#benefits — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #benefits, aggregated by home.social.
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"The #gas in the #Jackdaw #field will make a tiny contribution to our #supply & no significant difference to either our #energy #bills or our energy #security. Switching to #renewables makes us far better off in both respects. Any #oil produced by the #Rosebank field is unlikely to be refined in #Britain, as we no longer possess much capacity for handling oil of that kind... the #climate damage caused by the fields’ extra #emissions would outweigh any #economic #benefits several times over."
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UK chancellor urged to remove £100k childcare ‘cliff edge’ prompting parents to cut work hours
By Heather Stewart Economics editorCritics say threshold pushes higher-paid staff to cut back on work and often mothers to stop working to avoid losing entitlement
#Children #Childcare #Society #Money #Politics #JohnHealey #Budget #Budget2026 #UKnews #Taxandspending #Benefits #EconomicgrowthGDP #Economicpolicy #Business #Economics #TheGuardian #HeatherStewartEconomicseditor
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UK chancellor urged to remove £100k childcare ‘cliff edge’ prompting parents to cut work hours
By Heather Stewart Economics editorCritics say threshold pushes higher-paid staff to cut back on work and often mothers to stop working to avoid losing entitlement
#Children #Childcare #Society #Money #Politics #JohnHealey #Budget #Budget2026 #UKnews #Taxandspending #Benefits #EconomicgrowthGDP #Economicpolicy #Business #Economics #TheGuardian #HeatherStewartEconomicseditor
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UK chancellor urged to remove £100k childcare ‘cliff edge’ prompting parents to cut work hours
By Heather Stewart Economics editorCritics say threshold pushes higher-paid staff to cut back on work and often mothers to stop working to avoid losing entitlement
#Children #Childcare #Society #Money #Politics #JohnHealey #Budget #Budget2026 #UKnews #Taxandspending #Benefits #EconomicgrowthGDP #Economicpolicy #Business #Economics #TheGuardian #HeatherStewartEconomicseditor
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UK chancellor urged to remove £100k childcare ‘cliff edge’ prompting parents to cut work hours
By Heather Stewart Economics editorCritics say threshold pushes higher-paid staff to cut back on work and often mothers to stop working to avoid losing entitlement
#Children #Childcare #Society #Money #Politics #JohnHealey #Budget #Budget2026 #UKnews #Taxandspending #Benefits #EconomicgrowthGDP #Economicpolicy #Business #Economics #TheGuardian #HeatherStewartEconomicseditor
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UK chancellor urged to remove £100k childcare ‘cliff edge’ prompting parents to cut work hours https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/sep/10/uk-chancellor-urged-to-remove-100k-childcare-cliff-edge-prompting-parents-to-cut-work-hours #Children #Childcare #Society #Money #Politics #JohnHealey #Budget #Budget2026 #UkNews #TaxAndSpending #Benefits #EconomicGrowthGdp #EconomicPolicy #Business #Economics
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UK chancellor urged to remove £100k childcare ‘cliff edge’ prompting parents to cut work hours https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/sep/10/uk-chancellor-urged-to-remove-100k-childcare-cliff-edge-prompting-parents-to-cut-work-hours #Children #Childcare #Society #Money #Politics #JohnHealey #Budget #Budget2026 #UkNews #TaxAndSpending #Benefits #EconomicGrowthGdp #EconomicPolicy #Business #Economics
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UK chancellor urged to remove £100k childcare ‘cliff edge’ prompting parents to cut work hours https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/sep/10/uk-chancellor-urged-to-remove-100k-childcare-cliff-edge-prompting-parents-to-cut-work-hours #Children #Childcare #Society #Money #Politics #JohnHealey #Budget #Budget2026 #UkNews #TaxAndSpending #Benefits #EconomicGrowthGdp #EconomicPolicy #Business #Economics
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UK chancellor urged to remove £100k childcare ‘cliff edge’ prompting parents to cut work hours https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/sep/10/uk-chancellor-urged-to-remove-100k-childcare-cliff-edge-prompting-parents-to-cut-work-hours #Children #Childcare #Society #Money #Politics #JohnHealey #Budget #Budget2026 #UkNews #TaxAndSpending #Benefits #EconomicGrowthGdp #EconomicPolicy #Business #Economics
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UK chancellor urged to remove £100k childcare ‘cliff edge’ prompting parents to cut work hours https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/sep/10/uk-chancellor-urged-to-remove-100k-childcare-cliff-edge-prompting-parents-to-cut-work-hours #Children #Childcare #Society #Money #Politics #JohnHealey #Budget #Budget2026 #UkNews #TaxAndSpending #Benefits #EconomicGrowthGdp #EconomicPolicy #Business #Economics
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Machine Tricep Extension Benefits ☑️
The tricep extension machine is a useful option for directly training the triceps, especially when your goal is hypertrophy or improving pressing strength.
