Monday, December 21, 2015

adult diagnosis in another East Coast city

It is obviously out of order for budgeting decisions in NHS and Scottish government to leave no diagnosis service functioning at all for aspie adults in Aberdeen. So that some who can afford so have even been paying hundreds of pounds (which go towards what the hell?) for private diagnoses.

This is one of the places that has a drop-in One Stop Shop since the second round of them opening. It is practising well, setting a good standard, by extending help to adults who can't access diagnosis. The whole scene should think so.

Adults who were not picked up as kids, wherever they are, are visibly entitled to be recognised now and supported the same as they can see happening in other places such as here in Edinburgh. A service's existence in another location is factual evidence and grounds to cite your entitlement to it too. Referrals out of area should be happening to obtain diagnoses. Where is Aberdeen's local autism plan, it's required to have one, addressing sorting this scandal out?

Thursday, November 26, 2015

Autistic Groups Fairness Watch

Autistic Groups Fairness Watch is a new name and site for Spectrum Fairness, the blog project on giving voice to injustices suffered from autism groups. Originally in 2004 SF was conceived as being about online groups, and a deterrent to them banning members too easily. There is now interest in it having offline scope too. The new name should give clear voice to that.

The move was prompted by the closure of blog.co.de , but the new site is more versatile readable and better. Benefitting from how you can now make your own sites that are a mixture of blog form and static site pages.

Saturday, November 7, 2015

Is there gentle caring society without religious places in it?

Here's proud of a Youtube comment I just made, on how sneery tough antagonistic character types - the human majority - can't get along well in a thinking way and create local social scenes around their ideas. Anyone who wants that to happen needs to be favourable to making social behaviour softer and more including and welcoming than it usually is.

It's an atheist cartoonist, called "DarkMatter2525", - hey I happen to be sceptical of dark matter. In this cartoon www.youtube.com/watch?v=wguAQHWVcZY he complains that urban America is very densely full of churches, and atheists feel hassled by it. This was one of his emotionally serious offerings, probably his most self-troubled one.

He is a prolific maker of comedy cartoons on theology, though like all the Youtube atheists he never looks at the thesis of a God not having any magic omnipotence. The cartoons directly about conservative and morally harsh religious ideas, and how they would really work out for society if practised literally, are addictively incisive and what any conservative theocracy needs to hear. They are really good and deliciously libertarian. Others are turkeys leaving you furious at wasting time on them: those are the ones where he digresses onto lots of unnecessary sex and nudity themes to make himself look cool. Comics with macho characters always do that. Particularly offensive in some of his cartoons are some too harshly head-on uninhibited depictions of violent or medically tragic deaths, within a comedy context, made shockingly coldly unfeelingly by someone who believes in no existence after death, and wishes to attract his viewers to that harsh macho belief too - all those of his cartoons are just as bad as the harsh scriptures he argues for being offended by.

His sense of humour is emotionally gloating and psychologically sneering in the misery ehancing horrible way that has remained popular ever since the barbaric "alternative" comedy of the 80s started it. There was a clue in there to his complaint, to the social imbalance favouring Christians over atheists in having any neighbourhood social life with likeminded folks towards religion and its issues. And it's not only Christians, it's everyone who feels compatible with a church, you might not be a Christian but still feel likdminded enough with a liberal church to belong to it socially. I wrote -
"
" Plenty of nice folks are atheists. But the milder forms of organised religion, regardless of their content's rightness or wrongness, have a social virtue that practically nothing else achieves [besides the aspie scene, hopefully!] - they bring together softer gentler characters and give them a social space to be themselves and accepted, a refuge. From what? From human uncivilisation, from persecution by all the derisive-hearted macho thug chararcters who are a tyranny of conformity to a futile harsh cycle of sneer and violence which destroys everything nice. And because being macho includes deriding every nice idea in religions, not for being wrong but for being nice, macho sneer characters are always atheists.

This makes it far harder for atheists than for the religious, to like each other and get along well socially. Consequently, they can't form so many local associations equivalent to churches. The religious outcompete you not on ideas, their ideas can be dumb without limit, but on escape from cruel human nature. If humans were socially nicer than we are, there would be an equal spread of atheist churches. If you want to fight back from being surrounded by churches, encourage atheists to be saintly instead of tough personalities, ignore every macho sod who drops atheism in disgust at it, and look forward to the quality life of basking in warm-hearted tolerant soppy company.

That prospect is not shaking your self-esteem, is it? because that wouldn't be the rational response to its reasoned merits.
"

Maurice Frank

Sunday, August 23, 2015

Open letter to NAS on accountability

www.autangel.org.uk/letter-to-nas-trustees.html


This link is an open letter to the NAS, about its standards towards us: "trying to adapt to what it thinks its audience of the moment may prefer" and "We are concerned that the NAS is a charity that is not listening to the very people – autistic people – it purports to support and address the needs of". Which has always been my feeling, and why we needed ANS to emerge instead.

