Zoe Williams: the madness of modern parenting. 'No one should die penniless and alone': the victims of Britain's harsh welfare sanctions. We know that David Clapson was actively searching for work when he died because a pile of CVs he had just printed out was found a few metres from his body.
The last time he spoke to his sister, a few days before he died, he told her he was waiting to hear back about an application he had made to the supermarket chain Lidl. But officials at the Jobcentre believed he was not taking his search for work seriously enough, and early last July, they sanctioned him – cutting off his benefit payments entirely, as a punishment for his failure to attend two appointments. Clapson, 59, who had diabetes, died in his flat in Stevenage on 20 July 2013, from diabetic ketoacidosis (caused by an acute lack of insulin). Mentally ill people need to be helped, not hounded. Once upon a time, David Cameron said that general wellbeing matters as much GDP.
What's it all for if a country grows richer but its people feel no better? A genuine attempt at prioritising wellbeing would be revolutionary, because the happiest people live in more equal societies, are less ridden by anxiety, enjoy good employment, are well housed and more trusting. Yet in Britain all those fundamentals indices of wellbeing are in retreat. If aiming for happiness is beyond this government, minimising extreme pain could be within reach, if it began by prioritising scarce NHS resources entirely according to suffering.
If pain was measured in a Benthamite way – the relief of the greatest suffering for the greatest number of patients – mental illness would trump most other conditions. Ultra-rich man's letter: "To My Fellow Filthy Rich Americans: The Pitchforks Are Coming" You probably don’t know me, but like you I am one of those .01%ers, a proud and unapologetic capitalist.
I have founded, co-founded and funded more than 30 companies across a range of industries—from itsy-bitsy ones like the night club I started in my 20s to giant ones like Amazon.com, for which I was the first nonfamily investor. Then I founded aQuantive, an Internet advertising company that was sold to Microsoft in 2007 for $6.4 billion. In cash. My friends and I own a bank. We might be disabled, but we still badly need our independence. 'We are fighting simply to stay in our homes, to avoid going into abuse-riddled institutions, or to fall back on our over-stretched families – primarily, our mothers.' Photograph: Peter Marshall/Demotix/Corbis Almost 29 years ago, on a grey day in August 1985, I moved to east London from a council estate in the Chilterns.
I was in my mid-20s and had fought, with many tears, to be "allowed" to do this. I am disabled, a wheelchair user, and independence from the family home came after four years of constant battles with social workers. “It's not only steps that keep us out”: mainstream feminism must stop ignoring disabled women. Disabled women are being left out by the feminist movement Photo: Flickr I was a disabled feminist around a decade after I knew I was disabled and a feminist.
In a cashless society, what will the new currency be? Your reputation. New research suggests that it costs the average SME more than £3,600 per year just to handle cash, and – thanks to Bitcoin and other innovations – thoughts of a cashless society seem to be stirring again.
But what would a cashless society look like? And how will we get there? The social anthropologist and money historian Jack Weatherford said: "The electronic money world looks much more like the neolithic world economy before the invention of money than it looks like the market as we have known it in the past few hundred years.
" What Weatherford means is that ancient society worked on a shared memory of mutual cross-obligations, continuously adjusted and revised. One Family's Story Shows How The Cycle Of Poverty Is Hard To Break. Kenyan sex workers using HIV drugs instead of condoms. In Kondele, sex is in high demand.
Prostitutes charge clients as little as 20 shillings (14p), or provide sex on credit with the hope of being paid at the end of the month. The area is a low-end red-light district in the western Kenyan city of Kisumu. The temptation for many women, given the low fees, is to make potentially dangerous concessions in order to earn more, such as forgoing condoms. "Men who do not want to use protection pay double," explains Florence, a sex worker in the area. The working classes don't want to be 'hard-working families' The TUC fight for holidays with pay was finally won in the late 1930s.
Photograph: Science Museum Photo Studio/SSPL/Getty Images. Redistributing Wealth Is the Wrong Way to Fix a Rigged Game - Conor Friedersdorf. Elites shouldn't be forced to share ill-gotten gains -- they should be prevented from ever getting them. In my review of Twilight of the Elites , Chris Hayes's thoughtful critique of American meritocracy, I largely agreed with his contention that the current system is frequently rigged by those at the top. Why Do Poor People 'Waste' Money On Luxury Goods? My family is a classic black American migration family.
We have rural Southern roots, moved north and almost all have returned. I grew up watching my great-grandmother, and later my grandmother and mother, use our minimal resources to help other people make ends meet. We were those good poors, the kind who live mostly within our means. We had a little luck when a male relative got extra military pay when they came home a paraplegic or used the VA to buy a Jim Walter house (pdf).
The U.S. Economy Does Not Value Caregivers — www.theatlantic.com. Providers of physical and spiritual care are just as indispensable to our society as providers of income.
So why don't we treat them that way? Throughout its history, America has continued to reinvent itself, each time producing a better society for more of us than the one that preceded it. Reconstruction improved on the pre-Civil War republic. The New Deal created a “new America” that was a great improvement on the Gilded Age. The civil rights movement generated legislation guaranteeing the equality promised in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. This constant reinvention is fueled by what I call “the idea that is America”—the principles of liberty, democracy, equality, justice, tolerance, humility, and faith on which our country was founded. The next period of American renewal cannot come fast enough. Why you can't "bootstrap" yourself out of poverty — finance.yahoo.com. It’s a counterintuitive idea to say the least, but it costs a lot to be poor in the United States.
When money is at its tightest, cost-saving choices are often impossible to make, digging impoverished Americans deeper and deeper into the pit of day-by-day living. A common narrative in today’s political arena is that the nation’s least fortunate only need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps – that they’re just not working hard enough.
What often goes unnoticed, however, are the overwhelming barriers that those living below the poverty line face on a daily basis. "If I didn't sell drugs, I'd be dead" — www.motherjones.com. Companies Are Hiring Autistic Workers to Boost the Bottom Line — www.slate.com. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images The Wall Street Journal has a new piece today on how a handful of employers are looking to gain a competitive edge by hiring autistic workers. According to the story, software corporation SAP is actively searching for people with autism to fill jobs that require great attention to detail, such as testing software, debugging, and assigning customer-service queries. Also, U.S. mortgage lender Freddie Mac has partnered with the Autistic Self Advocacy Network to offer full-time paid internships to students and recent graduates on the autism spectrum in areas including IT, data services, and finance.
Why I'm Masquerading As A White Bearded Hipster Guy On Twitter (Despite Being a Black Woman) — www.xojane.com. When the French clock off at 6pm, they really mean it. Relaxing in a French cafe, untroubled by work emails. Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex Features. Inherited wealth is an injustice. Let's end it. 'The transfer of wealth between generations allows access to privileges that are otherwise beyond reach.' Homeless Woman's Children Taken Away After She Left Them In Car During Job Interview. Women Should Pay More for Insurance, Say Professional Trolls at TIME. The Surprising Reason Americans Are Far Less Healthy Than Others in Developed Nations. August 20, 2013 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. How not to write a PhD thesis. In this guide, Tara Brabazon gives her top ten tips for doctoral failure. What Happens to Your Brain When You Have Stage Fright. I Have a Health Problem You Can't See, and I Feel Like I Have to Tackle It Alone — www.xojane.