• DISABLED people refuse to be pitted against cyclists, e-scooter
riders and others changing to transport that doesn’t pollute the air we
all breathe – pollution which is killing so many people.
Camden Council and Transport for London should not be installing
cycle lanes without considering their impact on disabled people, who
face barriers getting around. Wiping out pavement ramps and disability
parking is against equality law.
Pavements need to be fully accessible at all times, otherwise people
using wheelchairs and mobility scooters are forced into the narrow cycle
lanes with batons, which is dangerous and problematic.
Binmen and women should be allowed time to put back recycling bins so
they aren’t left out blocking the pavement; this inaccessibility is
created by companies maximising their profits and by a cheaper contract
for the council. “Eat out” café tables should not take the whole
pavement.
To install a cycle lane in Fleet Road, disabled bays were suspended
for nearly a month. No alternative parking or protection from penalties
was offered to disabled residents who need to park yards from our front
door. Other residents resent disabled neighbours taking their bays which
they have paid an expensive permit for.
A sign suspending disabled parking for roadworks
Now the works are supposedly complete but no ramped kerbs either side on
Cressy Road. Where are wheelchair users supposed to cross?
Cressy Road with no ramped kerbs and blister paving with a step down
Will visually impaired people who use the pavement pimples to find
the kerb, know there is a step down? We didn’t get any answer from the
council roadworks team.
After lockdown, diesel and petrol vehicles are back with a vengeance.
Bad bus design means that two wheelchair users can’t travel together on
the same bus, and we’re made to compete for space with mums with
buggies.
Coping with disability and caring for children are both hard work,
made harder by lack of access and poverty inflicted on family carers and
disabled people.
It’s more obvious than ever that free, fully accessible, clean,
public transport is urgently needed for the climate, pollution and
poverty emergencies.
Contact us if you want to take on the council about the inaccessibility they are creating. Tel: 020 7482 2496 or email win@winvisible.org.
CLAIRE GLASMAN CHERYL McLENNAN WinVisible – Women with Visible & Invisible Disabilities
9 August 2020 update. While Shahrar Ali has moved his position leftward since 2005, I have decided that Rosi Sexton's stance is not really inclusive as she reckons that campaigning against HS2 and nuclear power are fruitless and even counterproductive exercises that she would ditch were she to become Green Party Leader. That, to me, is not inclusive leadership on Rosi's part.
The election period for Green Party of England & Wales leadership, deputy leadership, Trade Union Liaison Officer, and other Green Party Executive positions is upon us and actually started on Monday, 3 August 2020, to conclude on 31 August 2020.
Further details about candidates for the various Green Party Executive can be viewed via their responses to a survey from Green Party Trade Union Group, with updated question about responses to Green Party 'Holistic Review' outcome that would delete the position of Trade Union Liaison Officer. For those survey responses, go to
An Hereford & South Hereford Green Party colleague has been the only Green Party of England & Wales member to draw my attention to Rosi Sexton's candidacy as prospective Green Party Leader.
Here is a long interview with Rosi Sexton, followed by a much shorter campaign video from Rosi.
I shall outline below a few points and include this posting's link reference as comment in the 'comment space' on Rosi's interview video.The early August deadline for voting in Green Party Executive Elections is fast approaching, and I can edit the below in the meantime.
Response to Rosi from Alan Wheatley
Hi, Rosi
I have reached about the 47 minute mark in this video, and while I intend to get back to it later want to input a few points here.
Green Party in relation to Labour Party and 'Socialism'
One is that while I have been a Green Party of England & Wales (GPEW) member now since late 2005, I have also been a member of Green Left for almost the same length of time. Green Left members generally describe ourselves as 'eco-socialists' rather than 'socialists'.
