Grey dawn seeps into your flat and you wake to a tattoo of raindrops,Smethurst ! Its Sunday 23 rd of December 2012 and there s hurtful reminders on the doormat On January 3rd 2013 you will be homeless .Shower and put on decent enough clothes.Even a tie .Breakfast and prepare to set out along the A 82 Hope that you are not stopped by the police You could buy a return to Tyndrum on the Citylink No that would complicate matters if you keep to your intentions Yes you would be very uncomfortable The passengers seats have been dumped In go all the extra blankets and a bottle of whisky in the boot at the front as well as the painkillers
You wince with every step ,Smethurst ! The geriatric 1972 Beetle starts and you leave Partick , and join the A 82 with its destination boards to all those hallowed places where you created yourself a man ,Smethurst in your university days Glasgow slips behind as you see a glimpse of white ahead on the Kilpatrick hills On you flow downriver to the Dumbarton bypass and so to Drumkinnon roundabout where you see Loch Lomond gunmetal grey and Ben Lomond with cloud obscuring its summit
You remember your first drive in the Beetle with Fiona MacArdle in the passenger seat,Oh how you feel an atom bomb going off in your brain ! She ran off with a burly rugby playing type from the Borders by the name of Brian Kelly after ditching you And then come flashbacks of all the other girls whom you took hillwalking CRAMP ,Smethurst CRAMP Pull into a layby and writhe Tuesday is Our Lord s Fucking Birthday and all Scotland is in lockdown
..Ralph will be living it up in Mombasa …or perhaps even arresting Somali pirates !
He will be told …about you …and what you have resolved to do ..The pain eases .On you drive past Inverbeg where you stayed in the long closed youth hostel during your first year at university …enchanted with the Highlands after your schooldays in that awful school for Officers Sons in Sussex
Tarbet No need to fill up here Careful where the road narrows .Inverarnan and the last glimpse of Loch Lomond A sharp flashback of a mountain hidden by cloud and Janice Blake with her ginger hair whom you took up there … .. Up Glen Falloch and over the top of the pass Cloud is down to five hundred and fifty on Ben More ahead but breaking to the east …Down the bank past Crianlarich Station and stop to watch a train crawl over the viaduct Walk as you always did across the boggy meadow and see Creag Liaragain clear of cloud –oh March 1982 the day you walked to the summit .Stride back to the car Try to be rational ,Smethurst
Since Albajet went bust you have been banging your head …against closed doors You had faithfully served the airline from its start till its collapse in 2008 For that you have been rejected out of hand when you applied for jobs in the travel industry You spent hundreds of pounds in fares to interviews You cut corners with such matters as car insurance and you were caught and convicted for doing what everybody has to do,,then the matter of what you earned on the side in one way or another just to keep alive And credit cards that got you lumbered with debt You are no more indebted than the average fellow Now your practices of having multiple accounts and switching funds and then of course moving from flat to flat in central Scotland when you fell behind with the rent-all your worldly goods stowed in the Beetle at dead of night – why Dougie Dawson did it all the time – and even Maggie Oakes that prim woman from the mailroom had to do it when her husband walked out on her Who was it who declared that an honest man steals from his family because he does not play the old game that was played since fucking Jesus Christ s day ? ….The fucking Christians rant on about honesty yet they are behind such iniquities as hiked up interest rates on credit cards ! Cramp abates On you go Smethurst !
Tyndrum .Fill up Pay cash Just £35 left in your wallet THAT’S ALL YOU HAVE LEFT ,Smethurst Now set off for the County March
Ben Dorain peeks through swirling stratus and you remember your photographs of it and from it that await collection by …Ralph ! or your nieces in Plymouth ! Empty Glen Auch invites your feet ..no you d better do as you intended A stroll along the West Highland Way Now its twinges in your knees Snowflakes tumble onto your bald head Hurry back and oh CRAMP smites so rub both thighs and bear left On through Tyndrum and wait for the lorry as you swing onto the abandoned oxbow of the A 82 and so to the far end by Auchtertyre Bridge as the day dies You stagger to the middle of the bridge and watch the cloud sink onto Ben More as dogwalkers spot the Beetle and one makes a remark that it is nt taxed Well it won t matter any more
Ralph will get to know about you before he wallows in indulgence at the taxpayers expense in stinking hot Mombasa And what will your nieces think about your life,Smethurst ! A pile of mountaintop snaps for them to keep all taken by their wicked atheist uncle who was DISLOYAL TO THE FAMILY for studying and working in Glasgow at the other end of Britain ! What lies has Ralph been saying to them about you ever since you failed to appear at their christening services ? What ship is he now serving on ? Was it named after a Roman god ? Him,Ralph,four years younger than you ! and he actually enjoyed that awful school …which Father had attended ..where you got into trouble for dodging Sunday Eucharist and hopping on and off buses to explore Sussex ! Ralph so word perfect at his prayers ! And when you leave this world will he scatter your ashes on the summit of Ben Dorain ? with a little plaque like the one on the craggy hill without a name …dedicated to one ,Ronald Harvey who would have been one of your contemporaries ?
Will you change your mind and drive back to Partick to become one of the beggars in the Glasgow streets ,or keep to your intentions ? It will serve Ralph right if it costs him a grand to dispose of you .so go ahead ,Smethurst and stick to your plan !Chill wind smites you so back to the car and prepare with all the things you brought and you have made up your mind Smethurst …to go …where ? Beyond ? Slip the gear lever into neutral Start the engine and heater Partake of those things that will ensure a good exit
Slip into the sleeping bag close all the windows and let yourself go,Smethurst !
David Seagrave ,Dunfermline Library 21-12-2012
Friday, December 28, 2012
Sunday, December 23, 2012
THE EXTIRPATION OF IRRATIONAL GUILT
In this essay I shall be disclosing how I have been crushed by guilt feelings since I was a small boy and explore both the hurtful aspects and paradoxes that flow from my inextirpable irrational guilt In making these disclosures my goal is to get FEEDBACK from all on the autistic spectrum who have been crushed by guilt and also find ways of dispelling that guilt and a much more realistic way of dealing with the moral tightropes of our society
My first recollections of guilt arose around 1948 or 1949 for dismantling a clockwork toy engine and for strife with my brother 4 years younger Then followed guilt about sexual and excretory matters and the use of “bad language “ In memories of life in Lancing /Sussex from 1947 to 1952 these memories are like a badly faded photograph .In 1953 I was sent to a grammar school reached by a 20 minute train journey in trains with separate compartments then ubiquitous Three boys named Angood Malfroot and Robinson plied me with smutty talk ,amongst other things and at their instigation I took part in pranks with sexual overtones that caused no tangible harm even to a schoolgirl we met in a train compartment where one of the trio dared me to ask her if I could shag her I knew that a shag was a bird that lived on the sea and shaggy meant untidy It was as absurd as asking to be guillemotted .
