#winter fuel

[domwho11]

Please donate and reblog so this brilliant man can provide firewood for people to heat their homes. Thanks a lot 🙂

[imspardagus]

When a PM came in sight offering winter fuel

I don’t mean to boast but by comparison with the majority of people around me I am comfortably off. For the present. I am aware of the utility companies’ efforts to impoverish me but so far I have enough income to cover their parasitical demands.

I am a pensioner. After 45 years of continuous employment, I retired to live out my days not so much in the lap of luxury, nor, conversely, what my Mum had termed “genteel poverty” but with an income large enough, after tax, to ensure that my small house was heated and that I could keep myself clothed and shod and maintain a reasonable supply of good food. And there is generally sufficient for an occasional therapeutic visit to my friends at the local pub.

It is just as well because my daughter has, for much of the last 3 years, been unable to work because a bite from a false black widow spider triggered complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) in her right (dominant) arm that ended her ability to continue as a care worker and her ability to drive or find other work. DWP’s “support” through this was so pitiful that she could not begin to survive on it let alone live on her own, so she became dependent on my income too. We managed.

Thankfully, my daughter has now recovered sufficient use of her arm to be able to operate a keyboard in short bursts and has found gainful, if not generously remunerated, employment. This took some of the pressure off my resources in time for the rapacious energy companies to line their already bulging pockets at the nation’s expense (patriotism means different things in this country depending, it seems, on how rich you want to be).

Where am I going with this? Well Christmas is coming and the cats are getting fat and that brings to mind the much loved carol:

“Good King Wenceslas looked out On the feast of Stephen…”

Now, there may be little prospect this year of snow even falling this winter, let alone laying around “deep and crisp and even”. But a letter arrived for me this week from the same caring DWP that deprives, hassles and then hounds benefit recipients at enormous expense to us the taxpayers. Its purpose appeared to be to appease the reader of the Daily Express, to name but one, possibly the Tory Party’s last supporter, if you discount Keir Starmer. It informed me that I have qualified for a “Winter Fuel Payment” of £500.

I am blessed, or perhaps cursed, with a mind that finds connections, whether I like it or not, and immediately I read this letter the last lines of the first verse of that beloved carol sprang into view:

“When a poor man came in sight Gathering winter fuel.”

It didn’t take more than an instant for the word “payments” to join “winter fuel”.

The letter went on, in splendidly self-congratulatory mode, to inform me that “[My] £500 also includes extra money from the government to help with the cost of living.”

Now, I don’t want to cavil, but there are several points of objection here if you were to want to make them. Where to start? How about with that “from the government” schtick. Because it is not “extra money from the government” is it? Not for me. It’s a selective tax rebate. It is a return of money they have already levied – levied, that is, on the pension that I contributed towards for 45 years while paying tax. The government likes to portray itself as “Lady Bountiful” – “We are providing record levels of funding for this or that” is a standard response to the mostly genuine concerns voiced about our public services being deprived of what they need to work effectively. But the truth, pedantic as it may seem, is that this is OUR money they are splashing around, not theirs. And while we are about it, throwing that money at their friends and donors turns out to be no guarantee that the money is going where it is needed. Patently, when you factor in the extraordinary levels of corruption that have attended almost all “government” spending since 2019, most of what this government has done is about as focused and productive as a drunk spending his pay packet of buying rounds for his inebriate friends at his local while his wife and children wait starving at home.

That “cost of living” aspect rankles too. Who is most to blame for the current levels of inflation and the cost of living, eh? The government of the day, that’s who. Even if you accept the impact of Covid and Putin’s illegal war on the world’s economies, the gross mismanagement of the UK’s affairs, from Brexit onwards has been the single most disastrous factor in our current state of near destitution. At a time when tax is at its highest level since the Second World War. So it is a bit rich for the Government to try to claim kudos for offering a modicum of respite, in the form of tax relief disguised as a handout, to those, like me, who are in fact doing better than most. The only sense, apart from the combined wealth of today’s Cabinet of All the Clowns, in which it is a bit rich, to be honest.

And then there is the next issue. As I said at the outset, I am relatively comfortably off. I don’t need that £500. But there are many people around me who could genuinely use it just now. I want to say this payment is indiscriminate, but actually it is more pernicious than that. Apparently (according to the letter) the only qualification that I needed to fulfil to get this kickback was being “born on or before 24 September 1957”. I could be a millionaire Non-dom tax avoider and qualify. Or I could be in the majority in this country and be struggling to survive and miss out on it. 

