UK gets 2nd-last place for Mental Health – why?

Thanks to class privilege, predator capitalism and ‘neoliberalism’ government in the UK feels like a vicious legal scam exploiting us.

from thefreeonline on 18th May 2024 by GeorgeMonbiot

The Day That Never Comes

The news should have stopped us in our tracks. Astonishingly, however, it was scarcely reported here. The latest map of mental wellbeing published by the Global Mind Project reveals that, out of the 71 countries it assessed, the United Kingdom, alongside South Africa, has the highest proportion of people in mental distress – and the second worst overall measure of mental health (we beat only Uzbekistan). Mental wellbeing has plummeted in the UK further than in any comparable nation. How was this not headline news?

More importantly, why has it happened? The Global Mind Project blames smartphones and ultra-processed food. They doubtless play a role, but they’re hardly peculiar to the UK. I think part of the reason is the sense that life here is, visibly and obviously, spiralling backwards.

There was a time when almost everyone in the UK believed the following promises. That a rising economic tide would lift all boats. That everybody would have a good home. That drudge work would diminish and jobs would become more interesting. That we would enjoy greater economic security and more leisure time.

That educational attainment would keep rising across all social classes. That our healthcare and health would inexorably improve. That the UK would become ever cleaner and greener. That governance and democratic engagement would get better by the year.

We could easily have had all of these things. A vast amount of money has flushed through this country. Science has advanced by leaps and bounds; health and labour-saving technologies have greatly improved; we know exactly how to build good homes, treat sewage and improve democracy.

Instead (literally, in the case of our rivers) almost everything has gone to shit. The five giant evils identified in 1942 by William Beveridge, who helped design the welfare state, have returned with a vengeance. He called them “want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness”. His paternalistic language translates today into poverty, morbidity, educational exclusion, wretched housing and crumbling infrastructure, and bad employment or an inability to work.

As they come thundering back, the five evil giants have brought some friends to the party: environmental chaos, extreme political dysfunction and misrule, impunity for the powerful and performative cruelty towards the powerless, and state-sponsored culture wars to distract us from the rest of the horror show.

Only ‘two countries’ MIGHT survive nuclear war after ‘5 billion die in 72 hours’, says expert

Journalist Annie Jacobsen says that ‘most of the world will be covered in sheets of ice’.

from thefreeonline 15 May 2024, by Anish Vij by Ladbible.com at Antinuclear

There is a chance that around five billion people will die in just 72 hours in the event of nuclear war.

Though I’m sure you read the headline beforehand and are well prepared for some depressing insight into the future of humanity.

In this case, we have Annie Jacobsen to thank, an investigative journalist, New York Times bestselling author, and a 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist.

The 56-year-old from Connecticut, US, has spent years researching the possible effects of nuclear war and she claims that there are only two countries where you might, I repeat, might survive.

The reason being that nuclear attacks would cause a thick smoke from burning fires to spread across the three continents, ultimately causing a mini ice-age.

This would most likely kill five billion of the eight billion people on earth within 72 hours.

She explained on Steven Bartlett’s Diary Of A CEO podcast: “Most of the world, certainly the mid-latitudes would be covered in sheets of ice …places like Iowa and Ukraine would be just snow for 10 years.

“Agriculture would fail, and when agriculture fails people just die.

“On top of that you have the radiation poisoning because the ozone layer will be so damaged and destroyed that you couldn’t be outside in the sunlight – people will be forced to live underground.”

Jacobsen said that Professor Brian Toon, a leading expert on climate and atmospheric science, told her that only two countries could potentially survive a nuclear winter – New Zealand and Australia, who can ‘sustain agriculture’.

The expert also opened up about the story of former US Secretary of Defence Bill Perry and the idea of a nuclear war happening by accident.

“He was on the night watch during the Carter Administration … he was told by the National Military Command Centre, which is the bunker beneath the Pentagon, that there were ballistic missiles on the way from Soviet Russia,” she said.

“This was confirmed by the nuclear bunker beneath Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska the STRATCOM (Strategic Command) bunker.

“Not only were intercontinental ballistic missiles flying at the United States but there were sub-launched ballistic missiles coming at the United States. It was a massive motherlode of warheads.

“Within a matter of minutes he got word that it was a mistake – how does a mistake like that happen?

“What he told me was that there was a VHS tape of a simulated attack by the Soviet Union against the United States and the VHS tape had mistakenly been inserted into a machine in the nuclear bunker beneath the Pentagon and because it is linked to STRATCOM it was seen in both places.

Perry said to me it looked real because it was meant to look real.”