There are other ways into the Black Sea…

Edit: rather than just downvoting, why not consider that the Danube exists and is plenty of patrol boats/frigates based up and down it by Ukraine friendly nations.

It’s not a random string. 7.62x54r is a bullet calibre.

Edit; typo

Yes. This is a inflammatory headline purely to try and push an agenda.

There was literally a poll a couple of months ago that showed something like 80% of Ukrainians were in favour of not having elections.

Not to even mention that Ukraine is under Marshall Law, and per their laws disallows elections. And don’t even get me started on the entire premise of running elections in a country where a quarter of the landmass is under enemy occupation and the logistics of getting votes from 100s of thousands of deployed troops and the serious security concerns of the election itself from Russian attacks.

In my opinion Newsweek have just outed themselves here and the question is for who?

Ryan McBeth has done a fairly succinct video on it.

It’s very high level and skips a lot of nuance, but you get the idea.

https://youtu.be/Azs7As3MYFU?si=UrUGjWbh1tpyNM5J

I’m currently not sure how I feel about a proper official diagnosis at this stage. With the stigma around mental health illnesses 8 worry it’ll just be used against me. My journey with this is still very young (read: days) so a lot of stuff I’m finding out quite fresh and this particular nugget of info was as soon as this very morning.

There are other routes you can go through such as charities, the main one being ‘Right to Choose’ who support you with how to approach your GP, templates for letters, what to say to the various people you need to speak to and such. They also act as a tool for you to find support groups, specialists etc etc.

Sounds amazing, right? Hell yeah. Except they’re so utterly overflowing they’ve been closed to new referrals/applicants since the end of August.

2 weeks too late. Honestly, man. You can’t make this stuff up.

I think that the biggest issue is that in many places (the UK is a personal example), the services are so utterly over stretched and overflowing capacity that there is literal years long waiting lists in some parts of the country.

In York area, unless you become a priority case due to being a risk of self/other harm then they have a waiting list of over 4000 people, with the capacity to only process 160ish per year. I’ll let you figure out that maths by yourself. It’s fucking hopeless. So with an official diagnosis effectively impossible to self ‘diagnose’ is your only option and you have to hope that the people around you are supportive enough to trust you and help regardless.

Not to mention the difficulty in even getting a referral to an assessment for the diagnosis. The steps in place are practically brick walls to us with the requirements needed to fulfill. You need to get an appointment with your GP (good luck since it’s not an emergency), then you need to hope they have some understanding/experience enough to identify if you would be suitable for a referral, then you need to convince them you need a referral, then you have to wait for the specialist to pick you up and be put on the wait list, blah blah blah.

Why go through all that energy when you can just ‘diagnose’ yourself and carry on with struggling the way you always have. After all, as long as you keep your routine it’ll be fine…right?

Except it fucking isn’t, but what other choice is there?

I’m of the opinion that COVID is no longer news worthy beyond the minority it impacts. No different to the flu or various other low risk (to the vast majority) common community transmitted illnesses. It just is now. We don’t get news articles written and publicised at this level for a new flu variant or vaccine, so I don’t see the point for COVID.

Edit: some good discussion in the responses to this. But also some utterly dog shit ad hominem and trying to put words in my mouth. If only they bothered to actually read what I wrote.

I strongly believe that anyone who scoff at the idea that cyclists should be held to the same rules and standards as cars or who moan about cycle infrastructure should be forced to experience close passes themselves. See how quickly their tone changes.