But even if this shoddy bunch of spivs and chancers, having squandered tens of billions of pounds on worthless and sometimes criminal procurements, does not want to help out those whom its egregious and at times wilful incompetence has reduced to penury, there are other, better things to be doing with this money. There are schools and hospitals up and down the country literally crumbling because of the Treasury’s historical and constitutional incapacity to distinguish price from value when awarding contracts, to name but one.

So what actually is their game? If I were a cynical man, I would mention here that pensioners have a tendency to vote Tory. Poor struggling workers don’t. But surely this cannot be a factor in the government’s decision making? Can it?

The buying of votes – “electoral treating” – has been illegal in many democracies for quite some time. Sadly, England is not among them. So we cannot rule it out. 

Like Good King Wenceslas, I can’t just sit in my warm castle looking out as the needy rake around in the freezing cruelty of Tory England for the means to survive. As in previous years, my conscience will probably require me to pass all or most of this indefensible bung to one of the (too) many charities around here fighting to keep as many families as they can from severe poverty. But even as I do, I will only feel anger that it has been left to me to do this. Looking after the vulnerable in society is, whether these entitled creeps accept it or not, what we keep government for. Charity as the only refuge from destitution is a mark of failure not success in an advanced society. If only there was a party in the UK that believed this to be true.

Instead we have a PM offering winter fuel payments (to comfortable pensioners). It doesn’t even scan.

[kits-ships]

ppl always strive to be canon-accurate w/ their selfships or ocxcanon but who cares ! it's YOUR f/o whether you hit them with an OC beam or not. headcanons already exist and people will always interpret a character differently. love them however you want.

[crumb-crumblet-s-crumbington]

my little residents

[starry-bi-sky]

realizing i have. a lot of untapped trauma potential for clone^2 danny because i just Fully Processed Four Months Late the fact that his parents were capturing and torturing ghosts in the basement before he became Phantom. and the fact that he was on house rest for 2 weeks. during that time period. and he wasn't really leaving the house. he could hear their screaming through the floorboards

*points at clone danny* i can give you suuuuuuch a bad time babe ahaha. i've got two untouched years before you meet damian what fucks you up before then

[deadlyspikelover]

heeeyy bloodborners.. are you out there... some heavily edited sketches DONT MIND THE ENTIRE PAGE OF LAURENCE he's one of my least favorite bosses (unlike maria and amelia who are perfect and can do no wrong <3) and one of my favorite characters 👾 very intriguing fellow he needs to be studied

[hypewinter]

Conner is the only stable clone of Superman. Therefore the scientists over at Cadmus decide to clone him in the hopes that they'll have most success in their cloning.

They are indeed successful.... kinda. You see while they can produce more stable clones more often, seeing as these are clones of a clone, they're not that strong. They're all basically just slightly stronger than the average human. Except one clone who shows a lot of promise. Too bad he runs away before they can start training him. (They never expected the clone to prematurely wake up in the tank and escape).

That clone ends up becoming, you guessed it, Daniel Fenton. He doesn't know he's a clone and promptly forgets about his 5 minutes trapped in a strange facility as he adopts his new identity. Life goes on, he becomes a ghost, battles other ghosts and gets cloned by the local fruitloop. Enter Ellie. She is now the clone of a clone of clone. Cloneception if you will.

The reason she's constantly destabilizing is because she's so far removed from the original that her cells are physically degraded. Think of it like cells that have been divided for way too long and have become cancerous and/or tumorous. The ectoplasm in her blood just keeps healing her body at the same rate as the degradation but it's constantly needing to be replenished. If she wants to live a truly stable life she would need to get a DNA sample from the original.

[collegeboysam]

extremely pumped at the insane amount of options we have for plots for armandaniel fics now. we got the chase period following book canon, we have armand maybe obsessing over daniel after almost killing him in the show, we can have the mix of both, or have armand bringing daniel to dubai on purpose because he wanted to save him/turn him, canon divergence with armand not turning daniel but staying with him as a human, daniel getting his memories back as soon as armand turns him and wanting to see him again because what the fuck do you mean we were together before?, armand turning daniel in the 80s how he originally does in the book, armand staying with daniel after he turns him while daniel eggs him to call louis to apologize. ao3 is the startline and the sky is the limit, HAPPY DEVIL'S MINIONS RENAISSANCE TO THOSE WHO CELEBRATE!

[lorei-writes]

- Do the princes receive hate mail?

-- Who is the primary target of that?

--- ...How much of it do they receive?

Let us note that it'd be literal mail. Letters. Very flammable.

