I have had quite an interesting day. I went in to school this morning, initially to help out with a photography lesson, but they asked me to meet the head of the boarding unit, nick, about helping out with a student. I think I’ve mentioned the student in question here before – he’s the only VOCA user in school, but I guess his main problem is he lacks confidence. He’s been at school since he was about 5, and will leave in a couple of years, but going out, especially on busses, seems to scare him. They want me and another volunteer with CP, Jim, to work with him to try to increase his confidence. We use public transport almost daily, and if we could help the student increase hiss confidence with busses it would be a major step towards his independence. In my opinion he has to start using his communication aid more, too. Anyway, looks like this project will certainly keep me occupied.

I just got back from school/ I’d asked one of the teachers I work with there to have a look at the blog entry I made Friday, and she had obliged. For the most part I think she agreed with me, although she pointed out one or two things I had overlooked. For example, many schools on London simple aren’t wheelchair accessible, which has a bearing on the extent to which wheelchair users can be included. Interestingly, though, she also raised a point made in my comments section by Liza that more kids with more profound disabilities are surviving to school age. Medicine has advanced hugely, which has lead to the school in question having kids with very very complex needs; far more complex than I had ever encountered before. There are other factors involved, but it is certainly the case that special schools are taking on more and more kids with more and more severe conditions; and this will have a knock-on effect on the way kids are taught at such schools.

I’m therefore finding my voluntary work at school really is opening my eyes; it is, if you’ll forgive the pun, quite an education.

We had quite an interesting evening in the pub last night. We went in about 7, sat down and were just about to order a drink when an Irish guy at the bar offered to buy it for us. We accepted his kindness – free drinks are free drinks; it is slightly patronising, but sometimes random people buy us drinks just for being us.

Pretty soon, though, thee dude came over. He explained that he was buying everyone drinks, and it wasn’t because we were disabled – he’d won at the horses. He seemed a decent chap, and we let him sit down. However, for some reason he ‘twigged’ about Lyn’s lightwriter, but not mine, so he talked to Lyn but thought I couldn’t communicate. This meant he was speaking to Lyn and john and referring to me as if I was stupid. This irritated me greatly; in fact the guy irritated all three of us. At one point I began to wonder if I could beat him in a fight (by then I’d had a couple). However, my eagerness to utter the immortal line ‘step outside’ subsided when he heard that this guy had had to flee Ireland in the seventies because of something to do with the IRA. In the end, though, the guy grew less irritating and more interesting, and the rest of the evening passed peacefully. He eventually realised I had a lightwriter too.

It is interesting to reflect on the diverse array of people I meet, almost daily. I wonder if this is because I have CP.

I have been volunteering at the local special school for a while now, and I’ve noticed something interesting: there is a much higher proportion of kids with learning disabilities and behavioural problems at our local special school than there was at the one I attended as a kid. I guess well over 90% of the kids at the school round the corner must have a learning disability, compared to, as a rough estimate, 40% to 60% at mine. I think there are more kids just with learning disabilities at the local school too, and fewer wheelchair users. Of course, this can be explained in a number of ways, most simply by pure chance: that’s just the way the statistics fell. Yet I suspect there are other factors involved. Bear in mind that I was at school just under 10 years ago, having left in 2001, and much would have happened since.

I think that this may be an effect of inclusion. More and more kids with less complex physical disabilities are being put into mainstream education. I guess that the needs of physically disabled kids are much simpler to meet than those of kids with learning disabilities: often we just need stuff like ramps, large-print books and communication aids, and we’re good to go. The needs of those with learning disabilities – especially complex ones – are harder to resolve. And there are children with some very complex LD at the school I volunteer at. Of course I’m overgeneralising here, as all children need a lot of care and support no matter what kind of disability they have.

As a result, the ratio of kids with LD and BED to those with PD has shot up. Of course, you could argue that these kids should be in mainstream too, and they should be, but I now think it’s just not that simple. My friend charlotte has told me how rough it can get in mainstream school, and how hard it is for her, as a teacher, to control the kids sometimes. It can be very violent, and rather brutal. It is hard to see how the type of kids I have encountered at the local special school could survive, let alone get anything out of, such a setting. There are kids who are physically able but simply could not mentally handle being in a class of twenty to thirty rambunctious adolescents; and if they said anything their peers would simply rip them apart.

