Friday, August 11, 2017

2 Fringe shows not to go to

I never like socially aggressive comedy and regard its existence as a big social problem, and 1980s alternative comedy particularly as a big brutaliser of society, that made life oppressively harder for all interactively disdvantaged groups, including us aspies then unrecognised. But when the Fringe is on I have found it worth going to see Free Fringe stand-up comedians whoee shows are about politics. Not so much to laugh as to observe seriously whither the wind is blowing, and if they come from another country or perspective, pick up insights.

This year that has had 2 particularly bad results. The culture of comedy offensiveness may have made it no longer worth doing. 2 SHOWS NOT TO GO TO:

"Australia still fucked" by Kieran Butler. It starts off as promised, insight into the tragic racist trends in Australian politics and where they came from. But at the end it turns offensively graphic about child molestation, and then he made fun of Madeleine McCann. I showed the collection bucket person exactly what I thought of that. This is a comedian _ who MADE FUN _ of Madeleine McCann.

"I can make you Tory" by Leo Kearse. I am complaining to the Fringe in support of the person he victimised: and for aspies safeness of social space so that hooligan injustice can't happen is a matter of accessibility. The Fringe bills itself as caring about accessibility. Never seen anything remotely like this before.

Hardly 10 minutes in, he started having an unduly nasty go at an audience member for nodding! Actually for nodding! how bullying is that? Even though the person explained that his nodding had been a sign of agreement! Kearse refused to feel complimented and insisted the nodding was offputting, and several times mockingly asked if the person had a neurological disorder - itself not an attitude favouring accessibility. Then he switched his hostility to another audience member some distance from the alleged nodder, who had defended him. This person defended himself to banter rubbishing, which annoyed Kearse, and rightly would not accept having bitingly worded fault or blame pinned on him by Kearse. Kearse would not drop it without having an insulting closing jibe at the person, yet started blaming this person for disrupting the show, by an exchange that Kearse had started.

I was the first uninvolved audience member to promptly walk out in loud solidarity with the wronged person and his friend.

The exchange eventually stopped but not for long. Kearse delivered a couple more lines of his act, then rounded them off with another jibe at this person. A total treacherous contradiction of having claimed to be disrupted, to go after the person again. Obviously rightly the person objected. Straight away another man at the back stood up in an apparently official capacity and ordered "Leave now" ! An audience member targetted and bullied by a performer, then accused of disruption for taking the performer's own goading bait, then insulted by him again then thrown out for saying anything. This performer is a hooligan bully and audience abuser.

Aug 12 update: Today in the parade in South Queensferry's annual fair, a brass band was playing Waltzing Matilda! In a world of growing mutual apartheid closed doors between countries and anti-outsider nastiness, of Brexit and Manus Island, we casually play music that evokes other countries and think of it as part of a happy occasion, without spirits dampened by the tragedy. We still like to immerse ourselves in the world musically, when we are cutting each other off in real travel.

Aug 17 update: on Kearse's show: a stamen is part of a flower, btw - "Thank you for bringing this to our attention I have had a stamen form the performer who has stated he feel it was a forum of heckling. As we are a free festival venue we host the show but don’t run the programing etc. We are sorry this was not in the taste of what the festival is all about but our performers are free to remove anyone from the show they feel are heckling etc. " ... " I hope this has not put the venue in a bad light with yourself and we would be saddened by this."

Ludicrous end line. Patently it puts the Three Sisters venue in a bad light with any thinking person. They merit and need some being saddened! they need to cry over whether it's worse to ve saddened or publicly maltreated.

Sunday, August 6, 2017

not helped by the basket seller

Further to the unhelpful complications of the Post Office Travel Card.

Another aspie and ELAS member reports that he found you are not allowed to do something that is common sense and anyone would expect to do, and which he was not informed of at time of buying the card. This confirms that its info and directions are incomplete to the buyer and it is sneakily far more complicated than it advertises as being.

Consider that you need THREE numbers to use it, and a online account password too! You need an "access code", to quote to them like an identiy number, as well as having the actual card number and its PIN.

You can't pay in any other currency than the pound to top it up. Even though the whole point of the card is to hold balances of other currencies on it, and to top them up, you can only do it by conversion from pounds. After returning from a holiday in the Eurozone he went to the Post Office and tried to pay his leftover euros onto his card. It would have been a good way to solve the problem of the unexchangeable coins too. The Post Office said no.

Bureaucratic nonsense like that, upsetting your common sense planning, throws you. Throws a logical aspie mind especially. This is not an aspie friendly product, tricky, full of petty barriers and potential pitfalls, and not greatly consumer friendly at all. Not what it is claimed to be on bright billboards in post offices. Be wary using it. But yes, use it to save on bank currency exchange fees: and if you have cause sometimes to pay for things online in foreign currencies then that is how you can use up leftover balances between your travels.

