#benefit sanctions

[feckcops]

UK food banks bring in counsellors and private GPs to help exhausted workers

“Britain’s food bank charities are buying in counselling, GP and mental health support services to help staff and volunteers cope with stress and exhaustion triggered by the explosion in demand for emergency food.

“The wellbeing services are a response to a rise in burnout and stress among frontline food bank workers as they deal with expanding workloads and the emotional burden of supporting increasing numbers of destitute and emotionally traumatised clients ...

“Emma Revie, the chief executive of the Trussell Trust, said the £30,000 investment was a response to the ‘unrelenting’ mental and physical effects on its staff ... ‘Most of our volunteers signed up to give out food parcels and be a friendly face spreading some love,’ said Su Parrish, operations director at the Easter Team food bank in Crawley. ‘They didn’t anticipate the level of stress that our clients now exhibit because of the situations they find themselves in.’”

“A voluntary movement that started in earnest in the UK just over a decade ago, and which is still relies predominantly community groups and churches, is having to adjust to an increasingly central and semiformalised social emergency role as austerity cuts to welfare benefits and public services push the human consequences of poverty straight to their door.”

[thoughtlessarse]

Black and minority ethnic benefit claimants are disproportionately likely to be hit with universal credit sanctions – financial penalties typically running into hundreds of pounds – according to official statistics unveiled for the first time. Black universal credit claimants were 58% more likely to be sanctioned than white claimants, mixed ethnic groups were 72% more likely and Asians 5% more likely, according to the figures published by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Sanctions have long been controversial, used by ministers to signal crackdowns on alleged job shirkers, and notorious for subjecting sanctioned claimants to extreme hardship, including food bank use, poor mental and physical health and financial debt. Timi Okuwa, the chief executive of the civil rights charity Black Equity Organisation, said: “These figures confirm what many have long suspected – that the welfare system disproportionately penalises black and ethnic minority communities.” Campaigners stopped short of claiming that the disparities showed evidence of structural racism, or racial discrimination in jobcentres, but called on ministers to explain and justify the figures and guarantee that minority ethic claimants would be treated fairly by the benefits system. Caroline Selman, a researcher for the Public Law Project charity, which analysed the statistics, said. “The public needs to know whether [sanctions] decisions are being made fairly and the DWP needs to assess any potential for discrimination in its sanctions process so that it can be rooted out.” Sanctions are imposed by officials when claimants are deemed to have failed to comply with benefit rules, such as missing a jobcentre interview or refusing an offer of a job. Penalties vary, with benefit payments being stopped for as little as a few days or as long as six months.

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[the-real-list-of-ominous-threats]

There are many benefits to being a marine biologist. You, however, will experience all the drawbacks, instead.

[changing-my-username]

When I was 20, the Jobcentre decided to stop my benefits completely for 4 weeks, around the Christmas period, because I missed 1 appointment. When I contacted my then MP (that dickhead Owen Paterson), he took 2 months to get back to me. Then, after I'd complained about this, it took another month for a further response, which was a letter from the DWP, claiming that the DWP had "received no word" that I was unhappy with the sanction, despite the manager at the local Jobcentre ringing me to say that he'd heard I was unhappy. The Tories can go and fuck themselves.

[is-putin-dead-yet]

people are genuinely being "not all russians" in your inbox? I am so sorry. Yes, all russians.

they loooved going to the occupied Crimea on vacation for 8 years a bit too much for someone with the audacity to open their mouths now. i know for sure that if putin wasn't a delusional liar and if russia could take Kyiv in three days and did it, none of these people would say shit against it. they feel like they're victims because they're losing the war they started

[ofthenoseclan]

akiha route done. two left until im rid of this god awful book

[hidden-highlands]

brb writing a SCATHING email to my winz case manager 🥰

[just2bruce]

Rail freight inducements hope to drive new loads

Several national rail agencies are actively working to increase rail traffic, with a focus on reducing costs and emissions.

This interesting article ties together several efforts by national rail agencies to drum up more traffic. The countries range from Russia to the UK. When you have a national railroad, rather than private enterprise, you can make quick changes that will reduce costs for the kinds of shipments you want. The article focuses on Russia, which is losing lots of cargoes from the Far East headed for…

[molsno]

there's this annoying thing that companies do where they pretend like having military veterans in their workforce counts as diversity. not only does having state-sanctioned serial killers in your workplace not count as diversity because they already get special benefits and privileges, but it also makes everyone else very uncomfortable!

