(tw suicide)Listen, I know tumblr only cares about American news, but this is really fucking tragic, and if this doesn’t get an coverage I will be incredibly angry.
The conservative’s bedroom tax has actually led to a woman taking her own life. Let me repeat that for you; a peice of government legislation had had such a detrimental impact on someone’s life that they wrote letters, packed up their things, and walked into the M4 in front of a lorry. The bedroom tax has only be in place for the last 5 weeks.
For those of you that don’t know, the bedroom tax isn’t technically a tax; if you’re living in a rented property, and have an extra bedroom, you’ll have to pay a certain amount of money back to the government. Children under the age of 12 are expected to share with all their siblings, children under 16 are expected to share with their siblings of the same gender. The government placed no limits on how many children could be expected to share a room. It would have saved the government £490 million a year; the UK loses £5.2 Billion a year in tax evasion alone. [citation]
Stephanie Botrill, from Solihull, had lived in her house for 18 years, and her two children had, relatively recently moved into their own properties, one of them within the last year. She previously paid a rent of £320 a month, and bedroom tax would have meant she paid £400; she was having to starve herself to afford this. Let me reiterate that for you; a woman was having to go without food because of a cruel tory policy. The house the council offered her was nowhere near where she currently lived, and 30 minutes walk from the nearest bus station; she would have been nowhere near her family and friends. To make matters worse, the council said she’d have to pay for any damage to the house, which would have exceeded the £2000 she was given to move house.
Stephanie had been saying since the policy came in how she couldn’t cope. She even went to the GP, but only got sleeping pills. In the end, it all got too much, and she wrote letters to her children, grandson, friends, and neighbors and walked into the M4, dying instantly.
The Sunday People has photos of the letters, but I won’t post them because they broke my heart, but if you want to see them, they’re here
As well as this, her family was struggling to pay for her funeral, so the Sunday People contributed. We live in a country where we can pay £10 million pounds for the funeral of a woman who called Nelson Mandela a terrorist, but someone’s grandmother kills herself because she can’t afford to live in the house she’d lived in for 18 years. I hope everyone feels thoroughly disgusted.
The worst thing is, Stephanie’s story has a more extreme ending, but it’s fairly typical of a bedroom tax victim case. Although the tory’s policies targeted towards those on benefits claim to help to push people into work, and end a ‘something for nothing’ benefits system (and the whole thing reeks of deserving and undeserving poor) this is not the case at all.
Take a guess at what percentage of the people receiving benefit in the UK are unemployed. Guess. I was way, way out. The actual breakdown is this 42.3% elderly, 20.8% low income, 18.4% families, 15.5% sick/disabled, 2.6% unemployed. Only 2.6% of those on benefits in this country are unemployed.
In addition to this, the people most likely to have spare bedrooms are older people, who’s children have left home. They are not people living off the tax payer, whatever that means, they are people who have lived their lives in cheap rental property who’s children have left home, and so rely on their friends, like my Nana does, for company. And David Cameron and his tory cronies want to move these people away from their communities, their friends, the brick and mortar they’ve made their home, because they have the cheek to have a couple of spare bedrooms.
I hope you’re angry, because I’m really fucking angry.
You know who has got spare bedrooms? David Cameron, who got lucky enough to be born to a millionaire and the daughter of a Baronet, and his wife Samantha who’s father is also a Baronet. His personal wealth has been estimated at £30 million, inherited from off-shore tax havens. Like I said earlier, the UK loses £5.2 Billion a year from men like Cameron. To misquote Obama, Cameron’s not the solution, he’s the problem.
Meanwhile, more people like Stephanie Botrill, hounded from the home she’d raised her children in, and the community where all her friends live, will probably walk in front of lorries.
To cut a long story short, if you even think about voting Tory in 2015, I hope you think about Stephanie Botrill, and I hope you never sleep again.
“You mean the generation that paid three times as much for college to enter a job market with triple the unemployment isn’t interested in purchasing the assets of the generation who just blew an enormous housing bubble and kept it from popping through quantitative easing and out-and-out federal support? Curious.”
When comments are better than the article, Atlantic edition (“The Cheapest Generation: Why Millennials arent’ buying cars or houses, and what that means for the economy”)
Every time someone says we’re a lazy and entitled generation I’m going to show them this
They should be happy most of us haven’t moved to the moon yet
That actually sounds like a good idea at this point
(via setfabulazerstomaximumcaptain)
(Source: bostonreview)
the only way i’m gonna care about this pointless and anticlimactic “The Doctor’s Name!!!” story arc is if someone in the Doctor Who season finale is all:
“After centuries of traveling through space and time, we have finally found the Doctor’s true name: CLARA OSWIN OSWALD.”
then the Doctor freaks out and runs into a wall and regenerates into Clara, who’s all, “Huh, I guess this is why I kept having weird dreams about past lives!” and suddenly the Doctor’s creepy, patronising attitude towards Clara takes on a hilariously incestuous new meaning.
then then entirety of season 8 is just Clara-the-Doctor going on cool space adventures, with a bunch of cool new assistants.