Monday, June 5, 2017

carry 2 baskets of European currency

While social media bonds folks in different countries far more intimately together than leaves Brexit and the political popularity of borders making any sense, and Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg recently spoke in favour of a Basic Income system and progressive tax! travel is still oppressively user unfriendly in all the process it makes you get right and the lack of back-up if it goes wrong.

In ANS's autism strategy document An Ordinary Life Too (PDF book link) we touched on the pressure from the worrying losability of travel documents - tickets, passports, air boarding passes, money cards. It is an impracticality, that endangers everyone, to have no clear and committal answers on what to do when such things go missing - as they obviously can, as human error and crime both exist. An unjust society motivates suicides in vulnerable groups and a just society will never penalise in any way human error or being a victim of crime. The unfair story that a couple burgled during their wedding could not go on their honeymoon to Iceland because their passports were stolen, as well as proving the sheer evil of everyone who wants passports to exist, gave me a fear of telling anyone socially about an intended foreign holiday before it happens and I know I have arrived successfully. Which means using experience to juggle whose sympathetic contact numbers to carry.

Losable travel documents are a barbarity, continuing to be accepted because they exist: a dangerous anomaly left to continue, and us all left to navigate the dangers of, because sone politics of money is stirred up when you devise ways to abolish tickets. Passports are the offensive passbooks of a global apartheid. There is a disability discrimination in losable travel documents, for dyspraxia and motor clumsiness in handling small objects is linked to the autistic spectrum, and increases the chance of losing things. It is an equalities claim against losable travel documents being allowed to exist.

The pressure of losability creates a dilemma with money cards. If you have managed your life well enough to have more than one, is it safer to carry only one, leaving the others at home not to get lost, or to carry them all in case you need the funds in any of them, especially if one gets lost? For anyone in the typical position of having one bank debit card, this question is pressed, made a dilemma, now that the new Post Office Travel Card has blossomed into existence and replaced travellers' cheques. Travel insurance presses even more acutely, enough to quite reasonably just put you off travelling at all, whether you have made the safest choice with your cards so that they can't turn round and say you did not.

Experience travelling with ELAS indicates the answer. The answer is yes do carry them both. I venture to share this to help all aspies be confident towards your travel insurers, that yes that is the right choice, and establish clearly that it is. Something shows so from experience. You might overlook a spend, or find an extra spend present as needed, and that is not good if you only carried one card and the spend concerned could be covered by the other card, or using the other card for it makes the difference to whether you are left short of money for the rest of your holiday. As soon as you have another card in use than your main debit card, that pitfall exists. You might want the main debit card funds. A particular danger is with the bad system of online booking sites for hotels that book you but expect you to pay on arrival and don't let you more sensibly pay on booking - even if the site uses your debit card to confirm the booking. Anything could happen to the traveller to upset their carrying of everything they need, before they reach the hotel and need it to be an already safely paid for refuge. Hotels can actually have the wrong setting shown on a booking site, re whether a prepayment will be taken: that comes from an ELAS member actually asking an hotel that does not prepay, after making a card backed booking on booking.com. Or, after the transaction of securing a booking uses your card, it is easy for your mind to file that as dealt with, then missing that you still need to take that card in order to pay with it, to decide it would be a good safety idea not to take it because you are taking another card, the POTC.

So take them both.

It's complicated enough that you need 3 different types of password for the card! That is not explained when you buy it, either. You get an "access code" number that you need to quote any time you phone them about the card, and when you create an online account to work the card especially for checking your balance in each currency and topping up. Then of course this online account itself requires a password. Then separately to either of these, the card itself has a PIN number!

You will benefit from knowing another problem with the POTC that its marketing does not explain, and should, as part of explaining all details of things clearly to spectrumites. To use any other card to top up your POTC, you have to register the card's details onto the online account for your POTC, it does not let you use Paypal, I think it should, and the first top-up transaction may set off your bank security system as perceiving an "unusual activity" and disabling the card and making you phone it, clearly at big coping inconvenience if you are abroad. It is suggestive of the banks deliberately wanting to make the POTC harder to use and put folks off it, because it is a rival for them.

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

hate crime protection for autistics

A petition to MAKE AUTISTIC HATE CRIMES COUNT AS AGGRAVATED ON THE SAME TERMS AS RACISM. www.change.org/p/uk-parliament-make-autistic-hate-crime-as-punishable-as-racism?recruiter=54955655&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=autopublish&utm_term=des-lg-no_src-no_msg

It is needed against derisive conformist thugs who in several cases have been capable of serious violence. A really great thing it could do is ban macho aggression over eye contact! You know, the irrational thug culture of "Are you looking at me?" which comes from animal instincts to find eye contact a threat. But mishandling eye contact is part of autism.