👉 Strong triceps isolation
👉 Stable movement path
👉 Great for hypertrophy
👉 Easy progressive overload#progressiveoverload #triceps #benefits #tricepextensions #onlinecoach
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Machine Tricep Extension Benefits ☑️
The tricep extension machine is a useful option for directly training the triceps, especially when your goal is hypertrophy or improving pressing strength.
👉 Strong triceps isolation
👉 Stable movement path
👉 Great for hypertrophy
👉 Easy progressive overload#progressiveoverload #triceps #benefits #tricepextensions #onlinecoach
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Machine Tricep Extension Benefits ☑️
The tricep extension machine is a useful option for directly training the triceps, especially when your goal is hypertrophy or improving pressing strength.
👉 Strong triceps isolation
👉 Stable movement path
👉 Great for hypertrophy
👉 Easy progressive overload#progressiveoverload #triceps #benefits #tricepextensions #onlinecoach
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Andy Burnham rules out Tory benefit cut plan to fund extra defence spending
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The NGO Trap: How a $1 Trillion Industry Learned to Love African Poverty by Lawson Akhigbe
Somewhere in a glass-and-steel conference centre in Geneva, a distinguished panel is convening to discuss Africa's poverty crisis. The room costs £18,000 a day to hire. The keynote speaker flew business class from Washington. The catered lunch is exceptional. The conference proceedings will produce, in due course, a forty-seven page report recommending as the 1994 report did, as the 2003 report did, as the 2011 report did, more aid. Africa, meanwhile, remains poor. -
The NGO Trap: How a $1 Trillion Industry Learned to Love African Poverty by Lawson Akhigbe
Somewhere in a glass-and-steel conference centre in Geneva, a distinguished panel is convening to discuss Africa's poverty crisis. The room costs £18,000 a day to hire. The keynote speaker flew business class from Washington. The catered lunch is exceptional. The conference proceedings will produce, in due course, a forty-seven page report recommending as the 1994 report did, as the 2003 report did, as the 2011 report did, more aid. Africa, meanwhile, remains poor. -
The NGO Trap: How a $1 Trillion Industry Learned to Love African Poverty by Lawson Akhigbe
Somewhere in a glass-and-steel conference centre in Geneva, a distinguished panel is convening to discuss Africa's poverty crisis. The room costs £18,000 a day to hire. The keynote speaker flew business class from Washington. The catered lunch is exceptional. The conference proceedings will produce, in due course, a forty-seven page report recommending as the 1994 report did, as the 2003 report did, as the 2011 report did, more aid. Africa, meanwhile, remains poor. -
The NGO Trap: How a $1 Trillion Industry Learned to Love African Poverty by Lawson Akhigbe
Somewhere in a glass-and-steel conference centre in Geneva, a distinguished panel is convening to discuss Africa's poverty crisis. The room costs £18,000 a day to hire. The keynote speaker flew business class from Washington. The catered lunch is exceptional. The conference proceedings will produce, in due course, a forty-seven page report recommending as the 1994 report did, as the 2003 report did, as the 2011 report did, more aid. Africa, meanwhile, remains poor. -
The NGO Trap: How a $1 Trillion Industry Learned to Love African Poverty by Lawson Akhigbe
Somewhere in a glass-and-steel conference centre in Geneva, a distinguished panel is convening to discuss Africa's poverty crisis. The room costs £18,000 a day to hire. The keynote speaker flew business class from Washington. The catered lunch is exceptional. The conference proceedings will produce, in due course, a forty-seven page report recommending as the 1994 report did, as the 2003 report did, as the 2011 report did, more aid. Africa, meanwhile, remains poor. -
Majority of Tory and Reform voters do not back cuts to disability benefits, survey finds https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/08/majority-tory-reform-voters-do-not-back-cuts-disability-benefits-survey #Disability #Benefits #EconomicPolicy #Politics #Society #UkNews