Motherfucking Co-Signed.
Chris Person fixed TIME’s new magazine cover. Now it’s accurate. (TIME version #1, Person edit #2)
Update: And here’s another stellar contribution from @direlog
EXCELLENT
From @EARNEST_CYBORG9
I’m so mad. I’m back living at home because my mom NEEDS me. You think I WANT to sleep on a couch that’s not big enough for me and barely make enough to get by?
You don’t know my life, Time. Get off my back. and kindly fuck off.
Between this and that Atlantic article I read last night, I’m about ready to spit hot venomous magma. Youth in goddamned revolt.
I just had a huge conversation about this crying over this crap, my situation, and how so many other people my age are in the same boat. I’ve been crying for the past 3 years about it. And it’s still not getting any better.
we’ll get jobs and our own places to live when we pry them from your cold, dead hands
the millennial problem:
two millennials are barreling towards adulthood at 95 miles per hour. one of them has been coated with the most extravagant paint money can buy, but their steering apparatus is locked up until that coat’s paid off; the other’s brakes have been ripped out mid-trip, the thief yelling, “what, did you think you were entitled to these?” over their shoulder. half the tracks have been torn away to build second, third, and fifth garages for trains that are no longer running. solve for x.
tell me again how the song goes — i’m so inadequate i might forget. if we’re not informed enough then we’re apathetic morons, but if we’re too informed we’re oversensitive reactionaries; if we think we deserve more then we’re narcissistic cutthroats, but if we’re happy where we are then we’re passionless layabouts. if we’re making money then we’re materialistic automatons who only care about stuff and don’t value the important things in life, but if we’re broke then we’re disgusting, spoiled children who expect everything in life to be a handout. if we spend too much time with technology then we’re antisocial, soulless zombies who spell the end for human interaction as we know it, but if we spend too much time together we’re a dangerous, unstable element who should get real jobs already. we’re a disgrace; we’re a embarrassment; we’re a mistake; we’re a disappointment; we’re not what you wanted, however you slice it, and all of it’s our fault, right? right? oh, god, am i getting the melody wrong?
here’s what i propose, everyone who wants to open their twenty-four-hour news cycles or their pork-barrel mouths, who wants to use their filthy fucking hands to tear this generation a new one: you try it. you come up with a picture of the generation you seem to want: one that’s neither apathetic nor engaged, one that’s neither ambitious nor content, one that’s neither rich nor poor, one that’s neither technologically connected nor interpersonally involved. don’t forget to factor in the variables — the years of economic instability; the globalization of everything from communication to art; the hugely stratified individual experiences we’ve had based on things like race, sexuality, gender, and socioeconomics, on things that come with whole histories of systemic bullshit; the overwhelming burden of student debt that so many of us face; the fact that hindsight is 20/20. you write the formula for the millennial that will shut you the fuck up about all the things we should be and aren’t, about all the ways we’ve failed you, and then you bring it to me. i promise you, i will try it. anything for a little peace and quiet, right? anything to stop hearing it everywhere i go: that voice saying that, at twenty-three, i might already have flunked out of life.
(both millennials crash, spectacularly and yelling for help, into the station that never built a platform for them to pull into. onlookers stand by and shake their heads, wondering about the deplorable state of trains today. that’s what happens when nobody does the fucking math.)
TIME’s new cover makes me so mad I could write essays about it, but instead I’m going to keep job hunting since in today’s world a university degree means nothing and therefore like much of my generation, I’m stuck choosing between minimum wage jobs and internships that I can’t afford to accept in an attempt to pay off my tens of thousands of dollars worth of student debt.
I’d be interested in reading this article to see exactly what makes us entitled and lazy. Are we lazy because more of us are completing high school and going to college than ever before? Are we entitled because our standard of living is declining? Do we live with our parents because we’re too slothful to leave or is because our education costs are getting steeper and steeper while we’re getting less and less aid?
Tell us, Time Magazine, about how we’re narcissistic little slugs when we’re faced with an economic crisis that resulted in a lowering of our standard of living, an increase in tuition costs and how when we get out of our very expensive schools, more and more of us are going to end up working minimum wage jobs.
Rape has become endemic in South Africa, so a medical technician named Sonette Ehlers developed a product that immediately gathered national attention there. Ehlers had never forgotten a rape victim telling her forlornly, “If only I had teeth down there.”
Some time afterward, a man came into the hospital where Ehlers works in excruciating pain because his penis was stuck in his pants zipper.
Ehlers merged those images and came up with a product she called Rapex. It resembles a tube, with barbs inside. The woman inserts it like a tampon, with an applicator, and any man who tries to rape the woman impales himself on the barbs and must go to an emergency room to have the Rapex removed.
When critics complained that it was a medieval punishment, Ehlers replied tersely, “A medieval device for a medieval deed.”
- Half the Sky, Nicholas Kristof
REBLOGGING THIS. x1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
A medieval device for a medieval deed - yes.
WON’T ANYBODY THINK OF THE RAPISTS?!
It’s neat, and certainly clever. But I’m not exactly a fan. Not yet. I think I really need to hear about how it’s actually working out for the women who use it before I decide what I think.
