100 (Silly) Voices -The Brandon Trust

Saturday morning arrives at about 7.30 am. I try to ignore the bottle of whisky that’s sitting by the kettle as I fumble to generate enough coffee to kick-start the day.

cheap drink, strong dope and tranquillizers

I don’t remember how it got there. I kinda guess it’s related to the “oh-my-god-life-is-so-shit-I-want-to-die” episode I had last night. As usual, cheap drink, strong dope and tranquillizers got me through.

streamed live on Teh Intawebz... 

Firing-up my geriatric computer to attack the headlines aus Die Zeit mit meine schlechte Deutsche, I notice on Twitter the Brandon Trust are having another “100 People: 100 Voices” Learning Disabilities Conference, and it is to be streamed live on Teh Intawebz... The flyer says “This is your opportunity to tell us what is important to you”.

Live from Teh Intawebz - Mr Personality

The Brandon Trust, originally a just residential care company, say about themselves in their Vision Statement

Brandon Trust sees a future where people with learning disabilities will exercise full citizenship with all its rights and responsibilities within UK society, where every person will be empowered and supported as necessary to safely live their life to its full potential.

Great White Hope and putative saint

And headlining the event is none other than the Disabled Community of Britain’s Great White Hope and putative saint, Bendy Girl.

the corpulent sight of Matt Britt

Hitting the video feed, I'm greeted with the corpulent sight of Matt Britt, one of the the Brandon Trust’s umm... “Employment and Support” advisers. (Little did I realise at this point, that this horror show was going to contain more than one Matt).

“Why haven’t you got a job?”

Looking distinctly Pooh Bear-ish in his spanking new blue Brandon Trust T Shirt, Matt I (as we will call him for ease of identification) outlines a future where asking the Brandon Trust for help and social care will get the response

Why haven’t you got a job?

I’m serious. (I’ve got the short-hand notes in case of High Court actions).

putting pressure on the disabled, their parents and carers

Matt speaks of putting pressure on the disabled, their parents and carers to change the current habit of asking

Do you want a job?

into

You will go pack incontinence pads at one of our ‘work-projects’, on a short-term temporary contract, wholly dependent on massive hidden government subsidies, mainly paid through cutting your benefits and support to as close to zero as humanly possible.

 he’s “enabled” many of his clients to join “Job Clubs”

He also speaks glowingly of how he’s “enabled” many of his clients to join “Job Clubs” where despite their numerous and serious disabilities, they will disappear from the disability statistics and glory in their new found status as fully enabled, supported and largely unemployable Job Seekers.

the blonde, poodle-haired, irredeemably chirpy PR guy

Next up is Matt II, Matt Boyle, the blonde, irredeemably chirpy, poodle-haired, PR guy from the Brandon Trust who is conducting an “interview” with one of their “local user forums”.

Live From Norwich... It's Gorgeous!

excruciating sub-Alan Partridge repartee

He begins with excruciating sub-Alan Partridge repartee

Your mum and dad brought you down!?

(Everything Matt II says comes with an exclamation and question mark.)

I need a bus pass

replies the less than enthusiastic interviewee. Matt II rapidly moves on to his next victim.

Any experiences you want to share about the buses!? You have something positive to share about the buses!?

A long painful silence follows.

Do you have a bus pass!?

No, I'm scared.

Another painful silence follows, although fortunately slightly shorter than before.

Do you have a bus pass!?

Hey! That's a great photo on there!

Matt II ploughs on, to no reply. Undaunted, he continues, addressing what seems entirely empty space, Hey! That's a great photo on there!

Another of the user panel erupts UrrghArrrghUrrrrrrrrgh!, at this point, I find myself joining the interlocutor in an unholy counterpoint...

Full Metal Jacket Matty continues

Any experiences you want to share about the buses!?, Full Metal Jacket Matty continues.

I get teased...

Desperately he turns, seemly at random, only to hit point-blank by

The bus stop is so far away, I have to get a taxi to it

I scream. Literally, I scream

I scream. Literally, I scream. I’m autistic you see. I have alexithymia. Difficulty expressing my thoughts and feelings so instead I just go UrrghArrrghUrrrrrrrrgh! and smash things up.

Frequently it’s the telephone. I’ve got through 4 in the last year. I always make a point of buying the cheap ones, knowing they’re not going to last long.

the endless stream of negativity

Matt II continues, the endless stream of negativity from the panellists can’t be ignored and he is begrudgingly dragged into engaging with their concerns... I leave the room at this point.

ignore the whining from the lonesome whisky bottle

It’s about 11.30 am and I can no longer ignore the whining from the lonesome whisky bottle. Despite this failure, I do manage to ignore the seductive susurration emanating from the tranquillizer cupboard. They can't be wasted on generalized existential angst. They're for life-or-death situations.

