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
Showing posts with label listening. Show all posts
Showing posts with label listening. Show all posts
Friday, July 20, 2012
Saturday, September 26, 2009
America and the Royal Bank of Scotland
3 aspies in the Scottish scene, to my knowledge alone, have made recent or present visits to the United States. Others are more daunted by the fraught and risky pospect of that country's arbitrary and chancy entry barriers, which are on edge against any imperfection in foreign visitors, disabilities included, though this is never discussed in our media. It would very obviously be an injustice in the scene, if supportive chats and swapping of experiences should just accept easier US access for some than others. That the ups and downs of social experiences located in the US, for some, should be shared and receive support while not all are confident they would have access to that country at all. As a point of disability discrimination, such arbitrary difference between the accessibility of the same experience to folks with the same condition shouldn't be possible.
Now, more than just another protest that the big autism organisations will ignore as they always do with all ordinary aspies' issues. There is something timely to do about this one. While others have been having adventures in the US, I have had one concerning the US. Consider this. Read 3 paragraphs about a banking problem here at home, then see how it impacts on US travel. I have been writing the following to all the constitutional reform campaigns and others like Jubilee Debt.
**
The Royal Bank of Scotland, among the biggest players in the banking crash, has rejected doing a clear ethical duty for its customers against a blatant violation of a basic democratic principle: innocent until proved guilty. RBS is supposed to be getting cleaned up and showing us all so to rebuild confidence. Instead, there is now a reform to be forced in the West's basic standards towards its citizens by exposing that our second biggest bank is still offending.
There is now a security system around bank cards, that has never been publicly announced, in which your card can be blocked without warning while they check up on any activity that fits a profiling system's view of being suspicious. If you find your card blocked when you use it in a shop, you have to answer confusing security questions to RBS over the phone, which will take time, so unwarned you may suddenly face a choice between losing your card or missing transport and not reaching your next destination - on time or at all. It happened to me after I used my card to pay 50p for a coach seat reservation, because that is an unusually small transaction and card fraudsters often test systems with "dummy transactions" of this size. Okay if they explain this to folks, but I made a complaint about all the life situations I could think of where unfair effects can be caused if this can happen without warning and you don't know how to prevent it.
Anything at all that counts as "unusual", even just for you personally, can trigger a security block, so if you can think of anything unusual you intend to do with your card you are now advised to inform the bank first. This you only learn after having your first experience of a problem. Foreign travel is always one of the "unusual" items that you should notify.
Now - pair this with how this security includes profiling that makes assumptions about the customer, which means, about their character, and RBS itself says it does not know all the details of how the system it is using makes its assumptions! Apply this to travel to the United States. The Western superpower's immigration control system is in massive violation of the basic human rights standards the West says it stands for. It asks foreign visitors, as one question, "Have you ever been arrested or convicted" for any crime. It requires innocent people who have been arrested to declare the details just like a criminal record, it does not treat them as spotlessly innocent, burt as carrying a likelihood to be guilty that the US will pass its own opinion on regardless of the person not being found guilty in court. They may never even have gone to court.
The US has not signed up to the International Convention on Civil + Political Rights, but on any reckoning of international law and the standards that coutnries with uncorrupted law must show to each other's citizens, the US's entry control system is illegal. My complaint about the bank card problem gave RBS, which does business in the US too, an opportunity to lay claim to have the US's system abolished! because it is causing card security here in Britain to be undermined by an illegal human rights violation affecting customers here. This follows because if an RBS customer plans a visit to the US, known to the bank, then is refused entry on grounds of character tarring by an arrest, and by any other event the card security system discovers that the customer is not in the US when they should be, it can make assumptions about what has happened and about the customer's character. This is clearly a violation of the customer, on the human rights count of judicial propriety and on data protection. So RBS commits such a violation, upon its cardholders here in Britain, by leaving it possible for this to happen, by refusing to take the formal legal position I described towards the United States and all its business there. By taking this position, RBS could have forced the US to stop operating this outrageous system that most of the Western public are quite unaware of unless they have travelled there.
Now - by speaking out about RBS's failiure, you can force an end to this system. The ethical impact on the working of banks still stands despite RBS's silence on it. Others, reform campaigns, can publicise the fact instead. This is an actual case, an actual bank customer complaint, around actual practices in bank card security. To speak out what RBS should have done is to cite the same illegal violation by the US upon folks here, to make it known to be that - and so to actually force its abolition. All cooperation of law and police and business between the US and here will now collapse into illegality unless the US's use of a question about arrests is terminated forthwith, abolished not even as a policy shift but specifically as illegal. A major democratic reform, that affects folks' lives and character records here. You [meaning any reform campaign group I write this to] can force it to happen, just by exposing this bank issue. So please do!!
So will they?
Maurice Frank
Now, more than just another protest that the big autism organisations will ignore as they always do with all ordinary aspies' issues. There is something timely to do about this one. While others have been having adventures in the US, I have had one concerning the US. Consider this. Read 3 paragraphs about a banking problem here at home, then see how it impacts on US travel. I have been writing the following to all the constitutional reform campaigns and others like Jubilee Debt.
**
The Royal Bank of Scotland, among the biggest players in the banking crash, has rejected doing a clear ethical duty for its customers against a blatant violation of a basic democratic principle: innocent until proved guilty. RBS is supposed to be getting cleaned up and showing us all so to rebuild confidence. Instead, there is now a reform to be forced in the West's basic standards towards its citizens by exposing that our second biggest bank is still offending.
There is now a security system around bank cards, that has never been publicly announced, in which your card can be blocked without warning while they check up on any activity that fits a profiling system's view of being suspicious. If you find your card blocked when you use it in a shop, you have to answer confusing security questions to RBS over the phone, which will take time, so unwarned you may suddenly face a choice between losing your card or missing transport and not reaching your next destination - on time or at all. It happened to me after I used my card to pay 50p for a coach seat reservation, because that is an unusually small transaction and card fraudsters often test systems with "dummy transactions" of this size. Okay if they explain this to folks, but I made a complaint about all the life situations I could think of where unfair effects can be caused if this can happen without warning and you don't know how to prevent it.
Anything at all that counts as "unusual", even just for you personally, can trigger a security block, so if you can think of anything unusual you intend to do with your card you are now advised to inform the bank first. This you only learn after having your first experience of a problem. Foreign travel is always one of the "unusual" items that you should notify.
Now - pair this with how this security includes profiling that makes assumptions about the customer, which means, about their character, and RBS itself says it does not know all the details of how the system it is using makes its assumptions! Apply this to travel to the United States. The Western superpower's immigration control system is in massive violation of the basic human rights standards the West says it stands for. It asks foreign visitors, as one question, "Have you ever been arrested or convicted" for any crime. It requires innocent people who have been arrested to declare the details just like a criminal record, it does not treat them as spotlessly innocent, burt as carrying a likelihood to be guilty that the US will pass its own opinion on regardless of the person not being found guilty in court. They may never even have gone to court.