For that I was “suspended “ but never went back Instead I was plunged into such desperate mental pain that I wanted to end my life .After 60 years the scar abides .I felt worse than either mad or bad , and this experience gave rise to a conviction that people were human land mines ,women in particular Another sexually related experience even now too painful to write about concatenated to impart a fear that I would go mad and indecently assault women or girls which has been reactivated whenever I saw reports of sexual offences .At one time I even had delusions that I had committed these offences .This has totally poisoned my capacity to form heterosexual relationships ,
I was sent to a Remedial School where the headmaster administered psychoanalysis In the course of these sessions he required me to write down absolutely everything I could remember and I duly did I told him all about the schoolboy pranks ,and sibling strife and about sexual matters He convinced me that I was neither mad,nor bad but I had special gifts and staff members egged me on when I took to demanding pursuits Whilst I became a school livewire and at last discovered my dignity and self respect, it was wrested from me by my parents during school holidays The psychoanalysis was to bring about lifelong family strife .
My father took no interest in my schoolwork I TAUGHT MYSELF GERMAN in 1958 He was dependent on me during a trip to the Continent when I alone had command of French and German He could not accept that So on leaving school I was frogmarched into the Civil Service to add up salaries 8 months later I was sacked for being too slow All the good work of the remedial school was unravelled in a week when I had to sign on at a labour exchange and I was crushed by the stigma of unemployment This concatenated with the scars of the school expulsion to exacerbate my guilt complex At a time when I needed friendship I feared it so much that I fled from it I withdrew into myself during all the spells of unemployment
Whilst working in London I studied A level subjects and passed ,to earn a place at Glasgow University My guilt complex diminished until I graduated and underwent a fruitless search for jobs or post graduate courses It flared up and again I felt crushed family strife resumed ,and I felt my dignity drain from me as soon as I alighted at my father s home town I then accepted an offer to study computer science at Stafford Polytechnic but within a week I was in acute difficulties Then it was my brother Jonathan who was on my back accusing me of not trying hard enough I dropped out with great family acrimonies and so my Guilt complex resumed stronger than ever As after graduation I travelled far and wide to interviews .I discovered that 2 short spells in mental hospitals were to debar me from employment as surely as prison sentences
When I was maimed in 1981 I was able to shed my stigma of graduate dole scrounger but in 1984 family strife resumed when my father gratuitously humiliated me in front of a huge crowd –and I recall other such humiliations in sharp detail , Having climbed almost every Welsh mountain with artificial leg I moved to Cumbernauld Soon afterwards I was subjected to unremitting abuse from neighbours and acquired a CRIMINAL RECORD for a sarcastic remark about Catholicism which could have been a catch-line from Sir Walter Scott s contemporary Prosper Merimee who had written a novel about a religious war which I had studied .
At times my Guilt Complex flares up when I realise that my last prolonged spell of work was in 1971 yet I had made repeated attempts to get jobs only to elicit empty promises or hurtful rebuffs and even reprimands for my lateral thinking such as my proposed Photosouvenirs Livelihood Project.I feel irrational guilt overwhelm me whenever I make the slightest gaffe or I am careless like mislaying my doorkeys I IMAGINE THAT I have offended people merely by raising my voice and for my Aspergerising – talking about subjects that are TABOO FOR CHRISTIANS like even meteorology !
There may still be the Lo Fi camera Club run by WOMEN in central Edinburgh Acting in good faith I provided them with the texts of 2 pamphlets about photography and other assets that would have drawn new members I was thrown out for having Aspergers knowing too much about photography and allegedly preventing them from selling their abysmal photographs at an arts fair I was overwhelmed with guilt for what I had done until Andy Born reassured me that camera clubs are monopolized by cliques whose ossified practices drive away newcomers When a neighbour cut down a boundary hedge and set fire to the branches IN MY GARDEN I was very hurt yet by some strange process I felt as if I had OFFENDED HIM I could not bring myself to say to his face that he had trampled upon me by using my garden as a dump .
Edward de Bono has advanced an explanation for the formation of habits in his THE MECHANISM OF MIND He likens the developing brain to a sandpile being eroded by random action of rain and wind ,or a mountain being sculpted by the action of ice ,rain and other agencies upon layers of rock which have varying hardness From that I speak of “FAULT LINES IN THE BRAIN “ and how an otherwise normal person can undergo permanent personality damage by such matters as the reaction of his Christian parents when he uses smutty language or even the sensory overload of 400 children singing hymns at school assembly It is exceedingly commonplace for acute aversions to develop in normal people because of early experiences So giving rise to apparently irrational behaviours and indeed inextirpable fears of the opposite sex
I have maintained that in any authoritarian home a child will tend towards developing extremes –becoming an obnoxious clone of its parents or an incorrigible rebel This is borne out by the criminal records of the offspring of Victoria Gillick and Mary Whitehouse Meanwhile other evidence builds up to show that this personality deformation is very marked in children of services families If the child fails to conform to the tacit expectations to join the Forces or marry a Serviceman he or she is put under increasing pressure I have met very severely scathed adult children of services families
The paradox arises from single parent families where the sons have NO fathers to emulate or introject Without such adequate role models they have NO moral compasses they are readily corrupted by their peers and never develop consciences
I seem to have introjected my father s conscience because even 12 years after his death I am so overwhelmed with guilt for being normal and I cannot bring myself to be realistic about my trivial peccadilloes Only when typically of a SUNDAY and at CHRISTMAS it is as if my father s ghost is shouting in my ear and I plummet into a state where I am shouting derogatory words at myself as I am totally trapped in guilt
I anxiously await the views of fellow Aspies
David Seagrave Dunfermline Library 22-12-12
My first recollections of guilt arose around 1948 or 1949 for dismantling a clockwork toy engine and for strife with my brother 4 years younger Then followed guilt about sexual and excretory matters and the use of “bad language “ In memories of life in Lancing /Sussex from 1947 to 1952 these memories are like a badly faded photograph .In 1953 I was sent to a grammar school reached by a 20 minute train journey in trains with separate compartments then ubiquitous Three boys named Angood Malfroot and Robinson plied me with smutty talk ,amongst other things and at their instigation I took part in pranks with sexual overtones that caused no tangible harm even to a schoolgirl we met in a train compartment where one of the trio dared me to ask her if I could shag her I knew that a shag was a bird that lived on the sea and shaggy meant untidy It was as absurd as asking to be guillemotted .
For that I was “suspended “ but never went back Instead I was plunged into such desperate mental pain that I wanted to end my life .After 60 years the scar abides .I felt worse than either mad or bad , and this experience gave rise to a conviction that people were human land mines ,women in particular Another sexually related experience even now too painful to write about concatenated to impart a fear that I would go mad and indecently assault women or girls which has been reactivated whenever I saw reports of sexual offences .At one time I even had delusions that I had committed these offences .This has totally poisoned my capacity to form heterosexual relationships ,
I was sent to a Remedial School where the headmaster administered psychoanalysis In the course of these sessions he required me to write down absolutely everything I could remember and I duly did I told him all about the schoolboy pranks ,and sibling strife and about sexual matters He convinced me that I was neither mad,nor bad but I had special gifts and staff members egged me on when I took to demanding pursuits Whilst I became a school livewire and at last discovered my dignity and self respect, it was wrested from me by my parents during school holidays The psychoanalysis was to bring about lifelong family strife .