I'm having a mental image of Silvio just relaxing in the afternoon, perhaps sipping on some (spiced up) tea (... would it still be tea if tea content was the minority? Details!). It is cold outside. Worry not, however! The fireplace burns bright. With anonymous hate letters.

... And somewhere out in the woods, Clavis runs around a bonfire constructed out of complaint letters...

[stillunusual]

Meanwhile in Starmer's Britain....

[mixtapedoh]

actually you can go with seungmo + winter falls too. i think he's more of a winter falls girlie than lino. actually anything with winter falls 😭🙏

you knew what you were doing when you paired seungmo with my favorite skz ballad,,,,,,, your support and your mind will never go underappreciated in this house ♡♡♡♡♡

ᴀɢᴀɪɴ, ᴛʜᴇ ꜱɴᴏᴡ ꜰᴀʟʟꜱ (ᴡᴇ ꜰᴀʟʟ ᴀᴘᴀʀᴛ)

☄. *. ⋆

pairing: kim seungmin x reader (not endgame) genre: angst, reminiscing word count: ~1k warnings: heartbreak, mentions of blood (metaphor and imagery), all thoughts no plot (sometimes fanfiction is about VIBES and VERSE, not cohesive story telling), gratuitous sneaking in and bastardization of song lyrics

olive's notes: you know know i had to go full tumblr for the title of this fic. song lyric titles (with something in parenthesis) how i love you, how i have missed you, how you changed the very synaptic pathways in my brain ♡. nothing will ever be as influential as you ♡.

consider my mini writing event ?

It wasn't the weather that made you think of him.

No, because that would be all too cliche — tidy and neat — something easy to anticipate and, perhaps, simple to avoid.

In a way, you could blame it on the snow: the soft, fluffy flakes too carefree to be cold, spinning on the barely there wind, a graceful pirouette to a gentle, almost forgotten landing. It was beautiful — the first snowfall of the year — and because it's arrival was so benign (unexpected and mild, creeping into the edges of the day until it's whispered chill tickled your skin and it's gossamer flakes were delicately kissing your head), you had no warning against the flood of memory it would bring in it's wake.

It was the couple on the end of the street that reminded you, though, if we're to be fair to the elements and truthful in the story we tell.

Two figures at the furthest distance from your current standing, hand in hand, startled as they walked out of a shop and into sudden snowfall. The leftmost of the two, seemingly more ecstatic than their loving counterpart, stuck out their tongue, angling their head skyward, and after a moment, laughed in delight, or some approximation of it. They turned to their partner, kissed them on either cheek, and then took off their jacket to place around the other's shoulders. Perhaps there was an exchange of half-hearted argument, but the moment ended with the two of them walking off, one double-braced against the building cold, the other habitually turning their palms to the clemency of snow — as though the moment was pure and this weather something to be held.

Snowflakes fell of your cheeks. If you were to be asked, they were to be blamed for any wetness, there.

Memories come in waves, and they are a vengeful and needy sea: demanding to be realized, sure in the devastation they bear. But how long is it before an experience crystalizes into memory? What is the minimum amount of time that needs to occur before that passage is significant and longing for someone can turn into missing them?

You weren't quite sure if it could be called missing him: this gnawing, guilty feeling accompanying your thoughts of Seungmin.

Once, the two of you had been friends so close, no one could talk about either of you without mentioning the other. His footsteps always following yours, your voice a necessary addition to any of his statements. So close your names spilled into the other, so present there was a space carved in the both of you for the other to reside in. Side by side or in tandem, there were always two.

And there were two, that night, when your warmth was carbonated with a fizz of intimacy and bubbles of desperation. You confessed to the secret of loving him and he worshiped that attachment with his lips. Again and again, a mantra that intensified to the fervency of song.

I love you, love you, love you.

And how many times did you say that before the sentiment set to rot, and the permanence of that phrase became something of the past?

I loved you, loved you, loved you.

Again, snow fell on your cheeks, pulling you just far enough out of your mired thoughts, to remind you to finish your walk to that lonesome, quiet destination called home.

You had Seungmin for longer than you held him, and the feeling of his voice in your mind was more resonant that the touch of his lips on yours. Evocative, cohesive, tenacious — something you couldn't yet unstick from the crevices of your thoughts.

Seungmin beside you, Seungmin whispering into the shell of your ear, Seungmin placing his love in the spot where your neck met your shoulders, the crook of your grin, the place above your heart.

But the wind blew, the novelty faded, the movie ended and you were stuck in the credits where words became meaningless and effort was forgotten in the aftermath of spectacle.

