Politics, tech and media issues from a Muslim perspective
Last weekend, by chance, some of us found out that people with autism spectrum disorders (principally Asperger’s syndrome) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) were required to notify the DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licensing...
Recently a new organisation has been set up in the USA, the National Council on Severe Autism, based in California and run by a combination of parents and academics, a combination which has attracted...
Last night, at the rather late hour of 10:15pm, Channel 4 broadcast an hour-long Dispatches programme, presented by the children’s commissioner Anne Longfield, about concerns that home-schooling is being used as a cover for...
The past few weeks I’ve been in contact with the mother of an autistic teenage girl who was admitted (initially informally) to an adolescent mental health unit last July. She had been bullied at...
This is a claim I have seen being made in the media on a fairly regular basis. Usually it’s about general mental health issues, and often includes a strong element of blame towards those...
Last week two separate stories about people with learning disabilities were in the news. One was that a woman had died following the extraction of all her teeth at a hospital in Worcester which...
Last Tuesday evening there was a 45-minute programme on Radio 4 (part of its File on 4 slot) exposing the abusive treatment of an autistic teenage girl at the St Andrew’s hospital in Northampton,...
Last night BBC’s File on 4 programme was dedicated to how well the government’s declared intention to get people with learning disabilities out of short-term mental health care and into the community where they...
In a previous post I expressed the opinion that the erasure of Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba (right) from the medical register was a miscarriage of justice and that a medical practitioners’ tribunal should not be...
This documentary on Channel 4 last night (19th Feb) exposed abusive practices, short staff, over-reliance on temporary staff (including the undercover reporter for this programme) and poor safety at a hospital unit, The Dene...
Shitstorm. | Who By Fire The inquest into the death of Richard Handley (right), who died of faecal impaction in Ipswich in November 2017, is ongoing and is being live-tweeted on the account @HandleyInquest,...
The Sunday Times reported today (gleefully as you might expect) that Alexandra Spelman, the head of Ofsted, the British schools inspectorate, had announced a plan for her inspectors to ask primary school-age girls who...
In another chapter of the ongoing battle to bring to book those responsible for the death of Connor Sparrowhawk (known as Laughing Boy or LB) in a bath in an NHS learning disability facility...
This week sees the third Seven Days of Action event to raise awareness of the people with learning disabilities who are trapped in psychiatric units, usually so-called Assessment and Treatment Units, sometimes for lack...
Somebody has already been imprisoned for offences relating to the Grenfell Tower fire in west London, and it’s not someone who signed off on the dodgy cladding; no, it’s a local who had been...
So, today it was announced that Theresa May has promised new legislation on mental health if her party wins next month’s election, which will “rip up” the 1983 Mental Health Act under which people...
On Wednesday night, Channel 4 aired a Dispatches special, Under Lock and Key, which exposed the abuse and neglect of patients at St Andrew’s hospital in Northampton, an enormous campus which started out as...
Brandon Reid is a 16-year-old boy with Asperger’s syndrome whose family home is in Sheffield. He was in the news in November when a local paper and then the Daily Mail reported that the...
Last Wednesday, Nicky Reilly, who attempted to blow up a restaurant in Exeter with a home-made bomb which exploded in the toilet, injuring only himself, died in Manchester prison (otherwise known as Strangeways) where...
Back in February, I featured the story of Joshua Offer-Simon, who was at the time being held in a hospital unit in Birmingham. He had been under section for two years as a result...