Katie Shoop

1 Nurse: It’s become a real problem in this area 2 Nurse: We’ve seen the whole community lost to addiction 3 Show a building sign posted: Westminster ‘X’ Addiction Clinic With various Westminster people or looking at their phones outside it Nurse: Ministers, Spads, Researchers… 4 Nurse: Most mornings we’ll get a call about someone acting strangely [Nurse on phone taking a call] Ok - we’ll be right over 5 Nurse: We just have a gentle chat [Nurses approach a minister –Robert Jenrick? - standing in the Palace of Westminster Minister: I understand your concerns… 6 Nurse: Are you OK love? Minister: Yes I’m just hearing legitimate concerns from real voters 7 Nurse: That’s a robot, a Nazi and a poorly-disguised Russian [Show that the people he is talking to are precisely these characters] Nurse 2: Give us your phone, love 8 Nurse: At the clinic we put them in a Grass-Touching Pod, with a real voter to talk to [We see them back at the clinic, holding the minister's head and pushing him into a glass isolation booth with a grass floor. And it is a baffled looking woman, on a chair, ready to talk to him.] 9 Minister: YOU MUST BE WORRIED ABOUT THE COMING CIVIL WAR [woman looks baffled] 10 woman: I just want a bus service Minister: LOOK AT MY FLAG [produces a St George's flag] [ends]

Question - if wealth taxes don’t work and raise only paltry amounts, how come whenever we start seriously discussing them rich people start pouring resources into trying to start race and class wars as a distraction?

Sumo stars goofing about at tourist locations seems a more fun way to celebrate England than any number of flags.

There are 69.23 million people in the UK.

Last year, 36,000 people arrived on small boats.

That’s a 0.052% increase to the population.

Not 10%. Not even 1%. Not even 0.1%.

0.052%.

If I baked a cake, that wouldn’t even be a crumb.

Why the fuck is it THE story-of-the-day in the UK, every day?

...which is not going to stop with M&S either, they're going to bombard any and all businesses with nuisance lawsuits and boycotts if a trans person is employed, it's economic warfare against a class of people to ensure that any trans person in the UK cannot make a living, and it won't stop there.

This was always the goal of bathroom bans, to fully push trans people from any semblance of public life, and it won't end there either, the "gender critical" project is currently trying to exert pressure over businesses that hire trans people in the UK, so that trans people are unemployable...

In charts: why Labour MPs are rebelling over Starmer’s welfare reforms The prime minister’s benefits overhaul would hit the UK’s poorest

Only a fraction of those due to lose benefits are likely to start working, said @pollardtom.bsky.social. According to @jrf-uk.bsky.social there aren't enough vacancies, especially ones suitable for disabled people or in parts of the country most affected by cuts. 7/ www.ft.com/content/51d2...

Making it harder to claim personal independence payments (PIP) will NOT support more people into getting jobs. PIP is there to support with the extra costs that come from being disabled. It can be claimed whether you are working or not. 6/

What's behind the rise in disability benefit claims Rising rates of disability colliding with greater financial hardship are pushing more people to seek support

We found that the vast majority of the increase in disability and incapacity benefits claims is down to two factors: rising numbers of disabled people and a rise in financial hardship. 4/ neweconomics.org/2025/05/what...

Would be remiss to not point out people are rightly countering me by highlighting other developed nations aren’t seeing a rise in disability benefit claims

However, the reason for the differences seems obvious to me when money is so tight for so many (see my post below) bsky.app/profile/nadi...

Another hypothetical scenario

You struggle with bipolar and have relapsed, but the waiting list to see a psychiatrist is a year. You’re employed, but on statutory sick pay right now which is too low to live on. So you claim PIP to survive costs while you wait for treatment.

Hypothetical scenario

Let’s say you have a disability and part-time job. Before the cost of living crisis, you were just about getting by. However, now all your bills are much higher because of inflation but you can’t take on more work because of your disability. So you claim PIP to help with that.

