genocide. Our system is broken.

It's beyond dystopian - a London property expo set to profit from the sale of land in illegal settlements while Palestinians face dispossession, violence, and forced displacement. The marketing of annexation and ethnic cleansing should have no place in our capital city.