Yet this results in a school like the school I’m volunteering at, with hundreds of students, each with very complex needs. Staff there do their best to teach, and I try to help however I can, but the situation is often so complex that progress becomes very slow indeed. I’m now seeing how very difficult this situation is: as inclusion proceeds, special schools are left with higher and higher concentrations of kids with more and more complex conditions, and the result is that education in such places gets harder and harder. This is nit to say that it’s impossible to educate in such places, but I guess inclusion has meant it has become much more difficult since I left school.

It has been a long day. I just got in from a late session at school, doing long exposure photography – which I’ll probably tell you about tomorrow – and Lyn showed me this. it appears as if we might just have started our very own internet meme! How cool is that? Needless to say, Lyn and I both find it highly amusing.

We were watching The Secret Millionaire on TV last night, and it got me thinking about charity. I know I’ve criticised certain charities in the past, here and elsewhere, but, in and of itself, charity must be a good thing. It’s all about giving for no reward, caring about others, and selflessness. I have been the recipient of such kindness in the past, and I know it is something special to be praised.

I guess the thing about charity is that it isn’t forced – it’s entirely voluntary. That’s why it’s special, but it’s also it’s flaw. Right-wingers want charity to be used as an alternative to the wealth fare state, but that relies on people being personally altruistic, which I can’t see happening enough. in a way, the wealth fare state is similarly altruistic, but on a social rather than personal level. As I see it, it is based on the communal consensus that we should help others, rather than a personal ethic. It is therefore more effective. There is also less of an obligation to feel grateful for it – being the recipient of charity carries with it overtones of inadequacy and failure, which is why I and most disabled people object so strongly to it.

I suppose it’s a complex issue, and one I need to think through. Charity is a good thing, but if we care about all people in our community, we must care for them as a community rather than as individuals.

There are a couple of things I could blog about today: the issue of disability hate crime was in the news this morning, with more instances of it being recorded; also, this morning I had an awesome idea to write to google to ask them if they could make a map of middle-earth – I’m still rather excited about street view. But I instead want to use this blog to congratulate Obama and the Americans on the passing off their new healthcare bill. This historic bill will improve the lives of millions – it might not be the NHS exactly, but it is still great news. I know the republicans will undo this huge step forward next time they are in power, narrow-minded halfwits that they are, but for now millions will benefit. The republicans say they can’t afford it, and they probably have a point, though I suspect they’re just using that as a front for their loathing for anything liberal, left-wing or broad-minded. Nevertheless, I think it’s still a great day for our transatlantic cousins.

It will certainly be interesting to see the reaction in the blogsphere though.

Yesterday was a slow, lazy type of day. Friday night had been rather mad: our neighbours decided that we needed to celebrate my birthday, so we all went down the pub. By all, of course, I mean myself, Lyn, Paula, Dan, and an indeterminate number of children. You know, I can never tell how many children they have between them; it seems to vary. Anyhow we went to the pub, where everyone bought me drinks. At one stage I sat at the bar, on a bar stool, which for me was quite novel. After the pub, we came home via the shop, having decided to carry on drinking here. Needless to say, I still don’t know how I got to bed on Friday night.

Yesterday, then, was spent lying on the sofa, watching TV. All this alcohol is not good fir me, and it’s time to cut back. I know that sounds familiar, but now I’m 27 I’m getting on a bit!

Yesterday was odd – cool, but odd. It was my birthday, but it was also quite a busy day. In the morning, I had a meeting about direct payments; then I had school; then, in the evening I had my opticians appointment (my current glasses being on their last legs). In between all this I managed to catch the end of an IPL match on t.v – it was odd to see cricket with cheer leaders! I was pretty knackered by the end of it all, and rather stressed after the opticians, so I was very grateful for a latenight phone call to my parents and a few beers. What a day.