Internal barriers to Green Party standing for inclusion
Another point is to ask you how you feel GPEW can be more inclusive in its internal workings? My previous experience experience as alternatively a GPEW Spokesperson on issues such as Disability, Social Security and Social Care is that it does not do nearly enough to address disability equality issues internally, and has becoming far too centralised and 'single issue' in its messaging under the 'Leadership' vs 'Principal Spokespersons' system.
Such lack of support for disabled volunteers tends to contribute to the 'twee' image and corporate mindset of GPEW. Advocate of neoliberal, workfarist welfare reforms David Freud -- now Lord Freud -- used portrayals of Lord Nelson and Winston Churchill as exemplary 'disabled people as achievers who don't stand in their own way'. Yet income and social class are major factors in turning an impairment into a disability.
A Hereford & South Herefordshire Green Party colleague has drawn my attention to your leadership candidacy in terms of boosting inclusion/inclusivity and portraying GPEW as 'more than a single issue' party.
'Target to Win' electioneering in relation to street campaigning
Re 'Target to Win', my experience is that its advocates generally take their authority from 'focus groups' and oppose 'meet the public' street stalls. Green Party outlook on Target to Win, as someone else has argued, has changed from being a 'method' to a 'philosophy'.
But I am beginning to like what you say about working with it.
Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group, by contrast to those who oppose street stalls, has grown and taken people on board through use of street stalls. We stood outside jobcentres and disability benefit assessment centres with loudhailer and placards as icebreakers for contact with a 'hard to reach group' where they felt most vulnerable, and they came to our meetings for support.
'Scientific method' vs Complementary Medicine and pro-compulsory vaccination?
You advocate 'scientific method', but that is too often used to 'debunk' complementary medicine -- including homoeopathy -- that has benefited me. Would your advocacy of 'scientific method' also make vaccination mandatory?
You support nuclear power? I don't!
Though I will append further detail on my background,
I close here with regard to my strongest objection to what I've heard about you, which is that you support nuclear power.
I believe that the dangers imposed by existing nuclear waste and the capital-intensive nature of nuclear power would prove intolerable burdens on society as things are.
I look forward to your feedback on the above.
Something of my background
I believe it takes all sorts to make Green Party of England & Wales truly inclusive, and so here is a little about me and my background.
For most of my time in GPEW I was a Londoner -- before moving to Hereford in 2017 --- and got to know Shahrar Ali (your opponent for Leader of Green Party role) quite well through campaigning together against the centralisation of GPEW that was heralded by the shift from 'Principal Spokespersons' to 'Leaders/Co-leaders', and also through his involvement in lobbying for and then his proofreading the Green Party to Labour's 2008 'welfare reform' green paper that Anne Gray of Haringey Green Party co-wrote.
I was a GPEW Spokesperson on Disability and then got that reframed to spokespersonships on Social Care and Social Security, through liasing with Policy Co-ordinators.
I found that GPEW had a shortfall on supporting disability access, and I could not address 'disability issues' sufficiently because of my own slow productivity compounded by my feeling that it would be hypocritical for me to speak out for the Green Party while it had issues to deal with itself about disability equality at Green Party HQ, for example.
My background has been as a disabled jobseeker, consistently lacking bargaining power against an increasingly cruel system that fails to implement the Social Model of Disability, and thus I respect the incisiveness you can put in from your council Social Care background. I have also been a member of Social Work Action Network (SWAN), and a supporter of Carer Watch, as well as activist-led Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group.
Now that I'm a retired person in a stage of transition and de-cluttering, I'm sorting out papers from decades ago when I was in training and/or beginning work experiences. Rather than merely consign these to the paper shredder, it can be helpful for me to transcribe these and share them via this Web Log.
The paper I'm introducing below is from a Toynbee Training course I graduated from in early 1991 toward working with the under-5s, and the significance of its Speech & Language Therapy (SLT) roots were relevant to my own childhood development in the 1950s and 1960s and subsequent working with a speech impaired person as one of their domiciliary care workers in 2005 to 2006.
A true story with identities changed to help protect identities and also to help serve as a moral tale involves Liz Tentoomi and Ken Klutz and is fairly simply expressed in the dialogue below.
