I suddenly have another reason to look forward to the 2024 Olympic games. According to this bbc article, the ICC now intends to start lobbying for twenty20 to be included as an olympic sport. I think that’s a great idea. To be honest, the other forms of cricket are a bit too long for a multisport event like the olympics, but the faster, quicker pace of the limited overs format make it much more suitable. I really hope the IOC give it the go ahead. Whoever is selected as host, Paris or LA, it would just be fantastic to see cricket played at an olympic games.

There’s a hell of a lot of anger in my heart right now. Any time I hear anything about Brexit, I get so worked up it scares me. I shake with rage and frustration; I hate it. I want to be my happy, optimistic self again, but it feels like that can’t happen because the country I love has descended into utter stupidity. The only solution is to keep busy and take my mind off it.

And I am busy. These days, I have so much going on, I barely know where to begin. Last night I went to a film festival organisation meeting. I now have a screening in the park to organise, including venue, projector, seating… I have every confidence I can do it – I just need to get cracking.

On top of that, there’s a film at school I need to get going with, as well as the exhibition. They’re both well on their way though, so I’m pretty confident I’ll see them through. Busy though I am, I’m more confident than ever. In fact, when I focus on my day to day life, I become much more cheerful and positive. That, then, is the solution: keep my mind on the tasks at hand, because the second I start to think about events in the wider world, things suddenly seem much darker.

I won’t repeat what I wrote here yesterday, save to say that I am very, very angry indeed with what is happening today. I had been slowly calming down over Brexit, coming to a form of acceptance. But today I cannot accept it. Today, utter stupidity has prevailed. From now on, our rights will be eroded, greed will prevail, and tolerance and respect will be replaced with prejudice and barbarism. My blood boils at the thought that this could be allowed to happen. How could the people of this country be so fucking stupid?

I just came across a clip of farage on his LBC radio show, and quickly felt a wave of pure, intense anger. He was trying to sound all peaceful and accommodating, asking what it would take for us Remainers to accept the result of the referendum, but it struck me as a total insult. How dare this utter embarrassment to humanity be so patronising, condescending and arrogant? It was like he was trying to shut us up like wayward kids, resisting their parents’ judgement. I instantly flew off the handle; I felt a white-hot rage and had to go out into the Garden to calm myself down. I almost had an absence, I was so furious.

How dare he? The referendum was won on a lie, based on the slimmest of majorities. Our human rights and standing in the world are at risk because of it. Farage was making out it was all cut and dry, over with, and we should all accept the result. The hell I will. Thhat would give him and capitalists like him carte blanche to screw us all. I will not let this xenophobe get his way and turn this country into a free-market hell.

My rages scare me. For a few moments, all I feel is anger; I genuinely want to kill someone. Yet I’m not the only one who feels so angry. While the way I express it is connected with my cerebral palsy, the anger and worry I feel, the frustration that so many people allowed themselves to be mislead, is genuine. Others feel it too – we saw it with the protests on saturday. The anger is building, and that’s what farage fears and is trying to quell: he does not want brexit to be reversed.

But it must be; it will be. Brexit is utterly wrong for this country, and must be fought. More and more of us are waking up to the fact that it was a travesty of democracy built upon the lies of xenophobes. That’s why we refuse to ”respect the result”, and why we refuse to be talked down to by an utter disgrace of a human being who should be in jail, not on the radio.

I was thinking about the film I mention here a few days ago, and about how it might be good to use in my exhibition. I think it illustrates the ideas I’ll be trying to get at rather well: being disabled does not mean one is a burden, by any means. The problem was, the sound on that recording was awful; using it for a proper screening just would not be an option. There was just one solution: make another version.

Thus on Saturday, with the very generous help of Paul and Matt, we got filming. It didn’t take very long, but I think you’ll agree that the new version, which you can see here, is much better. It’s also more technically complex: rather than doing it in one long shot, this time we actually did a bit of editing and camera work. Matt was a great help with that. I’m very pleased with the outcome, and can’t wait to show the guys at school.