I return to the forum, dainty porcelain cup of whisky and a suspiciously large and stinky brown roll-up in hand.

Speaking in a particularly sexy low-cut maroon ensemble

Bendy Girl, Kaliya Franklin is powering up an improvised ramp onto the stage accompanied by rapturous applause. Speaking in a particularly sexy low-cut maroon ensemble, she appears to be accompanied by what looks like a G4S security guard in a blazer and tie. I try to ignore this fact. I don’t succeed.

silly-voice-o-meter hitting about 5.5

Kaliya gave a brief introduction, but almost certainly due to the psychic trauma of what followed, the recollection entirely escapes me, save for the flash-back of the silly-voice-o-meter hitting about 5.5 on a scale of 0 to 10,

one of the most grievous errors of judgement 

In what must surely rank as one of the most grievous errors of judgement since Bill Clinton did-not-have sexual relations with “That Woman”, Bendy Girl announces that we are going to have a “musical quiz”.

 a “musical quiz”

My spare bedroom, (which is about to attract a £13 a week reduction in my housing benefit), erupts to the sound of The Wheels of the Bus...

“The wheels of the bus, go round and round, go round and round...”

the ringing afterglow of this thermonuclear stupidity

In the ringing afterglow of this thermonuclear stupidity which at one point included Noddy (sorry but it's true), I was so distressed that for a moment, reality began to slip away. UrrghArrrghUrrrrrrrrgh! goes the scream of the slo-boi on and on, on and on...

Presumably feeling that her experience of physical disability equates with ours with mental disabilities, Bendy Girl goes on to say that we are partly to blame for the bullying and harassment we suffer... and that it is the sequela of expecting the worst of people... and we need to be more open with our attitudes...

UrrghArrrghUrrrrrrrrghArrrgh!

 "UrrghArrrghUrrrrrrrrgh!", I reply to the screen, "UrrghArrrghUrrrrrrrrghArrrgh!"

Several minutes later I regain my composure to hear her sign off and leave the stage with the Gandhi-esque phrase “Together we can change the world...” as once more my world is drowned in tinny music. This time it’s Queen

Buddy you're a young man hard man

Shoutin' in the street gonna take on the world some day

You got blood on yo' face

You big disgrace

Wavin' your banner all over the place

We will we will rock you

We will we will rock you

After lunch, (in my case 2 cups of whisky, 3 ‘roll-ups’ and a determined ignoring of the drug cupboard) the video feed resumes and introduces (for some reason) the Labour candidate for mayor of Bristol, Mervyn Rees, who doesn’t say (or do) anything.

Unlike the Labour Candidate - can speak.

And then, appears the magnificently camp Rt Hon. Peter Main, current Lord Mayor of Bristol, who says how pleased he was that the Brandon Trust users put employment top of their list of concerns... Leading to this conference, (seemingly mainly focussing on bus passes...).

I may have lost consciousness at this point

For some reason my mind wanders to Chomsky... I think I may have lost consciousness at this point...

Sometime later, I come-to, and realise once again I’m drowning in an tsunami of Schlager. This time it’s Abba‘s “Money Money Money”.

reality is about to be torn

The panic rises, an unstoppable red-hot column of lava - I make a grab for the pills, then inexplicably, the sense that reality is about to be torn into jagged, bloody pieces, recedes.

It all suddenly makes sense.

Money, Money, Money,
It must be funny,
In a rich man’s world.

Kaliya Franklin/Bendy Girl is an impressively brave woman. A fact that brooks no confutation.

own particular brand of neo-Liberal nastiness.

However the huge maturity, professionalism and realpolitik shown by her and the others in leading the campaign in defence of disabled peoples’ rights in the face of the government’s cuts, has led her right into the gaping maw of the Brandon Trust’s own particular brand of neo-Liberal nastiness.

drowned today in a sea of condescension and cheap music

The voices of the autistic and intellectually disabled people that the Brandon Trust and their “Official Ambassador” Kaliya Franklin, claim to represent, drowned today in a sea of condescension and cheap music.

We don’t need you to speak for us.
We can speak for ourselves.
But you’re not listening.