Because my first thought is that this is just another #safetytipsforladies. It’s practical, but it’s still something a woman is expected to do in order to prevent/stop her own rape. And the onus of preventing/stopping rape should never be on women. “Oh, your ‘rapist’ was never caught? Why weren’t you wearing the barbed female condom, huh? He’d have to go to a hospital to get it removed, you know. It’s really the best idea ever. I don’t know why you were stupid enough not to wear one. That’s just asking for it.” Etc.
But I’m also just not confident how useful it’s going to be in practice, which is why I really want to hear some data about its use. Is the pain generally debilitating, allowing the rape victim a better chance to escape? Or is it common for rapists who encounter this device to become more violent than otherwise? What measures (if any) do hospitals/doctors generally take (or are required to take) when they get a patient with one of these hooked onto his penis (eg, calling the police or similar)?
Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea. But I won’t be convinced until I see some data.
that guy’s phone in the first panel became more high tech in tony stark’s presence
omg it really did.
HAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHA
omfg
Everyone knows someone who can fix computers via the laying on of hands. Your computer can be fucked six ways from Sunday, and this person just sits down, hits “enter,” and says, “I dunno, it looks OK to me.” And it IS. In extreme cases, he or she will need to turn the computer off, then back on. Regardless of how many times you did that yourself, it won’t work unless this specific kind of person does it. They go through life thinking the rest of us are techno-morons, not suspecting that they have Powers.
Tony Stark started life with a natural 20 in whatever skill that is, and he’s been grinding it for YEARS.
Yes, he can upgrade a cellphone to a smartphone with his mere presence.
“Tony Stark started life with a natural 20” just killed me.
What I also find hilarious here is that there are dozens of media professionals here shoving mics in Tony’s face and pointing cameras at him and he’s talking straight to the only guy who’s recording this on his phone??
(Source: fuckyeahgarybarlow)
malicelegrow asked: I was actually thinking EVERYONE in the series would be gender-swapped, making it even weirder. Try to go to bed thinking about THAT! >:D
This has totally BLOWN MY MIND!
I’ve been thinking about a full genderswap BZG all day at work. How much would it stay the same? What would have to change because it’s too weird to imagine these characters as the opposite gender??
Uncle John trying to be a strong father-figure for David, even though he had never married or planned on having kids; schoolteacher Edward Clark allegedly abused several of the criminally insane students at St. Lyman’s School for Girls; most beautiful man in the world Nabhanyu spurns guildswoman Edanica’s fickle advances (because she only seems interested in him when she needs an apple from the Tree of Life); Valerie getting upset at school when Mean Boys gossip about David??
And then there’s the ghosts! An old man in the woods claiming to be a wizard to attract children before garroting them; the massive Father Megiddo who teaches his disciples how to commune with death; Plague, the young woman who was driven out of town for spreading a disease, starting with the preacher’s son who had just asked her to marry him; Cagey trapped and hunted by his insane, musket-wielding grandmother?
I want to read the whole series with a genderswap now! It would be EXTREMELY INTERESTING. I know there’s not much fic around for Bizenghast, but I really hope someone is inspired by the David and Valerie illustration to write a bit of this universe!
I thought it would be fun to do a gender swap of Dinah and Vincent, so here are David and Valerie! XD
I was messing around with the idea of doing a short gender-swap ashcan story of them, sort of like Adventure Time with Fiona and Cake, while I’m working on the next Riddle Road. What do you think? Of course I’d have to mix in a lot of comic-style content along with the story, because what’s the point of witnessing gender-swapped Bizenghast if you can’t SEE them? XD
Tried to go to bed, but I can’t stop thinking about genderswapped Di and Vi! I think the tone of the whole series could end up being a lot different if it was David and Valerie all along. Like, expectations for a traumatized child might be the same right after the accident, but a traumatized boy would end up being treated differently than Dinah was. Aunt Jane’s floundering attempts at mothering him would be about the same, I think, but Dr. Morstan’s approach would probably be radically different. (Probably it a lot of ways it shouldn’t be, but I’m yet to be convinced he was a very good psychiatrist anyway.)
Valerie’s protective instinct would read completely differently, as would David’s affinity for sewing his own clothes, assuming that these character traits remain the same. I suspect that it would take more work for Bali-Lali to seem genuinely threatening (to the reader) when she’s threatening a young man. More work to make David seem fragile than it took for Dinah.
On that note, I’d be less interested in seeing him recover from that fragility and learn to embrace his power than I was in seeing Dinah do these things. And even though I’m sure her death would be just as jarring and handled just as honestly as Vincent’s was, I’d probably still feel like Valerie had been fridged. (And then the series would be a total sausage fest without her.)
Though, yeah. I’d like to see Edrear hopelessly infatuated with David. /shallow
On the other hand, sudden-onset genderswap? Oh, I believe that would be non-stop delightful. Especially if Edaniel can’t figure out what’s wrong. Like, he sees everyone freaking out and genuinely does not understand why. Something’s different… but what could it be??
