Participatory Ideology: From exclusion to involvement
This is not a trick question. What is the link between recruiting a photographer at significant taxpayers’ expense to take cuddly, self-glorifying photos of a pet dog and a high level of successful appeals without precedent by disabled people against...
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Deaf in the time of Covid
Deaf people are not, by nature of their hearing impairment, at any increased risk from COVID than the general population. However, the strategy developed and implemented by the government to control the spread of the virus disproportionately disadvantages D/deaf people....
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Disposable humans?
A response to the recent social commentary on the perceived value of individuals with ‘underlying health conditions’ The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the fabric of society and has left many wondering about the social, political and economic structures that will...
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“There’s none so deaf as those who will not hear”.
A report released this week by the National Deaf Children’s Society (NDCS) shows that deaf children are falling even further behind their hearing peers in school than previously thought. Figures show that 30.6% of deaf children achieve a grade 5 or...
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Trade Unions: Working from the Margins
How UK trade unions can meet the needs of the contemporary labour force In a very poor attempt to offer up some ‘good’ news, Conservative party supporters continue to make much of the increased UK employment rate. Something that, on...
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The ADHD chronicles: Squeezing through the bars of the iron cage
My first two attempts to get evaluated for ADHD only resulted in promises that the psychologist would call me back. This never happened, and the only official indication that I was ever in contact with him/her was the invoices I...
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Zygmunt Bauman: On the Quest for Health
Zygmunt Bauman, who sadly passed away at the age of 91 in January, was one of the most influential sociologists of his generation. Bauman was Professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds from 1972 until his retirement in 1990....
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Same old story: between disability and disinterest
This week the UN Committee on the Rights of Disabled Persons (CRPD) published the results of an investigation that found that UK reforms to welfare have led to “grave and systematic violations” of disability rights. In the same week a...
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Where has all the kindness gone?
In October 2015 I wrote about the implications of the election of Jeremy Corbyn as the Labour leader standing on the pledge of a new “kinder politics and a more caring society”. I talked about the glimmer of hope offered...
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WRAGs to ‘riches’: Closing the disability employment gap
Iain Duncan Smith (IDS) recently resigned from his position as the Work and Pensions Secretary having seemingly suffered a delayed bout of morality. In his resignation letter he explained that he felt the cuts proposed in #Budget2016 were ‘a compromise...
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Scary clones and space-ready humans – the genome debate hots up
Hopes and fears around new developments in genome editing have sparked a fresh round of arguments about the ethics of eugenics. Until recently, a great deal of ethical thinking about genomics focused on what would happen if scientists ever worked...
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The fragile worker: stigma, illness and disability in the contemporary workplace