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Majority of Tory and Reform voters do not back cuts to disability benefits, survey finds
By Patrick Butler Social policy editorNearly half of respondents say spending on personal independence payments should be increased
#Disability #Benefits #Economicpolicy #Politics #Society #UKnews #TheGuardian #PatrickButlerSocialpolicyeditor
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The time has come for the working class to say enough is enough and demand the TUC call a general strike to bring down the Labour government and ...#benefits #britain #budget #carworkers #disabled #employment #labourparty #nhs #pensions #strike #tuc #unemployment #unions #wrp #youngsocialists
Healey makes first speech as Chancellor pledging Labour shares same values as capitalism - Workers Revolutionary Party -
The time has come for the working class to say enough is enough and demand the TUC call a general strike to bring down the Labour government and ...#benefits #britain #budget #carworkers #disabled #employment #labourparty #nhs #pensions #strike #tuc #unemployment #unions #wrp #youngsocialists
Healey makes first speech as Chancellor pledging Labour shares same values as capitalism - Workers Revolutionary Party -
The time has come for the working class to say enough is enough and demand the TUC call a general strike to bring down the Labour government and ...#benefits #britain #budget #carworkers #disabled #employment #labourparty #nhs #pensions #strike #tuc #unemployment #unions #wrp #youngsocialists
Healey makes first speech as Chancellor pledging Labour shares same values as capitalism - Workers Revolutionary Party -
The time has come for the working class to say enough is enough and demand the TUC call a general strike to bring down the Labour government and ...#benefits #britain #budget #carworkers #disabled #employment #labourparty #nhs #pensions #strike #tuc #unemployment #unions #wrp #youngsocialists
Healey makes first speech as Chancellor pledging Labour shares same values as capitalism - Workers Revolutionary Party -
https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/six-dwp-reports-show-exactly-why-so-many-young-disabled-people-are-not-in-work-education-or-training/. "Six #Government #research #reports have provided strong #evidence of the huge #barriers that prevent many #young #disabled people from moving into #work, #training or #education. They show that - contrary to #hostile #rhetoric in the #mainstream #media, & among some #MPs & #Ministers - there are good reasons to explain the significant number of young disabled people who are receiving out-of-work #disability #benefits."
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Russia says it could hit UK military targets over support for Ukraine – UK politics live
By Taz AliKremlin threatens British targets inside and outside Ukraine and claims UK’s ‘hostile line’ risks escalating conflict
#Politics #Youngpeople #Workcareers #Employability #Education #Benefits #Educationpolicy #PatMcFadden #AndyBurnham #Tata #Steelindustry #Industrialpolicy #UKcostoflivingcrisis #Unemployment #Ukraine #Russia #Military #TheGuardian #TazAli
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Born Free, Housed First: Reform UK and the Return of the Birth Certificate as Political Document by Lawson Akhigbe
Reform UK has now taken that quiet administrative habit and turned it into an actual policy platform, delivered at a press conference rather than buried in a PDF. Deputy leader Richard Tice has confirmed the party will prioritise British-born workers under 35 for social housing, alongside military veterans and married couples with children, should Reform enter government. The pitch comes wrapped in an infrastructure promise, 50,000 affordable homes a year, financed, the party insists, without new taxes or borrowing, which is the political equivalent of promising a birthday cake that requires no oven, no flour and no birthday. -
Weird idea to stop #waste, #fraud, and, #abuse of #taxpayer #money.