Thousands marched to oppose brexit yesterday, but it got hardly a mention on the news last night. I would have liked to have gone, but was busy filming (more on this soon). More and more people are waking up and realising they were deceived, lied to and manipulated into voting Leave. Brexit is not the will of the people and must – [b]MUST[/b] – be stopped. I know the outists won the referendum, but how can this continue? How can the tories plough on with Brexit, amid ever-growing opposition and as the country descends further and further into intolerance, xenophobia and a form of fascism? The mainstream media is currently ignoring the protests, trying to turn a blind eye to the anger; but before long it will realise that this is a problem which cannot be ignored. The people of this country were swindled by liars last June; it is now essential that it is restored to the right path – outward-looking, internationalist, tolerant – before it is too late.

Spring is here, and summer’s near,

The sky so clear, with so much cheer.

Grass so green, wind so still;

A day ahead waiting to fill.

Life’s so ripe on days like these;

Like corn in a field and fruit on the trees.

Spring is come and summer near,

Winter banished with all its fear.

Lyn and I took a walk down to the Thames yesterday evening, where she took this stunning image on her Ipad. I love the way Lyn captures the calm of the evening, in contrast to the hustle and bustle of the city behind.

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Amid all it’s current strife, there truly is beauty in the world – you just have to look for it.

Yesterday for me was quite a nice day. I did my usual volunteer work at school, then, around three, went to meet Sharon for a coffee in the park. We planned to meet there yesterday a week or so ago, but we hadn’t met up in three or four weeks so it was good to see her. Dan came too, and Lyn joined us there shortly after, so for a while the little place was crammed with wheelchairs.

It was a really nice afternoon. We discussed this and that. For a while, Dan and Sharon were discussing all the ins and outs of running a powerchair football club, and it was quite fascinating to hear them talk about the politics involved. That sport is far more serious and complex than I thought: for me, it is just something fun to do on Saturdays, but from the way my friends were talking yesterday afternoon, I glimpsed a far more severe, competitive and even cut-throat side to it.

We had got there about three, but in winter, before the clocks go forward, the cafe closes about four, so our gathering ended all too soon. Sharon made her way off, agreeing to see us again next week. Dan’s train home, however, wasn’t until about five, so we all came back here to continue chatting. Dan is a very nice guy: it amuses us both that we went to the same special school in Cheshire, and ended up meeting again down here. We discussed Hebden a bit yesterday, swapping opinions of old teachers.

Then dan looked at his phone, probably just to check the time, and said that something was happening up in Westminster. I came here, into my office, to look at my computer, and saw the news. It would seem that yesterday wasn’t such a good day after all. I felt the usual sense of bewilderment and concern one usually feels when you see news like that: you can’t do anything about it; information is sparse, so all you can really do is sit back and wait for news to trickle in. The news was showing streets I now know quite well, full of police, emergency vehicles and frightened, bewildered people. On the whole, though, I’m just relieved that it wasn’t far, far worse.

Shortly after that, Dan set off back to his place. He was worried about how this incident would effect public transport, but I checked a few hours later that he had got home safely. This is the sort of thing one has to expect when you live in a city like london. This isn’t rural cheshire. As vast and dynamic as london is, the metropolis also has it’s dark side.

Things have suddenly got rather busy. As of yesterday, I have a presentation to prepare, a film to shoot and an exhibition to organise, as well as a few other, smaller projects I’m working on. I’m beginning to feel a bit swamped. The problem is, I keep making all these suggestions, telling people I can do all these things, and I don’t notice the work piling up. At the same time, I feel more confident than ever. I know I can do it, and that when it is done, it will be awesome. It’s just a case of knuckling down and getting on with it, so on that note, I better get back to work.

I think I just need to direct everyone here today. Now you too can have the biggest lie you can think of printed on the side of a red bus. At least it shows that, despite how screwed up things are getting, people can still have a sense of humour.

I took myself to see Logan yesterday. I had heard a lot of good stuff about it, and wanted to check it out. After all, how can I call myself a cinephile if I never go to the cinema? However, I found myself mildly disappointed rolling home from the Odeon yesterday. I found the film over long and drawn out. While it is true that the film takes the X-Men franchise in a new direction, the problem I had with it was that it was still trying to be an action film. It was as if it could not decide what it was: psychological drama about the passage of time, or superhero action film. Don’t get me wrong,there are some very good aspects to this film, and very good performances, yet by the end I felt it dragged on a bit, with action sequences seemingly thrown in for the sake of it. Perhaps that was my fault – perhaps I should have refreshed my memory of the other films in the franchise before I set off. Nonetheless, I felt it didn’t quite live up to the marvellous reviews I had heard.

