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

Arbeitsscheu Muß Sterben!

The Work-shy must Die!

(Freely) With you, you carry the lifetime cost of the genetically diseased.

The Commons today have dumped the Lords' futile attempts at softening the impact of the Welfare Reform Bill.

The sick and disabled of both Britain and the other poor and unfortunate Euro-nations, will now bare the major cost of the cancerous German style Hartz IV reform.

1933-07-26 - Arthur Gutt - Law on the Prevention of

Genetically Diseased Offspring (German)

Meanwhile the sick and disabled 

Meanwhile on the streets the activists and sick and disabled are finalising their suicide pacts, while Poundland gears up to have a 20,000 strong army of starving and easily biddable Chavs on £0 p/hr to lead Britain out of the worst economic and moral shitstorm since the 1930's.

far preferable to life as a Erbkranker, in the UK today

Fuck, death is far, far preferable to life as a Erbkranker, in the UK today. The warnings of the Rabbis have been ignored; after all one must never, ever equate anything with the Nazis.

Hearing the Voice of Moses - Rabbi Debbi Somers-Young / Kalyia Franklin 13th January 2012

In Nazi Germany, well before there were Jewish pogroms and camps, disabled and mentally ill German citizens were rounded up, and it was for them that camps were initially developed. And how were the rest of the population convinced this was ok? They were told that these people were an economic drain on the nation. 

Holocaust Memorial Day - Danni Neumann 25th January 2012

The Nazi campaign started by targeting not the Jews but disabled people. They where quietlygassed in the first experiments with Zyklon B, these people were comparativelylow in numbers, were less likely to be missed, could not speak up forthemselves, and had no-one to speak up for them.
Then after a large propaganda campaign that tapped intothe populations anger about the country economic state, the murder of millions begun long standing prejudice's like...

"they think the world owes them something",
"They are a drain on the country's limited resources",
"they do not work so they are worthless",
"It would be kinder not to mention cheaper to kill them, preferably at birth",

...Are stomach turning yet they are statements I hear from people and politicians every day. Maybe not put quite as frankly or bluntly as that but the underlining argument and sentiment is the same.

We have entered a new age

We have entered a new age today. Where those caught up in the polite realpolitik of Westminster suddenly realise, that no number of emails to right wing Tories will ever soften their hearts; no amount of sloganeering, nor 100 strong demonstrations of disabled people will get them the traction they strive for.

Kauft Nicht Bei Nazis (Don't Buy From Nazis) (German)

The truth is, nothing short of Direct Action can have any chance of impacting on this debate. People are dying. People are being driven to their deaths by bullies and by the fear of poverty and homelessness.

People are dying

The Government, Opposition and Media have set a firestorm and the crips and the sick and the unemployed are being knocked down like skittles in the hurricane force inrush of supporters.

The Government, Opposition and Media have set a firestorm

Iain Duncan Smith Dr. Walter Groß said recently in the 1930's

We recall the days of delirium, when millions of unemployed had been thrown on the street by a sick political and economic system, made superfluous.

A single person pried the tracks apart and derailed a train... ...and stole their money.

And what did the world of yesterday say? “He can’t help himself. He is a victim of circumstances. He has Beethoven’s hands and an artistic temperament. We need not put him on the gallows or in prison to protect us and our children.

One must NEVER equate anything with the Nazis. Ever. Period.

No, this poor Schlesinger is only sick because of his environment. Put him in a modern sanitarium, give him what he needs: radio, a library, a smoking salon, a language teacher, a pastor, a newspaper room, ...In a few years, this murderer... will leave as an ideal human being, so pure and innocent that one can put him in charge of a kindergarten.”

That’s what people thought in the past.

Today that seems a bad joke to us, a crazy fantasy, 

but a few years ago it was government policy in Germany...

Welcome to the end of the world as we know it

And indeed in the UK. Welcome to the end of the world as we know it. I'm not going out quietly. I suggest you join me on the streets and we'll die like men, women, crips, and chavs.

The Fear - Like Being

"Mark Ty-Wharton is an exponential interventionist, iridescent existentialist and extra special experimentalist" – Nick Rhodes, Duran Duran

"You’ve heard the phrase think outside the box before?
For me, there is no box..."