Posts by Hilary Stace
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Just watched Saturday's Media3. Great programme and range of topics. Just a little comment about the fraught area of disability language. International usage tends to favour 'people first' language ie 'people with disabilities' as in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. New Zealand usage in recent years, particularly since the 2001 NZ Disability Strategy, has favoured 'disabled person' as in disabled by society, or alternatively 'people with disability' (people who live with disability caused by a disabling society). This reflects the social model of disability whereby people have impairments but disability is caused by society, attitudes, law etc. 'People with disabilities' can be seen as an alternative to 'people with impairments', so can be seen as a weaker description as it does not incorporate the political or power inferences.
However, this is probably far too much confusing and unnecessary detail for the average watcher of the Paralympics. -
The highlights package is certainly not tailored for NZ - the other night they couldn't even get Cameron Leslie's name right. The Paralympics coverage is just insulting. I have been paying a huge sub to Sky for years and the one time I actually wanted to watch Sky Sport to watch live sport, I couldn't. And Sky has the arrogance to say it can't afford it. I heard a presentation by David Beatson on public broadcasting a couple of weeks ago, and Sky is certainly not poor.
By the way in two year's time I would also like to watch the Special Olympics - live. -
The American Prospect stays afloat by crowd sourcing from time to time. I get most of my political US news from it.
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Hard News: And so it begins, in reply to Allan Moyle,
It looks like it is set up to provide such data. But who knows?
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Anybody linked to this data from the Education Counts website yet? Ethnicity and achievement etc data by school. http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/find-a-school/school/population?school=478
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However, in the situation I am talking about the woman was publicly named and vilified by the offender and his family who blamed her for 'causing' the offending. Because he got permanent name suppression she can never clear her name or reputation.
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Hard News: And so it begins, in reply to Glenn Pearce,
Sorry Glenn, although you are right, it is not quite that simple. Discrimination against 'special needs' kids can be subtle and insidious by schools and school cultures. Since I've been involved in autism advocacy I cannot count the number of specific instances of kids not welcomed by their local school (eg 'the school down the road is better equipped'), to the exclusion of such kids from school camps, plays or other events. Eventually many families are asked to remove them, formally or via 'Kiwi suspension' usually citing the health and safety of other kids (whatever that means). It can be as basic as having other parents complaining about the special needs kid taking too much of the teacher's time. If a parent with that attitude gets on the school board, there isn't a hope of an inclusive culture developing there.
Families are often exhausted fighting for support, and battling with an unwelcoming school is one more thing to cope with. I know of an example when a mother rang around a dozen schools to see if any would take her intermediate aged Aspergers child, after the local school board suspended him. All had excuses not to.
The IHC currently has a case with the Human Rights Commission citing numerous examples where schools have broken the law re disabled kids.
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Hard News: Living with the psychopath, in reply to Matthew Poole,
I've seen how one of those, once subject to his charms, has been villified, attacked, bullied, humiliated and harassed by the man and his family (and at times the legal system) over several years. So I'm probably biassed.
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Hard News: Living with the psychopath, in reply to Matthew Poole,
No, name suppression was not at the request of those who had been subject to his behaviour. They wanted him named to alert others. It seems to have been because of having a powerful family and being able to afford top legal representation. He is now in a position to continue as before and there are a lot of jobs which do not require police checks.
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How to get people to admit to their offending, or even see that they have done something wrong, is a complex issue. I’ve heard of another situation whereby a man apparently grooms girls with intellectual impairment through developing a relationship with their single mothers. Was convicted for something relating to internet paedophile images, but has permanent name suppression (perhaps because of powerful people in the right places). Situation seems to be that man and his family blame everyone but the man involved.
[Russell, I hope this is vague enough not to breach anything]