My father took no interest in my schoolwork I TAUGHT MYSELF GERMAN in 1958 He was dependent on me during a trip to the Continent when I alone had command of French and German He could not accept that So on leaving school I was frogmarched into the Civil Service to add up salaries 8 months later I was sacked for being too slow All the good work of the remedial school was unravelled in a week when I had to sign on at a labour exchange and I was crushed by the stigma of unemployment This concatenated with the scars of the school expulsion to exacerbate my guilt complex At a time when I needed friendship I feared it so much that I fled from it I withdrew into myself during all the spells of unemployment
Whilst working in London I studied A level subjects and passed ,to earn a place at Glasgow University My guilt complex diminished until I graduated and underwent a fruitless search for jobs or post graduate courses It flared up and again I felt crushed family strife resumed ,and I felt my dignity drain from me as soon as I alighted at my father s home town I then accepted an offer to study computer science at Stafford Polytechnic but within a week I was in acute difficulties Then it was my brother Jonathan who was on my back accusing me of not trying hard enough I dropped out with great family acrimonies and so my Guilt complex resumed stronger than ever As after graduation I travelled far and wide to interviews .I discovered that 2 short spells in mental hospitals were to debar me from employment as surely as prison sentences
When I was maimed in 1981 I was able to shed my stigma of graduate dole scrounger but in 1984 family strife resumed when my father gratuitously humiliated me in front of a huge crowd –and I recall other such humiliations in sharp detail , Having climbed almost every Welsh mountain with artificial leg I moved to Cumbernauld Soon afterwards I was subjected to unremitting abuse from neighbours and acquired a CRIMINAL RECORD for a sarcastic remark about Catholicism which could have been a catch-line from Sir Walter Scott s contemporary Prosper Merimee who had written a novel about a religious war which I had studied .
At times my Guilt Complex flares up when I realise that my last prolonged spell of work was in 1971 yet I had made repeated attempts to get jobs only to elicit empty promises or hurtful rebuffs and even reprimands for my lateral thinking such as my proposed Photosouvenirs Livelihood Project.I feel irrational guilt overwhelm me whenever I make the slightest gaffe or I am careless like mislaying my doorkeys I IMAGINE THAT I have offended people merely by raising my voice and for my Aspergerising – talking about subjects that are TABOO FOR CHRISTIANS like even meteorology !
There may still be the Lo Fi camera Club run by WOMEN in central Edinburgh Acting in good faith I provided them with the texts of 2 pamphlets about photography and other assets that would have drawn new members I was thrown out for having Aspergers knowing too much about photography and allegedly preventing them from selling their abysmal photographs at an arts fair I was overwhelmed with guilt for what I had done until Andy Born reassured me that camera clubs are monopolized by cliques whose ossified practices drive away newcomers When a neighbour cut down a boundary hedge and set fire to the branches IN MY GARDEN I was very hurt yet by some strange process I felt as if I had OFFENDED HIM I could not bring myself to say to his face that he had trampled upon me by using my garden as a dump .
Edward de Bono has advanced an explanation for the formation of habits in his THE MECHANISM OF MIND He likens the developing brain to a sandpile being eroded by random action of rain and wind ,or a mountain being sculpted by the action of ice ,rain and other agencies upon layers of rock which have varying hardness From that I speak of “FAULT LINES IN THE BRAIN “ and how an otherwise normal person can undergo permanent personality damage by such matters as the reaction of his Christian parents when he uses smutty language or even the sensory overload of 400 children singing hymns at school assembly It is exceedingly commonplace for acute aversions to develop in normal people because of early experiences So giving rise to apparently irrational behaviours and indeed inextirpable fears of the opposite sex
I have maintained that in any authoritarian home a child will tend towards developing extremes –becoming an obnoxious clone of its parents or an incorrigible rebel This is borne out by the criminal records of the offspring of Victoria Gillick and Mary Whitehouse Meanwhile other evidence builds up to show that this personality deformation is very marked in children of services families If the child fails to conform to the tacit expectations to join the Forces or marry a Serviceman he or she is put under increasing pressure I have met very severely scathed adult children of services families
The paradox arises from single parent families where the sons have NO fathers to emulate or introject Without such adequate role models they have NO moral compasses they are readily corrupted by their peers and never develop consciences
I seem to have introjected my father s conscience because even 12 years after his death I am so overwhelmed with guilt for being normal and I cannot bring myself to be realistic about my trivial peccadilloes Only when typically of a SUNDAY and at CHRISTMAS it is as if my father s ghost is shouting in my ear and I plummet into a state where I am shouting derogatory words at myself as I am totally trapped in guilt
I anxiously await the views of fellow Aspies
David Seagrave Dunfermline Library 22-12-12
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
a wiki leak
A moment when a reminder is needed not to follow Wikipedia as a source of reliable or useful facts.
Follow each of these links and let them speak for themselves:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Alexia_Death&oldid=410139534 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alexia_Death lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-September/028139.html
lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-October/054957.html
lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-August/026966.html
lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-July/025936.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/333346695 wikipediocracy.com/ www.wikipediasucks.co/forum
[added 6.2018 :] en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:EmmanuelTzannes&oldid=842257477
Follow each of these links and let them speak for themselves:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Alexia_Death&oldid=410139534 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alexia_Death lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-September/028139.html
lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-October/054957.html
lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-August/026966.html
lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-July/025936.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/333346695 wikipediocracy.com/ www.wikipediasucks.co/forum
[added 6.2018 :] en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:EmmanuelTzannes&oldid=842257477
Sunday, September 23, 2012
loyalty to the party
I would never have the confidence to throw a party, nor feel socially placed so to do. But I don't feel raging envy of the NTs who can do it, I feel concern, that it is quite perilous for them too and too easy to backfire in a world where social meannness exists.
Yesterday I was at a new home celebration, that only turned out to be described as a party when actually there. The hosts were churchy folks, whose company is far more sensible, so you would imagine nicer, than the laddish type of folks whose parties aspies would generally keep a wide radius away from. Yet they were still not totally lucky in avoiding receiving gratuitous meanness for their effort in holding the occasion.
As soon as one of the hosts' sister arrived, she said "Your party's really bombing." "Oh shut up." I thought to throw in "You can make it bomb some more."
I have seen it happen before. Instant flashback to a time when I was in an anti-fascist campaign who were supposed to be really into inclusion and obviously campaigning for it, yet one set of flatmates liked to keep throwing parties and one of their regular guests liked to keep saying "This party's flagging." Repeteadly and labouring the point.