It occurred to me, as we walked home this evening, how alien this landscape sometimes seems. We had been to the Royal standard, where Lyn had visited her bank, and then to a caf we know there. Dan took us a different route home, through a great expanse of tower blocks. I had never seen such a place – there seemed to be hundreds of apartment blocks, each with hundreds of flats. Thousands of people must live there, from all over the earth and each with a different story. I felt, in a way, both amazed and intimidated: its not as if the flats were run down; there was no graffiti or anything. It just occurred to me how far this landscape was from the detached suburban house I grew up in. Of course, I knew such places existed, and I know never to judge people by where they live, but in that moment I realised how very different London is.

We walked on. It was getting dark. The road we were on ran roughly west-east, and was on a bluff so that to the north the land dropped off sharply. Suddenly, looking through the gap between two blocks, I caught sight of the glistening lights of the city: canary wharf, the gurkin, and it was utterly beautiful. This landscape may still sometimes seem alien to me, throbbing at a pace I’m unused to, yet it has a beauty that I’m just beginning to discover. I suppose Walter Benjamin was right when he wrote of cities being a maelstrom; like the flaneur, I now find myself botanising on the asphalt, trying to make sense out of the chaos, and in doing so I realise what an amazing place this really is.

Last night I made the journey from my parent’s house up to the Swettenham Arms. It’s a journey I’ve made many times in my chair, and one which I love dearly. I used to go, in the summer months, north up through the lanes: it cleared my head and gave me space to think.

I took those roads again last night, but this time I didn’t leave Lyn’s house. Indeed, physically, swettenham is about 300 miles away, and a good 4 hours by car. But a few days ago my brother Luke showed me that you can now look at our old family house on Google Maps, and I couldn’t resist the temptation to take my favourite walk.

It’s incredible: the level of detail is astounding; you can see the leaves on the trees and the puddles in the roadside ditches. I know have criticised this site as an ‘invasion of privacy’, but you can’t see more than you would were you to actually go along the roads, and that’s perfectly legal. As for me, I love that site now; using it, last night, I was taken back to days when I felt the sun on my back and the smell of grass in my nose. The thing is, I sensed neither of these things, and that’s where the difference is, for I missed them last night.

It’s still an amazing bit of technology. Go look.

I think yesterday was my first mother’s day away from home: it’s quite an odd feeling. At uni I was only 7 or 8 miles from my parents’ house, so on such occasions I could easily go home. It’s also an odd thing for my parents: as mum put it on skype yesterday, it was the first mother’s day in 26 years that she didn’t have to take a cloth beaker and straws with her to the restaurant.

It’s been about 8 weeks since I was home – by far the longest time I’ve spent away from Congleton. I probably shouldn’t call it home any more, as Charlton is my new home now. I love life down here, having more independence than ever; yet yesterday my thoughts were back up north with my parents. I hope mum had a great day I love you.

When you have woken up next to the woman you love, got yourself looking smart then gone out; when you’ve had a bacon sarnie for breakfast and gone shopping; when you have bought stuff you don’t really need but just had to have; when you’ve talked about politics to random people in random pubs over bangers and mash; and when you’ve come home on the bus utterly content: then you know it’s been a bloody good day.

We have been cooking more this week. Well, okay, we’ve been getting Dan to cook more. Before now, my meals have mostly consisted of ready meals and canned stuff, but on Monday, feeling particularly hungry, I decided to print off a recipe for my mum’s spaggy bog and give it to dan. The outcome was very successful.

Lyn likes cooking, and I think I do too, so we decided that we should cook more. Lyn’s a vegetarian, so before now, when we have ready meals, we would often eat two entirely different things. We decided to cook and eat together more – after all, isn’t that what couples do? I know this means I might get less meat (assuming there is meat in co-op lasagne) but, last night, under our – well pretty much entirely Lyn’s – guidance, dan made a most delicious fish dish. If we can make food as good as that, I’m really looking forward to getting into the kitchen.

Youtube just got even better. They now say they will stream live Indian premier league cricket matches, aparrently for free. Now, I’ve never been interested in the IPL, partly because I haven’t been able to watch it. But cricket is the sport I love, and I’m eager to watch it whenever I can, which, thanks to sky, isn’t very often. Maybe I can now take some in – I need to calm down after getting too worked up about politics. Anyway, go here.