While I can’t claim to be a Chuck Berry fan in particular, to mark the sad death of one of rock’s all time greats, I think I’ll just direct you here. Like Hendrix, Berry was a master of the great southern guitar riff which just gets your blood pumping. I love it. Although he had a good innings, Berry will be missed.

I got quite an early birthday present last night. Lyn had a performance – her first in a while – up at the magnificent Institute of Contemporary Art, on the Mall. It was with Drake Music, and was a great evening. The disability music scene seems to be thriving at the moment, and it was great to watch all the diverse acts.. Lyn performed with three or four other people she has been rehearsing with for a few months, and got a great round of applause. I really love to watch L perform, do her thing and get the appreciation she deserves for it. We got back just after twelve, tired but happy. It was a great start to my birthday weekend; I just wonder what today will bring.

Rather depressing though it is, I think I need to flag this neat summing up of the current political status quo up. It does not make for cheerful viewing, but I think Owen Jones is spot on: this country is in it’s worst state since the second world war. We were fooled into leaving Europe; xenophobia is rampant; the economy is screwed and the UK will soon break up. On that note, I just want to say that I now fully support Scottish independence – I’ve done a complete 180 on the subject. I used to oppose it because I thought staying united and solid was best, but what right have I to now demand the Scots, who voted Remain, stay united with a bunch of inward-looking, xenophobic morons? I now say goodbye Scotland, and good luck.

Thus the uk is in a pretty dire situation, and I am very, very worried about it. Like many people I’m furious about what happened last year. More to the point, I’m worried about the future: I’m worried about my rights; I’m worried about this country being turned into a free market free-for all; I’m worried about everything. If only there was some way to undo the damage.

I was in the bath earlier, where I got around to doing some thinking. It seems to me that the brexit vote and election of trump etc could largely be a matter of intellectual disenfranchisement. More and more of us these days have degrees; there are more bachelors about then ever before. Half of us now belong to a club, real or perceived, from which the other half was excluded. Those who went to university have become something like a bourgeoisie, which those who did not go see as looking down at them. Brexit was a direct rebellion against that devision. Fed up of being told what to do by those they saw as patronising and arrogant, many people did precisely the opposite. Thus I think there is a link between the increase in graduates and brexit. People felt left behind by the revolution in higher education; they felt so bitter that they deliberately ignored the warnings and did the opposite of what the people who personified this devision were telling them. They chose instead to listen to people like Farage and Trump who claimed to be ‘on their level’, who cottoned on to this sense of being left behind and wariness about education/graduates and used it for their own perverse ends, not realising they were being manipulated.

I’m afraid to say that my abstinence from coffee has already come to an end. I just couldn’t help it – the urge to have a brew or two was just too much. It didn’t seem to affect my sleep, though, so I suppose it’s okay – one or two quick pick-me-ups during the day can’t hurt. I suppose you could say I gave in, but what the hey. Mind you, that certainly won’t be the case with alcohol: I’m quite proud to say that I’ve not touched a drop of drink for eight or nine months, and feel so much better for it. Thus, while I gave in to caffeine, beer is another situation altogether. Whereas a coffee with friends in the park is quite civilised, there’s nothing civil about rolling home drunk.

I just came across this, a bbc article about spin-offs, ranking three or four of them from best to worst. Television spin-off shows seem all the rage these days: Friends spin-off joey didn’t do very well, but the newly announced Big Bang Theory spin-off Young Sheldon will soon be all the rage. It’s quite an interesting phenomenon, really: rather than coming up with a completely fresh idea, or continuing with a scenario or narrative as it is, producers take one character or aspect of a show and enlarge it into it’s own text. Some might call that lazy program making. Then again, two of my favourite shows ever, Star Trek The next Generation and Star Trek Deep Space Nine, are spin-offs, so I can’t complain. I suppose it’s a way of breathing new life into something which, while still valuable, had run it’s course; a way to take something in a new direction.Either that, or it’s a way for tv execs to squeeze more money out of an old idea.

