A post from my Facebook mate Caroline Murphy about the housing problem in the UK . Really true.
"The biggest scandal in my
opinion, is the amount of unoccupied housing in the UK which cannot be
accessed apparently by would-be housebuyers. I read of a fantastic
scheme somewhere (forget where); a local authority had a stock of
derelict housing which would cost too
much for them to renovate and put back into the public sector housing
stock and due to the extremely low property prices in the area it wasn't
cost effective for developers to buy them. So they offered to sell
them off, for £1.00 each to employed people. These people would
instantly qualify for a £30,000 loan from the LA to do the essential
repairs needed to make them habitable again (we are talking small, 2 and
3 bed terraced houses). After that, they could get a mortgage in the
conventional way. The only caveat was that they had to agree to occupy
them for five years and could not let them out. Awesome! a load of
unavailable, current housing comes back into the market, the area
benefits from the upsurge these newly renovated properties inevitably
bring, local businesses benefit from the influx of new customers, the
council gets rid of a headache and loads of people suddenly find
themselves on the housing ladder - even the lowest paid workers can
usually qualify for a loan of £30,000. We need to do more of this."
Wednesday 29 August 2012
My response to a Facebook post mentioning "disability denial".
"This disability denial bit is a big problem . Many people over the years have said to me when I've said it will be tricky with my gammy hand getting a job " You not get a job Paul, all that hiking and clambering round the hills you do and blowing harmonica in those bands , whats wrong with you , you'll get a job easily!" And that has come consistently from friends and people very friendly towards me ! I've had to patiently explain that even with the Learning Disabled jobs I'm going for I can't do the Control and Restraint stuff, essential requirement in many places, lifting people in and out of beds and baths, the same and I may struggle getting through the First Aid Course because I can't use my gammy hand for fine motor skill jobs . Not being able to hold paper and cut it knocked me out of Primary Teacher Training 23 years ago because they suddenly woke up to the fact that I couldn't do parts of the job on the last half of the final Teaching Practice when I was passing gloriously ! I was to nice and naive to sue them at the time but I should of as was told me by a friend later well in the know. There was no assessment of my fitness to train as a teacher when I started . Disability denial, but this time they were being positive . See how tricky disability denial is . It can be positive as well . I've done it since I've been 6 when I got most of my arm ripped off and its the only way for me to manage my disability."
"This disability denial bit is a big problem . Many people over the years have said to me when I've said it will be tricky with my gammy hand getting a job " You not get a job Paul, all that hiking and clambering round the hills you do and blowing harmonica in those bands , whats wrong with you , you'll get a job easily!" And that has come consistently from friends and people very friendly towards me ! I've had to patiently explain that even with the Learning Disabled jobs I'm going for I can't do the Control and Restraint stuff, essential requirement in many places, lifting people in and out of beds and baths, the same and I may struggle getting through the First Aid Course because I can't use my gammy hand for fine motor skill jobs . Not being able to hold paper and cut it knocked me out of Primary Teacher Training 23 years ago because they suddenly woke up to the fact that I couldn't do parts of the job on the last half of the final Teaching Practice when I was passing gloriously ! I was to nice and naive to sue them at the time but I should of as was told me by a friend later well in the know. There was no assessment of my fitness to train as a teacher when I started . Disability denial, but this time they were being positive . See how tricky disability denial is . It can be positive as well . I've done it since I've been 6 when I got most of my arm ripped off and its the only way for me to manage my disability."
My response to a Facebook petition calling upon Facebook to implement more effective child protection policies.
"The cause is good but reporting people directly who I think are doing something wrong is more powerful and also taking personal responsibility . Most abusers know a person or persons who knows what they are doing but does nothing about it . This petition does nothing to encourage them to report and in turn is just another well meaning step that keeps in place the situation based social constraints that keep the victims of abusers and those that know about it silent. In other words in my view dealing with child pornography is at the same level that womens rights were at in the early 70s when if a women was getting violently abused, lots of people knew about it but did little if anything because it wasn't in the culture to report such things as it is now .
I agree with a friend in York who said many years ago that victims and those who know the victims should speak out and report such things if they come across them. Its what I do and is taking responsibility not just for what I do but even more importantly for what I see being done . All this stuff is a very vexed question because I don't want an an old East Germany style society where Stasi like individuals report everything but neither do I want a totally free one where child abusers can do what they like .
Very vexed issue this : the way people respond to child abuse when they come across it in their homes or in wider society. It seems men are most likely do abuse children but women are most likely to do nothing when they know it is going on . That is a challenging view because there is plenty of evidence for the former and not much for the latter because in my view societies globally don't treat children very well and women are not taken seriously when they say anything and they exist in a social situation where they are likely to form the judgment that the abuse is bad but fear the consequences of reporting it ."
"The cause is good but reporting people directly who I think are doing something wrong is more powerful and also taking personal responsibility . Most abusers know a person or persons who knows what they are doing but does nothing about it . This petition does nothing to encourage them to report and in turn is just another well meaning step that keeps in place the situation based social constraints that keep the victims of abusers and those that know about it silent. In other words in my view dealing with child pornography is at the same level that womens rights were at in the early 70s when if a women was getting violently abused, lots of people knew about it but did little if anything because it wasn't in the culture to report such things as it is now .
I agree with a friend in York who said many years ago that victims and those who know the victims should speak out and report such things if they come across them. Its what I do and is taking responsibility not just for what I do but even more importantly for what I see being done . All this stuff is a very vexed question because I don't want an an old East Germany style society where Stasi like individuals report everything but neither do I want a totally free one where child abusers can do what they like .
Very vexed issue this : the way people respond to child abuse when they come across it in their homes or in wider society. It seems men are most likely do abuse children but women are most likely to do nothing when they know it is going on . That is a challenging view because there is plenty of evidence for the former and not much for the latter because in my view societies globally don't treat children very well and women are not taken seriously when they say anything and they exist in a social situation where they are likely to form the judgment that the abuse is bad but fear the consequences of reporting it ."
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