Why does anyone ever hold parties in a world where that can happen? I never would. Is it just to look or feel stronger for doing it? Yet in order to suffer the least amount of visible hurt from it they have to treat the experience like a joke and outwardly just proceed as if it is not true. But how can they be sure it is not true, think of the anxiety whether it is true that could be sown? to hang oppressively over every conversational pause, making it more tense. Yes NTs do actually have conversational pauses, no topic is inexhaustible.
Maurice Frank
Yesterday I was at a new home celebration, that only turned out to be described as a party when actually there. The hosts were churchy folks, whose company is far more sensible, so you would imagine nicer, than the laddish type of folks whose parties aspies would generally keep a wide radius away from. Yet they were still not totally lucky in avoiding receiving gratuitous meanness for their effort in holding the occasion.
As soon as one of the hosts' sister arrived, she said "Your party's really bombing." "Oh shut up." I thought to throw in "You can make it bomb some more."
I have seen it happen before. Instant flashback to a time when I was in an anti-fascist campaign who were supposed to be really into inclusion and obviously campaigning for it, yet one set of flatmates liked to keep throwing parties and one of their regular guests liked to keep saying "This party's flagging." Repeteadly and labouring the point.
Why does anyone ever hold parties in a world where that can happen? I never would. Is it just to look or feel stronger for doing it? Yet in order to suffer the least amount of visible hurt from it they have to treat the experience like a joke and outwardly just proceed as if it is not true. But how can they be sure it is not true, think of the anxiety whether it is true that could be sown? to hang oppressively over every conversational pause, making it more tense. Yes NTs do actually have conversational pauses, no topic is inexhaustible.
Maurice Frank
Thursday, September 6, 2012
A milestone to prize
One of the childhood disasters that has quite commonly happened to aspies is to be involved with the gifted children movement. Isolated spikes of special ability in an aspie's focal interests may be overoptimistically misconstrued as meaning a high educational ability.
Some progress in an answer just received from the National Association for Gifted Children is of enough interest to need recording fron the reference of anyone who experienced the gifted movement being totally on the side of unchecked teacher authority. They now realise the term "gifted and talented" has impacted some lives badly and they want to call it "high learning potential", okay that could still be dangerous, and they state the objective of " personal success ie what they want to achieve." Now that is seriously progress. As recently as 1998 supporters of New Labour's high pressure policy were openly on radio 4 praising the prospect of "making" the kids work very hard.
And they have now said they are into "developing a children's Bill of Rights" "to help prevent issues of this nature." It is a milestone shift that has come 40 years overdue. Their whole scene needs holding to it.
Maurice Frank
Some progress in an answer just received from the National Association for Gifted Children is of enough interest to need recording fron the reference of anyone who experienced the gifted movement being totally on the side of unchecked teacher authority. They now realise the term "gifted and talented" has impacted some lives badly and they want to call it "high learning potential", okay that could still be dangerous, and they state the objective of " personal success ie what they want to achieve." Now that is seriously progress. As recently as 1998 supporters of New Labour's high pressure policy were openly on radio 4 praising the prospect of "making" the kids work very hard.
And they have now said they are into "developing a children's Bill of Rights" "to help prevent issues of this nature." It is a milestone shift that has come 40 years overdue. Their whole scene needs holding to it.
Maurice Frank
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Applied parental ideals?
I found Tannice Pendegrass's talk on autism treatments, at Skeptics on the Fringe yesterday, very sketchy and full of gaps.
Yes she did some important good by itemising the serious harm that can be done by hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) treatment, chelation and names of 4 kids apparently killed by heart failiure or lack of substances resulting from treatments that come from speculative theories of autism's causes that there is no proven evidence for. But when she mentioned the MMR issue she said no more than, this should not be mentioned in an autism talk at all, and moved on - Then in her summing up at the end told folks to help by passing on the news that there is no MMR autism issue as if they had heard actual evidence on it! Several other times with proposed physical causes of autism she just declared they are wrong without going into any details of why.
This approach seems completely wrong for a talk on evidence based scepticism! It seemed to say that the folks she was talking about had an obligation to support their statements with evidence but she had not. But this was likely to go down well with a Skeptics on the Fringe audience and slip by totally unnoticed by them: because, as I and another Elas member have both noticed, this is exactly the same approach as they take towards the paranormal all the time.
Skeptics on the Fringe is a now annual season by the local humanists, held to broadcast their opposition to religion and the paranormal. It sounds quite odd for a talk on autism to feature in that at all. The reason was to show how broad a reach the principle of scepticism has, by featuring scepticism towards quack cures. It is certainly a good message that the evidence for all proposed treatments should be questioned with a presupposition of scepticism, the onus put on the treaters to prove their case. That they not be taken on trust as experts will be familiar to all survivors of arrogance from child psychiatry.
But this whole scene of hardline opponents of religion and the paranormal is a scene with a big ego investment in pushing its own predetermined view, a doctrine, hence exactly like religion would do. If you attend much of Skeptics on the Fringe with a genuinely 2-way open mind, or if you scrutinise the frantic biased rantings in Carl Sagan's later writings, including his shocking wriggle "There are no authorities, only experts," or if you consider whether Richard Dawkins's call for everyone who has seen a ghost to be "gently pointed towards the nearest psychiatrist" is compatible with civil liberty over religion: you can easily notice their sceptical approach is one-sided. They do not apply it even handedly nor believe they need to. Folks who hold the beliefs they oppose, they hold responsible to jump through every possible hoop of evidence and proof, while too often any voice on the disbelieving side they generously and keenly accept on trust as expert, then actually cite their expert opinion as an argument! No surprise then, when the same one-sided accepting as expert with little scrutiny what a voice in sympathy with them says, happens in an entirely secular topic of medicine too. It happened at Pendegrass's talk.
She is a defender of Applied Behaviour Analysis, and she sanitised it by saying it is used with small kids and with more severe deficits of functioning - implying it is only used with them, and only used to find ways out of actual inabilities to function. She did not all discuss it getting used to change behaviours and social choices, to say stop doing this do that instead, in kids who certainly can function.
I got a question in at the end, on the objections I have heard raised from experience, to ABA, for being used for social control like this with older and more functionally able youth, even adults. I have come across such very credible objections, that match all we know of child psychiatry's own behaviour, in the online community. I asked Pendegrass what safeguards there are or there should be, to prevent ABA being used to force a patient into an ideal normal personality decided for them, to take away their own lifestyle choices.
I did not get a straight answer, not any answer about safeguards at all. All the answer given was, it's not about taking away folks' character, oh I have never come across it being used to make all folk's choices for them, and that in the Analysis part of it there is a 2 way discussion of the results a behaviour has, to work out whether they are good or bad. But all that is just defensive talk keeping it sounding right, relying on an appeal for trust, it is not actual safeguards. She said something else that quite gave the game away and points against giving ABA that trust: she said it is about "helping them not to end up ostracising themselves."
