I've heard from people in trans groups that part of the reason this work is being doing to collect data is because there are notions in the UK transphobia circles to ban trans affirming surgeries even for adults, arguing it is against the hypocratic oath (do no harm).
Never give ground to transphobes. They won't give up until trans people are eradicated.
Anecdotally, I can say that I know multiple trans people who have gone to Madrid, Spain for surgery, often to the same doctor, instead of getting treatment in the UK.
The backlogs in the UK can go as far as 10 years and be grueling and humiliating via the public route, sometimes requiring going through conversion therapy.
The private route is very expensive, double the price in Spain. In Spain I've heard is about £5k for top surgery. The recovery period can mean losing independence for weeks or months.
Still, many choose to do it. It could be avoidable if we hadn't banned HRT and puberty blockers for children. Instead they are forced to bear the brunt of societies failings.
However, a central option under consideration for young people is removing the health element of universal credit for claimants under 25, which has already been almost halved to £217 a month, and offering intensive support for people to get into work. The possibility of removing it for existing claimants – not just new ones – is being looked at.
One possible plan is for a separate regime to apply to the under-25 agegroup, with reduced or withdrawn entitlements – although those with the most severe and debilitating disabilities would not lose any money.
Officials have also been returning to the idea of cuts to the Motability scheme at a future budget, after axing tax breaks worth £300m. The scheme allows disabled people to use their Pip benefit to lease new cars for three years.
I don't think I have to say this, but PIP is not a benefit linked to employment, age or income. The reason being it's to combat the costs disabled people face over a led people. It's about fairness. Putting conditions on it inherently creates an unfair system.
The idea that restricting it for under 25s is pure discrimination. I happen to know a lot of people in their 20s with disabilities that prevent them from working. How exactly does it make sense for you to cut their lifeline to encourage them to work?
You can say "most severe and debilitating disabilities would not lose any money", but who will be the judge of that? "Sorry, we don't believe your disability is severe enough for you to receive support". Disabled people should not have to sue their councils and governments to get access to the care they need, yet that already happens even before these changes come into effect. This will only make it worse.
Why the hell would you give a language model the wheel of a car?
They don't even understand the concept of time and space. Some of them can parse an image, but typically only enough to pull text from it, and extremely slowly.
It's like asking an overweight English teacher to play pro football.
We built visual recognition machine learning systems for this purpose.
One interesting note: sometimes disabled people are kept in housing that is not accessible for years, requiring social care that they would not otherwise need.
You could reduce the amount of spend on social care by building accessible social housing and offering it to disabled people, and this increase in independence would likely improve the mental health of those people, allowing them to contribute to society in whatever way they can.
Unfortunately these resources are typically granted by charities, rather than the government, so they don't have a lot of money to start with.
Obligatory Simpsons meme
I'll take "we can't govern", please.
Trying to make it easier to get jobs is good and all, we definitely need more and better entry-level jobs, but there are some people who cannot work because they are carers, parents or disabled.
This administration has continued to talk about cutting support for disabilities, after doing exactly that under Starmer. What that does is make disabled people homeless as they have to choose between housing and medicine or food. They are unable to make it out fo the house anymore, so they can't work. It's way more expensive than just giving people support.
People with mental health issues, the ones most targetted, have their help taken away or denied, preventing them from being able to recover and hold a job.
If the administration really wanted people to get back to work, they would vastly increase the funding and availability of mental health services and the NHS. They would make easier to get benefits and housing so you don't get stuck in a beurocratic spiral instead of getting better.
A healthy public is a productive one.
I just don't trust the current Labour. I called Labour under Starmer "Forced Labour" and a change in Leader does not feel like it is enough. Shabana Mahmood and Wes Streeting still hold positions of power, is this really a new government? So far, it's better than Starmer, but disabled people, trans people and poor people always fall through the cracks or are actively abused. I'll believe this administration is different when I see it.
What's the longest single word your can type with that keyboard? Best I can do is "yucky".
It has varied. I used to keep them 1-2 years when they used to improve a lot year-to-year. The last 2 phones I've had 3 years each.
After I'm done with it, I hand my phone over to my brother, who runs it into the ground over the course of the next 3 or so years, until it's almost unusably slow. My brother does the shower thing too, but less often. Maybe 30% of the time and less steamy.
It's possible that there could be gradual, over time damage. Rust growing until it forms a short. But that's not been my experience.
Ultimately, it's up to you if you want to take the risk, but given how I treated mine, if you even did this half as often as I did, you're probably fine.
I didn't mention this above, but I sometimes also used the phone inside the shower. Clicking the next video or checking a message notification. Maybe 1 in 8 days.
I've also sometimes washed the crud off the phone under the sink, rather than my normal approach with isopropyl alcohol. The worst I'd get is a notification saying I couldn't charge for a bit, or the speaker sounding funny for half an hour or so.
You might call me crazy, but I don't like to baby my stuff. I paid for water resistance, I'm going to make use of it.
I've been told that caffeine is toxic to cats, doesn't that make this somewhat dangerous?
Yeah I put money in a Help To Buy ISA for 8 years, only to find out that the government scheme only applies for first time homes under £200k... How many homes nowadays are under £200k?! Mine sure wasn't.