The US has not signed up to the International Convention on Civil + Political Rights, but on any reckoning of international law and the standards that coutnries with uncorrupted law must show to each other's citizens, the US's entry control system is illegal. My complaint about the bank card problem gave RBS, which does business in the US too, an opportunity to lay claim to have the US's system abolished! because it is causing card security here in Britain to be undermined by an illegal human rights violation affecting customers here. This follows because if an RBS customer plans a visit to the US, known to the bank, then is refused entry on grounds of character tarring by an arrest, and by any other event the card security system discovers that the customer is not in the US when they should be, it can make assumptions about what has happened and about the customer's character. This is clearly a violation of the customer, on the human rights count of judicial propriety and on data protection. So RBS commits such a violation, upon its cardholders here in Britain, by leaving it possible for this to happen, by refusing to take the formal legal position I described towards the United States and all its business there. By taking this position, RBS could have forced the US to stop operating this outrageous system that most of the Western public are quite unaware of unless they have travelled there.
Now - by speaking out about RBS's failiure, you can force an end to this system. The ethical impact on the working of banks still stands despite RBS's silence on it. Others, reform campaigns, can publicise the fact instead. This is an actual case, an actual bank customer complaint, around actual practices in bank card security. To speak out what RBS should have done is to cite the same illegal violation by the US upon folks here, to make it known to be that - and so to actually force its abolition. All cooperation of law and police and business between the US and here will now collapse into illegality unless the US's use of a question about arrests is terminated forthwith, abolished not even as a policy shift but specifically as illegal. A major democratic reform, that affects folks' lives and character records here. You [meaning any reform campaign group I write this to] can force it to happen, just by exposing this bank issue. So please do!!
So will they?
Maurice Frank
Thursday, September 10, 2009
further to the library
Sep 10: Further to my item in April, it's still current and I want folks to dig it out and remain aware of it coz this is important !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- on the library internet system being changed for a worse system, with a built-in time cut-off that can make you lose your work if you hit any technical problems over the net running slow when you are trying to save. Which is provenly bad for us if we are trying to use the web to communicate to organise to meet up with researchers and the like.
The change is going badly. At Newington library, computer users are being told that the one they have converted to the "Netloan" system that it's not working very well, and advise against choosing to use it.
Same as nobody uses it in the downstairs room at Central, where the first conversion to it was made. This is because the new system is a bad system, so bad it's not worth introducing - and the libraries trying it out are now finding that in practice.
Oct 28: The system's piecemeal further extension is a total shambles, and the system's own faults are visibly why, to every annoyed library user who is struggling with it. Timers are going wrong, starting their count with 2 minutes already missing that have not passed, just like in Fife. Sometimes computers are taking 6 minutes to log in, and the solution to slowness, available under the old system, of telling the previous user not to log out, is no longer available in this system. The system for staff to set bookings is working too slowly, so that you are frantic if they are racing against the timer to set an extended booking. Mostly the staff don't know how to work the extension system, either. There are blocks in the system that are meant to force a minimum time gap between users' sessions, the staff are struggling to override these in order to do extensions. These blocks shut you out of the system half the tmem and refute the chicken-and-egg idea that you are supposed to log in to the system just to book when you are going to log in!! I mean, what the ... At central reference where it used to be you could see exactly how long the queue was, you no longer have any idea when you will get a vacancy. Unless you stare over all the users' shoulders to see their timers, which is unlikely to be allowed or popular, so you have to bother the staff more than before and with a question it takes them a long time to answer, so the new system is not saving them work at all, and the answer is supposed to be that you have made prebookings that are difficult or impossible to get a chance to make for much of the time. Staff in every library where I have observed, which is many, are frustrated and stuck and apologetic the whole time.
Everyone can see none of this should be happening. Everyone can see only the old system worked. Everyone can see this is a disability injustice that was totally preventable.
Maurice Frank
- on the library internet system being changed for a worse system, with a built-in time cut-off that can make you lose your work if you hit any technical problems over the net running slow when you are trying to save. Which is provenly bad for us if we are trying to use the web to communicate to organise to meet up with researchers and the like.
The change is going badly. At Newington library, computer users are being told that the one they have converted to the "Netloan" system that it's not working very well, and advise against choosing to use it.
Same as nobody uses it in the downstairs room at Central, where the first conversion to it was made. This is because the new system is a bad system, so bad it's not worth introducing - and the libraries trying it out are now finding that in practice.
Oct 28: The system's piecemeal further extension is a total shambles, and the system's own faults are visibly why, to every annoyed library user who is struggling with it. Timers are going wrong, starting their count with 2 minutes already missing that have not passed, just like in Fife. Sometimes computers are taking 6 minutes to log in, and the solution to slowness, available under the old system, of telling the previous user not to log out, is no longer available in this system. The system for staff to set bookings is working too slowly, so that you are frantic if they are racing against the timer to set an extended booking. Mostly the staff don't know how to work the extension system, either. There are blocks in the system that are meant to force a minimum time gap between users' sessions, the staff are struggling to override these in order to do extensions. These blocks shut you out of the system half the tmem and refute the chicken-and-egg idea that you are supposed to log in to the system just to book when you are going to log in!! I mean, what the ... At central reference where it used to be you could see exactly how long the queue was, you no longer have any idea when you will get a vacancy. Unless you stare over all the users' shoulders to see their timers, which is unlikely to be allowed or popular, so you have to bother the staff more than before and with a question it takes them a long time to answer, so the new system is not saving them work at all, and the answer is supposed to be that you have made prebookings that are difficult or impossible to get a chance to make for much of the time. Staff in every library where I have observed, which is many, are frustrated and stuck and apologetic the whole time.
Everyone can see none of this should be happening. Everyone can see only the old system worked. Everyone can see this is a disability injustice that was totally preventable.
Maurice Frank
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Effort to contribute our issues to another good cause
Is the society around us seriously registering aspie issues? and the beneficial impact they make upon many other fairness issues too? Or are they just saying what the socially minded say too often: Oh dear, will we be understood if we say anything new, let's just keep saying what we find familiar? When a local project starts up for a good cause, does it do its own thing, oblivious to us?
On May 9 the No Borders campaign held a dayschool here, as part of a tour, on the oppression of asylum seekers. Part of its purpose was to assemble such folks as might want to take part in starting a local project for practical solidarity with asylum seekers, similar to one already functioning in Newcastle. There was a predictable way that the prevalence of local faces who are already regular in the left wing or anarchist scenes reduced the likelihood that anyone not of those scenes could be involved and feel comfortable or included. The rigidity of attitude those folks have about most topics, really thwarts the wider growth of projects they would like to see wider growth of.
Some of what they are about was sensible practical sharing of material goods with asylum seekers who can't obtain them, either who are paid in food vouchers of tightly limited usability instead of cash, or who have had all income cut off completely at the same time as not being allowed to get jobs. Solidarity in the face of the unviability of life the asylum system is intentionally designed to cause. Naturally also they are interested in raising public support for our guests, for making the true situation wider known about how folks already come out of desperately dangerous situations are getting treated, and if need arises, for having the means to create campaigns of the community's eagerness to keep someone, around blatantly corrupt refusals of asylum or attempts to deport. There has in fact already been a past campaign in Edinburgh preventing a spiteful deportation of a care worker whose life was totally established here and formed part of the care of learning disabled folks too. These campaigns are brilliant in their impact aginst racism, because they pinpoint how immigration barriers trample over the practical common sense of daily life.