I just got in from my final session at Lifeline in Woolwich. I remember a morning in late summer last year, when I had got so drunk the night before that Lyn suggested i find help. I had to agree, and got Googling. That’s how I found Lifeline, who got me onto the 1000 Londoners project. It’s incredible really: quite by accident, and through the utter stupidity of drinking too much, I found myself given the opportunity to make films – exactly what I really wanted to do.

Through them I made Matt, a film I’m very proud of. I then went on to help with a bigger project where people with Cannabis problems tell their stories. It’s for use by doctors etc, to warn people of the risks. That’s what we finished today. It felt great to be working on something, contributing to something. More to the point, I feel I’ve made a lot of good friends and contact on this project, most notably Matt, whom I mention here.

We intend to continue working together, and I hope that we do. We have one or two plans in the pipeline already. This project, I feel, began something which I really want to cling on to and move forward. Since graduating in 2014, I was sort of left twiddling my thumbs, and needed to fill the gap. This project has filled that gap amicably. The risk now is letting it reopen, but now I’ve tasted a bit of actual filmmaking, I have no intention of allowing that to happen. This particular project may have come to an end, but I have a feeling it will now lead to even bigger, better things.

I just came across this fascinating opinion piece in The Guardian, which I think is well worth flagging up. It points out the strange convergence of far right and far left, the rise of illiberalism, and the way in which people like Farage and Trump are increasingly stigmatising what they call ”the mainstream” as some kind of bogeyman. I’ve been fretting over something along those lines for a while now. As the article points out, with the rise of the internet, we are less susceptible to being manipulated by big news corporations than ever before. The exchange of information is freer than ever, so the concept of a dominant mainstream trying to control us all is risible. Yet these people try to make a bogeyman out of it, and would have us believe that they are the ones telling the truth, rebelling against a monolith that keeps it from us.

It is quite obvious how this situation came about: unable to get their extreme views airtime because they are so vile to most people, the people on the political extremes have set about trying to stigmatise the mainstream which has rejected them. Most people in the media are well educated and can easily see the folly of such extremism, so the extremists are trying to find a way around them. How telling that they also try to stigmatise the education system and ”experts” as being part of this monolithic, oppressive, mainstream conspiracy? Isn’t it clear that they are the ones trying to manipulate us, trying to get us to turn against fact-checked, trustable and objective sources of information in order that we listen to their bile? The problem is, it seems to be working; people are mistaking it for some kind of countercultural independence and falling for it. These days, the concept of ”the truth” is more up for grabs than ever; so people are being persuaded by those who claim they are being manipulated, but are, in fact, the ones doing the manipulating.

Given the views these people have towards human rights, equality and so on, I find it all very worrying. But then, how do you know I’m not an agent of the mainstream, posing as a disabled blogger, trying to get you to turn against the people rebelling against them?

I noticed recently that there are now two or three young, male comedians with cerebral palsy doing the rounds. Lost Voice Guy Lee Ridley is one, and there is a chap called Ted Shires I have an eye on, who is very up-and-coming. Both men occupy a similar niche of ”man with cp describing things from his perspective”, so it seems to me that this style of comedy is very much opening up. There are one or two more guys out there, doing similar things, such as Jack Carroll, who was on tv last night, rolator and all. It’s great to see, to be honest: disabled people coming up, telling there side of the story. In a way it isn’t dissimilar to what I try to do on my blog, only they do it with a lot more humour, skill and wit. It’s exactly what we need these days, with disabled people becoming increasingly marginalised. Perhaps the best thing about this phenomenon is that these comedians are not combative: humour makes what they have to say more accessible, which means it is more likely to be engaged with.

The sleep problems I mentioned here have returned with a vengeance. I only got three or four hours sleep last night; after that, I lay awake for hour after hour, wondering why I wasn’t nodding off. And then I realised: at the cafe, I’ve taken to drinking an espresso followed by a Cappuccino – I like the way the espresso assaults the palette followed by the smoothness of the Cappuccino. I have both with sugar, of course. Yesterday was a busy day, out and about filming in the park, so over the course of the afternoon I must have had three or four of these combinations. I felt no immediate effect. It wasn’t until about four this morning, lying awake in bed, unable to keep still and wondering what the hell could have caused me to be like that, that I realised.

