Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

yeah that's precisely my point, disabled people are doubly disadvantaged - those that want to work are routinely discriminated against by employers and the job market as a whole, those who don't feel able to work are routinely discriminated against by the government and its agencies

in the same way that there was a kernel of enlightened progressive thinking behind "inclusion" until successive governments realised it was a great smokescreen for closing important specialist schools and colleges

Patients have become far better informed at self-diagnosis.

Is there one shred of evidence to support this? I say this as someone who was dismissed by a GP for a health concern which an online forum helped me successfully diagnose.

― kinder, Friday, 13 January 2023 bookmarkflaglink

If there is evidence Jenkins doesn't let us know. If you are going to change how healthcare is delivered 'google/AI will replace a doctor' needs work.

But ofc it's not about that.

among this bunch of fantastic and rich western democracies in the G7, I've seen multiple graphs illustrating that the UK has measliest and most punitive benefits system. And probably is the worst so called wealthy country for disabled people to live in amongst them. This is something (no it wasn't really that much better before 2010) that has been a cross party project for decades, and now the opposition party are basically saying that level of Cameron austerity is the best we can realistically expect. No wonder some people just give up altogether.

I managed to survive the last few rounds of culling-the-surplus-population (if you call this living) but it feels like I'm on borrowed time

i feel like the social presence of the self-informed has an increasingly massive weight in the whole of present-day politics, given the fact of a colossal and ever-expanding archive of information (which is often intensely contested of course)

it is for example at the root of the distaste for "populism" and the worry at the swelling (often-partisan) distrust of technocratic expertise -- the culture-wars assault on facts and logic blah blah

what's the politics of this as a general effect? "too early to tell" — zhou enlai

my partner probably hasn't got that long left to live, is wracked with MS and is developing dementia. A DWP letter dropped the other day to inform her that they are only just starting a PIP renewal review, 2 years after the form was sent in. I'm not taking it for granted that the renewal will be successful. That's how shite the system is.

without going into too much personal work-life detail let me just say that the DWP is in full "hassling people to get jobs by referring them - often against their will - to job support schemes that are frequently inappropriate" mode

That shit makes my blood boil calz, sorry you’re all going through it

Left too and anyone else on the sharp end of these cunts’ miseries

Fucking hell calz, my heart goes out to you. This is appalling.

And yes, sorry Left, I hadn’t scrolled up

Really sorry, Calzino. Really hope your partner gets the support needed.

Left too..

So sorry Calz. Have had my eyes opened in the last few years as to how people with disabilities are basically bottom of the pile. Obviously I have also seen some great support but it's stretched so thin it's transparent.

Calz, I am so sorry you’re going through this xx

thanks all, the upside to this is I've become quite calm and stolid in the face of crisis - a crisis expert almost, which you need to be these days!

glad you're holding up, it's a fucking war

Best wishes for you and your partner, Calzino, for whatever that's worth.

echoing the support from others, calz and Left <3

Just been reading the current LRB and I am increasingly convinced Iain Sinclair and Simon Jenkins are the same person

— Alex Harrowell (@yorksranter) January 21, 2023

Nothing says "change of senior editor" at The Guardian like a piece presenting wild swimming as anything other than a panacea for all the worlds ills being published.

RIP wild swimming. Nature’s ‘cure all’ has thrown in the towel | @EvaWiseman https://t.co/bfzWzDmmFn

— Observer Magazine (@ObsMagazine) January 22, 2023

breaking news: swimming in raw sewage is not as beneficial for your health as previously stated every week in the graun

my dad liked roger deakin's books (bcz he liked to read abt trees) so i read waterlog when it came out, as it was sitting there by dad's bed: its concept of wild swimming was more like hiking across the wild countryside and being sure to take a dip if/when you found open water like a sparkling stream or a cool calm lake miles from anywhere -- which i can't imagine myself doing tho i can see dad doing this when he was much younger (and not bed-ridden)

i.e anyway NOT swimming at the normal ordinary seaside! (dad liked beaches but i bet deakins despises them!) (lol even more now that they're mostly knee-deep in human waste lol)

wild swimming but it's at a lido south of the thames 😨

I've been in the sea at Newquay before in a wetsuit. And that was too cold for my liking, ankle deep is about as far as I can bear cold water.

yeah an afternoon paddle in August at Hornsea with the icy North Sea rattling the shingle up your legs is about my level

Enjoyed this column quite a bit. Pretty ruthless on someone who claims they will "self-destruct":

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/jan/22/ask-philippa-perry-im-single-about-to-turn-40-and-fear-i-will-self-destruct

Roger Deakin loved the seaside, some of the best bits of Waterlog are about beaches. He actually seemed to like people, unlike eg Sinclair.

ok busted it's like 20 years since i (skim)read waterlog but beaches still aren't wild swimming

Guardian leading the way in removing the 'T' from LGBT with their 'LGB+' designation, no doubt at the behest of the sensible middle-class white person lobby

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jan/25/young-people-england-wales-twice-likely-identify-lgb-overall-population

holy shit

metadata harder to kill:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/lgbt-rights

times are hard at the Graun, the cost of those extra Ts adds up

Thank you Bill.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/24/bill-gates-startup-cow-burps-methane-emissions

I was also surprised at the usage of LGB+ but I think it is because there is a separate section in the ONS census data around trans identity.

Yes, in census terms the letters LGB (sexual orientation) and the letter T (gender identity) represent different kinds of information. Every newspaper that reported on this story used LGB+ in this way (presumably because that's what the ONS used in their own reports on this data).

dammit did i just get outraged for no reason??

no because fuck the ONS

Do you hate stats too?

well it was the main reason I failed at maths and physics

I don't think I need to make a case for why british state bodies that monitor and classify population(s) have never been a benevolent force in the world

also not to sound like a reactionary but I hate the alphabet soup even though I use it sometimes - it seems to be a recipe for D&Q (and reflects general longer term masculinisation and gentrification and cissificstion of gayness in particular) - despite what some gay and trans activists seem to believe sexuality and gender identity and sex aren't discrete and only sometimes coincidentally overlapping spheres of being or whatever

D&Q stands for divide and quonker I guess I'm sleep deprived

i don't think that's really the effect of lgbt as an acronym, which is inclusive of both sexuality and gender identity?

of course, people using lgb is a blatant attempt to divide & conquer outside of some very limited cases where it makes sense (stats like those above probably are one)

No capture of stats is simply an attempt to take a snapshot of "the world as it is" tho, and every rationale given for where the limits are drawn needs to be, at least, heavily scrutinized

I don't think I need to make a case for why british state bodies that monitor and classify population(s) have never been a benevolent force in the world

― your original display name is still visible (Left), Thursday, 26 January 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Do you think those ideologies inform the work at ONS today?

It sounds like ONS doing more work on trans identity and how that's captured could be more accurate and representative? But the other issue is some of the people that use it and, in this case, the people that report on it.

iirc the relevant census question in 2021 were considered best practice re: trans status/gender identity etc. (or at least decent enough) but then partway through the census the ONS caved to a transphobic campaign and updated their guidance re: the question on sex (to insist on sex as recorded on birth certificate only, not passport which is much easier to change for trans people in the uk) so it's possible that just mangled the data but i've seen people say the data seems generally reasonable despite that potential issue

Worth mentioning that while I understand where Left is coming from, the absence of a state body that monitors and classifies population(s) in the context of race comes in very useful whenever countries like France want to dismiss the concerns of minority populations.

Did mention at a FAP once that I find it amusing that UK census distinguishes between "white british" and "white (other)", could not imagine any other country I've had contact with doing that.

i’m white (other) and proud!

(nb not really)