If a #corporation's #employees qualify for #government #assistance, the corporation is required to #reimburse the assistance #program for #benefits disbursed, plus an additional percentage to cover the #cost of overhead and collection of money owed.
This would apply to employees working 30+ hours/week or who work any number of hours while holding multiple jobs.
I love my neighbors, but my #tax dollars should not be subsidizing #corporate #profit.
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https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/ministers-set-to-take-decision-on-roll-out-of-new-pip-assessment-system-before-seeing-detailed-evaluation/. "A new #assessment #regime for #disability #benefits that will reduce the #influence of #healthcare #professionals & hand greater #responsibility to #civilservants is set to be rolled out across the country before ministers have seen a detailed #evaluation of its #impact."
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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/aug/07/millions-in-england-face-longer-waits-for-mental-health-care-as-nhs-providers-plan-cuts. This is NOT what the #LabourParty promised at the #GeneralElection - the #NHS isn't any safer in their hands than it was in the hands of the #Tories or would be in the hands of #ReformUK! None of these people can be trusted to safeguard #mentalhealth #care, & they can ALL be trusted to #cut #socialsecurity #benefits for #Claimants with #mental #health #issues.
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https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/dwp-quietly-reveals-how-universal-credit-flaws-were-linked-to-multiple-claimant-deaths-and-serious-harm/. "The Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) has been forced to publish #details of multiple #flaws within its #universalcredit working-age #benefits #system that led to #deaths & serious #harm to #claimants."
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Busy Beavers - The Turbidity Signature Of Ecosystem Engineers At Work
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https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.70661 <-- shared paper
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H/T @alan Puttock
“Beavers are the quintessential ecosystem engineers. In slow-flowing streams, they create complex wetlands with ponds by building dams and canals that can positively impact biodiversity, hydrology and water quality. These activities can interchangeably capture or release sediment along the watercourse. To date this has not been quantified at the resolution of rainfall events or beaver activity. This study used 15-min frequency, sustained monitoring upstream and downstream of a newly establishing beaver wetland to measure episodic changes in water turbidity at an event resolution. Monitoring showed no significant differences between upstream and downstream turbidity over 160 days when the first pair of beavers, known not to be building dams or canals, were resident. Shortly after introduction of another beaver pair, however, dam building, burrows and canal excavations were quickly observed, resulting in the creation of a complex beaver wetland between 2021 and 2024. Monitoring over 375 days during this period showed significant differences. Downstream turbidity was significantly higher overall than upstream: 13.1 Nephelometric Turbidity Units (NTU) compared to 4.2 NTU. Stochastic spikes in downstream turbidity during the study period not recorded upstream were associated with dam building and burrowing. Overall, there was no significant difference in turbidity loads, which was at least partially explained by a reduction in discharge downstream, particularly in higher flows, during the dam building period. This demonstrates a complex system with the trapping of influent sediment, the storing of water and the periodic release of beaver wetland sediment leading to net balance in loads. These results help provide context for other studies which have used temporally discrete sampling campaigns rather than continuous high-frequency monitoring. They provide a unique insight into the downstream impacts of a rapidly developing beaver wetland over its first three and a half years in a landscape that hasn't had beavers for over 400 years…"
#hydromorphic #water #hydrology #dam #beaverdam #waterquality #biodiversity #ecology #benefits #NatureBasedSolutions #Wetlands #Ecology #Biodiversity #EnvironmentalScience #Wildlife #Ecosystem #bioviversity #conservation #restoration #landscaperecovery #floodmanagement #FloodMitigation #flooding #energy #floodrisk #sustainability #wetlands #hydrography #dams #impoundment #deadwood #waterresources #landscapeengineer #benefits #vegetation #ecology #ecosystem #riversystemsstabilisation #naturalwaterregulation #resilience #valleysreborn #fisheries #invertebrates #extremeweather #floodflows #sediment #baseflow #drought #landmanagement #naturalsystems #landuse #monitoring #spatialanalysis #spatiotemporal -
Eager Beavers - Rodents Engineer Czech Wetland Project After Years Of Human Delay [ecosystem engineers]
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/11/beavers-save-czech-taxpayers-by-flooding-ex-army-training-site <-- shared technical media article
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver-engineered_dam_in_the_Czech_Republic <-- shared wiki technical page
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https://phys.org/news/2025-02-fine-beavers-czech-treasury-million.html <-- shared technical article
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https://youtu.be/GSTw8qmBP4Y?si=XK2Iy2pAltW91flj <-- shared video (Czech)
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H/T @ScienceGirl
"We don't expect any conflict with the beaver in the next 10 years," ~ Bohumil Fiser from the Czech Nature Conservation Agency
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“For seven years, planners struggled to complete a $1.2 million wetland restoration project in the Brdy region of the Czech Republic. The goal was to build a dam that would improve water management and bring back valuable wetland habitat, but the project remained trapped in a maze of permits and approvals.