Well, that’s it: time to stop drinking caffeinated coffee; time to nip it in the bud, just as I did with alcohol, at least for a while. Smeg knows how I’ll cope today: I’m up early, I’m already shattered and I have a film to finish. I suppose it’ll teach me not to get silly with stimulants. Oh well, I’ll probably be okay – I just hope I’m right, and that I sleep better tonight.

It has been a busy day so far. I was just in the park getting a few pick-ups for the cafe film we’re shooting. The guy with me, a great fellow also called matt, was telling me all about his experiences as a grip. As we went about the park getting shots, I was leading in my powerchair and he was following. When that happens, I have the habit of occasionally stopping and looking back to check whether the person following me is all right, so it must look oddly like a dog being taken for a walk, making sure his owner is still following.

On our travels, Matt made a comment I just had to smile at. He said my wheelchair needed a footplate for him to stand on, like the ones mums put on the back of prams for older, ambulant siblings. Such a footplate would, of course, be a bad idea as it would wreck the chair’s motors, but I just had to smile at it: Esther used to say exactly the same thing as I lead her around campus. The comment thus took me instantly back ten years, and I automatically thought of my old friend and learning support assistant following me here, there and everywhere, a slight look of puzzlement on her face.

In a way, it was a similar situation: at university, I was being productive, just as I was today. I found that rather pleasing – at the moment I feel I’m contributing to something, making something, just as I did at uni. Mind you, judging from the look on Matt’s face, i might just have to slow down a bit – either that or get one of those footplates.

Something quite, quite amazing happened yesterday afternoon which had me almost tearful. As I wrote here, I’ve been thinking about trying to find the family of my old school friend, Andrew Fox. They were great, warm people, whom the class got to know quite well. They came with us to Glasgow, for example, where in 1999 we competed in and won a wheelchair dance competition. Andy passed on in 2001, in my final year at special school, so I thought my chances for tracking them down were remote. Nonetheless, I did a bit of googling, and Managed to find a woman of the right name in the right area. I messaged her on Facebook, and – what d’ya know – I found foxy’s sister.

I was almost weeping with the beauty of it: her mum apparently remembered me, and was glad I still thought about Andy. So much had happened since I last saw Mrs Fox – it might even have been at his funeral, sixteen years ago – I barely knew where to begin. We only exchanged a few brief ”hellos” last night as it was getting late, but having hooked up now I think we’ll remain in contact. I have so much to tell them, about Lyn, about London, about everything. It’ll be good, too, to find out how they’re doing. Google, it seems, has done it again; perhaps somewhere up there, Andy and the guys are looking down, and smiling.

A few days ago I noticed how fast my typing has become, and that I can now write entire sentences without looking down at my keyboard. I’ve been using an extended keyboard for over a decade now – closer to two, in fact – and I reckon I do something approaching touch-typing on it. While it may not be quite as fast as a ‘normal’ typist, I’ve reached the point where I know my keyboard so well that typing on it is second nature. I suppose this is only to be expected, given how much I’ve used it and it’s predecessor over the years, but I thought it noteworthy. I frankly find it pretty cool, and now have fun seeing how long I can type for without looking at my keyboard or making a mistake.

Just to flit back to my fascination with olympic bids, I just came across this quite lengthy BBC article on the hot water the IOC is currently in. Budapest recently withdrew it’s bid to host the 2024 games, presumably assuming it had no chance up against Paris or LA. But in this article, Dan Roan points out that this reveals how much trouble the olympic movement is in: nobody wants to host the games anymore; and everyone sees it as an expensive, corrupt party held every four years for a bunch of bigwigs. I mean, I keep an eye on this stuff because I think one can read a lot about global politics and relations into it, but does that mean I want London to host the games again anytime soon? Screw That!

As a concept, the olympics is glorious: I love the idea of an event, sporting, artistic or anything, which brings the people of the world together for a time. We need more events like it. Yet the olympics has become, it seems, a bloated, fetid, festival of corruption. The more I hear about the people behind it’s organising committee, the more concerned I get. While I still look back to 2012 with great, great glee – and probably always will – as Roan points out, something seriously needs to change in the olympic movement before we see another summer like that again.