‘Why has the number of PIP claimants gone up since 2019?’, I keep seeing asked in SW1 like it’s a proper mystery

We have an aging population, we have had a pandemic which disabled people, and the cost of living has exploded in recent years!

If you live in the real world it’s not a mystery, surely!

Sending lots of love to fellow disabled people in the UK right now

We are being spoken about as if we’re a problem to be managed instead of human beings that make immense contributions to society

Whether we claim PIP or not, whether we’re in work or not, we deserve to be treated with respect

This is such an ableist take. Long Covid doesn’t turn anyone into a fascist or fascist sympathiser.

Cuts to international aid are having a devastating impact on the global HIV response. A recent study published in the Lancet HIV issued a stark warning: without urgent global action, we could see 10.8 million new HIV cases and nearly 3 million deaths by 2030.

Some U.S. media (such as the Washington Post here) trace U.S.-Iranian animosity back to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, conveniently forgetting that the CIA helped overthrow a democratically elected Iranian government in 1953, forcing Iranians to endure decades of the Shah’s brutal rule.

DMA statement - Durham Miners Gala and Reform UK Reform UK have chosen to criticise us publicly for not inviting them to the Gala. They obviously don’t understand how this works, so we will explain...

1)In July we will host the 139th Durham Miners Gala

Reform UK, who in the May elections won control of Durham County Council – have chosen to criticise us publicly for not inviting them to the Gala

They obviously don't understand, so we will explain...

This is Nick Clegg-post-tuition-fees level bad approval ratings. This is a cold, airless, lonely place in the nation's affections from which leaders do not often come back.

Interesting that this article doesn't mention what seems an increasingly obvious problem for LLMs - every new iteration is trained on data that has been increasingly poisoned with garbage from the previous iteration. The web is full of AI-generated nonsense, and that's now part of the input.

Polling shows Keir Starmer losing 5 points overall from 28% approval to 23% approval. He is always toxically unpopular with Reform (2% approval, from 4%) but managed to shed 17 points among Labour 2024 voters

This follows May elections, polling on 2 days after Monday's Immigration White Paper 12.5

Pretty big news out of North Texas, an epicenter for far-right schoolboard takeovers: Yesterday, the GOP in Tarrant County - a bellwether for the state - went 0-11 in the three largest towns; and seven school board candidates backed by the Christian nationalist Patriot Mobile PAC also lost.

This is certainly true for girls as well. And for boys to understand about girls: the messaging about girls' societal worth is appalling, and certainly that plays into boys' expectation of what's owed them. We are all dehumanized from birth, under this system.

It doesn't have to be and it really shouldn't be.

Also, this is only the case in a society that teaches straight teenage boys that their value can be determined by the number of sexual partners they have.

Not sure about raising funds (proportion of the UK public donating to charity continues to fall, grant funds increasingly competitive) but if you can create a business plan to wash its face you could set up a not-for-profit community interest company or a profit-sharing co-operative society?

Masking discourse is on again and I’ll just say if you see people masking when few others are it’s likely because they’ve determined that for them, in that setting, the benefit of not catching (or spreading) whatever’s going around is worth the cost of masking. It’s rarely more complicated than that

I can't see how anyone with a variable condition will be able to qualify for PIP now under these changes. It is hard enough as it is. Another blow for #pwME #pwLC

The New Nasty Party doesn't seem to give a sh*t about the 2 million of us who are literally punished by our bodies for any exertion

Ok well you seem determined to read bad motivations where there are none. This conversation is not doing my POTS any good and I’m sure it’s not helping yours either, so I’m going to disengage now. I hope you find some peace.

I believe that more voices shouting about this is helpful for tackling ableism, but if you have advice or requests for how newly-disabled people can join the fight differently I’d listen.

That doesn’t make past ignorance right, and I can understand why you’re frustrated. It’s shit that it’s taken a mass disabling event to wake up more of the public and medical professionals to this and I am genuinely sorry you’ve been experiencing this shit for such a long time.