Category Archives: UK

Tackling disability discrimination takes more than wheelchair ramps

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Dribblers please sit on the left”; the underbelly of disability segregation and acceptance.

Civil rights activist Rosa Parks, who took a stand against racial segregation on buses in Alabama. Disabled people face an 'us and them' ethos. Photograph: Corbis

By Matthew Harper – Guardian Blog

You’re in a restaurant; dressed up, with friends, family, maybe a partner and halfway through your slap-up meal there’s a tap on your shoulder and “do you mind moving? it’s disgusting, no its just … you’re dribbling – it’s putting me off my food”. Had that said to you? Or been the one saying it? Or even just thinking it?  Continue reading →

Shakespeare plots new play on Royals

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The Royals on display

Bard building new play based on bawdy bedrooms at Balmoral and Buckingham

Over the last few nights I have been visited by the ghost of William Shakespeare.

On the third night, I followed him onto the deck and the ghost spoke:

“I am thy famed bard’s spirit, doom’d for a certain term to walk the night till the foul crimes done in these days are burnt and purged away.” Continue reading →

Disability cuts will hurt deeply

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My daughter is brain damaged. Cuts to disability funding will devastate families like ours and cost society more in the long run

Cuts to social programs including those for the disabled by Conservative UK Prime Minister Cameron are sending shock waves through the disability community and their caregivers.

Stacie Lewis

By Stacey Lewis, Guardian.co.uk – A year and a half ago, my daughter, May, was born severely brain damaged. After a healthy pregnancy, her injuries sent me into a paralysis of fear.

Staff at the hospital reassured us. When we left the special care ward, there would be a team of professionals, equipment, funding and respite care. We would not be alone. Continue reading →

Favourite Dylan song from 1960s – It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)

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Dylan’s grim masterpiece from 5th album hits the right note for fan

It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) from Bringing it All Back Home

Dylan fan Dylanblues from Birmingham, UK enters contest with this pic.

Choosing your favourite 60′s Dylan song is a bit like trying to choose your all time favourite pint of beer or bacon sandwich, it’s just not possible.

However, the purposes of this comp I will suggest the above. The song stands out in my memory from first listen and I never tire of the insights and imagery it conjures.

No one has ever produced such a tapestry of existential angst in song form and I can only imagine the effect it would have had on me had I heard it as a contemporary. I think of it as the moment that heralds the complete disintegration of the line between song writing and poetry; though I appreciate there are other contenders, for me, many years after hearing it for the first time, I still chew over lines and marvel at the insight and brutal summation of mid 60′s society.

With it’s ‘sister’ songs Gates of Eden and Not Dark Yet, it’s the tune I always keep in my saddlebag when riding into a town of ‘non-believers’.

By Dylanblues

To enter our contest for a free copy of Bob Dylan’s Concert at Brandeis University enter here before November 30, 2010.  Continue reading →

Favourite Dylan song from 1960s Like a Rolling Stone

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My favourite Dylan song from the 60s is ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ – enter to win free Dylan CD

Bob Dylan recording at Columbia Studio A

From the opening snare hit to closing bars, it is the best and most revolutionary pop song of all time.

The lyrics speak with an intensity unknown to pop music at the time.

The music is ethereal, moving like an oceanic force of nature.

Added to this is Dylan’s supreme vocal performance which batters the listeners senses with yet more intensity.

Many songs have been influenced by ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ since, some have even copied the song, yet none have come anywhere close to topping this masterpiece.

Angus Gibson, Glasgow Scotland

To win a free copy of Bob Dylan at Brandeis University 1963, enter here.

Video follows the story break. Continue reading →

Obesity In Later Life Leads To Increased Risks Of Disability

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But not of dying and to a ticking time bomb for health and social services

Editor: Obesity can make disability worse for neuromuscular disabilities which have skeletal problems or muscular weakness as a factor. Carrying extra weight with hip problems, MS, MD or post polio syndrome makes the disability more severe.