Ken:
Hi! How are you?
Liz:
[Garbling a response as a result of speech impairment resulting from the disability Dyspraxia]
Ken:
[Not attempting in any way to clarify what Liz had just said] Ah! That's great! You must be really proud of yourself!
'Proud of herself' in no way described what Liz was feeling at that time, for what she had just said or attempted to say was, "My mum's just died," and Ken's ill-considered 'communication' must surely have exacerbated her feelings of being all alone in the world while in her mid-40s.
That story was told to me by one of Liz's regular care workers in helping me understand just how why Liz would greet me so warmly despite my difficulties deciphering her speech in 3 hour contact sessions. "The point is, Alan, that you care and make the effort to clarify what Liz says; too many people don't."
My own speech development as a person living with Dyspraxia
I was comparatively very fortunate in my development as a person with Dyspraxia. Family legend has it that my first word, in response to a command from my mother that I stop loudly opening and closing the lid of her sewing box, was, "No!" and Mum was so surprised at that being my first word that she did not 'discipline' me for my outright disobedience.
In those days my speech was impaired not only by Dyspraxia but also by over large tonsils that I had removed at age 4. From then to the point at which I entered Infants at around my 5th birthday, I reputedly spoke in the pseudo language of BBC children's TV characters 'Bill and Ben the Flower Pot Men'.
Later at a fee paying school, the extra attention paid to me helped bring me in contact with speech therapy that helped me develop my capacity to verbalise more clearly, although I still stuttered and mumbled into my early adulthood, with others incorrectly completing my sentences for me. Subsequent singing tuition and writing my own poems helped give me the experience of knowing what I was going to say before I said it, rather than feel pressured to respond immediately with poor 'working memory'.
Writing my own poems also helped me build bridges with audiences as an amateur entertainer, and connect with those audiences deeply from my own deep experiences.
Liz's experience of SLT
Liz's experience of SLT was perhaps too late and too brief in her teens while she was educated below mainstream schooling. I heard from my line manager that Liz had received some SLT at about age 13 but clearly not enough, and I noticed that Liz's old school peers who were also service users of domiciliary and other services from that charity for learning disabled adults were well grounded in deciphering what she said.
In her 40s Liz's socio-economic position was that of an Incapacity Benefit claimant and treated by the system as 'not worthy of quality investment of public resources' in her education. I had already experienced Learning & Skills Council low priorisation for adults with learning difficulties as they cut back on supporting the below Level 1 Literacy adults I had volunteered with, and in about 2004 I met someone who responded to my saying that I thought Learning & Skills Council had very little understanding of the educational requirements of adults with learning difficulties: "I would say that you are too kind: they have no understanding of the educational requirements of adults with learning difficulties."
The description given by the Learning & Skills Council on their website was, "The Learning & Skills Council exists to help make England better skilled and more competitive." Thus to them preparing the way for London 2012 Olympics involved disregarding the aspirations of those who had not yet made it to Level 1 in adulthood and also rubbishing the prospects of those like me who might have been able to make a living helping them.
Lack of vocal clarity clearly got in the way of Liz's capacity to grieve, and as a consequence she blew inheritance money to the wind through wasteful purchases, attempting to reclaim that which could never be got back, as a psychotherapist might say.
But when cost-cutting government ministers say, that people on state benefits are in the position they are in with limited prospects because of "poor lifestyle choices," they take no consideration for the impact of decades of under-investment in the lives of disadvantaged adults, and show no understanding of the Social Model of Disability.
As one who has 'found their voice' in various ways though, I become all the more determined to use it to help give others a 'voice' and tell the truths of their lives more accurately without impinging on their rights.
Tower Hamlets Health Authority
Speech Therapy Department
ARTICULATION e.g. production of sounds
This develops in fairly regular stages.
During babbling period several sounds used.