All ostracising is a hate crime and instrument of group tyranny over personal lifestyle choices, it is there to be resisted and defied. The entire idea of "ostracising yourself" is about blaming the victim. It is the worst of all ways of saying, conform and be normal or else suffer oppression in society. It is a way of saying the oppression is the victim's fault because they have not chosen to avert it by bowing to the crushing communism of peer groups and giving up all their own distinctive personality. Everyone who belongs to one of the many minorities with histories of unpopularity and persecution will spot a mile off that doctors can tell you, stop being what you are and become what the tabloid mob tell you or else you are "ostracising yourself". The entire idea "ostracising yourself" is a blank cheque invitation for that crushing level of control, for ordering you to make choices that don't work for you, e.g. to obey dress norms that are physically wrong for your body's sensitivities, with the added misery of seeing anyone else succeed in not obeying them.
I put this point of unpopular minorities and the wrongness of forced norms straight back to her, and all she did then was revert to taking about severely affected small kids who were not the point of my question: she said surely it can't be wrong to help a kid who just suits staring at a light all day to function more effectively than that. This was dodging the question. But at this point another of the audience threw in a point on her side, said all parents and folks working with kids are trying to bring them up in a certain way, which means directing their characters, and Pendegrass grabbed this gratefully, said "That's a really good point".
Then, as too often happens under the time pressure of such events, that was the end of the time slot for this question. No chance to come back and challenge the oppression these 2 folks were both defending, and for that to go unchellenged is particularly striking in the setting of Skeptics on the Fringe. ABA was blatantly not given the same level of questioning as as the more physically medical quack cures were. Oddly that is even though Pendegrass admitted ABA is often offered at rip-off prices of several thousand pounds, and when one of her pieces of moral shock info against the quack cures had been the costs they are sold at.
On bringing up kids in character directed ways: the whole point of sceptics and humanists is they are supposed to expose that as the evil oppression and life destruction it is, because often the controlling ideals of parents or teachers come from religion and are about making the kid follow that religion. We have in Elas a member done a lot of life damage to in exactly that way by a too fervently Christian parent. Are the sceptics and humanists going to defend that type of parenting? It would startle all their supporters if they did, it would contradict their fight against religion in schools, a fight that liberally religious folks like me agree with totally. But otherwise, they should have challenged that audience speaker who favoured controlling agendas towards kids, and they have a duty of scepticism towards ABA until they obtain a satisfaction on that point that was was not obtained at that talk yesterday.
Maurice Frank
Yes she did some important good by itemising the serious harm that can be done by hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) treatment, chelation and names of 4 kids apparently killed by heart failiure or lack of substances resulting from treatments that come from speculative theories of autism's causes that there is no proven evidence for. But when she mentioned the MMR issue she said no more than, this should not be mentioned in an autism talk at all, and moved on - Then in her summing up at the end told folks to help by passing on the news that there is no MMR autism issue as if they had heard actual evidence on it! Several other times with proposed physical causes of autism she just declared they are wrong without going into any details of why.
This approach seems completely wrong for a talk on evidence based scepticism! It seemed to say that the folks she was talking about had an obligation to support their statements with evidence but she had not. But this was likely to go down well with a Skeptics on the Fringe audience and slip by totally unnoticed by them: because, as I and another Elas member have both noticed, this is exactly the same approach as they take towards the paranormal all the time.
Skeptics on the Fringe is a now annual season by the local humanists, held to broadcast their opposition to religion and the paranormal. It sounds quite odd for a talk on autism to feature in that at all. The reason was to show how broad a reach the principle of scepticism has, by featuring scepticism towards quack cures. It is certainly a good message that the evidence for all proposed treatments should be questioned with a presupposition of scepticism, the onus put on the treaters to prove their case. That they not be taken on trust as experts will be familiar to all survivors of arrogance from child psychiatry.
But this whole scene of hardline opponents of religion and the paranormal is a scene with a big ego investment in pushing its own predetermined view, a doctrine, hence exactly like religion would do. If you attend much of Skeptics on the Fringe with a genuinely 2-way open mind, or if you scrutinise the frantic biased rantings in Carl Sagan's later writings, including his shocking wriggle "There are no authorities, only experts," or if you consider whether Richard Dawkins's call for everyone who has seen a ghost to be "gently pointed towards the nearest psychiatrist" is compatible with civil liberty over religion: you can easily notice their sceptical approach is one-sided. They do not apply it even handedly nor believe they need to. Folks who hold the beliefs they oppose, they hold responsible to jump through every possible hoop of evidence and proof, while too often any voice on the disbelieving side they generously and keenly accept on trust as expert, then actually cite their expert opinion as an argument! No surprise then, when the same one-sided accepting as expert with little scrutiny what a voice in sympathy with them says, happens in an entirely secular topic of medicine too. It happened at Pendegrass's talk.
She is a defender of Applied Behaviour Analysis, and she sanitised it by saying it is used with small kids and with more severe deficits of functioning - implying it is only used with them, and only used to find ways out of actual inabilities to function. She did not all discuss it getting used to change behaviours and social choices, to say stop doing this do that instead, in kids who certainly can function.
I got a question in at the end, on the objections I have heard raised from experience, to ABA, for being used for social control like this with older and more functionally able youth, even adults. I have come across such very credible objections, that match all we know of child psychiatry's own behaviour, in the online community. I asked Pendegrass what safeguards there are or there should be, to prevent ABA being used to force a patient into an ideal normal personality decided for them, to take away their own lifestyle choices.
I did not get a straight answer, not any answer about safeguards at all. All the answer given was, it's not about taking away folks' character, oh I have never come across it being used to make all folk's choices for them, and that in the Analysis part of it there is a 2 way discussion of the results a behaviour has, to work out whether they are good or bad. But all that is just defensive talk keeping it sounding right, relying on an appeal for trust, it is not actual safeguards. She said something else that quite gave the game away and points against giving ABA that trust: she said it is about "helping them not to end up ostracising themselves."
All ostracising is a hate crime and instrument of group tyranny over personal lifestyle choices, it is there to be resisted and defied. The entire idea of "ostracising yourself" is about blaming the victim. It is the worst of all ways of saying, conform and be normal or else suffer oppression in society. It is a way of saying the oppression is the victim's fault because they have not chosen to avert it by bowing to the crushing communism of peer groups and giving up all their own distinctive personality. Everyone who belongs to one of the many minorities with histories of unpopularity and persecution will spot a mile off that doctors can tell you, stop being what you are and become what the tabloid mob tell you or else you are "ostracising yourself". The entire idea "ostracising yourself" is a blank cheque invitation for that crushing level of control, for ordering you to make choices that don't work for you, e.g. to obey dress norms that are physically wrong for your body's sensitivities, with the added misery of seeing anyone else succeed in not obeying them.
I put this point of unpopular minorities and the wrongness of forced norms straight back to her, and all she did then was revert to taking about severely affected small kids who were not the point of my question: she said surely it can't be wrong to help a kid who just suits staring at a light all day to function more effectively than that. This was dodging the question. But at this point another of the audience threw in a point on her side, said all parents and folks working with kids are trying to bring them up in a certain way, which means directing their characters, and Pendegrass grabbed this gratefully, said "That's a really good point".