Here is the problem. Folks doing these campaigns, if they seriously and genuinely care and want sheer reasoning decency to win against racsim, then they must want every possible contribution to victory for asylum seekers to be seized on and made maximum use of. This is an automatic duty. In the dayschool, in the session devoted to gathering ideas, I contributed an idea arising from autism. Think about this one:
Disability discrimination is now an established principle, itself owed to a history of struggle too. Among asylum seekers, just as among any other group, there are bound to be some aspies, some dyspraxics, and some attention deficits. To treat them in any way they will have a disadvantage with because of their conditions, is disability discrimination hence must be illegal. This is arguable by 2 separate routes, nationally on grounds of disability discrimination law, and internationally on human rights grounds applying to medically real minorities. But is there a screening system that is diagnosing all the autistic spectrumites among asylum seekers, and doing it straightaway without a wait, and being generous about diagnosing in uncertain cases? Of course not. As there is not even such a system for the ordinary settled population, even less possible is it for asylum seekers. This proves - the system handles asylum seekers completely blind to which ones are on our spectrum. Hence, any way that all asylum seekers are treated, that would be disadvantageous to the spectrumite ones, is a disability discrimination and is invalid to continue. Where there is an impairment of concentration or attention, there is a greater chance, innocently and without blame, of losing physical objects, especially small or flimsy ones. Like - identity papers and cards. It is visibly disability discrimination to make any autistic spectrumite verify their status by carrying documents. Because of not knowing which asylum seekers are spectrumites, disability discrimination is committed by making any asylum seekers at all depend on carrying documents, in any way at all !
This gets rid of the identity cards being introduced for asylum seekers, and it wipes out the validity of ever penalising them for lacking papers or passports on their arrival here.
So we wait to hear that No Borders or any other asylum solidarity project makes some use of an item of this whopping magnitude. How long will the wait be? At the dayschool, my point was just put in the list, with a murmur of uncertainty of how much gain it would be possible to make from it in practice. One more voice, speaking from lack of knowledge of disabilities, voiced the sense of unsure ground hence of need to pass this item on to any folks with more secure disabled knowledge who might pop up in the local project in future. This is all that happened. Indeed from experience this is about all I expected would happen. The item was not focussed on again in the ending. It's obvious what this means: no commitment that the item will be used at all. The project will start with local radicals just saying the familiar things they are already used to saying, that don't force any big shift in the system's nature.
We have never yet had an asylum seeker in Elas. In theory we could, if there was an aspie one living in Edinburgh. Then we would be involved at the real personal level of experiencing the oppression, the global apartheid, splitting friends and vandalising lives. We will all as a community, not only the asylum seeker, have been medically wronged and violated by any functioning local asylum solidarity project, if it claims to have even in theory a choice not to make use of the item I raised. Same goes for all the national projects. If the local project does get going, then any asylum seekers reading this will know whether the project honestly cares a damn and wants to win your cause, by whether it takes up my disability discrimination argument and cites it publicly against the identity rules in the asylum system. It is a simple clear argument.
How many other good causes are there, where the opportunity for autism to force positive advances in civil liberties gets received only with uncertainty and doing nothing, just because it is unfamiliar? This makes all the difference to whether aspies are marginalised, or campaigners for other causes are seen to care at all about the biological needs they raise. The issue about losable documents does not only affect asylum seekers, they are only the most extremely and urgently affected group. For all the settled population too, the issue has the potential to stop identity cards and to force the democratic world to abolish passports and tickets on public transport. Which brings a whole lot more issue campaigns under the same clear test:
EITHER to commit medical betrayal cheating the entire ordinary population out of a great gain, OR to have no psychological barriers ever to immediate takeup of new information heard for the first time.
Maurice Frank
On May 9 the No Borders campaign held a dayschool here, as part of a tour, on the oppression of asylum seekers. Part of its purpose was to assemble such folks as might want to take part in starting a local project for practical solidarity with asylum seekers, similar to one already functioning in Newcastle. There was a predictable way that the prevalence of local faces who are already regular in the left wing or anarchist scenes reduced the likelihood that anyone not of those scenes could be involved and feel comfortable or included. The rigidity of attitude those folks have about most topics, really thwarts the wider growth of projects they would like to see wider growth of.
Some of what they are about was sensible practical sharing of material goods with asylum seekers who can't obtain them, either who are paid in food vouchers of tightly limited usability instead of cash, or who have had all income cut off completely at the same time as not being allowed to get jobs. Solidarity in the face of the unviability of life the asylum system is intentionally designed to cause. Naturally also they are interested in raising public support for our guests, for making the true situation wider known about how folks already come out of desperately dangerous situations are getting treated, and if need arises, for having the means to create campaigns of the community's eagerness to keep someone, around blatantly corrupt refusals of asylum or attempts to deport. There has in fact already been a past campaign in Edinburgh preventing a spiteful deportation of a care worker whose life was totally established here and formed part of the care of learning disabled folks too. These campaigns are brilliant in their impact aginst racism, because they pinpoint how immigration barriers trample over the practical common sense of daily life.
Here is the problem. Folks doing these campaigns, if they seriously and genuinely care and want sheer reasoning decency to win against racsim, then they must want every possible contribution to victory for asylum seekers to be seized on and made maximum use of. This is an automatic duty. In the dayschool, in the session devoted to gathering ideas, I contributed an idea arising from autism. Think about this one:
Disability discrimination is now an established principle, itself owed to a history of struggle too. Among asylum seekers, just as among any other group, there are bound to be some aspies, some dyspraxics, and some attention deficits. To treat them in any way they will have a disadvantage with because of their conditions, is disability discrimination hence must be illegal. This is arguable by 2 separate routes, nationally on grounds of disability discrimination law, and internationally on human rights grounds applying to medically real minorities. But is there a screening system that is diagnosing all the autistic spectrumites among asylum seekers, and doing it straightaway without a wait, and being generous about diagnosing in uncertain cases? Of course not. As there is not even such a system for the ordinary settled population, even less possible is it for asylum seekers. This proves - the system handles asylum seekers completely blind to which ones are on our spectrum. Hence, any way that all asylum seekers are treated, that would be disadvantageous to the spectrumite ones, is a disability discrimination and is invalid to continue. Where there is an impairment of concentration or attention, there is a greater chance, innocently and without blame, of losing physical objects, especially small or flimsy ones. Like - identity papers and cards. It is visibly disability discrimination to make any autistic spectrumite verify their status by carrying documents. Because of not knowing which asylum seekers are spectrumites, disability discrimination is committed by making any asylum seekers at all depend on carrying documents, in any way at all !
This gets rid of the identity cards being introduced for asylum seekers, and it wipes out the validity of ever penalising them for lacking papers or passports on their arrival here.
So we wait to hear that No Borders or any other asylum solidarity project makes some use of an item of this whopping magnitude. How long will the wait be? At the dayschool, my point was just put in the list, with a murmur of uncertainty of how much gain it would be possible to make from it in practice. One more voice, speaking from lack of knowledge of disabilities, voiced the sense of unsure ground hence of need to pass this item on to any folks with more secure disabled knowledge who might pop up in the local project in future. This is all that happened. Indeed from experience this is about all I expected would happen. The item was not focussed on again in the ending. It's obvious what this means: no commitment that the item will be used at all. The project will start with local radicals just saying the familiar things they are already used to saying, that don't force any big shift in the system's nature.