It's a UK scale action, it's written by an aspie in London, David Mery,gizmonaut.net. He is gathering signatures, by emailing him if you want to sign it.

NAS reply of Sep 11 is just a businesslike holding acknowledgement, says nothing of substance.

Thursday, July 2, 2015

common sense asserting of your fair place socially could get you criminalised

www.change.org/p/uk-government-house-of-parliament-uk-prime-minister-reform-of-protection-from-harassment-1997-act-stop-the-wrongful-criminalisation-of-individuals-with-conditions-that-affect-social-understanding?recruiter=69061609&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=share_facebook_responsive&utm_term=des-lg-no_src-no_msg&fb_ref=Default A petition by ASSGO on the law on harrassment passed in 1997 after a media panic about stalking.

We need to be careful that able autistics have a normal citizen's capacity and hence not to lump all autistics together with learning disability and mental health in arguments about lack of insight into an action's social effects. Some actions are totally fair and logical and fall foul of PC. So I'm not wholly happy with the petition's wording. But have signed because it is an important civil liberty point for all autistics to prevent logical fair sensible actions of assertion of fair place in society, from getting classed as harrassment because a malicious person unfairly has a stronger social influence and power base.

For we already live in a time when it has become logically impossible for straight men to take any step at all towards acquiring a partner because absolutely any such action can count as an offence of sexual harrassment and get us into trouble. This at the same time as music and TV still peer pressurise for partnering. A total mixed message in the culture, saying to all straight men: we assume you have failed or are suffering unless you do something which we might charge you with harrassment if you do.

As I wrote in my submission to parliament's enquiry on loneliness: "The correct awareness of safety for women and ending a sex object view of them has led to the opposite swing of a PC presumption against men in every boundary colliding situation. Men now perceive, that in any dispute over accidental social or physical collisions, whoever actually caused them, we are the ones who are more politically convenient to blame. This has gender unequal impacts on safety of acceptance to be in social spaces, hence to feel secure in them, hence on exclusion and loneliness."

This is a strong reason why the petition is right.

Maurice Frank

Friday, May 29, 2015

Experiment concludes most misinformation inserted into wikipedia may persist/

wikipediocracy.com/2015/04/13/experiment-concludes-most-misinformation-inserted-into-wikipedia-may-persist/

A months-long experiment to deliberately insert misinformation into 30 different Wikipedia articles has been brought to an end ... In 63% of cases, the phoney information persisted not for minutes or hours, but for weeks and months. And at the end, his attempts to fix Wikipedia back to its previous state were halted by a Wikipedia administrator! :) Read to see why Wikipedia’s purported “self-correcting” prowess is more myth than reality.

On the day when Wikipedia's founder has been given a sycophantic uncritical interview on radio 4, agree with the commenter on this link who says "A well written and well conceived test of Wikipedia standards. Hopefully 60 Minutes will give you equal time." He has spotted whose side the media is on, not the side of fair grassroots democracy.

Friday, May 8, 2015

the not listening election.

When did I make the previous post? 6 DAYS AGO!!!! you can see on it.

I submit that exactly the phenomenon I warned about well before this poll, has happened. Has happened! An election has been decided and swung by the "don't understand" psychology.

Maurice Frank

Saturday, May 2, 2015

Oh hey the papers have explained all now, change my vote. Nah nah nah not listening to you, I don't understand.

How fair will it be for an election to be swung by the psychology of "don't understand" towards unfamiliar situations?

NB - ELAS is for folks of any politics, short of racism against other members, and so is this blog. Any party view suggested by this post is only personal. Write a counter to it if you like.

I have a particularly strong hate and sense of moral cause against what should be termed "the don't understand trick". This is when folks wilfully resist hearing a new idea of an upsetting fact, and evade having to make any response to it, by the device on insisting that they don't understand it.

There is no honesty in folks saying they don't understand. It is part of how narrow mindedness and respectability perpetuate themselves: oh no you can't go saying that to them, "they won't understand."

All communication is tyrannically shut down when thick yobs decide to keep saying they don't understand every time you say anything else than they want to hear, or is already familiar to them. Being up against this like a brick wall unless you only say what they want to hear, you are silenced. It is a vicious socially controlling device.

The don't understand trick is the greatest weapon of bigots and unfair obstacle to getting anything heard that's not what popular culture already wants to believe. If anything your hearer does not want to hear, or any new idea, is conveniently not understood, your voice is silenced. Your right to communicate is gagged. This is clearly out of order if the mob refuse to want to understand things to do with personal safety or schools endangering children. Think of an Open University study of anti-sexism where a boy enjoyed cooking in the privacy of home but was concerned to keep it secret from so-called friends because "they won't understand". Contemplate the evil of how, for trying to explain aspieness to folks who are unfamiliar with it, you can get labelled as a rubbish hard to understand character, while someone else for writing exactly the same things in books read by an autism familiar audience get labelled as a good recommendable author.