Discrimination and hate law is now an overlapping power of both governments. The Equalities Act 2010, the overall British-wide law on mimority groups and an aggravated hate status for attacks on them, was done at Brirish level and so this petition, which after all originates in England too, is naturally going to British level. But it's worth knowing that steps at Scottish level are possible too under the recently increased powers.

Friday, May 12, 2017

voicing into the autism strategy, so we must stay visibly organised

Facebook link for it coming soon. Already linked from the autism strategy's site by this link, because it is a document attached to the autism strategy. A grassroots sourced guide of what real life situations for aspies it has to address, for effectiveness of all services. Thus is the Autism Network Scotland's compilation An Ordinary Life Too. From many aspies in Scotland as contributors, and the editing team's membership overlapped ELAS.

That is what ANS has been about: grassroots input into the policy system for us. Scotland seems to be where this model is best developed in the world. In the 10 years it has run, it has succeeded as an experiment and a principle: proud to be part of that.

What a contrast with the failure rate, throughout Britain, for independently organised aspie local societies. Their number in Scotland is declining. According to an ELAS member who has observed the trend, "all over Britain AS support groups had started, and folded when their members were tired of one another." To get tired of the countrywide mass and scene of your fellow aspies is a really nasty thing to do and increases vulnerability. You don't get fellow aspies' empathy and understanding in NT society, dammit. Aspie Village keeps a national aspie scene in existence, but a successful networked scene of UNCORRUPT local societies, with constitutions tying them to standards of personal fairness and no instant or arbitrary rejections, and the standard protections of minorities, is what we need to stand up for ourselves at a practical level everywhere, and not be reliant on the arrogant self-interested NAS.

ELAS has just crossed a line of failure as a self-reliant independent group, as a dispute over honouring of ethics and fairness has made it cease to be possible to have an impartial and ethically spotless chair from within the group, and need to have Autism Initiatives workers take the chair. It is a milestone of scene contraction, that underlines the need for conscientious group fairness ethics at all times, to underpin all aspie societies. No excuse for anyone ever to assert toughly spoken brute views of reality and limits to willingness to adhere to fairness, or to claim there ever exists any reason for anyone's personal fainess to be sacrificed for a group's expediency - those are violations of vulnerability. When local societies are proper tied down ethically safe spaces, where all know that nobody, officeholders included, can get away with doing a dirty on you, then there is less motive for anyone to get tired of it. For the aspie scene and nationally networked community to be sustained, much less grown, it needs to be worthwhile, means reliably nice and caring, for the folks taking part in it. That's a no-brainer.

Fibromyalgia can co-occur with autism or in the same families at it, though curiously the gender balance of its prevalence is the reverse of autism's. Liaison with a friend with it has confirmed that its recognition as a disability is accurate and wanted, and brings really practical benefits and helps with establishing practical disability entitlements. So that this petition to class fibromyalgia as a disability picked up from another aspie contact, is worth your support. To share it is an example of practical good from a sustained aspie scene, from us caring not to tire of it !!

Sunday, February 12, 2017

gettng away with inaccurate pro-homework spin

Did you hear Good Morning Scotland mention anything about this today? I didn't. If they mentioned it at any other time, then it missed reaching the regular Sunday audience.

Re their review of the papers, covering a Sunday Herald front page on an initiative of increasing school time for kids from poorer backgrounds. Complaining that: the radio reviewers were convinced that this plan when used in America had had only good results, and there was no balance because there was no asking if a more intense regime would be a pressure and harmful, and the actual article had not mentioned homework.

Dear Mr Frank
Reference CAS-4202564-ZBGB9X
Thank you for getting in touch about Good Morning Scotland broadcast on 29 January 2017.
The paper reviewer on the programme mentioned ‘more homework’ as being a feature of this proposal, and that was not backed up by the newspaper piece under discussion. This was however a single fleeting reference and the substance of the discussion focused on the two issues of longer school days and shorter holidays.
The newspaper review is an informed and opinionated take on a range of stories across the Sunday newspapers and is driven by the opinions of the reviewers. That should be tempered and challenged by the presenters, and on this occasion that didn’t happen.
We’ve shared your feedback with the production team. Furthermore, all your comments have been fully registered on our daily audience log. This internal document is made available to all our production teams and senior BBC management.

Monday, January 16, 2017

Parent of adult needs support fighting mental health act

Parent Leo Andrade in London is having an unjust hard time against rigid Mental Health Act ways of thinking, still being applied wrongly to autistic son Stephen into adulthood, now aged 22.

Support this family's petition and keep hearing listening to and linking to their testimony. Injustice stories always need telling. That is always the first basic about them. Shine a light into truth. Always makes less bad stuff possible to happen than if it goes unnoticed.

Maurice Frank