We have never yet had an asylum seeker in Elas. In theory we could, if there was an aspie one living in Edinburgh. Then we would be involved at the real personal level of experiencing the oppression, the global apartheid, splitting friends and vandalising lives. We will all as a community, not only the asylum seeker, have been medically wronged and violated by any functioning local asylum solidarity project, if it claims to have even in theory a choice not to make use of the item I raised. Same goes for all the national projects. If the local project does get going, then any asylum seekers reading this will know whether the project honestly cares a damn and wants to win your cause, by whether it takes up my disability discrimination argument and cites it publicly against the identity rules in the asylum system. It is a simple clear argument.
How many other good causes are there, where the opportunity for autism to force positive advances in civil liberties gets received only with uncertainty and doing nothing, just because it is unfamiliar? This makes all the difference to whether aspies are marginalised, or campaigners for other causes are seen to care at all about the biological needs they raise. The issue about losable documents does not only affect asylum seekers, they are only the most extremely and urgently affected group. For all the settled population too, the issue has the potential to stop identity cards and to force the democratic world to abolish passports and tickets on public transport. Which brings a whole lot more issue campaigns under the same clear test:
EITHER to commit medical betrayal cheating the entire ordinary population out of a great gain, OR to have no psychological barriers ever to immediate takeup of new information heard for the first time.
Maurice Frank
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Thoughtful culture
Popular culture at mob level has never exactly been famous for its civilised tolerance. So it can hardly be a priority of life to become a winner in a minefield of unreliable friendships and cliques. That is not the place to look for deep acceptance, it is the place where our survival advantage is the ability to go without deep acceptance and follow our own consciences. Above all, it's never worth being submissive in search of acceptance. How miserable is that? You won't know what directions it will push you in, which innocent folks the social leaders will force you to exclude and pick on, which bigotries they will force you to pretend to believe in? You could be alone in the world and still none of that will be worthwhile.
In family, in political or religious or hobby social life, at work, at volunteer days, basically at anywhere normal, there is no formula beyond personal chance that determines how much acceptance and fitting in is possible. Living within reach of as many options as possible, for the sake of adaptability, must be one sensible tip. Then it just becomes a question of trying to observe, in each person you associate with, whether they are just a closed mind, then it would be damaging to mention AS, or they have any spark of thoughtfulness and civility. If they have, I find, then a casual mention of AS, not a deep sermon about it, is good because it helps to secure that the person stays a nice way. It gives them a reason not to drift towards being on more dumbed-down and ribald terms with you just from thinking you want that normality, which is exactly what we don't want. From chances grabbed as they arise here and there, with the right folks, ground can be gained for awareness and acceptance on decent terms. Slowly it builds up, to all our benefit.
Thoughtful folks have always aspired to find or own congenial community outside the conformist horror world of the type of normal thickos who booze and gamble and iron and believe what the tabloids tell them about foreigners. That type of popular culture is a starkly treacherous place to get by in, even to win a place in at all. It does not operate rationally or thinkingly. So the point of describing it so grimly is not snobbery, it's to illustrate that culture's own choice of enmity towards us. How it is not designed for anyone guided more by reasoning and logic than by gang following, to survive or thrive in. Thoughtful folks of all types need to defend ourselves from having to belong in social conditions like those. We have always needed an alternative and been in search of one.
What better justification can there be, for needing our own scene, our own space, than an impairment to communication? But even in thoughtful activities, groups become ruined by the normal cultures' influence and the resulting fear of ribaldry and derision that comes to enslave the socially minded to take the rougher and more dumbed down life attitudes. I have watched an astronomy society die in this way. As the traumatic nature of science education has driven away from enjoyment of science the potential keen new blood the society could have kept attracting and formerly had, firstly the more practically minded strongman types came to stand out as the leaders. Then that meant all abstract chat about the subject's wonders petered out and stopped being expected or thought comfortable. Then that left the shrunken society's core life reduced wholly to happening among a few normal hard-edged cynical sneery impatient men, further alienating the non-core membership. To a comment on the virtues of serving ethical coffee the vice-president could say, "Don't let's bring ethics into it, this is the astronomical society not the ethical society, I'll get some more Nescafe." Any time you are thinking of joining an astronomy society, quote that and ask them if it could happen.
Casual evil like this, and like the pointless cliquiness we all know can pop up out of the blue in the personal boundaries of workplace social life when least expected even in health-conscious workplaces, are why the struggle for a secure thoughtful counterculture to belong to has repeatedly been defeated and savaged all through the history of semi-civilisation. Before AS was known, I had already seen, and been dismayed by, the failiure of such scenes to last permanently, in 2 settings: around children with unusually intellectual interests, and around folks going through emotionally intense problem youths.
Aspies are another grouping who could deliver a parallel culture for nice thoughtful non-ribald characters totally opted out of the majority hard soul-dead culture. We need each other's acceptance as a higher priority than to dream about finding it with any consitency outside the caring circles. Trouble is, aspies are no more immune from having nasty ways than any other grouping are. It's only as an overall tendency that our society is made nicer than average by our willingness to think critically. There are still some aspies who don't think much at all, who just want a quiet life, or who feel clever by having sarcastic uncaring characters. So the quest depends on willingness go be combative about the aspie scene's standards of personal fairness whenever they wobble, and never just passively take what the big organisations deign to give us. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
The work the Scottish Autism Services Network is doing with us, putting our own voice into the info produced about us for all sorts of health or other service providers, is part of this vigilance. That won't be delivered to us by submissively trusting the big organisations who speak without consulting us, to "choose their priorities."
All organisations who don't speak out about how school homework destroys some aspies' chance to be child authors like the 2 well-known ones, commit a crime of child cruelty and endangerment. All organisations who ignore the case that because aspie clumsiness and gaps of attention give us a greater than equal likelihood to lose small objects, public transport can no longer require any passengers to carry losable tickets or passes, commit an endangerment of our safety. Yet one director of a lobby group for us just wrote to me, "I note what you say", a well-known bureaucrats' answer that says utterly nothing. If they lobby employers about us without mentioning the biological entitlement to dress freely, that is proved from our sensitivity and metabolism issues, they have lied about us while gambling with our life opportunities. Which all makes it important to keep local groups self-run, not provided by the big organisations, and independent of any urge to keep in their favour. There must be no divisive attitude of one generation against another, because that's not friendly, and there must be a declared automatic right for all members to count each other as equal in social worth and wantedness.
No group, big or small, local or national, is ethical unless it declares that in every conflict between personal fairness and the group's wider interests, personal fairness shall always automatically win. Our web communities too have good and bad among their number. It would be so much easier on emotionally stressed aspie reasoning if our scene was all good, it's not, but a dedication to keep the good parts of it going is our best strategy to belong and keep some part of society even half-reliably worthwhile.
Maurice Frank
In family, in political or religious or hobby social life, at work, at volunteer days, basically at anywhere normal, there is no formula beyond personal chance that determines how much acceptance and fitting in is possible. Living within reach of as many options as possible, for the sake of adaptability, must be one sensible tip. Then it just becomes a question of trying to observe, in each person you associate with, whether they are just a closed mind, then it would be damaging to mention AS, or they have any spark of thoughtfulness and civility. If they have, I find, then a casual mention of AS, not a deep sermon about it, is good because it helps to secure that the person stays a nice way. It gives them a reason not to drift towards being on more dumbed-down and ribald terms with you just from thinking you want that normality, which is exactly what we don't want. From chances grabbed as they arise here and there, with the right folks, ground can be gained for awareness and acceptance on decent terms. Slowly it builds up, to all our benefit.
