Landlords, city councils, please, no more of this:
Don’t dump your rubbish on tenants. Don’t force tenants to enjoy their summer weekend barbecue surrounded by your rubbish. They can’t afford to have it removed for you.
And no more accidental pulling up of flowers sowed by tenants.
Let them garden!
I just had an e-mail from Adam at the UK charity Sense, for disabled people, about the parents of autistic children.
Autistic people experience the world very differently from mainstream people. They interact with it very differently. The sensory information their brains receive and how their brains deal with that input, it is all very different from what happens in the brains of mainstream people.
Autistic people see, hear and feel differently.
In my opinion, it is wrong to call all autistic adults and children “disabled” unless you stress that the “disablement” mostly refers to the constraints that society imposes on the lives of autistic children and adults.
Society expects all of us to think and behave in a certain way and make largely the same choices. That means that society is flawed because this is an irrational expectation. Ask any digital nomad or vanlifer how traditional “get a job” (“for a lifetime so you’ll have a good pension, too”) people respond to their decision to live life differently and you’ll get a sense of what I mean.
When parents of autistic children state that their child is different, believe them and accept that as a fact. Dont call them paranoid. Don’t tell them that they are just bad at parenting.
But there’s something else that we have to remember.
Until very recently, I knew nothing about autism and was convinced I had never known anyone who’s autistic. After I started reading up about autism, I discovered that I had in fact since 1982 known a woman who’s autistic. She’s meanwhile confirmed that and she too had only learned recently that she is autistic. Then, to my astonishment, I discovered that I know another person who’s autistic, someone who I first met in 1984. Both people are university-educated and have what is called “high-functioning autism”.
The first one deals with auditory overload from people talking by filtering out that external input, shutting off the gateway to the input internally some way. (This causes frustration for mainstream people because nothing they say gets through. They simply cannot get through to her.) The second one responds with irritation and deals with it by walking away and going into a separate room, shutting the door to external auditory input quite literally. (This too can cause frustration, but also and probably mostly in the autistic person.)
Until you spend enough time with autistic people in private, you rarely get to see that – and in which ways – they are different, because they have learned to “mask” from a young age.
Almost like with DID (dissociative identity disorder, which is something very different), the person who goes out into the world to interact with it is not necessarily the same “person” you’d get to see if you were to observe an autistic person relaxing at home. Masking = trying to look like everyone else and hiding that you are different. (Why? To avoid friction.)
If you want to have some idea of how masking works, just picture yourself interacting with the CEO of the company at which you work versus interacting with your two-year-old or your husband or wife at home or at the supermarket when you’re out shopping. Your behavior toward the CEO will be quite different from how you deal with your child, your husband or your wife.
Don’t tell the parent of an autistic child that he or she is a bad parent or just plain paranoid. That would be you making an ass of yourself.
Read Karla’s story: https://www.sense.org.uk/blog/four-things-you-shouldnt-say-to-a-parent-of-a-disabled-child/
If you want to take your understanding one step further, think about whether wanting to eradicate autism from the world could be like wanting to eradicate giraffes because you like cattle and are used to dealing with cattle.
I just had this e-mail from Calum at Crisis. I was replying to him, and then I remembered that I was asked to share the story. Calum already knows what’s what. It’s other people who need to hear this.
This is what I had typed up for Calum:
Continue readingSister stand up
For what you believe
I hear anarchy
in the way you speak
Teach her not to give up
Only how to seek
Ain’t no anarchy
in the way they cheat
Sister stand up
for what you believe
Fight the power
Or die at their feet
I know they don’t see what you see
But don’t fight the people
For being sheep
God are the men who make you pay
God are the men who force your way
Play God is the image that he made
To make you obey
Play God Play God
He plays god
He plays god
Brother stand up
Admit to what you do
This complex ain’t helping me or you
Changing the world starts with you
Don’t tell me you don’t know what you do
Brother listen up
She’s tryna tell you
This system’s failed us both it’s true
Time to wise up
You know it’s overdue
Stuck in limbo can’t follow through
God are the men who make you pay
God are the men who force your way
Play God is the image that he made
To make you obey
Play God Play God
He plays god
He plays god
A report by the Hastings Center.
Thirty people, two communities.
£1,600. Now we’re talking. Let’s end systemic poverty in England. Let’s end structural inequality.
