Politics, tech and media issues from a Muslim perspective
A few months ago I wrote here about the needs of some converts, particularly those with disabilities, which was reproduced on MuslimMatters a few weeks later, and mentioned the problems with setting up a...
Yesterday the medical journal PlosOne published findings from the PACE trial, a trial of various treatment options for “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” which was published to great derision from the patient community last year. The...
I found out about Netroots 2012 through a tweet by Sue Marsh, one of the main authors of the Spartacus Report, earlier in the week and decided to go, more or less on the...
BBC iPlayer: Ukraine’s Forgotten Children (viewable in UK only until 28th June); more here Last night (Monday), the BBC broadcast a 90-minute exposé on the state of care for orphans and disabled people in...
For my previous writings on Ayn’s case, see these two entries from September and December 2011. There is also a Facebook group to support Ayn’s parents in getting their daughter out of care. A...
Why I let my husband die | Life and style | The Guardian This article is an interview with Jill Anderson, whose husband Paul killed himself in 2005 (on his fourth attempt). He had...
Catcalls, whistles, groping: the everyday picture of sexual harassment in London (from the Independent) Yesterday (Friday) it was reported in the Independent newspaper in London, and discussed on the Vanessa Feltz show on BBC...
Because of the pressure of work, I’ve been unable to write anything for ME Awareness Day (or even week) this year. I’ve written a few articles over the past year, the two most important...
Being Accessible Doesn’t Just Mean Ramps – Blogging Against Disablism Day » Dannilion.com Danni Brennand posted the above article this morning, regarding how accessibility is often taken to mean providing wheelchair ramps, rather than...
This post has been republished at Where’s the Benefit as a guest post, and you can comment there or here. Last Saturday night, there was a debate on the Stephen Nolan show, a late-night...
Last week the issue of postal voting reform in the UK was in the news again, after a judge who had found six Labour councillors in Birmingham guilty of postal voting fraud in 2005,...
I’m starting writing this just before a Panorama programme featuring video’ed evidence of violence against an elderly lady in a care home is aired on British TV. If you don’t have the stomach to...
I often hear it said that various professions, particularly medicine, nursing and teaching, are meant to be vocations, and that it is surprising that members of these professions are often found to be uncaring...
Derek is Ricky Gervais’s latest TV outing and one which has caused some controversy among journalists and even among disability activists online, with some claiming that Derek is a parody of someone with a...
Recently the ME community online had to deal with the sad news of three deaths, including one of its best-known and most loved activists, Emily Collingridge (right). There were also two inquests which reported...
Rachel Cohen Rottenberg recently blogged about the recurrent problem of parents of children with severe disabilities (usually autism) murdering them, and the stock response being that the mother (as it usually is, but not...
Last Monday, three men were found guilty of a shooting in south London that left a 5-year-old girl of Tamil origin, Thusha Kamaleswaran, paralysed from the chest down, and injured an Asian man, Roshan...
Please note: Emily’s mother has requested that her appeal from 2011 be reposted. I posted it here at the time and readers are invited to read the appeal. Today I heard the very sad...
Channel 4 has been advertising a forthcoming TV show titled “The Undateables”, in which they try to hook up various people with disabilities and disfigurements which might have been getting in the way of...
Last night BBC1 aired a programme, Letting Go (available until 20th March in the UK), presented by Rosa Monckton, one-time friend of Princess Diana and whose daughter Domenica, god-daughter of Diana, has Down’s syndrome....