Then, as too often happens under the time pressure of such events, that was the end of the time slot for this question. No chance to come back and challenge the oppression these 2 folks were both defending, and for that to go unchellenged is particularly striking in the setting of Skeptics on the Fringe. ABA was blatantly not given the same level of questioning as as the more physically medical quack cures were. Oddly that is even though Pendegrass admitted ABA is often offered at rip-off prices of several thousand pounds, and when one of her pieces of moral shock info against the quack cures had been the costs they are sold at.
On bringing up kids in character directed ways: the whole point of sceptics and humanists is they are supposed to expose that as the evil oppression and life destruction it is, because often the controlling ideals of parents or teachers come from religion and are about making the kid follow that religion. We have in Elas a member done a lot of life damage to in exactly that way by a too fervently Christian parent. Are the sceptics and humanists going to defend that type of parenting? It would startle all their supporters if they did, it would contradict their fight against religion in schools, a fight that liberally religious folks like me agree with totally. But otherwise, they should have challenged that audience speaker who favoured controlling agendas towards kids, and they have a duty of scepticism towards ABA until they obtain a satisfaction on that point that was was not obtained at that talk yesterday.
Maurice Frank
Friday, July 20, 2012
Safety of your own property
Even the Autism Services Network, whose meetings' accessibility for us in the east is affected by Citylink's practices, have not received a word of answer, been completely ignored by Citylink. Even a project working with government funding.
Folks need to be warned against travelling anywhere by Citylink, on a free bus pass, outside the main population belt, off the frequently bus served roads. It is operating an arrogant policy of seizing bus passes from passengers without their consent, either if they don't work on the scanners or if the photo is eroded. Some weeks ago I saw it happen to an old couple not even at the point of boarding, when they might have a chance to grab the pass back out of any thief's hands, but in mid journey at the hands of an inspector. They were on their outward journey of a holiday and concerned about the effect on their return journey, and the coach was in remote country at the time, where if thrown off it for not cooperating they would have no other means of travel.
Citylink when complained to called this a "policy" and made not a word of admission of folks' right to hold on to their personal proerty. They even denied it would be violence for a driver to steal a pass and refuse to give it back.
Folks known to Elas through Number 6 have had it done to them and not had their new pass arrive in time before the temporary paper pass they were given expired, which is only a week. With the onus on you to apply for as new pass, you could very easily not have time to do it in time if you are on the outward journey of a holiday.
THIS IS A DANGER TO PERSONAL PROPERTY. That it can be stopped is an absolute test of the autism strategy's efficacy. Maurice Frank
Folks need to be warned against travelling anywhere by Citylink, on a free bus pass, outside the main population belt, off the frequently bus served roads. It is operating an arrogant policy of seizing bus passes from passengers without their consent, either if they don't work on the scanners or if the photo is eroded. Some weeks ago I saw it happen to an old couple not even at the point of boarding, when they might have a chance to grab the pass back out of any thief's hands, but in mid journey at the hands of an inspector. They were on their outward journey of a holiday and concerned about the effect on their return journey, and the coach was in remote country at the time, where if thrown off it for not cooperating they would have no other means of travel.
Citylink when complained to called this a "policy" and made not a word of admission of folks' right to hold on to their personal proerty. They even denied it would be violence for a driver to steal a pass and refuse to give it back.
Folks known to Elas through Number 6 have had it done to them and not had their new pass arrive in time before the temporary paper pass they were given expired, which is only a week. With the onus on you to apply for as new pass, you could very easily not have time to do it in time if you are on the outward journey of a holiday.
THIS IS A DANGER TO PERSONAL PROPERTY. That it can be stopped is an absolute test of the autism strategy's efficacy. Maurice Frank
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Have you passed through the chamber of paradox at the airport
Aspie or not, wouldn't you be confused if you were directed into a room and a recorded voice started howling "You have entered a resrticted area. Exit immediately." Wouldn't you think you were in the wrong place?
All folks with friends or good contacts abroad, and we have some helfpul ones among aspies now, know how horrible the system of entering Britain has been made by all the tabloid racism. Have you seen the "UK border" section at the airport, with all its prominent notices openly using the word "tougher"? Openly unfriendly to all the folks arriving. When we travel, even for a diplomatic purpose like the twin town visit to Norway I have just taken part in, we have to walk through this nonsense and offensive gateway of global apartheid, and succeed in carrying safely a losable document, which is in fact our apartheid passbook, past a lot of legal warnings to foreign visitors about prosecution if they lose it and are thought to have destroyed it. After not seeing anything like that in the entries to neighbouring countries.
How functionally odd it is that the baggage reclaim always comes after the passport barrier, so that anyone who suffers the apartheid evil of getting blocked by the barrier appears to be exposed also to the danger that anyone could walk off with their luggage? Then, how often is the experience I had yesterday, arriving back on my flight from Norway, experienced? After passing through that morally chilling passport barrier whose existence prevents any thinking person enjoying foreign travel, we passed baggage reclaim. This was in its own room, not in the open airport space. Then the directions led through customs, but no staffed operation of the green channel was taking place. Then passed that unstaffed point there appeared to be closed room not leading anywhere, except for a closed door marked as automatic.
It all looked very confusing, and I was at first unsure whether to retrace my steps, but there was no other way to go. Anyway I only ventured through said automatic door when some other passengers did too and I could go with their flow. This door just led into a smallish and seemingly pointless empty room, which turned a right angle then had a second automatic door out of it again. As soon as I entered that room, this voice blasted out "You have entered a restricted area. Exit immediately."
Surely anyone would think they had walked into the wrong place? I whirled round on the first thought that it must mean I should exit the same way as I had entered. But from this side the first door now said "No entry!" complete with road sign too. While the second door was there to exit through, and was the only apparent exit. There had been nowhere else that our directions off the plane and through the passport evil had led to, than into this kafkaesque chamber that seemed to tell us we should not be there! Lo and be staggered, the second door opened into the main airport space, duly completing our arrival. In front of us were the folks waiting to meet folks. When I looked back, above the door out of the chamber of paradox was the sign "international arrivals". This experience that makes no rational sense really was part of the entry to Britain provided to the passengers of that flight from Norway.
Some airport signing is bilingual, and out of the airport the road signs reminding you we drive on the left are in 5 languages. But the voice in the kafkaesque chamber was only in English. A visitor without a good knowledge of English would not know what was going on, when the signs directed them through a chamber that treated them like a criminal for following the signs, they could be caused a lot of fear and panic? Was this a freak error of them not switching off the voice or does this happen frequently? Is our system now so wilfully nasty to the outside world that it has set up this chamber of paradox to test visitors' psychology with? Then what do the resident population think of coming home through such a hurdle? Consider how an autistic person unable to sort out the mixed messages, suddenly finding themself in this chamber that made no sense, could be thrown into panic? and meltdown and cessation to cope?
A really odd story from the yukky global apartheid of our times.