Then a family of eight Eurasian beavers did what engineers had planned… without permits, machinery, or a budget.
The beavers built a network of dams in almost the exact area chosen for the proposed project, naturally restoring the wetland system officials had spent years trying to create. After seeing the results, authorities decided there was little point continuing with the original human-built dam.
Although some reports suggested the beavers completed the work overnight, experts say their construction likely took several weeks. The reason it seemed sudden is that the animals quietly worked away until their finished dams became impossible to miss.
Beavers are known as “ecosystem engineers” because their behaviour can reshape entire environments. By cutting trees and blocking streams, they create ponds and wetlands that support countless species, including fish, amphibians, insects, birds, and mammals.
Their wetlands also act as natural water reservoirs, helping during droughts, reducing flood risks, filtering water, storing carbon, and keeping landscapes wetter during wildfires…
Once heavily hunted across Europe, beaver populations have been recovering thanks to conservation efforts, proving that sometimes nature can solve problems humans spend years trying to fix…"
#water #hydrology #KlabavaRiver #Czech #BrdyRegion #protected #CzechRepublic #armytraining #military #beaver #Eurasianbeavers #dam #beaverdam #waterquality #restoration #biodiversity #crayfish #wetland #ecology #benefits #Beavers #NatureBasedSolutions #Wetlands #Ecology #Biodiversity #Agroforestry #EnvironmentalScience #Conservation #Wildlife #Ecosystem #bioviversity #conservation #restoration #landscaperecovery #EcosystemEngineers #nature #floodmanagement #FloodMitigation #flood #flooding #energy #floodrisk #sustainability #wetlands #hydrography #dams #impoundment #deadwood #waterresources #landscapeengineer #agriculture #benefits #vegetation #ecology #ecosystem #riversystemsstabilisation #naturalwaterregulation #resilience #drought #wildfire #valleysreborn #slowdetermination #fisheries #invertebrates #extremeweather #floodflows #sediment #baseflow #drought #landmanagement #naturalsystems #landuse #ecosystemengineers #watermanagement -
https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/dwp-launches-research-into-support-for-autistic-claimants-just-months-after-death-of-david-panther/. "The Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) is researching how it supports #neurodivergent #claimants of #universal #credit (UC), months after an #autistic man took his own life after becoming increasingly distressed by the fallout from the #UC #migration #process... David Panther took his own life in January after... being left with a new £500 monthly charge for his #socialcare package, after he was forced to migrate to UC from so-called #legacy #benefits."