Of course a person can have genuine failings at following language and must be entitled to ask for explanations, but that is the point: willingness to understand. They would ask you to explain, point by point, the specific points where they are not following you. Players of the "don't understand" trick never do that. The "don't understand" posture is a refusal to listen, a withdrawal of patience from you getting the point across at all, rejecting of any further explanation you have. This is what proves it is a trick device. When you are genuine in not grasping what someone has said or written, you can itemise exactly where in the text your unclarity is and ask for explanation to clear up those bits. This is a posture of willingness to listen, of accepting the validity of the person getting their point across, and you see how utterly different it is to the hostile wall created by the "don't understand" posture.

That shows no one ever actually needs to say "I don't understand". You simply need to say instead, what does this word/phrase mean? can you explain this bit? how do you get from here to there? etc.

I have found an excellent revealing way to weed out the bullies who are using the "don't understand" posture as an oppression device. It proves from experience that my perception of this is right, and it needs sharing, it could be very useful for forcing folks to listen to you properly. When someone goes into the impatient posture that they don't understand so are not going to listen any more, then you invite them to go through what you have said, word by word, to pinpoint exactly what they don't understand so that you can explain it. They will always run a mile from this invitation. It utterly catches them out in the unjust evil true intent of their "don't understand" posture. You can test this out for yourself, the proof that the "don't understand" posture is an emotional abuse.

So, the election? Today the press are trying to muddle everyone with the situation around a Labour government's relation to the SNP. Following Miliband's renunciation 2 days ago of any deal with other parties, now several front pages saying: oh look, we've caught them out, they will do a deal. This is based on some of the Shadow Cabinet explaining that a minority government would go from vote to vote talking to other parties to get as much as it can of its own business through. That is not a deal. That is what Miliband already explicitly explained that that is not a deal. It is exactly what happens when there is not a deal, it is the way any minority government has to function, the other parties can jostle with it on passing or not passing each item of its business. It's the way the SNP minority government of 2007-11 worked, getting business through with Tory support so often that to be logically consistent these papers should accuse it of having a deal with the Tories, exactly what is terrible for the SNP ever to be seen by its voters to have. But logically consistent is what these headlines have an interest in not being. To understand what it or is not a deal takes willingness to listen to explanations and understand the system. For the real human minds of many voters, knee jerk prejudice is easier and saves mental effort. Oh look, this headline has made it sound like this means a deal, so it probably does, so it does. Conclusion reached, end of story, mind closed to further listening.

Because the story is written to fit prejudice that what the politician says is likely to be lies, the voter leaps to the simple conclusion that it is indeed lies in this case. To make any effort to understand the system would be an unwelcome mental effort. It could threaten 2 things for the voter, (i) a prejudice, (ii) their self-esteem of being right in leaping to the hasty conclusion. because these things are threatening, they must be shut out of mind, by insisting: no no no, I DON'T UNDERSTAND. Even if they would understand perfectly well if they chose to listen. So now, anyone trying to explain the technicality of why a minority government's work to pass each vote is not a deal, and why these shadow ministers have not confessed there will be a deal, will just get "I don't understand." And that psychology in enough voters could change the election's outcome.

The voting reform referendum in 2011, already, appeared swung by a "don't understand" prejudice. The argument that the proposed new system took more effort to understand, succeeded in appealing to voters to reject it. That worked better as an argument than the case that it was a fairer system. So this is totally capable of happening. Now in this multifaceted election, that recent rejection of reform is a real pain to all the folks voting tactically or frustrated that voting the way they want won't match with dealing with the contest most threatening to happen in their seat. They have the unjust "don't understand" psychology to thank for dumping them in it.

Maurice Frank

Monday, April 6, 2015

NO UNIFORM. There is a place that has learnt.

Apr 6:THERE IS NO SCHOOL UNIFORM IN THE SHETLAND ISLANDS, ACCORDING TO THEIR OWN COUNCIL !!

Question remains how effectively they have prevented there being informal uniforms effected by peer pressure. But as regards formal uniforms, their own Executive Manager of Additional Support Needs and Early Years says "we do not have a school uniform policy in our schools, and pupils are free to wear what they wish.

Our teachers receive training on strategies to support our pupils with autism, which includes awareness of sensory issues."

Like the case of sensory issue which Luke Beardon cited in his address to the NAS conference in Aberdeen on Mar 27, of an autistic man with a shorts sensitivity who he had met through the NAS, who was prevented being able to focus on any exams and had his school outcome destroyed entirely by a trousers uniform that made his knees feel "on fire." A so clear obvious abuse that I am circulating it as the inescapable clincher against uniforms.