You got mud on your face
You big disgrace
Somebody better put you back in your place

We will we will rock you
We will we will rock you

Passing Comment I

“If you feed the poor it just encourages them to be lazy. See the Peterloo Massacre and the Irish Famine. History teaches us that lead is the best answer to whiny Guardianistas”.

Fritz V

British Welfare Policy Explained

freely: Here you bear the cost of the disabled

Demonising people who are on benefits is a deliberate Conservative ploy to harden public attitudes to welfare so that it’s easier to carry out the cuts and set neighbour against neighbour.

Source

An Accommodation Too Far

or

How I Broke the Social Model

The Social Model of Disability [1] as first proposed, suggests that disability is

... the disadvantage or restriction of activity caused by a contemporary social organisation which takes little or no account of people who have physical impairments ...

This can be translated into standard English to read, in its simplest form

people with physical impairments are mainly disabled by society’s failure provide enough wheelchairs

whereas the Oxford English Dictionary says succinctly

a physical or mental condition that limits a person’s movements, senses, or activities

A good example of the usefulness of the social model can be seen in the, fortunately now outdated, behaviour of special schools for the disabled [2]

... those disabled people who attended segregated schools may have gained lower academic qualifications than their non-disabled peers, simply because their ‘special’ school failed to provide a proper mainstream curriculum.

My mother caught polio

My mother caught polio when she was 15 years old. She spent more than a year in an iron lung before she recovered enough to breathe unaided.

She has ever since been in a wheelchair.

Mummy in the middle caught in her E&J Wheelchair at school

In about 1971 she was provided with a Mini 850, fitted with hand-controls and was able to take us three children to school in the morning and then go off to work as a telephonist for Griffin & George.

The company fortunately had a reception with big double doors her wheelchair could get through, and fortunately at the time, Society saw fit to provide her with a subsidised and adapted car.

A seriously disabled woman

A seriously disabled woman with State and an understanding employer’s help, was able, raise three children and hold down a job.

(If you’re wondering where my father was during this time, he was mainly on the run from the Army, in Florida with the leading actress from Bewitched).

So to reiterate, the Social Model proposes

that disability is a result of the barriers faced by people with impairments

The Skegness Butlins Sexy Legs competition

And that if one removes the barriers, by providing suitable “accomodations", for example adapting a motorcar to be driven with someone with no legs and providing wheelchair accessible workplaces, the person effectively ceases to be disabled (except of course, until they try to enter the Skegness Butlins Sexy Legs competition - but don’t mention that, it’s wrongthink that gets one expelled from the Crip Club).

As time went on, some non-mentally impaired people, decided that the mentally disabled deserved the same right to re-examine their “disabilities” in terms of a neo-Marxist model of societal oppression by a mentally privileged oligarchy. [3]

Created an idea they called Neurodiversity 

A little later, some actually mentally disabled people got in on the act and created an idea they called Neurodiversity [4] - and largely blamed the entirety of their impairments on the attitudes of “Neurotypicals”. [5]

OK, now lets try and apply this extension of the Social Model to me:

I have autism and I am described by Dr Zaman from the Specialist Learning Disability Service as having an

ASD [Autistic Spectrum Disorder] and major difficulty in social interaction...

... functioning is poor because of the developmental disorder and his lack of social skills, independent skills and communication difficulties...

Yeah, so far so good...

It was clear from the assessment that the behavioural symptoms, agitation and angry outbursts are associated with his ASD

OK, that’s a fair measure of my ‘disability’ - social interaction causes me major anxiety, I have very few social skills to call on when dealing with people, and I have trouble expressing myself, and often even talking is impossible.

Massacring passing country-folk

Consequently I often take out my frustration by screaming like a terrified animal, or smashing-up things, or if I’m having a really bad day, by firing up my chainsaw and massacring passing country-folk.

Drink cheap whisky, smoke strong dope

Actually, if I’m in a really bad mood, I drink cheap whisky, smoke strong dope and pop Lorazepam until I am unconscious and thus incapable of functional medievalism.

I know killing people is wrong, so I don’t go out on bad days.

“Where am I going?”

If I do go out on a Bad Day, the consequences for those around me are often not nice: the little old lady who brushes my arm as she terrifyingly sits next to me, is told to “fuck off”; the toddler opposite is petrified by the sight of the unkempt bus-stop looney rocking and a jabberin’ to himself as the sensory overload and anxiety propels his brain to an epileptiform ballet leaving him dribbling and distressed and asking the ever patient bus drivers “Where am I going?”

Stop oppressing me 

Listen up, people: give me my Wheelchair for the mind! Stop oppressing me with you lack of regard to my needs! Accomodated ME!