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Billions Spent And Hypothetical Returns: The AI Boom Explained With Six Charts
(expenditure is growing fast and consumer take-up accelerating; but alarm bells are sounding)
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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jun/07/billions-spent-hypothetical-returns-the-ai-boom-explained-with-six-charts <-- shared technical media article
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“… [The] latest peak in the AI market comes amid a multitrillion-dollar spending spree on related infrastructure such as datacentres. Meanwhile, companies are attempting to deploy the technology in a way that makes investing in it worthwhile. Here’s a look at what stage the AI boom is at and six key charts that tell us how we got here…
• Datacentres are propping up US GDP - …This means that datacentres – and the AI boom – carry a disproportionate share of US growth, and a large part of why the world’s largest economy, despite significant headwinds, still looks healthy. Any dent in this expenditure could have economic, and thus political, consequences…
• AI has sent stocks soaring
• Expenditure is growing at a staggering rate
• Firms and consumers are adopting AI at pace
• Claude is snapping at ChatGPT’s heels
• AI is getting more expensive to use
• Datacentre building might not keep pace with demand
• What AI models can do is expanding rapidly…”
#AI #impacts #benefits #overview #technicalarticle #AIBoom #humaninpacts #datacenters #Datacentres #expenditure #cost #economics #infrastructure #building #investment #stocks #GDP #USgrowth #sustainability #statistics
@TheGuardian -
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/20/global-power-britain-brexit. "Having failed to situate #national problems in their proper #global context, #Labour ended up splashing around in the shallow end of #political #debate. That is the comfort zone of #demagogues who blame the country’s ills on #immigrants & #benefits #claimants."
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https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/one-in-three-terminally-ill-people-in-deprived-areas-arent-claiming-dwp-benefits-theyre-entitled-to-at-the-end-of-life/. "A third of terminally ill people living in the most deprived parts of #England & #Wales are not claiming #benefits they’re entitled to in the final 12 months of life. Contrary to successive #Government & #mainstream #media #narratives around the soaring numbers of #benefit #claimants, the new #data backs up what many #disabled #activists have repeatedly warned: that the up-take of benefits is instead far lower than it should be."
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Elevation-Derived Hydrography [EDH] - The USGS’s Rich New Hydrological Features Dataset
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https://doi.org/10.2489/jswc.2024.0314A <-- shared paper
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https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/tm11B12 <-- USGS EDH Representation, Extraction, Attribution, and Delineation Rules reference publication
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https://www.usgs.gov/3d-hydrography-program <-- shared link to the USGS 3DHP page
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[in my role, I have the pleasure of working with the valuable EDH process(es) and the data it produces on a daily basis]
#GIS #spatial #mapping #water #hydrology #hydrography #3dep #edh #3dhp #elevationderivedhydrography #opendata #elevation #dem #dtm #interpretation #waterfeatures #usecase #waterresources #floodmodeling #alignment #model #modeling #dataset #naturalresources #costs #benefits #economics #businessuse #publicdata #spatialanalysis #USA #USGS
@USGS -
Just Work It Off
“Work as if you were to live a thousand years, play as if you were to die tomorrow.” – Ben Franklin
This blog post previously appeared in Common Weal’s weekly newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter here.
If you’d like to support my work for Common Weal or support me and this blog directly, see my donate page here.
Sir Keir Starmer, Knight of the Realm and Man of the Working People, has declared again that thou shalt work or thou shalt starve.
It’s becoming an increasingly common political line in the UK that the economic woes are all caused by people not working hard enough and there is particular ire being levelled at those who are neither employed nor unemployed (a quite narrow measure of people who are not in but who are actively looking for work) but who are “economically inactive” – who are neither working nor who are looking for work. The other line is that work is the only thing that gives someone’s life purpose and that if you’re not working then you’re a lesser kind of person than someone who is – a failure, or an immoral shirker.
I want you to consider someone who is “economically inactive”. What is the image in your head? According to some, it’s a sofa-lout – someone who would rather persist on benefits than actually do some honest labour or might even earn MORE through those benefits than someone who does work (they almost certainly don’t and when they do, often that number is padded by housing benefit that goes to their landlord to pay for an inflated house rent – who are the real spongers off the taxpayer in that scenario?).
Or it’s a disabled or long-term sick person – except they’re not REALLY ill, are they? They’re playing things up to avoid work, or they’re outright faking being ill, or they have a mental illness and everyone knows that’s not a real illness so they should just buck up and stop sponging off the taxpayers. Just work it off and it’ll be fine.
I wrote about this quite recently in terms of who is actually not working and why but it bears repeating because Starmer’s plan is so badly wrong on all levels. He has misidentified the problem in the economy as ‘too many sick people not working’ and misidentified the solution as ‘and therefore we need to force young people to ‘work or starve’.
