New laws needed

[Fiz]

It shocks me that the police couldn't get involved as "no laws have been broken". New laws are needed! 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-57838553

[SashaQ]

Yes indeed - that was shocking.

It was a few years ago that I had trouble with a taxi driver - he agreed to take me and loaded me into the cab OK, but then started asking questions about 'what's wrong with you?' I laughed it off, but then when we got vaguely near my destination, he stopped somewhere random, chucked me out of the cab (luckily I didn't fall over) and then didn't give me £4 change from my £20 note and just drove off...  Not good, but could have been worse...

[Sunny Clouds]

I don't understand why there's no crime.  The actions of the driver as described appear to be attempted theft.

I suppose the argument of the police would be that the driver didn't intend permanently to deprive the owner of her wheelchair, but if not, what plans could he argue he had to return it to her?

[Fiz]

In days gone by I remember the day when even when there was no crime committed, the police would pop round and mediate and attempt to resolve things between upset neighbours or customers, just because. Nowadays they just don't have the time so if there's no legal case they won't even go and talk to people. This is a sad decline in police service in my view, caused by massive underfunding yet again. And it's the working class and people living in deprivation that would have benefited from that friendly visit to help resolve a situation which is why the cuts have been allowed to happen of course. The rich don't benefit from higher numbers of the police in the same way.

[Sunny Clouds]

Some Tory MP made disparaging comments the other day linking taking the knee, BLM and defunding the police.

Well, leaving aside that defunding the police is an American campaign, and leaving aside whether he understands what it's actually about or not (i.e. moving funds along with the tasks they pay for to other services where they'd be more appropriate, e.g. moving funds for welfare visits for mentally ill people to specialist social workers or similar), it's the Tories that left us with a cut in police funding of about 10% in the last decade. 

Ah, but that's not 'defunding' the police, that's, erm, cutting unnecessary something-or-other.

We live in scary times.  When people attack disabled people physically, financially, socially, psychologically or however, we need to keep uniting, keep speaking up, keep using social media etc.

All I feel able to do is things like awareness-raising and helping people to map their situation onto that of others. 

But news stories like this one do make a difference.  Even if each time a story like this breaks just a few more people have a moment of mentally picturing themselves with a particular physical or mental obstacle, it's a bit of help.

[On the edge]

Some Tory MP made disparaging comments the other day linking taking the knee, BLM and defunding the police.

Well, leaving aside that defunding the police is an American campaign, and leaving aside whether he understands what it's actually about or not (i.e. moving funds along with the tasks they pay for to other services where they'd be more appropriate, e.g. moving funds for welfare visits for mentally ill people to specialist social workers or similar), it's the Tories that left us with a cut in police funding of about 10% in the last decade. 

Ah, but that's not 'defunding' the police, that's, erm, cutting unnecessary something-or-other.

We live in scary times.  When people attack disabled people physically, financially, socially, psychologically or however, we need to keep uniting, keep speaking up, keep using social media etc.

All I feel able to do is things like awareness-raising and helping people to map their situation onto that of others. 

But news stories like this one do make a difference.  Even if each time a story like this breaks just a few more people have a moment of mentally picturing themselves with a particular physical or mental obstacle, it's a bit of help.

I stopped taking notice of anything in newspapers or the BBC a long time ago.  I'm fed up of the lectures and what we are all 'supposed to do' to comply with issues created in the USA or in some random focus group based in Islington. BLM (UK) is extinct, it's moderates resigned 5 days after the Bristol matches, now only aggressive, fist-waving people make unreasonable demands instead.  'Taking the knee' is based on subservience historically, no way would I do that for Black people or any other area.  They would not do it for us. (And half of us would have trouble getting up again after lol).


Respect has to be earned, it isn't a given.  The police are all that stands between us and complete anarchy, and the cuts are horrific.  Awareness doesn't work, laws don't work, if they did equality would have happened years ago with human rights and long before 'dedicated' disability laws were enacted.   Awareness is a never-ending merry-go-round that is managed and run by mean-wells and opportunists who don't understand basic human nature and believe wagging a finger and threatening people with a law will work.


As regards hearing loss, the deaf made a real 'killing' presenting themselves as 'experts' on deaf awareness, created awareness as they saw it (in a vacuum!), and charged gullible hearing and business fees, then duly dismissed11 million with hearing loss, insisting everybody signed, 'clients' had to take awareness of 1880s Milan, made to understand the deaf hate English, and anyone who was oral, CI's were 'genocide of the deaf' in action, you couldn't script it, discrimination and distortion, made legal, and awareness a profitable joke at everyone else's expense.


Be it hidden disability campaigns or whatever, not working.  It's a free for all, and unless the deaf and the disabled start weeding out the people creating issues for us, it will only get worse.  This means we dump the randoms really because having 10m empowered to state how their issue affects them produces 10m different forms of awareness, and you cannot get support or access that way, you have to have a commonality of approach or the noisy few get a free run.


The needs of the many outweigh the demands of the few, simples.  Now all we need to do is Identify them!

[Sunny Clouds]

As for BLM(UK), do you mean the former Black Lives Matter (UK) or the later Black Liberation Movement (UK)?  Whilst I agree that there's controversy over these and overlapping groups about where on the political spectrum they are and how inclusive they are etc., they're just a part of the overall BLM movement, which goes way beyond the assorted cluster of international BLM chapters and organisations.