Thoughtful folks have always aspired to find or own congenial community outside the conformist horror world of the type of normal thickos who booze and gamble and iron and believe what the tabloids tell them about foreigners. That type of popular culture is a starkly treacherous place to get by in, even to win a place in at all. It does not operate rationally or thinkingly. So the point of describing it so grimly is not snobbery, it's to illustrate that culture's own choice of enmity towards us. How it is not designed for anyone guided more by reasoning and logic than by gang following, to survive or thrive in. Thoughtful folks of all types need to defend ourselves from having to belong in social conditions like those. We have always needed an alternative and been in search of one.
What better justification can there be, for needing our own scene, our own space, than an impairment to communication? But even in thoughtful activities, groups become ruined by the normal cultures' influence and the resulting fear of ribaldry and derision that comes to enslave the socially minded to take the rougher and more dumbed down life attitudes. I have watched an astronomy society die in this way. As the traumatic nature of science education has driven away from enjoyment of science the potential keen new blood the society could have kept attracting and formerly had, firstly the more practically minded strongman types came to stand out as the leaders. Then that meant all abstract chat about the subject's wonders petered out and stopped being expected or thought comfortable. Then that left the shrunken society's core life reduced wholly to happening among a few normal hard-edged cynical sneery impatient men, further alienating the non-core membership. To a comment on the virtues of serving ethical coffee the vice-president could say, "Don't let's bring ethics into it, this is the astronomical society not the ethical society, I'll get some more Nescafe." Any time you are thinking of joining an astronomy society, quote that and ask them if it could happen.
Casual evil like this, and like the pointless cliquiness we all know can pop up out of the blue in the personal boundaries of workplace social life when least expected even in health-conscious workplaces, are why the struggle for a secure thoughtful counterculture to belong to has repeatedly been defeated and savaged all through the history of semi-civilisation. Before AS was known, I had already seen, and been dismayed by, the failiure of such scenes to last permanently, in 2 settings: around children with unusually intellectual interests, and around folks going through emotionally intense problem youths.
Aspies are another grouping who could deliver a parallel culture for nice thoughtful non-ribald characters totally opted out of the majority hard soul-dead culture. We need each other's acceptance as a higher priority than to dream about finding it with any consitency outside the caring circles. Trouble is, aspies are no more immune from having nasty ways than any other grouping are. It's only as an overall tendency that our society is made nicer than average by our willingness to think critically. There are still some aspies who don't think much at all, who just want a quiet life, or who feel clever by having sarcastic uncaring characters. So the quest depends on willingness go be combative about the aspie scene's standards of personal fairness whenever they wobble, and never just passively take what the big organisations deign to give us. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
The work the Scottish Autism Services Network is doing with us, putting our own voice into the info produced about us for all sorts of health or other service providers, is part of this vigilance. That won't be delivered to us by submissively trusting the big organisations who speak without consulting us, to "choose their priorities."
All organisations who don't speak out about how school homework destroys some aspies' chance to be child authors like the 2 well-known ones, commit a crime of child cruelty and endangerment. All organisations who ignore the case that because aspie clumsiness and gaps of attention give us a greater than equal likelihood to lose small objects, public transport can no longer require any passengers to carry losable tickets or passes, commit an endangerment of our safety. Yet one director of a lobby group for us just wrote to me, "I note what you say", a well-known bureaucrats' answer that says utterly nothing. If they lobby employers about us without mentioning the biological entitlement to dress freely, that is proved from our sensitivity and metabolism issues, they have lied about us while gambling with our life opportunities. Which all makes it important to keep local groups self-run, not provided by the big organisations, and independent of any urge to keep in their favour. There must be no divisive attitude of one generation against another, because that's not friendly, and there must be a declared automatic right for all members to count each other as equal in social worth and wantedness.
No group, big or small, local or national, is ethical unless it declares that in every conflict between personal fairness and the group's wider interests, personal fairness shall always automatically win. Our web communities too have good and bad among their number. It would be so much easier on emotionally stressed aspie reasoning if our scene was all good, it's not, but a dedication to keep the good parts of it going is our best strategy to belong and keep some part of society even half-reliably worthwhile.
Maurice Frank
Library internet
What is the point of making known the particular needs or medical interests of a minority, unless it is to ensure those needs are never abused? Malpractice is usually reckoned the right word to describe decisions made in disregard of any group's biologically real needs, and made without even giving any committal answers to aspects of need that will be overridden. The type of politician you know to run a mile from, is the type who leaves any point about harm, that you have put to them, utterly not acknowledged by so much as a word. Your disgust is invited at the smug ruthlessness of our local politicians, who are treating in this way a problem put to them on these terms. It concerns an idiotic change being threatened to the library internet service.
It should not be down to 50-50 luck, as it is, whether each county's library internet uses a system with automated timers, that cut you off when your time is up, or not. It makes a big practical difference. Timers are unfriendly, they force you to rush to save work for fear of losing it, instead of completing it, in case your time runs out seconds before you can complete your task. As you know, in all internet work there is always the chance of making a bad connection, and being stuck fuming while you wait for the screen only slowly to show any result, which even then might be a failed connection. That can happen when your time is close to running out, and it means, however careful you are about remembering to save your work, you are always at risk of losing it. Bad connections can result in you failing to save before the timeout happens. Then, all your work and a big chunk of your time have been wasted. That possibility is an abuse.
If there is no timer, you can make sure your task is safely completed before you hand over to the next user. That way, everyone is happier and less stressed. The occasional problem of a user encroaching seriously upon the next user's time and having to be pushed out, and from experience in Edinburgh that is rare, costs you far less user time than the danger of losing all your work because of a timer, and than the way a timer deprives you of effective use at all of your slot's closing minutes because of the risks in starting any new task. Timers don't protect library staff from a difficult user, either, for they provide no physical means to make that user leave their seat and instead they can make it worse by giving the difficult user justified anger over lost work.
They obstinately persist in having timers in Fife, and the difference between their library internet and Edinburgh's, in neighbouring regions, is extraordinary. I belong to both. The line taken by Fife, and by Galloway which shares its system, towards cases of lost work, is: we sympathise but tough. Yet the problems suffered in Fife have discredited timers utterly.
The timeout often does not happen exactly when it should, it can happen up to 2 minutes early or late. You can have less time left than the clock on the screen says you have. You know what that means: work is lost or not accomplished. As for when you log in, sometimes you get connected within a half minute yet the timer appears showing only 57 minutes left. Several staff at Duloch library in Dunfermline told me some most insightful info - the timeout drifts out of sync with the clock, this problem increases over time, until periodically they have to reset the system. Where does that leave the users?!
When printing is done, it is more work for the staff to worry about not letting the timeout happen during the printing. The system does not freely let you log out and back in if the computer gets clogged up, which in Edinburgh's you can do perfectly easily. At 5 minutes and at 50 seconds before timeout, a reminder appears, that locks the screen until you acknowledge it, so further interrupting any writing you are doing and costing time and adding to the stress. Yes you can ask for extra time if it is available, but the act of going to the counter and asking for it consumes some of the time you already have, and you are panicking to get served in time as well as to save your work. Those 2 needs are in conflict.
Then, as recently as within the last year, Fife's system sprang a fault where the timer can jump to zero and cut you off, just spontanously at any moment during your whole session. They had to stick up notices, and they only bothered in some libraries, warning users to keep saving their work very frequently for fear of losing it: all through your session. Which disrupts flow of work and takes up time, and is always subject to the danger of bad connections. This is a system that does not work.
