This year, the average American taxpayer paid $1,087 just for Pentagon contractors alone — a sum representing twenty-one days of work for the average person and four times what they contributed to K-12 education ($270). They also paid approximately $74 for the maintenance of nuclear weapons, while just $43 went to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). An average taxpayer gave $298 to the five largest military contractors, while only $19 went to programs concerned with mental health and substance abuse. Lockheed Martin, incidentally a major air polluter, received $106 from the average person’s income tax contribution, while a mere $6 went to renewable energy.
The institute has long tracked the wider growth of spending related to domestic policing and securitization. Here the numbers are no less striking: $20 per taxpayer for federal prisons and just $11 for anti-homelessness programs; $70 for deportations and border control versus just $19 for refugee assistance, and on and on it goes.
This womans story really chimes with me, especially the bit about not wanting to have a psychotic illness but here it is. One of the things that happened to me as part of my so-called journey was realising that I am a bit unstable, no middle gears, tendency towards inappropriate and/or overwhelming levels of emotion. Also, that everyone already knew this except me. One thing that having a greater understanding of your mental health situation does for you is that it ruins your dreams, because your dreams were probably the dreams of someone who doesn’t have mental health problems. They were the dreams of a person who doesn’t live in a world where most people are terrified of the mentally ill and where the demands of the job world are designed for extracting the most surplus value from a healthy person. These demands are simply too much for an unwell person, who will be judged to the standards of a healthy person anyway.
So you have to adjust your dreams and ambitions to fit the world you have, or the weight of these dreams will drag you down. I’m never going to be the person I once dreamed of being, and I didn’t know I was fooling myself with those dreams, but there are other things I can be that are meaningful, beautiful, and important. You need to have an understanding of what you are capable of, your limitations, and how those limitations interact with the world. That’s not necessarily very easy, of course.
Shielding not safer than Not Shielding, reports Swansea University, whilst acknowledging that Shielding people were more vulnerable, and required more hospitalisation events and thus more change of medical transmission than Not Shielding people. I haven’t read the report, only the BBC’s version, so I this is based on hearsay rather than review, but… It’s worth adding to this - that Shielding people generally required care and support workers, and so they would have had people coming into their house up to four times a day, people with varying standards of covid security. Unless all those interactions are conducted at levels of Covid security far in excess of the norm, a Shielding person is at hundreds of times greater risk than a normal person. That they died in slightly greater proportions than Not Shielding people is not a sign that Shielding itself was unneccessary and of no benefit, just that Shielding wasn’t done properly. We’ve been Shielding, and one of the problems of Shielding is making other people behave properly. Especially now Covid is Over, and we’re not counting infections or deaths or hospitalisations or whatnot. If the state had wanted to protect us from Covid it could have done, but it would have had to have been tougher than it was. It is hard hard hard to hear people talking about how lockdown was too tough and the economy was too badly affected, because they are saying that actually someone else’s profit is more important than your life. Im sorry you’re disabled forever but someone we don’t know needs to enlarge his rental portfolio.
I’ve just sold a vintage fantasy mag to Richard Starkings. I know, right?
A jar, containing a baby’s arm holding a coin, naturally mummified and green.
On average, disabled households (with at least one disabled adult or child) need an additional £975 a month to have the same standard of living as non-disabled households.
If this figure is updated to account for inflation over the current period 2022/2023, these extra costs rise to £1,122 per month.
On average, the extra cost of disability is equivalent to 63% of household income after housing costs.
The average extra costs rise to £1,248 per month where there are two disabled adults in the household and at least two children. And for households with one disabled adult, one non-disabled adult and at least one child, the average extra cost is £634.
Scope’s Disability Living Price Tag 2023
I mention PTSD. She reminds me that the term “post-traumatic stress disorder,” or “PTSD,” is being overused at the moment.
The problem with a lot of us, Amanda, she says, is that we are not “post”-anything.
You’re still in the thick of it. You have generalized anxiety, because none of these things are in the past.
It’s still happening to you.
This is true, and I find it strangely comforting.
Post-anything, my ass.
Epic names corner: Fanny Bandelier
We’re trying to reduce the use of forever chemicals in our household but it seems a complete waste of fucking time when shit like this is allowed to happen.
An example of a local council getting everything wrong at every stage. Ah Lambeth, how I miss you.