On free transport passes and invisible disabilities
Epileptic Jess McGee, 19 Ordered Off Bus After Driver Calls Her Illness A ‘Pisstake’ The other day my new Asperger’s job consultant in Kingston asked me if I had a Freedom Pass (a free...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
My letter on ME in today’s Telegraph
Means-testing pensioner benefits is a political rather than practical policy – Telegraph I wrote the Telegraph a letter on Monday in response to Max Pemberton's article on the issue of mental health stigma in...
Exaggerating Thusha’s disability
The BBC recently conducted another ‘exclusive’ interview with the family of Thusha Kamaleswaran, the (then) 5-year-old Tamil girl shot and paralysed in a gang-related incident in south London last year. There is a written...
Max Pemberton: the red herring of ‘mental health stigma’ in ME
Why few dare tackle the psychology of ME at the Telegraph website This article is by Max Pemberton, who has earlier written in the same paper about why ME sufferers are wrong to object...
Motorists support rise in speeding fines, charity claims
I was listening to the You and Yours programme on Radio 4 early this afternoon, and I heard part of an interview with some woman from the “road safety charity” called Brake, and she...
XMRV is not the only virus
ME is probably a mental illness after all – but that does not mean that it is not real – Mail Online – Michael Hanlon’s Science blog: From The Cutting Edge This is one...
Review: Fy Chwaer a Fi (My Sister and I) on S4C
S4/Clic O’r Galon: Fy Chwaer a Fi S4C is a Welsh-language TV channel that only broadcasts in Wales, although you can get it on satellite (not cable) and online, and it offers subtitling of...
On ‘child brides’ and irrelevant imams
I saw two stories in the mainstream press today that were about the state of the British Muslim religious establishment. One was in the Daily Mail by Baroness Cox which was based on a...
Disabled people in the UK versus Nazi Germany
Last week Stephen Sumpter posted an article comparing the situation facing disabled people in the UK today with that facing them in Germany in the 1930s under Hitler. The Nazis ran a programme to...
How to blaspheme in Pakistan
How to commit blasphemy in Pakistan | World news | The Guardian This is a fairly comprehensive assessment of the situation surrounding the blasphemy law in Pakistan right now. While I am not against...
What’s wrong with the Green Mile?
Last night it was announced that the actor Michael Clarke Duncan, best known for playing John Coffey in the 1999 film The Green Mile, based on the Stephen King novel of the same name,...
Global warming and the circles of denial
Along with the Arctic ice, the rich world’s smugness will melt | George Monbiot (in yesterday’s Guardian) This article appeared in yesterday’s Guardian and it is about the record melting of Arctic ice that...
Review: ITV’s “Don’t Hate Us”
ITV Player: Tonight — Don’t Hate Us Last Thursday ITV broadcast a documentary on the rise in hate crimes against people with disabilities which has occurred since the coalition government came to power and...
Assange, Galloway and low Muslim expectations
Last week there has been a lot of discussion about people’s attitudes to rape with regard mostly to the extradition of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, currently hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy in...
The problem with Policy Exchange’s housing sell-off
Yesterday there was a report published by the Tory think-tank Policy Exchange (previously discussed here as a source of reports from spies in mosques) which proposed that councils should be forced to sell off...
Nicklinson ruling was the right one
Tony Nicklinson died on the morning of 22nd August 2012, having contracted pneumonia over the weekend. Last week the British High Court ruled that the courts could not allow doctors to end the life...
Muslims and the care of those with learning disabilities
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...
Gold medals won’t cure cancer
As the British team in the London Olympics surpassed its previous gold medal record (its all-time record from 1908 is unbeaten, but that was when the rules were very different from now), politicians started...
Further PACE findings and a biased Australian interview
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...
The Olympics, Ramadan and racism
So, the Olympics has finally started. I had been planning an article last week about the chaos in the preparation for the Games, the security etc., and the traffic disruption that would result from...