It is not practical for anyone to rely on at all, a system that can function as chaotically as this. Timers' unreliability impacts on the communication needs of those autistics who can express themselves with less difficulty by words composed on screen than by conversation or phone. Timers are easily discriminatory to our friends in the dyspraxic community, for the demands they make on dexterity both mental and physical. Mental because it takes quick thinking and a build-up of multitasking, especially if you have to panic what to do about a slow connection. Physical to get mice clicked and keys pressed quickly to beat the clock, or even worse, to beat an unreliable timer that may malfunction.
Last summer, some of us took part in an AS research project by an Edinburgh University student, but done through NHS Fife and so with sessions held in Fife. I suffered disruption to organising my participation, when a bad internet connection was overtaken by a timeout on a Dunfermline library computer and resulted in loss of a message. For this, I got the fact recorded in the project, that the computer system with timers had disrupted medical research by frustrating participation in it, thus working against our interests as a minoirty group, and has added unnecessary coping stress to the whole process, for the participant to deal with. This would not have happened in a system without timers, like Edinburgh's, hence it proved the timer system is both medically harmful and an obstruction of science. This was recorded as a real fact experienced in practice.
This should be a basis for me to get timers abolished and banned everywhere, as discriminatory and a medical abuse of us. Discriminatory also upon all the populations of counties with them, compared to without them. Edinburgh's present system stands proved the ideal model for introducing everywhere. Our friends in Fife need the case proved for this change. Edinburgh owes them that. Imagine then the inconceivable looking-glass horror, of instead catching early word of a plan for the head-on opposite to happen, for Edinburgh to change to using timers too? In the face of the harmful mess they have made in Fife?
This is what I was lobbying my 3 local councillors for help to prevent, on grounds that it would be knowingly a medical abuse and intrusion upon our needs. My council ward is called "Almond" because there is a river called that. Its 3 councillors all belong to different parties, you would expect them to be keen to score against each other's ethical failings. I put that to them all at once. Norman Work, SNP, Kate Mackenzie, Conservative, and of particular interest because he is actually the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, George Grubb, Lib-Dem. These councillors are public figures, elected to keep all the health needs in their community remembered by the planners, right? There is a pressing public interest in revealing them falling short of that.
At first the only response to me came from the first named. He said he had gone to speak to the staff of 2 of the outlying and less busy libraries, not saying if he had mentioned my point about the medical research record. Nor the point about timers being bad for library staff's safety. He wrote not a word about that to me either, made no acknowledgement of its existence at all, as he wrote: "As the staff I spoke to were in favour of a timing system I am not going to go against their wishes". He then argued ridiculously that the time extension system, problems of already discussed, should be a reassurance!
The second named has never said a word. The third named declares these councillors all work together and answer on each other's behalf - and remember he is Lib-Dem, the party with the longest history of keenness for the electoral reform that gave us multi-member seats. "Thank you for drawing this to my attention. The 3 Almond Ward councillors are working together on most community issues." That is not the choice that multi-member council seats were created for. They all belong to different parties, yet the voter struggling to stop medical abuses is presented with a single line of brush-off from them all jointly, that is not even an answer to the problem. On what basis is there any party contest?
So you can put to them a point of medical harm and they are capable of completely ignoring it without mention, as one gives you the wrong answer and the others back him. Where does this leave you if you are a parent fighting a more serious issue over children's illnesses? Looks what it shows: that they don't have the first shred of an ethic to hold their answers accountable to whether they knowingly approve medical harm whose nature is on scientific record. Whose health is ever safe in hands like these?
"If he had acted supposedly for all 3 councillors and not just for himself", I asked, then the only way for the other 2 councillors not to be seen by name to choose culpably in favour of doing medical harm and hurting vulnerable groups, was "if they are committal not noncommittal in disagreeing with" his line. That is logical. Answer: "I have been following your emails about the libraries situation and I will ask Head of Libraries for an update on the situation". This resulted only in getting a copy of a report on the plan.
No position taken against the plan, by any of them. NO ANSWER, from any of them, to the medical harm point, or on the needs of groups affected adversely by the change. Does that sound at all committal to you?
Any answer directly from libraries management, to justify the change, is still awaited, since Feb 3. So in conclusion: Here is the state of democracy and of disability rights, going on all around you. Councillors across party are allowing a disability wrong to be done without taking any position against it, and he is ignoring how local scientific research already records that the proposed change will abuse us. The Lord Provost of our capital is going along with this and not a word of committality on it can be extracted from his office. If you are a visitor here in the Year of Homecoming, these are the standards you are homecoming to.
Maurice Frank
PS - added Jul 28. The library has now taken its first step, introduced the timer system in one department of Central library, the "Learning Centre" where the computers were already unstaffed. The result? Nobody uses them! Previously this section of computers was always full, now it is often empty and you never see more than the occasional user. The library users have voted with their feet, between the merits of the 2 systems. They have all totally chosen the old system without timers, as easier and friendlier to use. Observing this, the library now has no other honest choice than to find that the timers system is a total failiure, to cancel all further extension of it, and to share this practical test result with the rest of the country to force banning of the timers system wherever it is used.
Monday, March 30, 2009
endemic bus malpractices
Here is an action towards a public office, citing disability discrimination on our behalf, that consequently they have a duty to act on, and they are not doing. Now, what is the point of having a disability discrimination law if we are not supplied with the means to pin down any public office to give answers according to it???!!
These 2 emails were to the "Bus Passenger's Platform", the complaints department of an entity called Passenger View which advises the Scottish government on what bus passengers need without at all having to ask bus passengers what we want it to say! When you complain to BPP about malpractices by bus drivers, usually it is on the bus companies' side and completely in their pocket. BPP will scrape the gutter for any excuse to find that the bus company couldn't have taken an absolute line on preventing the malpractice.
BPP is one of those bodies that exists to make it look like something is being done. In reality, even if you have been blatantly bullied by a bus driver and the advertised bus sevice blatantly not honoured at all, as long as BPP's decisions are discretionary it is utterly pointless to lodge a complaint to BPP. The only thing there is any point in doing, is to extract from each bus malpractice any aspect you can of distinct ill-treatment of a minority needs group, and lobby BPP about it, telling BPP it is acting illegally concerning discrimination unless it admits that its duty to make findings in favour of the minority need is automatic, not discretionary. You need to ask BPP to confirm this to you before you file an actual case to them. This is what I sought to do in the following emails:
Mar 5: I belong to [mentioned Elas and Sasn].
The vulnerablilities caused by Asperger Syndrome include a reliance on literal information, and lack of facility to make contextual guesses that information is not meant literally. This would include, that we more than other passengers can't be expected to guess, by cultural norm, that some information given in a bus timetable is less true than other parts of the timetable and may routinely not be honoured by the bus operator. It would be illegal disability discrimination to expect any such thing of us.
A consequence of this, is that it would be illegal disability discrimination against us, ever not to find against the operator, in a case where a particular service frequently jumps one of the stops it is advertised to observe, and the operator has ignored or evaded all efforts to pin them down committally to do anything about it. A case where there is always a 50-50 chance that the bus you want will sweep past the stop in the central dual carriageway lanes that block it from observing the stop, instead of taking the side lanes to observe the stop, and this is on a long distance service so that total wreckage of a day's travel plan is inflicted by it.