Everybody deserves to be able to meet basic needs and live without financial worries and the related consequences.
This represents how the various animal species, including humans, should get along with each other on the planet.
Read the report and find out what is needed: https://www.autism.org.uk/what-we-do/news/education-report-2023
Did you know that autism.org.uk also provides training and education?
Continue readingSunshine, trees, flowers, a calmly preening great blue heron and Mr and Mrs Coot teaching their four toddlers what to do for food.
Very few pigeons here nowadays. Jackdaws have taken up their place.
Before, when I was growing up, sparrows were abundant. So we did what we could to eradicate them, after which the descendants of the pigeons that we once took from their sea cliffs flourished.
Ill health is not a crime. Neither is neurodivergence or being deaf or in a fugue state or just plain devastated and exhausted and too worn out to care about who can hear you cry in agony.
That the NHS is badly underfunded is not the Met’s fault.
This is what England’s class system looks like in real life.
This is a private patio where people like to sit in the summer and enjoy a barbecue. Yes, literally.
But these are ordinary people without any clout. Lower class.
(This includes people like me too, yes, in England.)
Unable to get any support with this from Portsmouth City Council – including Gerald Vernon-Jackson, the Lib Dem city council leader – I eventually demolished the mattresses myself. Mattresses out in the open not only are an eyesore, they can get really moldy and smelly.
As it had become sheer impossible for me to do much high-end work, tackling the rubbish hands-on gave me something to do, too.
In case you still wonder, yes, Gerald Vernon-Jackson was fully aware of this.
I provided him with copies of photos and with copies of letters sent to Grant Murphy by recorded postal mail or special delivery.
I enquired here and there how much it would cost to get the fridges removed, but I couldn’t afford it, certainly not right away. (A hilarious fairly standard response to “I don’t have the money” is “no problem”. 😂)
Next, I ordered a bunch of signs and stickers in an attempt to put a stop to the rubbish dumping. (It’s helped.) I also put a webcam in my office window. Below are screenshots of some of my order confirmations.
The rubbish dumping was actually started by Grant Murphy’s people after the police interfered when there was illegal drugs activity in one of the front three dwellings.
Once you dump rubbish, it encourages others to do the same. Everybody knows that.
I had been trying to address this for many years. I repeatedly had offered to help Grant Murphy’s people with this, too. To no avail.
See also
and
https://angelinasouren.com/2023/04/30/my-battle-with-the-establishment-in-portsmouth/
This latter post has more photos of dumped rubbish as well as a screenshot of a communication with Hampshire Fire & Rescue.
This is a paper by a woman who couldn’t get a pupillage (traineeship), which she needed so that she could become a barrister – not even when a successful business man did his best to arrange one for her – because England’s class barriers ran too deep for both their humble beginnings.
(Until the entrepreneur stepped in and stepped up, she was actually working at a betting shop.)
So she became a legal scholar.
Her field is legal geography.
(vegan)
A good development. A result of the pandemic.
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20230522-how-the-perfect-job-candidate-has-changede
An e-mail from John Devine, senior attorney at the NRDC, in my inbox:
https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/sackett-v-environmental-protection-agency/
Some explanation:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-454_4g15.pdf
Interesting bioethics research into the distinction between treatment and enhancement:
Against Fieldsports Channel Ltd
Congratulations, Chris!
Full judgement:
What is the story?
The Intercept:
https://theintercept.com/2022/09/13/china-tibet-police-dna-thermo-fisher/
The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/19/us-companies-mass-dna-collection-tibet/
When we see someone who has a highly visible impairment, all we tend to see is the impairment. I used to be like that too.
Disabled people are people like anyone else, though. Some are kind, some aren’t, some carry grudges, others have a wealth of wisdom.
Continue readingHe’s here
I mentioned that the other day. Here is an example.
https://www.statnews.com/2023/04/26/kaiser-permanente-geisinger-merger/
Sorry folks, I am not in the habit of “shopping” people but these entanglements are highly unethical, to say the least, and these folks can make your life a living hell. Below are some names and hints to warn you and possibly enable you to protect yourself.
Continue readingThat you didn’t shut down this horror factory at the end of your time at the White House. Shame on you, Biden, that you haven’t yet either.
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/may/11/abu-zubaydah-drawings-guantanamo-bay-us-torture-policy