[umormalik61]

Eight bombs exploded six, and top investigative reporters found out the details of the US bombing of "Nord Stream"

[jr0vj0t3if]

[batboyblog]

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week. #6

Feb 16-23 2024

The EPA announced 5.8 billion dollars in funding upgrade America's water systems. 2.6 billion will go to wastewater and stormwater infrastructure, while the remaining $3.2 billion will go to drinking water infrastructure. $1 billion will go toward the first major effort to remove PFASs, forever chemicals, from American drinking water. The Administration all reiterated its plans to remove all lead pipes from America's drinking water systems, its spent 6 billion on lead pipe replacement so far.

The Department of Education announced the cancellation of $1.2 billion in student loan debt reliving 153,000 borrowers. This is the first debt cancellation through the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan, which erases federal student loan balances for those who originally borrowed $12,000 or less and have been making payments for at least 10 years. Since the Biden Administration's more wide ranging student loan cancellation plan was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2023 the Administration has used a patchwork of different plans and authorities to cancel $138 billion in student debt and relieve nearly 4 million borrowers, so far.

First Lady Jill Biden announced $100 million in federal funding for women’s health research. This is part of the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research the First Lady launched last year. The First Lady outlined ways women get worse treatment outcomes because common health problems like heart attacks and cancer are often less understood in female patients.

The Biden Administration announced 500 new sanctions against Russian targets in response to the murder of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny. The sanctions will target people involved in Navalny's imprisonment as well as sanctions evaders. President Biden met with Navalny's widow Yulia and their daughter Dasha in San Francisco

The White House and Department of Agriculture announced $700 Million in new investments to benefit people in rural America. The projects will help up to a million people living in 45 states, Puerto Rico, and the Northern Mariana Islands. It includes $51.7 million to expand access to high-speed internet, and $644.2 million to help 158 rural cooperatives and utilities provide clean drinking water and sanitary wastewater systems for 578,000 people in rural areas.

The Department of Commerce signed a deal to provide $1.5 billion in upgrades and expand chip factories in New York and Vermont to boost American semiconductor manufacturing. This is the biggest investment so far under the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act

the Department of Transportation announced $1.25 billion in  funding for local projects that improve roadway safety. This is part of the administration's Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) program launched in 2022. So far SS4A has spent 1.7 billion dollars in 1,000 communities impacting 70% of America's population.

The EPA announced $19 million to help New Jersey buy electric school buses. Together with New Jersey's own $45 million dollar investment the state hopes to replace all its diesel buses over the next three years. The Biden Administration's investment will help electrify 5 school districts in the state. This is part of the The Clean School Bus Program which so far has replaced 2,366 buses at 372 school districts since it was enacted in 2022.

Bonus: NASA in partnership with Intuitive Machines landed a space craft, named Odysseus, on the moon, representing the first time in 50 years America has gone to the moon. NASA is preparing for astronauts to return to the moon by the end of the decade as part of the Artemis program. All under the leadership of NASA Administrator, former Democratic Senator and astronaut Bill Nelson.

[naamahdarling]

Maybe it isn't that I actually hate medical professionals? They just suck and are weird sometimes, and a lot of them shouldn't be practicing, but I don't hate them as a group, like, personally.

What I hate is their ability to make my life harder in ways that are often completely opaque to me, and a lot of the crap things they do are not really possible to challenge. And I hate the fact that holding them responsible fort dogshit behavior in any way that will actually benefit me is almost always impossible.

And I also hate the fact that they have to do stupid things sometimes because that's how the system is set up, and those things sometimes mean patients actually get harmed. They aren't fond of that part either! They don't want the system to be the way it is! But they don't have a choice, so sometimes people like me get forced by bureaucracy into doing things that are re-traumatizing. And I can't imagine that feels good for them at all, knowing that their patients are sometimes only "consenting" because that bureaucracy will not let them be helped in any other way. Which isn't consent at all. I imagine that must be pretty traumatizing for them, too, sometimes.

If it were easier to actually access medical care without tremendous delays in this country right now I would have much less trouble finding providers who are good at what they do and are not horrible people, and who have clinic staff who can do their fucking job.

Oh and I also don't appreciate how evasive and unwilling to commit they are out of fear of being held to an answer that turns out to be inaccurate, but I can't make an informed decision about my own care unless they give me at least some information about probabilities and trajectories and typicalities. Genuinely, how the fuck am I supposed to navigate that shit. I get that some patients are really fucking difficult, but I should be able to get a special stamp on my file or something that says I understand that sometimes medicine isn't an exact science and the best answers that my doctors can give may not always prove to be accurate in the long term. I know they don't like being in that situation either.