I just re-listened to this and I’m completely in two minds about it. Ability by Lee Ridley is a new radio sitcom, starring Lost Voice Guy Lee Ridley. While I was very taken by it the first time I heard it, now I’m not so sure. Of course, it’s great to hear a comedy which features a communication aid user so prominently, and to begin with I was very enthused with it. Apart from a few niggles with terminology – ‘carer’ instead of ‘personal assistant’ and so on – it sounded as if Ridley had just about hit the nail on the head. Here at last was a show about someone just like me, which could reveal to the country, or at least the part of it that listens to radio Four, what life is like for a person with cerebral palsy who uses a communication aid.

But then it all fell down: Ridley bit off more than he could chew, trying to write about things he clearly has no knowledge or experience of. Don’t get me wrong, I like where he was going. Yet in trying to turn his character into a drug dealer, helping his agency carer sell weed from his house, the narrative instantly started to sound naive. There is no way a weed dealer would trust a guy with his merchandise like that; such areas of life are far bleaker and more cut-throat than depicted by this show. To be honest, it sounded as if Ridley was trying to introduce subjects and themes he had no actual experience of, like a child trying to sound all grown up by writing about war, or politics. All the while he had the central character telling one-liners clearly ripped from his stand-up show, as if he thinks such subjects are something light and flippant. Thus, while the basic premise is a good one, I found it ultimately mishandled and very naive, and by the end it started to get on my nerves. It’s strange: what two months ago I took to be quite edgy and brave, today seemed naive and immature.

Why does the bbc continue to flog the dead horse that is Top Gear? Give it up guys; it may have been one of your greatest, most successful programs, but it’s gone. Without Jeremy Clarkson and co., it just doesn’t work. Fans want the original three presenters; replacing them with three other guys, especially a nauseating american from Friends and two guys we don’t know from Adam, just won’t work. The beeb will never be able to recapture that special something the original presenters had because they took it with them, and now, whatever they do will seem like a hollow facsimile. I might have been cautiously optimistic about it’s first revival last autumn, but now Chris Evans is gone, I really think what we see tonight will be a shadow of it’s former self. Thus, Top Gear is dead. It is no more. It has ceased to be. It has gone the way of this parrot, and try as the beeb might to revive it, without Clarkson, Top Gear is an ex-program.

Lyn and I just got in from a wonderful walk. Now that the days are starting to get longer, we have been going on quite a few lengthy rolls together. This afternoon, after our usual coffee in the park, we headed down to the river. The sun was, at that point, just beginning to set; the lights were coming on across the city, and, apart from a few spots of rain and a stiff breeze, all was calm. Rolling along the riverbank behind Lyn, I suddenly felt very warm and content. I suddenly remembered those days, a decade ago now, when Bill used to push me along the Salt Line and down the bridal paths near Alsager. I thought too of walking back to campus with Charlotte, singing at the top of our voices into the cheshire air.

I’m on the rocky road

Heading down off the mountain slope

And as my steps echo echo, louder than before

Another day is done, say goodbye to the setting sun

See what I found,

Turn back to the ground Just like before…

Coming back up the hill, towards the Royal Standard, I blurted out a couple of those lines once again. It was a moment of bliss. The sky, overcast a few moments before, was clearing from the west. In front of me, the woman I adore the most in all the world was leading us home. I felt loved. As we walked, so many people had recognised me and said ”Hi Matt”, it was uncanny. Moments like that make me reflect on what a remarkable, wonderful life I lead. In such moments you remember what has been, but that in turn makes you look forward to the great things yet to come.

It might be a bit celeb-gossipy, but I came across this earlier. One of my favourite actors, Sir Patrick Stewart, now says he intends to become an American citizen, so he can better participate in the fight against Trump. While I passionately support giving that barely elected numpty what for, this news rather puzzles me. After all, we have battles of our own to fight here in Britain. As Stewart himself points out in the article, things are bad enough over here with brexit. And if he becomes a fullyfledged yank, what would happen to Sir Patrick’s knighthood? I get the impression that there’s more to this story than meets the eye, so it’s one I’ll be keeping at least half an eye on.