In any case of this nature, it needs only be established that the company is allowing the offence to happen, by its lack of committal answers, and that makes it a simple 100% certainty that the complaint would be upheld. Hence, it would be illegal disability discrimination to a recognised medical group who have public speaking outlets, for you not to agree that this is the case, to this enquiry in advance of an actual case being brought, or to be noncommittal about it.
It would be disability discrimination to insist that the actual case is brought before you take any position, because by so insisting, you would be keeping in existence a visibly provenly illegal margin of discretion against the position being an automatic certainty. You would be forcing the case to be a gamble instead of a routine upholding of a literal principle. You would be saying that in a case where the factual finding was that yes the events concerned have happened, it could ever be at all possible even in theory to find against a complaint of the nature described and to allow a bus operator to behave in this way.
Past experience proves the need to put the case's committal medical principle to you before being forced into taking any gambles on which way you might go if it is left to arbitrary discretion.
Mar 12 BPP's answer: [first an unnecessary para explaining what BPP is]
Unfortunately you have not indicated whether or not the bus company has had an opportunity to address your complaint. I would be grateful if you would advise this office accordingly. If the operator has responded to your complaint and you are unhappy with the response, you must sens a copy of all relevant correspondence to this office.
If the complaint has not been taken up with the bus operator in the first instance, I regret that BPP is unable to consider your complaint at this stage.
Mar 14: Yes, we are talking about a case here the bus company has had this problem repeatedly put to it over a year and a half, and has only gone from explaining each incident as an isolated driver error, to not answering at all.
I know the rules about sending correspondence with an actual complaint - I have experienced the process before. But I have not made any actual complaint to you yet. I was enquiring about BPP's attitude to a principle: the committally automatic wrongness in every case ever, of a bus service being allowed to persist in often jumping one of the stops it is advertised to observe, by passing it in the wrong traffic lane for stopping.
I pointed out the disability discrimination to a whole population group, that would be done if BPP refuses to take a position on this principle that would be known in advance to apply to any specific case of it that is brought to you. So that cases are not forced to be brought to you with the discretionary possibility of BPP choosing not to uphold the principle even if the facts are found to be as described.
Thank you,
- To which there has been no further answer. You can see that BPP is meticulously evading making any comment at all on the question asked of it. Does a complaint of this particular malpractice by buses have to be upheld automatically if it is established the malpractice happened? BPP is blatantly committing disability discrimination and acting corruptly to the oppression of bus users, by ignoring this question and seeking to hold onto a discretionary power to reject such a complaint.
Let me tell you where this bus malpractice has been happening - it is on an important trunk route. It is on Citylink's M91 stopping service from Edinburgh to Perth, some coaches continuing to Inverness. One of the advertised stops on the more frequently stopping coaches is at the south side of the Forth Bridge, the former tolls, which is still stubbornly being called "tolls" in bus timetables long after the tolls have been abolished. Quite often these coaches just charge past in the central lane of the dual carriageway and ignore this stop. It can happen in both directions, but mostly in the northward direction where the stop is located on an entry sliplane, so that if the coach fails to take an exit from the main carriageway it is then barricaded into the central lanes and can't access the stop.
For a year and a half I have had repeated cause to make complaints to Citylink about this, and the only answer they ever give is a one-off apology for the driver error in forgetting the stop. The first time they said they would remind drivers about it, but this changed nothing. They will never say anything committal specifying how they will force all their staff to observe the stop. Twice I have enquired on behalf of both Elas and our equivalent in Fife, telling them that aspies have no instincts to guess in some cultural way that their service's published details should not be taken literally! and formally asking which coaches they will guarantee for certain will observe the stop, if we should organise some group travel starting at that point. CITYLINK HAS IGNORED AND NEVER ANSWERED THOSE ENQUIRIES. THIS ITSELF IS DISABILITY DISCRIMINATION, THAT THE BPP's ASSISTANCE IS NEEDED TO STOP, YET WE LIVE IN A STATE WHERE THE BPP ITSELF CAN GET AWAY WITH BEING EQUALLY CORRUPT. If you are a visitor in the Year of Homecoming, this is the state of the state here. If you are an aspie as well, and if you are trying to head north of the Forth, you have cause to complain that you are left in unclarity how the hell you are supposed to plan travel in a state where nobody enforces the honouring of published transport services in reality. If you tell Year of Homecoming about this, do you find them committal or noncommittal about caring? - for that will tell you whether it's just a con.
Some other bus malpractices that BPP's attitude also encourages to happen, are these.
* A driver on Stagecoach who drives away from the present diversionary stops in central Edinburgh, with their long queues, before passengers who were well back in the queue can reach him, and visibly laughs about it.
* First refusing to give any committal answer that their buses can be hailed from the wrong side of the road, even when they know this evasion is an offence against road safety because it meant you had to run in front of a very late bus that suddenly appeared in Galashiels' one way system, and which still drove past you anyway,
* or even when you are walking from East Linton to Haddington in the evening because 3 successive of their buses have not turned up, ("mechanical failure!") and then one passes you on the road some way short of Haddington just when it's starting to rain.
* Drivers on First who refuse to believe that the fare you want exists, in First's preposterously muddled zonal system.
* Who insist that a day ticket is just an ordinary return, or
* who take a £20 note from you then refuse to give it back or to sell you anything but the fare they think you should want instead of the fare you do want. NB - I got signed for a free bus pass as a direct result of that experience, actually on grounds of the burden of coping with communication with bus drivers! and this establishes every aspie should get one. But that is no get-out from the need to enforce proper trading standards upon First too, is it? including sacking that driver?
The Green Party, which always insults our intelligence by saying please use public transport and save carbon, never takes any position on any specific transport malpractice. I asked their council candidate in 2007, for a position against First because of the Sunday morning trains that had repeatedly been leaving early from Dalmeny station, that I had twice in 6 weeks seen ruin the travel plan of a mother trying to take 2 small infants to Glasgow visiting family. I got, "If you will forgive me, I can only respond to your general query about public transport and accountability, rather than your ongoing problems with First." DON'T FORGIVE THEM - this is the worst offence that democracy's entire effectiveness is still abused by, it is NONCOMMITTALITY. If the Greens keep this up in the coming Euro election, they are committing a specific minority uncaringness upon the autistic spectrum, because we can't be expected to communicate successfully with corrupt bus or train staff or to observe corrupt unstated principles of how to get by despite them.
Maurice Frank
These 2 emails were to the "Bus Passenger's Platform", the complaints department of an entity called Passenger View which advises the Scottish government on what bus passengers need without at all having to ask bus passengers what we want it to say! When you complain to BPP about malpractices by bus drivers, usually it is on the bus companies' side and completely in their pocket. BPP will scrape the gutter for any excuse to find that the bus company couldn't have taken an absolute line on preventing the malpractice.
BPP is one of those bodies that exists to make it look like something is being done. In reality, even if you have been blatantly bullied by a bus driver and the advertised bus sevice blatantly not honoured at all, as long as BPP's decisions are discretionary it is utterly pointless to lodge a complaint to BPP. The only thing there is any point in doing, is to extract from each bus malpractice any aspect you can of distinct ill-treatment of a minority needs group, and lobby BPP about it, telling BPP it is acting illegally concerning discrimination unless it admits that its duty to make findings in favour of the minority need is automatic, not discretionary. You need to ask BPP to confirm this to you before you file an actual case to them. This is what I sought to do in the following emails:
Mar 5: I belong to [mentioned Elas and Sasn].
