lose a small object = sent away from your friends.

In the latest tabloid racist crackdown on our European friends, anounced today, for other EU citizens begging is going to become a deporting offence.

I see an autism discrimination in this, related to travel documents and their losability. The danger we are all in from having to carry travel documents, tickets or passports, which are capable of getting lost by human error, and the sudden enormous effects if they do get lost far from home. Still not yet taken up publicly by the big charities, I have long made a case that all travel documents' losability and stealability is a discriminatory extra endangerment of everyone with autism related conditions, and this makes a disability discrimination case against their existence.

This is because of "fine motor clumsiness", having an impaired physical skill at handling objects, especially small objects and small details. Arises in dyspraxia, attention deficit, Irlen's syndrome, and simply in autistic sensory overload.

So it occurs to me, for aspies who are other EU citizens. What if you lose your ticket because of autistic issues with motor skills, you are stranded in trouble up against transport systems being totally noncommittal and unhelpful to you, you are not going to get out of trouble quickly unless you can raise money for a new fare, so you beg? Sometimes I have been begged to in Edinburgh by folks with a story of needing to finance a journey home, and can't be sure they are making it up. In a desperate situation not your fault and whose capability to happen is utterly unjust, suddenly you can be sent back to your other EU country for it and not allowed back here for a year.

Exactly the type of serious emergency possibility that is why ordinary aspies need our direct voice, like through ANS, to force the big charities' and professionals' hands to take a position on it.

Maurice Frank

trial by face.

Letter writers published in the Times yesterday and the Metro today are so important to protecting justice. Saying: a jury is supposed to decide guilt or innocence from evidence, to do it by looking at faces is like relying on witchcraft and is no guide at all to a court case's facts.

More than they may realise, there was a particular minority group put in danger by Kenneth Clarke's outburst about seeing body language in court, us. What can't aspies and all levels of autistics do? Communicate effectively and give normal social signals. That includes engaging visually, includes facial expression. Our instinct is remain stony faced and avoid eye contact because we don't have culturally learned ways to do anything else. We can neither see body language nor show it.

For courts to allow juries to look at body language in judging evidence of crime, as Kenneth Clarke describes, is to load the system unjustly against a section of society. No lawyer is responsible who still invites this to happen. He has spoken without any sign of minority awareness. Autistic people can not do body language, or eye contact. If we are judged on body language or face, we risk appearing guilty by reason of an inbuilt personal disadvantage.

Maurice Frank.