I suppose it is fair to say that I come from a family of intellectuals. I have aa Master’s; my brothers both have PhDs; our parents are both graduates etc. Thus I know the value of reading and research, and was taught to trust those in positions of authority. I am, however, becoming increasingly alarmed at the growing tide of antiintellectualism which currently seems to be sweeping the western world. People seem to be turning against those in authority, rejecting academia in favour of pundits, either online or through other media, who dictate to people what they should think. These pundits depict academia and the mainstream as a type of elite, whose values are to be shunned. In effect they are trying to get people to reject intellectualism and research, telling that it is some kind of big, bad, oppressive other, and to be independent they should reject it.

This strikes me as very, very dangerous indeed. For one, it is utterly false: academia does not force people to only think in certain ways, as such pundits often claim it does. Instead, it encourages as varied a discourse as possible. I could write anything I wanted back at university, the only proviso was that I had to have the evidence to back it up. The claim that academia is somehow repressive and only values certain types of thought is thus simply untrue.

The problem for the people who claim otherwise is, academia often rejects the worldviews they promote. Academia is often pluralist and quite liberal, whereas they often prefer more conservative, dogmatic stances. These speakers want people to reject academia because it means people are more likely to accept what they tell them: by discouraging research and devaluing academic rigour, they turn the people who listen to them into mindless zombies who just accept whatever they are told. Back at uni, I was taught never to take any particular source at face value; we had to question everything, and see what evidence there was to back a claim up.

It is this rigour that those currently decrying intellectualism want to escape. They don’t want people to question what they say. In depicting academia as somehow oppressive and getting them to reject experts, then, they make people much more controllable and passive. People just accept what they are told.

The irony of all this, of course, is that such pundits often present theirselves as free thinkers. They often claim to represent an anti-authoritarian counterculture, rebelling against a monolithic, oppressive mainstream. Thus you see these speakers lambast mainstream institutions, lashing out at experts, railing against academics as forces of oppression and intolerance, when in fact they are the ones trying to oppress and manipulate us, and a second’s worth of academic scrutiny would expose them as the con-men they are.

I really think, then, that we should all be very concerned about the growing tide of anti-intellectualism. Turning against academia and experts is folly. It makes us all easier to manipulate. There is nothing countercultural or independent about it; it is not being subversive or rebellious. On the contrary, it is falling into a trap laid by those who would ensnare us and turn us all into passive zombies who just accept what we are told. After all, that’s how the church worked for centuries. By turning us against academia, we lose the capacity to scrutinise and question. Certain people are now trying to tell us to value stupidity and ignorance, and that those who know how to research and scrutinise are to be shunned. I find that very troubling indeed.

I’ve always thought of my cp as fairly moderate: not especially severe, but not exactly mild either. On that subject, I definitely think this vlog by Ted Shires is worth flagging up. He draws attention to the fact that comparing cerebral palsy severity levels is quite meaningless, but has become fashionable lately. He makes some very good points. Everyone’s cp is different, after all: I’m sure people would say Lyn’s cp is more severe than mine, but Lyn can often do things I can’t (especially when it comes to organisation). Thus, while I don’t know what provoked Shires into making this video – perhaps someone told him he had mild cp, and it struck a nerve – he makes a lot of very good points, and it’s definitely worth watching.

I have had quite a fascinating and productive day. I’m back volunteering at school, and today they had the children’s book illustrator Mehrdokht Amini in to talk to the students. While I must admit to not being that familiar with her work, I found her a remarkable woman. She’s from Iran, so we got a glimpse of the regime there. She described how, outwardly, things were very, very repressed; yet behind closed doors this meant people went to the other extreme. She didn’t elaborate much about precisely what that meant, but one can understand the psychological mechanisms at play.

After a short break, she lead a drawing session with the students. I was in two minds about staying for that at first – I was soon due to meet Matt B for another editing session – but I’m glad I hung about. The images she created on the board in front of us were intriguing:vivid, detailed, yet abstracted in a North African style. I was fascinated to watch her draw. It seemed so evocative, non-western and other-worldly. Chatting to her a bit after the event, she struck me as one of those interesting people from a completely different area of the world; who you meet only briefly yet who stays in your mind for a long while afterwards. I went away eager to find out more; it just goes to show how one can never stop learning.