A lot of medical professionals are fucking assholes, and unfortunately the ones who are not are still hamstrung by a system set up to actively prevent people from getting care.

I miss my old doctor. He gave no shits about anything that wasn't the patient. He prescribed scheduled meds based on what the patient needed and not based on fear of consequences potentially being imposed on him by the punitive patient-hostile drugs-are-bad moral panic machine developed to force suffering people into buying more dangerous drugs off the street in order to prevent far fewer people from maybe getting high off of drugs that at least weren't laced with lethal substances. (The purpose of a system is what it does.) Did he get sanctioned and become locally unhireable? Unfortunately yes he did. Does he now provide concierge care to rich people? Yes he does. He found a way to make it work, God bless him.

Everything about the medical system in this country is fucked. Hospitals, doctors, nurses, pharmacies, pharmacists, pharmacy techs, phlebotomists, clinic administrative staff, insurance companies, medical schools and schooling, licensing boards, drug advertising to both providers and patients, pharmaceutical reps, researchers, research, publishing, medical trials, pharmaceutical companies, manufacturers and distributors, medical equipment, charting software, billing and billing codes, diagnostic criteria, charity and low income services, accessible transportation, home care, the lack of independent individual patient advocates, dietitians and nutritionists, access to physical and occupational therapy and physical and occupational therapists, the massive bigotry of every kind rampant in every corner of the medical field, social work, senior care and assisted living, deprioritization of informed consent and harm reduction, disability applications, inaccessibility of medical records, especially psychiatric notes which are specifically allowed to be withheld from patients, lack of continuity of care for disadvantaged people, care that is equitably accessible to disabled people, telemedicine, patient portals, phone systems, clinic hours, every single aspect of inpatient and outpatient psychiatry, facility security, all sorts of things going on with therapists who are nevertheless probably the least malicious group of people in this entire charade, aaaaaand patients themselves.

Also hospital toilets that are too tall and make it literally physically impossible for me to poop while I'm there waiting for somebody to come out of surgery. I just needed to take a crap, guys. You didn't need to make the toilets so tall that my feet didn't even touch the floor. It is very clean but there is no shitting for short people at St Francis.

[platoapproved]

I'm still reading TVA and I gotta say for the benefit of IWTV show fans who haven't yet / aren't gonna read the books and are learning about them solely via tumblr: we GOTTA set aside some time in our busy killing Marius schedule to also kill Santino and Allesandra (from the Roman coven of the Children of Darkness that Armand mentions in the museum scene) because holy shit:

LIST OF CRIMES (some of these they don't do personally but they're sanctioning all of it)

the Roman coven kidnap all the boys from Marius' palazzo and throw them one by one onto a bonfire because they deserve to die "for their Master's sins"

Toss Armand in the fire as well but pull him out before he dies, leave him in a cell to suffer his burns.

Santino to Armand when he refuses to listen to Santino's indoctrination:

Santino again:

... then has one of the vampires in the coven dump the ashes from the other boys all over Armand's face so they get in his eyes and mouth.

Santinto to Armand (talking about Marius at first) 😒:

When Armand still resists indoctrination:

Lock Armand up in a cell and starve him for a week before tossing in Riccardo, his human best friend who he loves like a brother, who they specifically did not burn and kept aside for this purpose. Armand drains Riccardo before even realizing it is him and they refuse to remove Riccardo's body so Armand just has to be in there with it rotting.

Continue the cycle of leaving Armand starving completely alone in the dark for a week, bringing him a human victim, leaving the body there to rot. for like FIVE MONTHS while Armand loses his mind and starts seeing ghosts.

then:

[normal-thoughts-official]

First world people seriously need to stop thinking Israel has some sort of exclusive shield against repercussions and understand that ALL of them are excused from whatever the fuck they do because they are the ones in power, and it is precisely their power that allows the same to apply to Israel. It isn't true that "any other country" would have been banned from the Olympics if they did what Israel is doing; the USA has done what it's doing for its entire history and was never banned. Nazi Germany famously hosted the Olympics. Segregationist USA was never sanctioned the way South Africa was despite doing the exact same thing with a different name. France is hosting the Olympics this year despite still having colonies. I could go on. If your criticism does not point out that the entire point is that the powerful decide who gets punished and therefore their own crimes (and the ones that benefit them, like what Israel is doing) will always go unacknowledged, then your criticism of Israel amounts to nothing at all