Last night I managed to catch a programme on David CaMoron. J tried to watch it with an open mind, but I’m now more certain than ever that the guy is a numpty. Some of his ideas simply hold up to scrutiny: as one professor of politics they interviewed put it, if you actually unpack some of his ideas, you find them barren of substance. For example, unlike Thatcher, CaMoron says he believes in society, but that society isn’t the same as the state. He wants things to be community oriented, but wants government to take a back seat. In other words, he wants things like charities to take over the responsibilities of the state.

Is this 2010 or 1860? This is the type of stuff the Tory party were saying in the nineteenth century. Back they then believed the deserving poor should be cared for by charity, and the rest were just lazy. By the turn of the twentieth century, the liberal party had figured out that this system did not work. What is needed is a centralised wealfare state – a top down approach – not a charity based system. My partner and I get benefits – we do not want to rely on charity like some good little cripples. People give to charity to make themselves feel better, to salve their consciousess. They do it by choice, which means it would be an unreliable, under funded system of support. But Tories like this system because they can pay less tax and keep more money; the rest of us can either starve or work harder, or go begging to charities Tories sometimes give to to salve their consciouses. It is an utterly selfish mode of thinking, despite what CaMoron would have us believe. CaMoron’s views are patronising, condescending and selfish; in short downright stupid. I’m sorry, but I really do hate that bastard.

Today has a rather anticlimactic feel to it after the excitement of yesterday. I woke up this morning very happy – things went so smoothly and it was great to see everyone. It felt as though it was a landmark event – the first time ever my parents came to visit me and my girlfriend, in the same sense that they might visit Luke and Yan or mark and Kat. In other words, it felt like a landmark in independence. The same applies for Charlie and holly – they were visiting me as they would any of our other friends.

Now, though, its back to the old routine: Lyn’s making music, Dan’s making a snack, and I just got back from school. In a way it feels like any other normal household. This means that I’m now a family guy; the man of the house. It’s just normal, but at the same time I’m proud to have achieves this state.

Just a quick note to say what a truly great day today has been. This morning, my parents visited: our meeting want well, and we all got on like a house on fire. I think mum and dad really like Lyn, and she likes them very much. Shortly after, Charlie and holly came by – coincidence would have it that they visited on the same day, but my parent had left by thee time my friends got here. Marta had made a fantastic roast, so between both parties nothing went to waste.

It was great to catch up with them all.. mum and dad seem well, as do Charlie and holly. Lyn and I have had a great time. I’d been worried that something would go wrong, but it all went very well indeed. I’ve written before on how much I love my parents, and how dearly I think of my friends, so right now I’m pretty much the happiest guy on earth.

I know I said yesterday I was going to leave politics alone for a bit, but I was just watching CaMoron speaking in Wales, and it made me angry. I honestly think that, despite his eloquence, the guy is actually a bit stupid. He talks of spending more for less, but doesn’t say how;; he says there are too many people on benefits, but doesn’t understand that there are reasons for that other than sloth. CaMoron says he wants to cut beurocracy, criticising the number of checks and balances – how else do we establish whether what we are doing is right? Dad’s a quality control manager; I picked up enough from him to know that these systems are necessary. In other words, I think CaMoron is criticising things because he simply doesn’t understand them. The guy is thick. How can we possibly elect this moron?

Thinking back on what I wrote yesterday, last night it struck me that I could be being a bit idealistic and arrogant in my politics. I was going on about people contributing to civilisation, and so on. That is to say, I was writing from a particular background, in a particular paradigm – writing as one brought up with a set of middle class values. Thus ii write about ‘bigger pictures’, civilisation’, and so on. I sometimes forget that other people don’t have those values; people to whom big ideas like the future of mankind doesn’t matter as much as earning enough money to put food on the table. I can see their point. The thing is, last night I asked myself: who am I to impose my ideas of a socialist utopia on such people? if it were to be implemented, wouldn’t it mean forcing a certain set of values on others, something which contradicts my belief in liberalism and democracy? Thus the very ideals which give birth to socialism – equality, freedom, liberalism – also mean it can never work. So much for that idea.

