When Do We Start Calling These 'Depraved Areas'?

Children as young as 13 in the UK have been referred to a specialist clinic for a “devastating” bladder condition linked to sustained use of ketamine. Medics at Alder Hey children’s hospital in Liverpool opened the first ketamine clinic in the UK for young people amid a surge in urology problems linked to addiction of the drug. Now analysis of the first patients to use the service shows some are as young as 13, with most being girls and most living in deprived areas.

'Deprived'..? Think that's a typo!  

Excessive use of ketamine can cause serious health problems as the drug and its breakdown products sit in the bladder for a long time, where they can damage the lining and muscle tissue. Ketamine-induced uropathy – also known as ketamine bladder – is a severe and painful condition caused by the drug damaging the bladder, urinary tubes and kidneys. Symptoms include frequent urination, loss of bladder control and blood in the urine.

Lovely, it makes crack and heroin look like minor league habits. 

“By looking at factors such as age, where they live, their background and their life experiences, we can start to build a much clearer picture of who is being affected and how we can best support them. 

“This problem is preventable. Understanding more about the young people who are presenting to us is an important step towards preventing further harm,” Corbett said.

I think perhaps a little less understanding and a lot more condemnation would give better results! 

Analysis of the clinic’s first 60 patients by researchers at Alder Hey and Lancaster University showed their average age was 14, ranging from 13 to 15.Of the 60, 16 had autism or ADHD, or both. One in five had experience of the care system. Almost three-quarters (72%) had experienced emotional trauma during childhood.

Is the fact that they are all 'victims' of something what is preventing them being put into the criminal justice system, where they deserve to be, then? 

The clinic at Alder Hey takes a “non-judgmental” approach, Isba said. “We want to give young people a safe space to talk about what is happening in their lives and work with them to develop a plan to stop using ketamine and prevent further damage.”

Looks like it.  

Urban Areas Have Their Dangers Too, Love...

This bizarre headline is due to that most contentious issue for modern families, school places.

Laura has been told she will not be offered free transport to Helmsley Primary School, which her eldest daughter already attends, and is challenging the decision.At the heart of her case is the way North Yorkshire Council calculates a child’s nearest suitable school using the shortest available walking route.

And like everything councils do, it’s based on the easiest option. 

Laura believes the approach simply does not work for isolated rural communities.

Well, you chose to live in one, were you unprepared for the inevitable downside? 

“I understand that in an urban area, in towns and cities, the shortest available walking route probably works, and it probably works really well,” she said. “But I think for rural areas like where we are, it’s just not fit for purpose.” She says the route being used in her daughter's case crosses challenging moorland.

’Challenging moorland’? Your kid is walking to school, not delivering jewellery to a Dark Lord accompanied by your gardener! 

“In winter you’ve got the snow, and it is a grouse moor, so during shooting season you’ve got people up there shooting and in summer there's adders — and you’re expecting a four-year-old to walk up there.“Even with an adult, I still don’t think it’s safe. You just wouldn’t do it. Surely it’s a welfare issue.”

And in urban environments she’d have to deal with diverse youth machete fights, loose bloodsport dogs, road traffic (probably equally diverse and thus unlicensed) and peadophiles.  I’d take the adders any day. And grouse shooters will be aiming a little too high to bother a four-year-old.

Her experience is one of a number being highlighted by campaign group STAG as North Yorkshire Council continues to implement its revised home-to-school transport policy, which it introduced in a bid to reduce its annual school transport bill of more than £52m.

52mil? What are they using, Lamborghinis? 

How About 'No'!

BBC News should be on streaming sites and social media to justify a new universal levy, the head of the corporation has said.The BBC is predominantly funded by the £180 annual licence fee, which is currently under review. Director-general Matt Brittin, the former head in Europe of Google, believes the corporation is 'held back' by the fee, which is 'no longer fit for purpose', and has suggested a household levy could be an alternative funding option.

So, to combat the fact that fewer and fewer people are paying for your service (legitimately or not) you want to force everyone to pay for it instead by putting it on general taxation? Congratulations on beating big Hollywood stars, young socialists and trans men to the top of the entitlement charts.

He told the BBC's Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme: 'What we need to look at is the current model. 'You pay the licence fee if you watch live TV or you're on iPlayer. I'd like to see reform that allows us to be where audiences are. 'I think BBC content should be on Netflix, on YouTube, on TikTok, on Spotify, and Instagram, and everywhere where audiences are. 'Particularly news, actually, which I think is part of disinfecting misinformation. It's our job to be everywhere.'

The BBC claiming to be against misinformation is a sick joke. 

Mr Brittin clarified that the universal household bill is just one of a number of ideas that are being discussed during the renewal process. He said that the model has been used in many other countries to fund public media and would ensure a level of fairness.

Are you considering a subscription model, so those who want your service can buy it? That’s the fairest option, surely? 

And when asked why everybody should pay the proposed charge, Mr Brittin said: 'Ninety-four per cent of households every month are consuming BBC content. That's incredible, yet only 80 per cent are paying. 'So there's a fairness issue there in terms of how we fund the BBC and I think that the principle is if we want a BBC that's for everyone, then it needs to be funded by everyone, and how you get that modernisation is critical.'

I'm not as hopeful as Longrider that the green paper conclusions will be heeded in the face of such rapacious entittlement. What say you, Reader? 

Narrator: 'It Can't'

Certainly not if it listens to people who write to the 'Guardian':

Your youth unemployment editorial (18 September) sees the crisis clearly, but reaches for the wrong tools. Placements, apprenticeships and work coaches cannot conjure jobs that do not exist. We need macro solutions to macro problems. Youth unemployment is not a crisis of skills or geography. It is insufficient government deficit spending. There is not enough money circulating to employ everyone who wants to work and that is a policy choice, not an accident.

O..kay…. 

Macroeconomists divide the economy into three sectors: government, households and businesses, and the rest of the world.

That’s four sectors, isn’t it? I mean, I’m not too good at maths but…

One sector’s spending is another sector’s income. Put simply, government spending is income for the non-government sectors.

With the UK running a persistent current account deficit, money flows continuously abroad.

 I hesitate to encroach on Tim’s territory, but this doesn’t sound right even to me…

Indeed, unemployment has long been used deliberately as an inflation management tool. As the US economist Stephanie Kelton notes, orthodox economic policy assumes that a certain amount of unemployment is necessary.

So what should Labour do? Not pay employers £3,000 to hire someone that the market won’t touch (an admission that demand is absent), but become the employer directly. A job guarantee, publicly funded and locally administered, would offer anyone a job at a living wage doing socially useful work.

Who decides what constitutes ‘socially useful’ work? 

It is not welfare. It is work.

Simon Ripton Co-founder, Resilient Economy CIC

But not all their readers are insane: 

It doesn’t take a graduate qualification in economics to see that Rachel Reeves’s increase in employers’ national insurance contributions has reduced their ability to take on new people. She has also created a timebomb – as, by reducing the number of new people getting jobs, she has also reduced the number of people able to start paying into pensions.

Susan West Quorn, Leicestershire

What pensions? They won’t be worth claiming if Bodybags isn’t kicked out of No 10!