Must read article by Lucy Mangan in The Guardian (24/01/2015)

If you don’t understand how people fall into poverty, you’re probably a sociopath

Why don’t abused women just leave their partners? Why don’t poor people just spend less? Why do people in positions of power ask so many stupid questions?

• 
• • Lucy Mangan
  • The Guardian, Saturday 24 January 2015

Excellent article not least due to the line from comedian Bridget Christie, who

"...finished her act with a plea for all laydeez to stop waxing, spraying, deodorising, strimming and surgically trimming their – well, let’s call it “that part of ourselves historically judged to be the seat of all our femininity and womanly powers” – and instead celebrate our individuality by thinking of those parts as “unique, special – like snowflakes. Made of gammon”"

I was listening to Bridget Christie delivering this line on Radio 4 whilst driving - R4 should issue warnings to drivers before broadcasting such knicker wetting humour!

Drugs in prisons...

Surely an increase in drugs seizures in prisons is due to more drugs getting in and not better security! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30859350

Government spin in operation here!

A huge increase in drugs found does not equal better searching/security, there could be a link but it's unlikely and who would actually think that it was a direct link when the biggest increase is in private prisons. Private prisons do not have a good track record! The more obvious conclusion to draw would be that there has been a major increase in drugs smuggled into prisons - now this might just go alongside an increase in security but the uderlying factor is likely to be an increase in drugs.

The government is desparately trying to prove privatisation works before the general election. Well on recent evidence it doesn't:

• Hinchingbrooke Hospital inadequate - Privately run by Circle
• HMP Northumberland: Prison 'stand-off' comes to an end - Privately run by Sodexo
• Oakwood Prison: 'Near riot' claim as inmates damage cells - Privately run by G4S

What price privatisation of our NHS?

Hinchingbrooke Hospital - Inadequate

To me this doesn't just say NHS 'privatisation doesn't work', it also says something very fundamental about our NHS. If our NHS is failing it is because it is UNDERFUNDED. If a private company, that chose to bid to run Hinchinbrook, can't pull it off it means we are not putting enough INTO our healthcare system. What do we have, if we don't have health?

Furthermore, do you, YES YOU, think that someone should be making a profit out of health care? Making a profit out of our taxes? Should my or your ill health line even more private companies pockets? Isn't it enough that our health is held ransom by 'Big Pharma'?

Read Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Pharma

To finish with a little food for thought...

If we all become healthier what future do the private healthcare companies have then? Ok, I know this is the silly extreme but think about it! There is no profit in private healthcare companies reducing our need/dependency on them whether it be reduction in a need for their drugs, their hospitals, their care homes or their anything else!

The Health Promotion Blog: Ebola and the Global response

The Health Promotion Blog: Ebola and the Global response: Our hearts go out to our students, colleagues and everyone else in those countries affected by Ebola. There’s very little...

by Rachael Dixey
Professor of Health Promotion at Leeds Beckett University, with interests in health inequalities, health justice, teaching and research.

Welfare Conditionality?

Heard of it? If you haven't then you need to and you need to understand it. If your life ever takes a turn for the worse - the really bad and you have to depend on our famous welfare system then this is how it is now run: welfare conditionality. Now I'm not actually saying it is wrong OR right but just saying...

Conditions? Whose conditions? For what reason? And can a one size fit all approach work even if you have the right conditions for the right reasons?

This really interests me at the start of my Public Health Masters, to me, this is what its all about - how we make people live. MAKE because it is only those in need that cease to have control, those that need help, the vulnerable, the disenfranchised, the lonely, those who are already hurting, they have to obey the rules that are set...

OK, but who makes the rules? Are they the right rules? Does it matter? How can we make them the 'right' rules? Do we have a right to set such rules? When life is all hunky-dory, then we are in control. When life is shit then societal structures end up in control because they hold the purse strings and make the rules. And can those of us who don't need help ever understand without 'walking a mile in someone elses shoes'.

I don't think I'll ever know the answers but I hope to be part of a way forward, possibly a solution, but at the minimum to help...

Watch this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03xlch7/panorama-hungry-britain
(Edit: that maybe sounded a bit bossy, but actually you really do HAVE to watch; it yes YOU, it is essential to your humanity.)

If you want to know more about Welfare Conditionality you could start reading here:
http://www.welfareconditionality.ac.uk/about-our-research/what-is-welfare-conditionality/

I'll write more, no promises when though as I'm crap at this blogging regularly business!

Why I Think This World Should End by Prince Ea

This is fantastic!

Post by Prince Ea.

Blogging...

So it seems I just get worse at this blogging business. In some ways this is just a mirror of life atm - oh yeah that sounds all 'poor me' and bloody pathetic (or maybe not but the thought behind it was!) but things are a little bit wrong, well, stalled I suppose and have been for too long. I'd like to move on now please...

And as I'm no good at airing my downs in public I'm actually only managing to say "life is a bit shit" just before the up begins... It's an up that I know is coming, as I start my Masters in two weeks, that will be a focus, a feeling of doing something that has meaning. So I'm really looking forward to that but am really pissed off with not finding a job that feels right (also rather a 'poor me' statement - who has the job they actually want?) I know I am highly employable, I am a jack-of-all trades that tends to become the master of things pretty fast (apart from the master of finding a job.)

I have been surprised by how much when some bits of life become stalled it actually seems to grind you to a total halt, I though it was just me being an utter slob but having chatted a bit to people (in a very non-emotional, I'm not letting you know life is feeling really shit sort of way) that it does seem to be 'a thing'. I could have achieved so much over the last two years, round the house, round my brain (reading, writing all that self-enhancement stuff) but what do I have to show for it? ...chaos, boxes still unpacked, a lack of any direction, tiredness, lots of weeds in the garden and my pet fibroid.

(But at least I'm a level 8 in Ingress (don't ask!))

Hmm, that's it for now, please do return, as normal service (whatever that is) may be resumed at some point...

(oh and P.S. for those who haven't noticed I have a little addiction to ellipses. This, I feel, is better than my previous addiction to exclamation marks which I mostly recovered from not that long ago. Does this change in itself say something about my life right now...)