Towards end of 1st year child learns use of sounds for words, i.e.
contructively.
Begins to build up sound system from scratch.
Children tend to use certain sounds before others, e.g. "p" "b" "m"
(front sounds) before "k" "g" (back sounds; and "p" "b" before "f"
"s" "v" etc.
CHART
ORDER OF
APPEARANCE OF SOUND AND APPROXIMATE AGE
by 2 years
'p'
'b'
'm'
'n'
'w'
by 2½ years
't'
'd'
'k'
'g'
'ng'
(e.g. sing)
by 3 years
'f'
'g'
'l'
'y'
by 4 years
'sh'
'v'
'z'
'r'
'ch'
'j'
by 5 years
* 'th'
but may depend on <em>where</em> in word sound is e.g.
beginning, middle or end.
Also consonant clusters will be simplifed at first.
* This sound may be substituted by 'f' of 'v' as features of the
London dialect.
This chart refers to <em>sounds</em> not letters as many
letters have different sounds, e.g., the letter 'c' may be
pronounced as /k/ as in 'cat' or /s/ as in 'nice'.
Certain sounds may have been acquired by a given age, but may still
cause problems in certain words till a little later e.g., The child
may say 'door' but have trouble with 'dog' or may say 'like' but
have trouble with 'little'. The areas are estimates only, but if a
child is not producing the sounds by the stated age, speech therapy
<em>may</em> be indicated.
COMPREHENSION
AGE
DEVELOPS
BEHAVIOUR
To 12 months
Distracted by any new event
12 to 18 months
Recognises many everyday objects when named,
and can point to them
12 to 18 months
Recognises and points to pictures when named
18 to 24 months
Understands verbs: e.g. "sit down", "come
here"
2 to 2½ years
Understands sentences with 2 information
carrying words:
e.g., "put the spoon in the cup"
2 to 2½ years
Points to smaller parts of the body:
e.g.,chin, elbow
2 to 2½ years
Beginning to understand size: i.e.,
'big/little'
2½ to 3 years
Selects objects by function:
i.e., "Where's the one we eat with?"
2½ to 3 years
Understands simple prpositions: 'in/on/under'
2½ to 3 years
Knows if 'he/she' is a 'boy/girl'
2½ to 3 years
Understands longer and more complex sentences
2½ to 3 years
Knows several colours &emdash; blue/red
&emdash; yellow/green
3 to 3½ years
Follows verbal directions with 3-4
information carrying words: e.g., "make dolly sit down under
the table"
3½ to 4½ years
Understands "all", "both", "much", but not
yet firmly established
EXPRESSIVE LANGUAGE
AGE
DEVELOPS
BEHAVIOUR
To 12 months
Babbling, combinations of vowels and consonants
12 to 18 months
Using some single words: mama, dad, ball
18 to 24 months
Imitates 2-3 word sentences
18 to 24 months
Links words together: e.g., "all gone", "my teddy"
18 to 24 months
Asks questions using infomration: e.g., "see hide?"
18 to 24 months
Calls him/herself by own name
2 to 2½ years
Begins to use words creatively: "bye bye milk"
2 to 2½ years
Begins 3 word utterances: "Daddy kick ball"
2 to 2½ years
Begins to use "I" and "me"
2½ to 3 years
Uses longer more complex sentences:
"Where's my mummy's hat gone?"
2½ to 3 years
Signalling grammatical word endings:
e.g., 'ing', 's', 'ed'
2½ to 3 years
Relates experiences from the past
Addtitional Notes by Alan Wheatley about SLTs
SLTs are almost solely employed by local health authorities rather than local authorities. I believe it would be better for equalities purposes if SLTs were also employed by local government rather than solely by local health authorities. Anyhow, the professional body for SLTs in the UK is the Royal College of Speech & Language Therapists https://www.rcslt.org/
The UK's General Election 2019 may be over, but for many with speech and language disorders, their problems are only just beginning. The country has spoken?
