NO UNIFORM. There is a place that has learnt.

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

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

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

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

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

lose a small object = sent away from your friends.

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

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

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

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

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

Maurice Frank