Don’t touch me, ever, even by accident. At best, I’ll swear at you, at worst, I’ll hit you.
Don’t take you kids out if they get upset by the sight of retards.
Don’t ever telephone me, ever. It scares the shit out of me and I won’t answer and it’ll take me hours to get over it.
Don’t knock on my door. FFS! Don’t ever, ever do that! It sends my blood pressure so high I see stars and I have to hide under the bed. (Unfortunately I am not exaggerating for theatrical effect).
Don’t ever expect me to reply to a tweet in less than a week. The last time you Tweeted me, desperate as I was for human contact, it scared me so much I couldn’t Tweet for days. And still haven’t managed to reply yet.
Don’t expect me to tell you that it’s a pretty dress when you look like a moose that’s had an accident in a curtain factory. I don’t do that socialising shit.

This list is not exhaustive, in fact, the briefing document for those care workers brave enough to visit me runs to about 3000 words...

Just going to have to accommodate me

And I’m sorry, you’re just going to have to accommodate me spitting in your face because you’ve accidentally invaded my personal space...

Are you feeling as uncomfortable as me about the atomic-powered, Golden Wheelchair the Social Model seems to propose?

Impalements from physical and mental illnesses

Over the years the Social Model has been refined into several sub-models including the biopsychosocial (BPS) model which attempts to view the impalements from physical and mental illnesses as having an exogenous source. [6]

The BPS model attracted the attention of American healthcare insurers, and one, UNUM has made it a central plank of their strategy in dealing with insurance claims from sick and disabled people. [7]

The idea is that the impact of an illness on a person isn’t just a result of the purely medical elements. Physical (e.g. disease, joint damage), psychological (e.g. disposition, anxiety) and social factors (e.g. work demands, family support) also play an important role.

An excuse to stop work and claim for expensive treatment

In practice it means that the company views all potential claims as being from malingerers attempting to use their terminal cancer as an excuse to stop work and claim for expensive treatment that isn’t likely to save them anyway. [8][9]

The tale of how the Social Model mutated and how UNUM influenced the work of the company tasked with the governments monumental welfare reforms, ATOS Healthcare has been well documented by others. [10]

Even in its most ethical and pure form the Social Model seems to leave me a little out in the cold, while the BPS model puts me at Ground Zero of the government’s determination to end this “something for nothing culture” of wheelchairs and adapted cars. [11]


[1] The Social Model of Disability. Grant Carson http://www.ukdpc.net/site/images/library/Social%20Model%20of%20Disability2.pdf
[2] http://www.ukdpc.net/site/images/library/Social%20Model%20of%20Disability2.pdf
[3] ‘Learning Difficulties’, the Social Model of Disability and Impairment: challenging epistemologies. Dan Goodley http://www.discourseunit.com/papers/du_members/goodley_papers/Goodley%202001%20D&S.pdf
[4] http://www.danda.org.uk/pages/neuro-diversity.php
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotypical
[6] The clinical application of the biopsychosocial model. Engel GL http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7369396
[7] UNUM and BPS Model http://ask.unum.co.uk/blog/questions/frequently-asked-questions/
[8]"My Job Was to Terminate and Deny Claims," says Former Unum Claims Handler http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/articles/first_unum/interview-unum-insurance-disability-claims-5-16710.html#.UET4HIoaOTI
[9] Suit Says Insurer Wrongly Denied Disability Claims http://articles.latimes.com/2004/apr/17/business/fi-unum17
[10] A tale of two models http://www.dpac.uk.net/2012/04/a-tale-of-two-models-disabled-people-vs-unum-atos-government-and-disability-charities-debbie-jolly/
[11] Even the dying will work http://the-newrepublic.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/even-dying-will-work.html

Das Totschreiben -The Death Letter

Not a problem: I have sleeping tablets, whisky and charcoal.

My anxiety disorder has recently graduated to a stress disorder and the consequent breakdown of the boundaries between the present and past are preventing a more rational and reasoned approach to this development.

Ton Steine Scherben - Wir müssen hier aus (We Gotta Get Out of Here)

Wir sind geboren, um frei zu sein.

Wir sind zwei von Millionen, wir sind nicht allein.

Wir sind geboren, um frei zu sein,

Wir sind 60 Millionen, wir sind nicht allein.

We are born to be free.

We are two of millions, we are not alone.

We are born to be free

We are 60 million, we are not alone.

Concept Savant - The Fear

Mark Ty-Wharton

The New Republic

The New Republic is being archived here.