The ease corroded, the bitterness spilled, past tense slipped into the habit of your speech until all the tenderness between you was finished and gone by.

I loved you, and it wasn't his words or yours, but something set on the table for the both of you to consume. A sentiment on which you both engorged and drank dry.

Everything had changed, and yet you were somehow still the same. Seungmin had been so clearly and undoubtedly part of you — you carved out his place inside you alongside him! You hollowed out a space for him, and he for you — and yet with the absence of him, should there not have been something desperate and bloody for you to fix? You had searched and pleaded and clawed at the edges of you to find that void so you might set it to rights, but it evaded you, still.

I loved you.

Perhaps it had already healed over.

Perhaps it had never been.

But still, that unfound cavity ached in you. It was filled with the sound of his voice, and the phrases in his diary he'd let you read and you held to committed memory — it was shaped like the palm of his hand when it cradled you, and it contorted to the essence of his grin.

Would it have been different, had you never said anything all that time ago, and instead chose to keep those feelings in a bottle, only to be uncorked should Seungmin, himself, had fallen first and told you so? Maybe you could have kept that bottle of spirits in the most hidden parts of you, and, on nights when your yearning sharpened to the point of a knife, drank from them — an alcohol of illusion — just enough to get by? Maybe he would have found the bottle, and smashed it to ruin, or maybe he would have loosen it and get the both of you drunk off your own delight.

You would have liked it, perhaps, had he been the one to fall.

Maybe then he would stare at the innocence of snowfall and mix the feeling of it's melt with salty tears.

(ʇɹɐdɐ llɐɟ ǝʍ) sllɐɟ ʍous ǝɥʇ 'uıɐɓ∀

☄. *. ⋆

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[newyorkthegoldenage]

Sometimes you just gotta laugh: a resident of a heatless tenement looks at a sign posted in the building urging tenants to help stop fuel waste, the Bronx, February 1943.

Photo: Weegee via the Int'l Center of Photography

[crimeronan]

"If polyamory were normalized..." SAY IT LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK. You're so right that Hunter's Luz's type. If she weren't SEVERELY crushing on Amity by Hunting Palisman she'd have gone a little bit heart eyes at the sad wet cat boy. That being said. Lumity Real and Good. I feel like in the human realm the girls would sometimes have girl talks at night and Amity would ask Willow "Why Hunter of all people???" and Luz would be like "Nah i get it, he's kinda cute in a weird way"

addition to the last ask: the absolute COMEDY of "mean lesbian Amity" wanting to insult Luz's taste for saying Hunter's cute but being unable to without insulting herself. Peak Fucking Comedy

-

honestly i ship the lavender winter polycule (hunter/willow/amity/luz) like BURNING so this all slots delightfully into it. i think it's totally reasonable that the kiddos might end up negotiating more complex and/or flexible entanglements with each other as they get older, that doesn't have to mean that they end their current relationships. like maybe it's just because i'm polyamorous but this has happened with So Many Groups Of Friends of mine.

amity being like "why is your taste so terrible. i recognize that i'm including me in this but it's necessary because HUNTER????" and luz being like "i guess i just really like people who are fundamentally kind and do their best to rise above shitty circumstances :)" and amity being like [STRUGGLE] [STRUGGLE] "DON'T DO THAT >:(((("

they're. perfect. thank god.

[izzyspussy]

i feel like i remember people posting happy birthday character posts for mickey in june? is that right? well, even if he doesn't have a canon birthday (or if he does and it's. wrong.) he has a summer birthday To Me. and i've never seen a guy who is more obviously a capricorn than ian, so! if mickey's summer birthday is indeed in june specifically (i'm thinking cancer, but it would also be really cool if mickey and mandy are both gemini - twins who aren't twins), then mickey is technically two years older than ian for about half the time.

[bizlybebo]

Bunny doodle for the soul?

HOOLYYYY SHIT BNUNY……

[zee-man-chatter]

Wealth transfer from poor & middle class 101. We dress up cutbacks on you as a "tough decision" that has to be done, and of course for your own good.

Do the math, 10 million pensioners @ 250 pounds a pop = 2.5 billion pounds.

UK military assistance to Ukraine, which benefits the shareholders of arms companies.

UK military assistance to Ukraine, 2022/23 to 2024/25

2022/23 £2.3 billion 2023/24 £2.3 billion 2024/25 £3.0 billion

The above link is to the UK Government spending on the Ukraine war. It's a downloadable PDF file. Not too difficult to join the dots on this one.