Maurice Frank
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Rare piece of insurance common sense
Travel Guard, answering a travel insurance enquiry for a company their claims line serves, said something worth hearing concerning a topic that no travel insurance policy is satisfactory on: lost or stolen travel documents including passports. To my enquiry as to what happens if you can't get a written police report, they say you can now give them a note explaining the circumstances that you could not get one.
The rule they always have in travel insurance, that you must obtain a written report to base your claim on, conflicts with the whole nature of travel risk. How can they possibly know that the police or other officials will be willing to provide the written report? What if they won't, and in a foreign country, how are you supposed to make them? Even in a European democracy, let alone in totally corrupt countries?
To a common sense enquiry as a buyer, for once I have got a better answer than I expected to get. It is some progress on the issue that concerns me so intensely, of losable travel documents and your safety when having to use them: particularly for spectrumites because of dexterity issues dyspraxia and attention deficit that make small objects easier to lose. Of course, given the complex trickiness of insurance and all the unpredictable details of a loss situation that you can not know what they will be until it happens, the value of this consumer victory remains small compared to the safety need that folks' safety when travelling should not depend on carried physical documents at all, and the safety victory if this 200 year old practice that big business interests have habituated our culture to accept was actually stopped.
Maurice FrankMonday, April 16, 2012
Covering ground
It matters to be an independent group that runs itself, not tied to any council funding nor run by the big charities. It matters because to be a genuine voice in what you say. But there is a very clear top reason why it matters, which Elas is living now. It means we are free to have no territorial boundary.
Elas has been the core of making a string of successful meet-ups happen all round the Central Belt, as recently at Perth and Paisley. In them we have put face to face reality to personal links made beyond our own region, in 2 ways.
Now we hear of a new group in Stirling with the council paying Scottish Autism to run it. This arrangement again ties it to only serve the territorial boundary of Stirling, We have seen this result in exclusion from that local scene, in time of need, be experienced when resident in an adjoining council area, clearly inside the radius of having Stirling as a focal place. Incredibly ironic of SA to accept deals like this to run groups, when its own head office is in Alloa, one of the places this group is barred from serving.
In common sense care for the participants, SA should want this arrangement to be as temporary as possible. The folks in Stirling need their group to evolve to the model of running independently same as us, and as Argh in the Highlands. So that it can include folks' friends in Alloa and all the places around there regardless of what council they are in, and so it can make the same non-local links as us, maybe including with us, and be part of the growth of a speaking out scene that covers everywhere. Local groups don't need funding to exist, members just need to agree a place to meet up that does not involve expensive room booking and they are all comfortable with. Local groups by contact and meet-ups, and by folks crossing region to belong to whichever group they feel best in, helping each other to make the scene cover everywhere, is the vision. We are already starting to make this happen. It also protects our freedom everywhere to speak on problems with services and to have blogs like this, when what we want to say goes well beyond what the big charities want to say.
Remember another way these links massively importantly protect our free voice, and indeed our personal links and friendships. By our links with each other in different places we will all safeguard each other against getting trapped by any authoritarian takeover in any group, like the cautionary horror story of what happened to a group in a region adjoining us, that was run by a bigger society whose committee suddenly passed Orwellian cult-like rules misusing data protection to ban members from speaking freely to each other, before they had even had the chance to consent to this being put in place, so that it interfered in communication between friends and cut folks off from each other. A sinister story I told here a year ago, it is time to remind ourselves of it. In fact the group concerned has remained suspended from meeting ever since then, supposedly temporarily, which is now a farce. It is a clearly failed and destructive outcome to how to run a group. Compare that with the success of the total opposite model, the free model, ours.
The folks who were in that group, now unjustly adrift without an aspie scene, or who have been in any type of controlled group, have a need to find the scene all over again, but our free scene of independent groups that all support each other's members in keeping it the free scene.
Maurice Frank
Elas has been the core of making a string of successful meet-ups happen all round the Central Belt, as recently at Perth and Paisley. In them we have put face to face reality to personal links made beyond our own region, in 2 ways.
- So that aspies within reach of us have joined us, who have no similarly independent group running in their localities: our filling of that void has been right and made a needed practical difference in several cases.
- Or, so that folks in those places where a new venture can start up cautiously, that is independent like us, can use us as a reference point and a friendly link to meet up with and share with. Supporting the free aspie scene to take root in new ground.
Now we hear of a new group in Stirling with the council paying Scottish Autism to run it. This arrangement again ties it to only serve the territorial boundary of Stirling, We have seen this result in exclusion from that local scene, in time of need, be experienced when resident in an adjoining council area, clearly inside the radius of having Stirling as a focal place. Incredibly ironic of SA to accept deals like this to run groups, when its own head office is in Alloa, one of the places this group is barred from serving.
In common sense care for the participants, SA should want this arrangement to be as temporary as possible. The folks in Stirling need their group to evolve to the model of running independently same as us, and as Argh in the Highlands. So that it can include folks' friends in Alloa and all the places around there regardless of what council they are in, and so it can make the same non-local links as us, maybe including with us, and be part of the growth of a speaking out scene that covers everywhere. Local groups don't need funding to exist, members just need to agree a place to meet up that does not involve expensive room booking and they are all comfortable with. Local groups by contact and meet-ups, and by folks crossing region to belong to whichever group they feel best in, helping each other to make the scene cover everywhere, is the vision. We are already starting to make this happen. It also protects our freedom everywhere to speak on problems with services and to have blogs like this, when what we want to say goes well beyond what the big charities want to say.
Remember another way these links massively importantly protect our free voice, and indeed our personal links and friendships. By our links with each other in different places we will all safeguard each other against getting trapped by any authoritarian takeover in any group, like the cautionary horror story of what happened to a group in a region adjoining us, that was run by a bigger society whose committee suddenly passed Orwellian cult-like rules misusing data protection to ban members from speaking freely to each other, before they had even had the chance to consent to this being put in place, so that it interfered in communication between friends and cut folks off from each other. A sinister story I told here a year ago, it is time to remind ourselves of it. In fact the group concerned has remained suspended from meeting ever since then, supposedly temporarily, which is now a farce. It is a clearly failed and destructive outcome to how to run a group. Compare that with the success of the total opposite model, the free model, ours.
The folks who were in that group, now unjustly adrift without an aspie scene, or who have been in any type of controlled group, have a need to find the scene all over again, but our free scene of independent groups that all support each other's members in keeping it the free scene.
Maurice Frank
Friday, February 10, 2012
physical document stolen, no holiday, and listening to us could have prevented it
In today's Metro I was overjoyed to find that someone else, not me, had written in supporting the view favoured by me and the education reformer John Holt, that there should be no age limit on the vote at all. That everyone can start voting when they personally feel ready. You see, whenever you are oppressed, there is always someone somewhere who sensibly realises it.
But never in this world does pleasure last, before pain takes it all away again. The same Metro also told of a couple who got burgled during their wedding, and the man's passport was stolen. Despite the personalised nature of passports the burglars obviously reckoned they could do some fraudulent changing of it, and nicked it, with the result that the couple can't go on their honeymoon to Iceland.