Personally, I shall be perfectly happy to continue to find people with BLM posters and badges etc. next to me on equality rallies, meetings etc. 

And whilst there may well be aggressive BLM demonstrators, all the ones I've stood and marched alongside have been no more aggressive than those with GRT wheels or blue/yellow Euro flags.

I appreciate that you may not like it when people take the knee if you see it as a symbol of subservience and don't like postural symbols like that, such as kneeling,  standing to attention or saluting.   If in civvies I either kneel before a crucifix war memorial or stand and bow my head, I see that as no different from standing and bowing my head in uniform or marching past and giving a head-up eyes-right or eyes-left in uniform, but others do not like physical gestures like that.  On the other hand, perhaps you could consider that postural gestures to display respect are widely respected, including ones such as bowing, curtseying, placing one's hand on one's chest, kneeling etc.

Pondering it, I think that if taking the knee had been the normal posture to take when the Stars and Stripes was played, standing up with hand over heart would have been what was started as the BLM/equality posture.

As for 'the deaf', it still doesn't make sense for me why you seem to lump all deaf people in together as if we all think the same, behave the same, belong to the same groupings and organisations.  We don't.

[On the edge]

Some Tory MP made disparaging comments the other day linking taking the knee, BLM and defunding the police.

Well, leaving aside that defunding the police is an American campaign, and leaving aside whether he understands what it's actually about or not (i.e. moving funds along with the tasks they pay for to other services where they'd be more appropriate, e.g. moving funds for welfare visits for mentally ill people to specialist social workers or similar), it's the Tories that left us with a cut in police funding of about 10% in the last decade. 

Ah, but that's not 'defunding' the police, that's, erm, cutting unnecessary something-or-other.

We live in scary times.  When people attack disabled people physically, financially, socially, psychologically or however, we need to keep uniting, keep speaking up, keep using social media etc.

All I feel able to do is things like awareness-raising and helping people to map their situation onto that of others. 

But news stories like this one do make a difference.  Even if each time a story like this breaks just a few more people have a moment of mentally picturing themselves with a particular physical or mental obstacle, it's a bit of help.

I'm not a fan of BLM, once they started vandalising property, and waving fists at us all I don't want to know. The originators of BLM resigned after 9 DAYS from the campaign after it was hijacked by trouble-makers.  Taking the knee was a step too far as well, just confrontation and suggested only footy fans were racists and they were all white people. Not too bad IF you are black 'though the BBC handed them £44m to run own BLM shows, so the resident authority on black classical music (Lenny Henry),  stepped in.  The state so far has handed them more than another £400m and they now own the Eastender franchise..


Nobody took the knee for me or any disabled person.  I'm fed up with populist campaigns run by media and filched from the USA.  A drug-ridden human right abusing country that was created via the genocide of the native Americans. We had slavery for 6,000 years they talk as if only the UK and USA did it recently, when it was a norm for every emerging civilization.  Nigerian and other African Chiefs made huge amounts of money enslaving their own people and selling them after.


The trouble with quoting history is that it becomes selective according to your campaign. The biggest issue is the actions taken against free speech.  Anyone who disagrees is a racist or discriminator or something, which means to offer a comment you need to have a very thick skin, these people will trawl the net for something you said or did from the cradle and try to ruin your life now.  That's me done for then lol


Disabled make a mistake aligning their problems with others, and run the same risks too. I am wondering just WHO these campaigns are aimed at? where is this mythological 'mainstream'?  Who are they?  It's us as well.  We are all racists all homophobic, we all practice isms.  Human nature will out.  We all have an instinct that tells us if something (Or someone), is wrong, you cannot challenge it.  Choice means we can say NO as well as Yes. humans are anti-life really.  We've never had a period of world peace ever.

[Sunny Clouds]

BLM is not a single organisation, and I find it extremely frustrating that you're talking as if it is.

There is an organisation called Black Lives Matter or BLM in the USA, which has chapters in other countries. Each one is a separate organisation.

But the BLM matter movement is far, far wider than just those organisations and is not controlled by them.

Further, in relation to BLM(UK), there was both a changearound of peole and a change of name, to a new name with the same initials but not the same words.

Meanwhile, there are various unconnected BLM groups in the UK besides the group that changed its name so that their BLM no longer stands for Black Lives Matter. 

I wonder whether people did the same with suffragettes (and suffragistes etc.).  Probably.

Or the difficulty people have between liberals as in members of Libdems (or equivalently named parties in other anglophone countries), socially liberal people, economically liberal people, and politically liberal people, all of which overlap like a venn diagram, but no two of which are quite the same.  Ditto communists - those who believe in pure communism, or those who support distorted communism of the sort that  is now associated with the word communism, but is very, very different? 

As for disabled people aligning our problems with others, I don't feel that campaigning for one sort of equality means that I can't campaign for another sort.  I don't feel I need a stronger argument for doing so than "First they came for..."

If I don't stand alongside other ethnic minorities such as people of colour, or East  Asian people currently victims of some rather nasty attacks, some verbal and some very violent, usually with some reference to Chinese virus vel sim., or any other grouping, why would they stand alongside me as our government goes on the attack?  I'm getting more and more frightened with so few people speaking up as Priti Patel gets vicious legislation through parliament.

As for who campaigns are aimed at, it depends on the campaign, both in terms of overall campaigns/groupings and in terms of specific campaigns/events.  I don't get the reference to 'mainstream'.   

As for all racist and all homophobic, well, no, we're not all racist and homophobic.