When we actually look at the numbers and reasons for people being both out of work and not actively looking for work, a very different picture emerges. Yes, the number of long term ill people has risen since the pandemic – and I’ll come back to that group – they make up less than a third of the total number of people not working and not seeking to work.The next largest group in that category are students who are focusing entirely on their studies (an increasingly difficult thing to do in this era of increasing fees, costs of living and lack of the kind of support that the people increasing those fees got when they were students). The next largest group are carers – who really should be paid much more than they are for providing that care given the amount of unpaid benefit they PROVIDE the state in terms of services. As I’ve mentioned during discussions of UBI vs Job Guarantee Schemes (short version: do both), not everyone who cares for someone wants to turn that into a “job”, particularly if there’s even the hint of a risk that they could be reassigned to care for someone else – on the other hand, so many unpaid carers make do with so little support that both their and their cared for experience unmet needs that should be dealt with (perhaps via a National Care Service…) but in any case I can’t imagine that situation being made better by telling unpaid carers that they have to work or lose their benefits, especially when so many of them lose their benefits when they DO work.
We also see homemakers and early retirees in this “economically inactive” group which really shows the lie that this whole exercise is based on. We simply do not count the work of looking after a home as work and thus we devalue the existence of anyone who has spent their life doing that (usually women. Almost always women.). The very concept of GDP is based on the idea that a woman’s unpaid homemaking has a value of zero. Literally zero. The illustration I use is that if I clean my house and you clean your house, GDP is unaffected. But if you pay me £100 to clean your house and then I pay you that same £100 back to clean my house then no one has profited, the same houses are just as clean but now GDP is somehow £200 higher. Forcing homemakers to take a job instead might push the GDP line up but will it really result in more work being done?
All in Starmer is about to discover what previous governments did – that people are actually on the whole a pretty good judge of their own position in life and that the vast majority of people who aren’t working aren’t working for a very good reason. There just aren’t that many people in the “economically inactive” group who aren’t working, can work but who don’t want to work (in fact, that group is SO small in the dataset that it’s subject to sample size issues).
There may well be people who want to work but can’t. Someone who is ill but will eventually recover could well be supported back into work AFTER they recover and that recovery could well be sped along by improvements to health and care – but this isn’t a moral failure on the part of the person who is ill. Someone else might be able to work but not able to get that work (a job vacancy for a farmhand in Dumfries isn’t likely to be much use to a former oil engineer in Aberdeen) but that’s an economic rather than moral failure too.
And in neither case will they be helped by Starmer cutting their benefits as if he can continue previous Conservative government policy of starving people into submission or that any help folk are given has to be carefully micro-managed because the “fact” of their poverty is already evidence of their poor moral choices and judgement.
The solution is the same one as I’ve presented before. Trust people. There hasn’t been a Universal Basic Income study yet that has shown that it discourages people from working EXCEPT the people we probably would PREFER focus on something other than work if it was us (students, carers, parents). Nor has there been a case where giving people money resulted in them “wasting” it on things we think are only acceptable to spend on if we’re rich (and thus moral) enough. The case for a UBI is now beyond arguable and is now a moral imperative. In fact, a world of a UBI flips the “moral” case for work presented at the start of this article on its head. Rather than forcing people to find purpose in life through their labour like life is an open air work camp, UBI allows people the freedom to find purpose in their life – purpose that may include working (please donate to Common Weal to allow me and my colleagues to keep doing precisely that) but it equally may involve finding purpose in doing something other than work or doing something that someone else doesn’t consider to be work. Once we’ve done that, we can add in a Job Guarantee Scheme (as I say, we need both) to allow people to turn that freedom to work into an opportunity to work WITHOUT it becoming, as the Conservatives and now Starmer’s Labour would want, an obligation to work.