Apr 27: Glasgow too. "confirm we have no policy or school rule that would prevent the wearing of shorts". But again NO WORD on the critical biggie of preventing of PEER GROUP oppression, by allowing every pupil to opt out of any class or social circle who would persecute their personal choice by the undemocratic ape means of RIBALDRY.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

the autism charities' corruption will be a cause of homicide by hair length.

THE CORRUPTION OF THE BIG AUTISM CHARITIES HAS ALLOWED THE FOLLOWING TO HAPPEN.

How so, when this is not about an autistic person? Because sensory issues in autism prove a biological humanitarian case against dress codes and uniforms, any at all ever, by reason of their biological harm to autistic people's bodies, and because this includes the unidentified or undiagnosed of us, dress codes can only be kept away from us by being kept away from THE WHOLE OF SOCIETY. So our biological situation liberates everyone else, NTs too, from dress codes.

This alert comes form the LGBT campaign All Out. After fleeing violence in Nigeria 10 years ago, Aderonke Apata applied for asylum. But in her latest hearing last week, a Home Office barrister argued that she couldn’t be a lesbian because “Lesbians only have short hair. And they don’t have children.” Because Aderonke used to have long hair and has children she can’t possibly be a “real” lesbian.

They could decide Aderonke’s fate at any moment: we have a critical window to speak out before Aderonke is sent back to Nigeria where she could be killed or jailed. The Home Office is breaking its own rules, which say that stereotyping the lives and looks of LGBT folks is not allowed. A huge public outcry in the next few days will push Home Secretary Theresa May to stop Aderonke’s deportation. Sign now to help stop life-threatening deportations based on idiotic stereotypes: go.allout.org/en/a/aderonke_hearing

The big autism charities, who speak only for themselves with no accountability towards us who they purport to speak for, have chosen to fit in comfortably with what politicians want to hear. It is knowingly child assault that school uniforms still exist this long into the time of autism knowledge, and child endangerment for any autism charity to choose not to speak out so. They are directly to blame for the discriminatory LIFE endangerment of Aderonke and LGBT asylum seekers. A shift by society into a humanitarian awareness against dress codes would have destroyed the concept of using an appearance based argument in an asylum case, long before this case ever happened.

Saturday, March 7, 2015

useful consumer site suddenly annoyingly closes

It is an emotional and consumer blow that an exceptionally sensible website with a simple empowering concept is closing down. The "Fix my transport" site www.fixmytransport.com.

It's all because of site hosting and maintaining. The way that shifts as projects diversify and their time commitments shift. The web still has this infuriating flaw, that to be good democratic and user-empowering does not bed a site in to the certainty of lasting.

Using that site helped me in motivating the council to take the supported bus route 63 (Gyle to South Queensferry) away from Horsburgh, whose shoddy standards included simply cancelling buses without rep-placement if they broke down. On an hourly service, and there was a case where they visibly used another bus to deliver staff from their depot to deal with the breakdown but not put the bus actually onto the service for the folks who had been waiting an hour.

When Lothian buses took over, they reinstated the Sunday service that Horsburgh had found unviable and dropped years before - and it seems that just by running it better they have found it viable enough now to increase the evening service, on all 7 days, as well as the day frequency during the week.

It shows the positive public empowerment at stake having a facility like "fix my transport", and now it's going. Credit also Queensferry Community Council, for its local response to the issue, but they did not make it publicly findable knowledge, it was Fix My Transport which served for that. We need to bother to organise a similar sort of consumer info, for spectrum folks, through ANS. An idea that has been raised before and has not yet taken off, as it needs starter contributions, like this 63 bus item could have been one, to get it going.

Maurice Frank

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

draw the line

Not published by the Metro. Do you find that predictable?

" Though cartoons should be free to criticise harmdoers, they should not be free to inflict personal harm themselves. Hence, unless you want to risk being sued for contributing to suicides, you should ban and refuse to publish cartoons like today's [Friday] Pearls Before Swine, gloating over the spectacle of unjust social attitudes causing loneliness. "

Je suis caring.

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Why Psychiatry Holds Enormous Power in Society Despite Losing Scientific Credibility

www.alternet.org/why-psychiatry-holds-enormous-power-society-despite-losing-scientific-credibility

by Bruce Levine.

"In our increasingly fear-based society, psychiatry meets our own increasing needs for coercion."

"Influential “thought leader” psychiatrists and major psychiatry institutions, by their own recent admissions, have been repeatedly wrong about illness/disorder validity, biochemical causes and drug treatments. In several cases, they have been discovered to be on the take from drug companies, yet continue to be taken seriously by the mainstream media."