Anyway, I think that’s enough of that. In other news, on Sunday both my parents and Charlie and holly are coming to visit, but not at the same time. Should be fun.

Last night on facebook a friend of mine asked me why I only criticise the Tories, as some of the accusations I make about them are just as valid to make of labour. This is, to be fair, true; but the difference is I don’t have a problem with Labour’s philosophy. I am what you might call a left winger, and I think this stems from my disability. I believe, firstly, that everyone is equal, regardless of gender, creed, colour or disability. This might lead one to conclude that if we are all equal, we should all be left to our own devices.. the best will rise to the top. This is more or less the Tory stance, and it is wrong. All it means is that wealth will be handed down from generation to generation; only the rich would get a decent education; and society will remain divided.

On the other hand, if we are all equal, shouldn’t we all be treated equally? If we are all of equal worth, don’t we all deserve equal access to education and healthcare? We all have equal potential to contribute to civilisation, but if some have better access to resources due to their class (or theiir disability), doesn’t it mean that some human potential is being wasted? This is why I think we must do away with the class system; tax thee rich to feed the poor. That way, resources can be pooled – a great example is the NHS. Only then can we start off on an equal footing, so we all have the same chance to contribute. I think, personally, that what Marx ssaid about the socioeconomic constraints of class is equally aplicable and transposable to the physical constraints of disability.

As far as I can tell, the Tories want to perpetuate the class system. They see meritocracy as a good thing; but meritocracy often only benefits the greediest rather than the best. The Tories want to keep their money, rather than giving it away to benefit society. This is a philosophy of greed and selfishness which, in the long term, wastes human potential and gets us nowhere. If we value all human life in all it’s diversity, we must work together and pool our resources in order to foster everyone’s unique talent. The individualism of the right will get us, as a civilisation, nowhere.

This morning I came across this article on facilitated communication. This is a technique where people help severely disabled people to communicate, for example by holding their hands as they point to a letter-board. The thing is, as the article points out, there is sometimes difficulty in establishing whether it is actually the disabled person talking. I am in two minds about this: it might well be that such communication is sometimes a mirage, and the facilitator, consciously or unconsciously, is the one producing the words. But if we say that, and condemn the technique, we automatically deny some severely disabled people the chance to communicate. Anyway, go read.

The oddest thought occurred to me today. You know when you just catch yourself thinking odd things. I was looking through my parents photos of their trip to Hamburg, and I thought: ‘I miss Dad’s cap’. Not ‘I miss dad,’ but ‘I miss dad’s cap’. I saw a picture of my father in his ccap, and this odd thought just arose. Of course, my dad’s cap is now part of my dad’s identity; he often collected me from university wearing it, so I associate that cap with a warm feeling.

You know, I’ve never written on my blog how much I respect my father, or how close we are. He is, without doubt, the man whom I respect the most in all the world: he brought me and my brother’s up well, teaching us to value learning, and to always do our best. This is also a man whom I can always depend on for a cuddle. He has the best reading voice I’ve ever heard, and it was he who introduced me to the writings of Tolkien and Asimov. Seeing my dad in those pictures, ccap on his head as protection from the German winter, just stopped me in my tracks. I love this brave new urban world in which I find myself, yet sometimes I need to see that cap an the truly great man who wears itt.

I have decided it’s better to stay dirty, or ask Dan to do it. This morning I wanted a shower. Lyn has quite a cool set-up – she has a shower you step into, and close a vacuum-sealed door behind you. You sit in it and it fills up like a bath. I’ve seen Dan do it a few times, so today I decided to spend time by doing it myself. Big mistake. It was going well at first; my bath was filling up nicely and I was getting pleasingly warm. Then I heard something go bang. I thought nothing of it, until I noticed water leaking out of the tub. Oh crap! I was in trouble. I yelled ‘DAN!!!’ but he couldn’t stem the flow. I mustn’t have pressed the vacuum button for long enough.

I felt rather stupid, but Lyn and Dan saw the funny side. Lyn was playing water-related songs all morning. The bathroom floor and the floor in the passage are still rather damp though.

No more baths for me!