The Labour Party was founded on a principle of supporting workers but I think they’ve forgotten that that means they were founded to support working people (even as they’ve tied themselves in knots trying to include the “right” (read: morally upright) people in that definition and exclude others but not themselves), not to support people to work. They need to stop thinking of people as units of production who push the GDP line up (or who fail to do so). Once that happens, maybe they’ll start to understand where the problems really lie with the economy and will be able to actually start fixing them.
#benefits #carer #carers #mentalHealth #politics #UBI #UKPolitics #work
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BBC iPlayer - Question Time - 2024: 13/06/2024
The Tories are going to raise money by cutting the benefits bill. More like by cutting claimants including from life.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00204mf/question-time-2024-13062024
#BBCQT
#QuestionTime
#Tories
#DWP
#Deaths
#Benefits
#Welfare
#Claimants
#BenefitsClaimants -
Wrongly convicted #AndrewMalkinson using #FoodBank as he awaits payout
Exclusive: Man freed last year after [incorrectly serving] 17 years in jail says he is struggling to survive on #benefits while he pursues compensation
https://www.theguardian.com/law/article/2024/may/11/andrew-malkinson-compensation-food-bank
#ToryPoliciesInAction #UnderfundingPublicServices -
Wrongly convicted #AndrewMalkinson using #FoodBank as he awaits payout
Exclusive: Man freed last year after [incorrectly serving] 17 years in jail says he is struggling to survive on #benefits while he pursues compensation
https://www.theguardian.com/law/article/2024/may/11/andrew-malkinson-compensation-food-bank
#ToryPoliciesInAction #UnderfundingPublicServices -
Wrongly convicted #AndrewMalkinson using #FoodBank as he awaits payout
Exclusive: Man freed last year after [incorrectly serving] 17 years in jail says he is struggling to survive on #benefits while he pursues compensation
https://www.theguardian.com/law/article/2024/may/11/andrew-malkinson-compensation-food-bank
#ToryPoliciesInAction #UnderfundingPublicServices -
Wrongly convicted #AndrewMalkinson using #FoodBank as he awaits payout
Exclusive: Man freed last year after [incorrectly serving] 17 years in jail says he is struggling to survive on #benefits while he pursues compensation
https://www.theguardian.com/law/article/2024/may/11/andrew-malkinson-compensation-food-bank
#ToryPoliciesInAction #UnderfundingPublicServices -
Wrongly convicted #AndrewMalkinson using #FoodBank as he awaits payout
Exclusive: Man freed last year after [incorrectly serving] 17 years in jail says he is struggling to survive on #benefits while he pursues compensation
https://www.theguardian.com/law/article/2024/may/11/andrew-malkinson-compensation-food-bank
#ToryPoliciesInAction #UnderfundingPublicServices -
Rishi Sunak: I’ll slash benefits to fund plan to scrap national insurance | The Independent
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rishi-sunak-benefits-national-insurance-b2510044.html#Sunak
#Benefits
#BenefitCuts
#NationalInsurance
#NI
#Tories
#Hunt
#WarOnThePoor
#NationalInsuranceContibutions
#NICs
#Labour -
Life on benefits under Labour will not be an option, says Liz Kendall | Welfare | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/04/life-on-benefits-under-labour-will-not-be-an-option-says-liz-kendall#Benefits
#Sanctions
#NotInEducationEmploymentOrTraining
#NEET
#Kendall
#Labour
#Unemployment
#Unemployed
#BasicEducation
#Education
#MentalHealth
#WarOnDisabled
#WarOnThePoor
#Mind
#BenefitsAssessments
#InstituteForEmploymentResearch
#EmploymentSupport
#FluctuatingConditions
#Ableism -
Life on benefits under Labour will not be an option, says Liz Kendall | Welfare | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/04/life-on-benefits-under-labour-will-not-be-an-option-says-liz-kendall#Benefits
#Sanctions
#NotInEducationEmploymentOrTraining
#NEET
#Kendall
#Labour
#Unemployment
#Unemployed
#BasicEducation
#Education
#MentalHealth
#WarOnDisabled
#WarOnThePoor
#Mind
#BenefitsAssessments
#InstituteForEmploymentResearch
#EmploymentSupport
#FluctuatingConditions
#Ableism
