Mental health conditions are overdiagnosed, Streeting says:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd7ejvr3y0zo

Absolutely fuming!

There are lots of people suffering without help because of the stigma around mental health. By effectively saying that people diagnosed with mental health are on the scrounge, the mental health crisis will worsen.

But I don't think that the red-Tories really give a fuck.

This Wes #Streeting guy is a real villain of a human.

For what it means to anyone (and everyone else's case is valid), when I had my mental health collapse, I didn't claim these so-called 'benefits', and still people looked at me like I was making it all up.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd7ejvr3y0zo

Labour Party targeting people with mental health issues for more cuts, just evil.

Nothing less of a military draft, dragging the most vulnerable to indenture service knowing they're the most likely to be exploited without much protections.

Thinking of Dawn Foster today

The UK Online Safety Act burdens small sites with duties and penalties that they can't shoulder. They'll shut down instead, stripping us of net plurality.

There’s a simple solution:

Exempt small, safely run blogs, forums and fedi instances
The government can do this now

The duties start TOMORROW – Write to your MP

#SaveOurSites

https://action.openrightsgroup.org/save-our-sites-write-your-mp

Wes Streeting: there is overdiagnosis of mental health conditions

Imagine the level of self confidence you need to have to have a degree in history and say such a thing.

Wes Streeting should resign. He is no position to make such a statement as Health Secretary and he should be rebutted by the GMC right away.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/mar/16/wes-streeting-there-is-overdiagnosis-of-mental-health-conditions

Morning all.

Musing: the lies from Labour about helping people into work.

If you want disabled people to work, and I don't know why you would other than some twisted belief that human lives are meaningful only in terms of our economic output, but if you do then you could do it this way:

* Identify areas in which deploying large numbers of people with varying skills and ability levels could improve society for all, and if you must do it this way, improve national economics capability

* Offer flexible and realistic positions to make progress in those areas, to disabled people, without threat and at market rates

* Pay for this using the power of a fiat currency with a national central bank

Maybe this would work instead of forcing people to compete in an ableist job market deliberately designed to have large numbers of unemployed in order to suppress wages.

But you don't want it to work. You just want to look good to the gammon and the City and the cost will be the lives of disabled folk.

"US politicians and privacy campaigners are calling for the private hearing between Apple and the UK government regarding its alleged encryption-busting order to be aired in public."

https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/14/apple_uk_encryption_hearing/

"Colloquially, the IPA is referred to as the Snooper's Charter since its aims are to legally empower intelligence agencies with greater surveillance powers."

"What if we gave Appeasement one more try? Is there some middle ground with Fascism I can inhabit?"" - Starmer

‘Absurd’

When you have the press and civil society camped outside the courtroom, the secret might be out

Even so, we’re still denied the reasons why the UK government wants to take a battering ram to our security and privacy.

It shows contempt for the public interest in the Apple encryption case.

https://pressgazette.co.uk/media_law/apple-encryption-government-press-appeal-tribunal-snoopers-charter/

"There is still time for the Labour cabinet to act like a cabinet, and for its members to stand up to the Treasury to halt the cuts in benefits to the sick and disabled, and to insist on a more flexible interpretation of the fiscal rules and a limited set of tax measures."

John McDonnell

Benefits cuts now? What’s the point of a Labour MP who votes for something so cruel, tin-eared and short-sighted? | John McDonnell | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/15/benefit-cuts-labour-mps-disabled-sick
#UKPol #Labour #welfare #austerity

Saddling small sites with the same duties as huge platforms means many will shut down in a hammer blow to net plurality.

We'll be left with the Sophie’s choice of monopoly services; the incubators of online harms.

URGENT: The UK government must change the Online Safety Act to protect safe, non-commercial blogs, forums and fediverse.

Write to your MP to #SaveOurSites

https://action.openrightsgroup.org/save-our-sites-write-your-mp

"Google refuses to deny it received encryption order from UK government"

The UK’s encryption-breaking order for a backdoor into iCloud isn’t a one-off.

The secret hearing happening RIGHT NOW is bigger than just Apple. If the government wins, our right to privacy and security falls.

Other services will be hit.

https://therecord.media/google-refuses-to-deny-it-received-uk-tcn

Sign our petition https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/keep-our-apple-data-encrypted

No one really knows how the game is played
The art of the trade
How the sausage gets made
We just assume that it happens
But no one else is in
The room where it happens.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/uk-us-hold-private-talks-resolve-apple-encryption-order-bloomberg-news-reports-2025-03-13/

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/keep-our-apple-data-encrypted

"Devolved Scotland doesn’t have many powers when it comes to unilaterally defending itself against a Trump trade tantrum that Starmer will supplicate and grovel to avoid – but the powers it does have are surprisingly powerful."

#UKPol #ScotPol

https://thecommongreen.scot/2025/03/14/platform-socialism/

According the the UK government, the way disability benefits are managed is scandalous. I agree, but not for the same reason. In my latest piece for Yorkshire Bylines, I look at one of the things they seem less keen to talk about: how their own figures reveal that a shocking proportion of people who are recognised as disabled in childhood find themselves suddenly without financial support when they turn 16. https://yorkshirebylines.co.uk/society/supported-as-a-child-abandoned-as-an-adult/ #disability #UKpol