Imagine carrying around a 30 lb turkey in your arms all day. That’s the same as being 30 lbs overweight. The puzzle is that the disability encourages inactivity thereby increasing the likelihood of weight gain. Rigorous control of food intake is a practical answer.  Continue reading →

Disabled people do have sex lives

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We don’t need to exploit prostitutes to have sex – but we do need equality in society for the myths to be debunked

Image KK+

By Naomi Jacobs, The Telegraph.co.uk – The Telegraph picked a particularly shrewd moment to pry into disabled people’s care plans, seeing as we are currently are the disproportionate target of a cost-cutting campaign that has started with the poorest and most disadvantaged people in society. The article, reproduced later in the Mail and Express, claims to have found evidence of “taxpayers’ money” spent on sex services for disabled people. Continue reading →

700 children born with genetic disabilities due to cousin marriages every year

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Intra-family marriage is dangerous as it increases risk if genetic defects

Research shows the number of cousin marriages has risen dramatically in the UK over the last three decades image: ALAMY

By Rebecca Lefort, Telegraph.co.uk

The problem is worst among children born in Britain’s Pakistani community, where more than half of marriages are between first cousins, and children are 10 times more likely than the general population to suffer genetic disorders.

The medical risks of first cousin marriages include higher rates of infant mortality, birth defects, learning difficulties, blindness, hearing problems and metabolic disorders.

As adults, the children born from first cousin marriages are at increased risk of miscarriage or infertility. A third of children affected die before their fifth birthday.  Continue reading →

Disabled woman ‘may have starved to death after her carer mother died suddenly’

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A disabled woman may have been left to starve to death after her mother, who cared for her full time, died suddenly in her bed.

Tragedy: The bodies of Stephania Wolf and her disabled daughter Sam were found inside their home in Hertfordshire (image: Daily Mail)

Daily Mail – The bodies of Stephanie Wolf, 56,and her daughter, 29, were discovered in their home after going unnoticed for several weeks.

The pair, who were known to adult care services, had refused the help of social workers, it was revealed today.
Police are investigating whether Mrs Wolf, who was found in her bed, died suddenly, leaving her paralysed daughter unable to care for herself or raise the alarm.

It is thought the bodies had been in the three-bedroom property for a number of weeks and had partially decomposed before they were found on Saturday.

The alarm was raised by a man delivering leaflets who noticed flies swarming around the letterbox.

Mrs Wolf devoted herself to caring for her daughter, who was found just yards from her mother’s body.  Continue reading →

UK cutting disability benefits in workfare destined to fail

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We want to work – but government would rather cut costs than help us

UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, putting the disabled back to work or else

By Rhydian Fôn James, Guardian.co.uk - According to the national statistics, there is a benefit worth £8.2bn a year where fraud runs at 1%, twice the rate of both disability living allowance and incapacity benefit. These benefits are the pension credit and the state pension, and a pilot review in 2005-06 estimated the cost to the taxpayer up to £51m a year in fraud.

The vast majority of pension credit claimants make genuine claims for money to support them in old age. Only a few very strange people would suggest that pensions should be cut for everyone, just because a handful of pensioners play fast and loose with the system. And yet, that is the argument made for the sick and disabled. Why? It is all about the tabloid-stoked perception of anyone claiming disability-related benefits as potential scroungers who are able to work. This line of thought suggests that most disabled people are capable of some kind of work – however minimal – and that benefits disincentivise work. Such thinking allows the government to take a hacksaw to the welfare state in the guise of benevolence aimed at reducing fraud.   Continue reading →

A Reading List to Put the WikiLeaks ‘War Logs’ in Context

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Much of what is on Wikileaks is already in circulation but not in one place

Australian founder of whistleblowing website, 'WikiLeaks', Julian Assange, holds up a copy of today's Guardian newspaper during a press conference in London on July 26, 2010. (LEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images)

by Nicholas Kusnetz and Karen Weise ProPublica

This morning, The New York Times [1], England’s The Guardian [2] and Germany’s Der Spiegel [3] published reports on what’s been termed the “War Logs”—nearly 92,000 documents about the war in Afghanistan made public by WikiLeaks. To put the leaked documents in context, we pulled together some of the best, past reporting on the main themes in the reports.

Pakistan’s influence on Afghanistan

The documents suggest [4] that Pakistan’s intelligence service has been aiding the Taliban and the Afghan insurgency. (See some of the documents here [5].) At the heart of this debate is the question Dexter Filkins posed in his Pulitzer-Prize winning coverage [6] in late 2007: “Whose side is Pakistan really on?”  Continue reading →