Think about that. They are no longer allowed to do something they have presumably already booked and paid to do, because by no fault of their own a physical object has been stolen from them. For being victims of crime, victims of theft, they personally cease to be allowed to do a thing.
Then remember what I have said here several times before, about how the fine coordination and dyspraxia and attention issues in autistic spectrum conditions increases the losability of small objects like tickets, so makes it disability discrimination for your status as you move around ever to depend on your possession of any small physical object like a ticket. Like a passport too. It is a form of ticket, and it is barbarously primitive to have its losability during your holiday to be able to get you into a frightening practical crisis. Very visibly it is a form of apartheid pass book too.
There is a disability equality duty to listen to all the impacts made by any disability. If there had been no blatant evading of the responsibility to listen to the autism scene concerning this, then the issue of losable documents would already have been forced, including at a brilliantly democratising international level because passports exist. If this had been done uncorruptly, following the medical facts as far as they go, then passports would no longer exist and this couple's experience could not have happened.
Maurice Frank
But never in this world does pleasure last, before pain takes it all away again. The same Metro also told of a couple who got burgled during their wedding, and the man's passport was stolen. Despite the personalised nature of passports the burglars obviously reckoned they could do some fraudulent changing of it, and nicked it, with the result that the couple can't go on their honeymoon to Iceland.
Think about that. They are no longer allowed to do something they have presumably already booked and paid to do, because by no fault of their own a physical object has been stolen from them. For being victims of crime, victims of theft, they personally cease to be allowed to do a thing.
Then remember what I have said here several times before, about how the fine coordination and dyspraxia and attention issues in autistic spectrum conditions increases the losability of small objects like tickets, so makes it disability discrimination for your status as you move around ever to depend on your possession of any small physical object like a ticket. Like a passport too. It is a form of ticket, and it is barbarously primitive to have its losability during your holiday to be able to get you into a frightening practical crisis. Very visibly it is a form of apartheid pass book too.
There is a disability equality duty to listen to all the impacts made by any disability. If there had been no blatant evading of the responsibility to listen to the autism scene concerning this, then the issue of losable documents would already have been forced, including at a brilliantly democratising international level because passports exist. If this had been done uncorruptly, following the medical facts as far as they go, then passports would no longer exist and this couple's experience could not have happened.
Maurice Frank
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Getting your classic Yahoo mail back
Anyone who has the "upgrade" version of Yahoo email and has found it total rubbish, here is a way to change it back. The upgrade version is full of difficulties the old did not have, you can't backspace or else you just have to put your password back in, and you can't delete drafts without getting a crazy message "one of the drafts you are trying to delete is open. Please close it " - and what the hell do open and closed mean? There is no explanation of that from Yahoo.
Go here: help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/ymail/context/migrationv2.html
When the page opens---scroll down about midway until you see this---"What if I don't want to upgrade to the newest version of Yahoo! Mail"?----If you do not want to upgrade, please "click here" to use Yahoo! Mail Classic.
("click here" is a blue link). Return to Classic is immediate and permanent.
This came from here answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AgLeOawNBx_FJd7AqN2xgXcD.Bd.;_ylv=3?qid=20120113110800AAOha2E fantastic how many folks will be grateful for this answer. As written there, the New "Improved'' (sic) Mail is very buggy, unstable & a total pain in the butt. There are literally thousands & thousands of users complaining they can't use their mail like they used to.
Go here: help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/ymail/context/migrationv2.html
When the page opens---scroll down about midway until you see this---"What if I don't want to upgrade to the newest version of Yahoo! Mail"?----If you do not want to upgrade, please "click here" to use Yahoo! Mail Classic.
("click here" is a blue link). Return to Classic is immediate and permanent.
This came from here answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AgLeOawNBx_FJd7AqN2xgXcD.Bd.;_ylv=3?qid=20120113110800AAOha2E fantastic how many folks will be grateful for this answer. As written there, the New "Improved'' (sic) Mail is very buggy, unstable & a total pain in the butt. There are literally thousands & thousands of users complaining they can't use their mail like they used to.
Friday, January 6, 2012
stressing me
In the news today a compensation award for stress for a teacher who suffered a ridiculous workload. Resulting in a radio Scotland phone-in this morning on teachers' work conditions and stress. I failed to get mentioned on it that the media has regularly shown interest in overstressing of teachers and none at all in overstressing of their students. Never have I heard a phone-in on that.
It's now hitting 30 years since I was overwhelmed by a ridiculous workload at school, and I never got any chance to seek a compensation award through any industrial injury type of route. Employees get that, school students don't. The system assumes their abilities can be decided for them, and they are not free to walk out of the situation if it becomes impossible as it did for me. It is a lot harder and riskier a prospect for the mishandled school student who has left school with consequently no prospects, to simply sue, and besides, crises at school bring in the teenage mental health systems, who themselves can take sharply against you if you resist getting bossed around by them just as badly as by your school. The student becomes a mental health issue, with all that means for civil status, because of their teachers' actions which are not the student's fault. Then they are not going to be supportive witnesses for you, instead their attitude that you are mental unless you change yourself to fit in with all their ideals makes any suing impossible.
The emergence of aspies has been the life miracle I needed delivering into my hands proof that aspie skills at some limited types of fact retention had been the real explanation of the personal strengths that made my teachers recklessly greedy. Never was proving this point helped by the media recognising student stress as any sort of major issue. Now, we in the aspie scene know that student stress has been a recurring aspie experience from constant misreading of us by educators. The trusting public who believe reality is everything the tabloids and BBC say it is, still have no knowledge of this at all. They still only hear of the teachers suffering.
Maurice Frank
It's now hitting 30 years since I was overwhelmed by a ridiculous workload at school, and I never got any chance to seek a compensation award through any industrial injury type of route. Employees get that, school students don't. The system assumes their abilities can be decided for them, and they are not free to walk out of the situation if it becomes impossible as it did for me. It is a lot harder and riskier a prospect for the mishandled school student who has left school with consequently no prospects, to simply sue, and besides, crises at school bring in the teenage mental health systems, who themselves can take sharply against you if you resist getting bossed around by them just as badly as by your school. The student becomes a mental health issue, with all that means for civil status, because of their teachers' actions which are not the student's fault. Then they are not going to be supportive witnesses for you, instead their attitude that you are mental unless you change yourself to fit in with all their ideals makes any suing impossible.
The emergence of aspies has been the life miracle I needed delivering into my hands proof that aspie skills at some limited types of fact retention had been the real explanation of the personal strengths that made my teachers recklessly greedy. Never was proving this point helped by the media recognising student stress as any sort of major issue. Now, we in the aspie scene know that student stress has been a recurring aspie experience from constant misreading of us by educators. The trusting public who believe reality is everything the tabloids and BBC say it is, still have no knowledge of this at all. They still only hear of the teachers suffering.
Maurice Frank
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