The vulnerablilities caused by Asperger Syndrome include a reliance on literal information, and lack of facility to make contextual guesses that information is not meant literally. This would include, that we more than other passengers can't be expected to guess, by cultural norm, that some information given in a bus timetable is less true than other parts of the timetable and may routinely not be honoured by the bus operator. It would be illegal disability discrimination to expect any such thing of us.
A consequence of this, is that it would be illegal disability discrimination against us, ever not to find against the operator, in a case where a particular service frequently jumps one of the stops it is advertised to observe, and the operator has ignored or evaded all efforts to pin them down committally to do anything about it. A case where there is always a 50-50 chance that the bus you want will sweep past the stop in the central dual carriageway lanes that block it from observing the stop, instead of taking the side lanes to observe the stop, and this is on a long distance service so that total wreckage of a day's travel plan is inflicted by it.
In any case of this nature, it needs only be established that the company is allowing the offence to happen, by its lack of committal answers, and that makes it a simple 100% certainty that the complaint would be upheld. Hence, it would be illegal disability discrimination to a recognised medical group who have public speaking outlets, for you not to agree that this is the case, to this enquiry in advance of an actual case being brought, or to be noncommittal about it.
It would be disability discrimination to insist that the actual case is brought before you take any position, because by so insisting, you would be keeping in existence a visibly provenly illegal margin of discretion against the position being an automatic certainty. You would be forcing the case to be a gamble instead of a routine upholding of a literal principle. You would be saying that in a case where the factual finding was that yes the events concerned have happened, it could ever be at all possible even in theory to find against a complaint of the nature described and to allow a bus operator to behave in this way.
Past experience proves the need to put the case's committal medical principle to you before being forced into taking any gambles on which way you might go if it is left to arbitrary discretion.
Mar 12 BPP's answer: [first an unnecessary para explaining what BPP is]
Unfortunately you have not indicated whether or not the bus company has had an opportunity to address your complaint. I would be grateful if you would advise this office accordingly. If the operator has responded to your complaint and you are unhappy with the response, you must sens a copy of all relevant correspondence to this office.
If the complaint has not been taken up with the bus operator in the first instance, I regret that BPP is unable to consider your complaint at this stage.
Mar 14: Yes, we are talking about a case here the bus company has had this problem repeatedly put to it over a year and a half, and has only gone from explaining each incident as an isolated driver error, to not answering at all.
I know the rules about sending correspondence with an actual complaint - I have experienced the process before. But I have not made any actual complaint to you yet. I was enquiring about BPP's attitude to a principle: the committally automatic wrongness in every case ever, of a bus service being allowed to persist in often jumping one of the stops it is advertised to observe, by passing it in the wrong traffic lane for stopping.
I pointed out the disability discrimination to a whole population group, that would be done if BPP refuses to take a position on this principle that would be known in advance to apply to any specific case of it that is brought to you. So that cases are not forced to be brought to you with the discretionary possibility of BPP choosing not to uphold the principle even if the facts are found to be as described.
Thank you,
- To which there has been no further answer. You can see that BPP is meticulously evading making any comment at all on the question asked of it. Does a complaint of this particular malpractice by buses have to be upheld automatically if it is established the malpractice happened? BPP is blatantly committing disability discrimination and acting corruptly to the oppression of bus users, by ignoring this question and seeking to hold onto a discretionary power to reject such a complaint.
Let me tell you where this bus malpractice has been happening - it is on an important trunk route. It is on Citylink's M91 stopping service from Edinburgh to Perth, some coaches continuing to Inverness. One of the advertised stops on the more frequently stopping coaches is at the south side of the Forth Bridge, the former tolls, which is still stubbornly being called "tolls" in bus timetables long after the tolls have been abolished. Quite often these coaches just charge past in the central lane of the dual carriageway and ignore this stop. It can happen in both directions, but mostly in the northward direction where the stop is located on an entry sliplane, so that if the coach fails to take an exit from the main carriageway it is then barricaded into the central lanes and can't access the stop.
For a year and a half I have had repeated cause to make complaints to Citylink about this, and the only answer they ever give is a one-off apology for the driver error in forgetting the stop. The first time they said they would remind drivers about it, but this changed nothing. They will never say anything committal specifying how they will force all their staff to observe the stop. Twice I have enquired on behalf of both Elas and our equivalent in Fife, telling them that aspies have no instincts to guess in some cultural way that their service's published details should not be taken literally! and formally asking which coaches they will guarantee for certain will observe the stop, if we should organise some group travel starting at that point. CITYLINK HAS IGNORED AND NEVER ANSWERED THOSE ENQUIRIES. THIS ITSELF IS DISABILITY DISCRIMINATION, THAT THE BPP's ASSISTANCE IS NEEDED TO STOP, YET WE LIVE IN A STATE WHERE THE BPP ITSELF CAN GET AWAY WITH BEING EQUALLY CORRUPT. If you are a visitor in the Year of Homecoming, this is the state of the state here. If you are an aspie as well, and if you are trying to head north of the Forth, you have cause to complain that you are left in unclarity how the hell you are supposed to plan travel in a state where nobody enforces the honouring of published transport services in reality. If you tell Year of Homecoming about this, do you find them committal or noncommittal about caring? - for that will tell you whether it's just a con.
Some other bus malpractices that BPP's attitude also encourages to happen, are these.
* A driver on Stagecoach who drives away from the present diversionary stops in central Edinburgh, with their long queues, before passengers who were well back in the queue can reach him, and visibly laughs about it.
* First refusing to give any committal answer that their buses can be hailed from the wrong side of the road, even when they know this evasion is an offence against road safety because it meant you had to run in front of a very late bus that suddenly appeared in Galashiels' one way system, and which still drove past you anyway,
* or even when you are walking from East Linton to Haddington in the evening because 3 successive of their buses have not turned up, ("mechanical failure!") and then one passes you on the road some way short of Haddington just when it's starting to rain.
* Drivers on First who refuse to believe that the fare you want exists, in First's preposterously muddled zonal system.
* Who insist that a day ticket is just an ordinary return, or
* who take a £20 note from you then refuse to give it back or to sell you anything but the fare they think you should want instead of the fare you do want. NB - I got signed for a free bus pass as a direct result of that experience, actually on grounds of the burden of coping with communication with bus drivers! and this establishes every aspie should get one. But that is no get-out from the need to enforce proper trading standards upon First too, is it? including sacking that driver?
The Green Party, which always insults our intelligence by saying please use public transport and save carbon, never takes any position on any specific transport malpractice. I asked their council candidate in 2007, for a position against First because of the Sunday morning trains that had repeatedly been leaving early from Dalmeny station, that I had twice in 6 weeks seen ruin the travel plan of a mother trying to take 2 small infants to Glasgow visiting family. I got, "If you will forgive me, I can only respond to your general query about public transport and accountability, rather than your ongoing problems with First." DON'T FORGIVE THEM - this is the worst offence that democracy's entire effectiveness is still abused by, it is NONCOMMITTALITY. If the Greens keep this up in the coming Euro election, they are committing a specific minority uncaringness upon the autistic spectrum, because we can't be expected to communicate successfully with corrupt bus or train staff or to observe corrupt unstated principles of how to get by despite them.
Maurice Frank
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