Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: A right old Barney, in reply to Stephen Glaister,
The bottom line for me and everyone I knew was that NO had been interesting but a bit of a mess, and that they clearly weren’t in the same league as Simple Minds at Mainstreet a few months earlier. Those guys tore the roof off the joint and just blew people away. NO, not so much.
Intriguing.
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Hard News: This Is Not A Complicated Issue, in reply to nzlemming,
You’re a high school teacher. One of your students persistently avoids making direct and sustained eye contact when you’re talking.
Actually, I’d immediately think they might be autistic, rather than dishonest. Not everyone has your worldview, Craig.
I think you’ve royally missed Craig’s point there …
Edit: Or possibly not. You're saying people/teachers are better than that?
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Hard News: This Is Not A Complicated Issue, in reply to George Darroch,
It still amazes me how the temporarily-able-bodied considered that disabled are out to inconvenience them
To be fair, it can be worse than that.
The Cameron government's horrible decision to use people on disability benefits as a wedge issue wound up with this deeply alarming story earlier this month:
The government's focus on alleged fraud and overclaiming to justify cuts in disability benefits has caused an increase in resentment and abuse directed at disabled people, as they find themselves being labelled as scroungers, six of the country's biggest disability groups have warned.
Some of the charities say they are now regularly contacted by people who have been taunted on the street about supposedly faking their disability and are concerned the climate of suspicion could spill over into violence or other hate crimes.
While the charities speaking out – Scope, Mencap, Leonard Cheshire Disability, the National Autistic Society, Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), and Disability Alliance – say inflammatory media coverage has played a role in this, they primarily blame ministers and civil servants for repeatedly highlighting the supposed mass abuse of the disability benefits system, much of which is unfounded.
At the same time, they say, the focus on "fairness for taxpayers" has fostered the notion that disabled people are a separate group who don't contribute.
Ugh.
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Hard News: This Is Not A Complicated Issue, in reply to Chris Waugh,
But Mojo Mathers got up in front of 120 MPs, the public gallery, and, via TV and radio, the whole bloody country and spoke in a language she can't hear. I am in awe.
And yesterday she did radio interviews in which she sat opposite the interviewer, lip read the questions and spoke in response to them. It puzzles me that some people can't see how far she is already coming to meet the rest of us.
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Hard News: This Is Not A Complicated Issue, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Having been busy the last few days, I haven’t posted a great deal on the story, and your link to a story that could very easily mislead people into thinking that the Speaker was denying funding for technology, because you know, it said he was being staunch about technology funding, was the one where I decided to launch off. It wasn’t really just about this story.
Well, no, because the story's correct in what it says. It repeatedly refers to funding for "note-takers" (the only mention of equipment is verbatim from Mathers' maiden speech) and I think the UN convention is directly relevant. 'Speaker staunch on deaf MP’s technology funding' is the headline written by some busy web-editor.
I get annoyed about inaccuracy in media too. I wrote about it at quite some length last week. But this seems an odd one to jump on -- let alone to scold me for linking to.
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Hard News: This Is Not A Complicated Issue, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
I note however, that the article quotes someone pointing out that the Government has promised that disabled people will be able top perform public function “with the use of assistive and new technologies where appropriate.”
As the story indicates in the sentence you paraphrase ….
The Government signed up to a United Nations disabilities convention. It says disabled people have the right to hold office and perform all public functions at all levels of government, with the use of assistive and new technologies where appropriate.
Specifically, the New Zealand government ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2008.
That committed the New Zealand government to:
Protecting the right of persons with disabilities to vote by secret ballot in elections and public referendums without intimidation, and to stand for elections, to effectively hold office and perform all public functions at all levels of government, facilitating the use of assistive and new technologies where appropriate;
It commits the government to “facilitating the use” of such technologies, not merely providing the technologies. And the use is plainly contingent on labour, which the government, via the Speaker, currently does seem to be regarding as an optional extra.
And given that is not in dispute, the decision of the journalist to include it in the story leads me to the concern I already expressed: how can I be sure that any other factual claim about which I don’t have knowledge is accurate and will assist me in any way in understanding the situation?
You’ve completely lost me. The paraphrase in the report is reasonable. The commitments in the UN Declaration are explicit and relevant and I cannot see how the simple act of noting those commitments has you so “concerned”.
You’re going to a lot of bother to justify refusing to read a news story because you didn’t fancy the headline.
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Hard News: This Is Not A Complicated Issue, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
And on the off-chance the article itself is accurate, how would I know this, and thereby by able to rely on any information in it?
This is the first two paragraphs of the accompanying story, which is based on the script for the report:
New Zealand's first deaf MP, Mojo Mathers, has used her maiden speech in Parliament to take a dig at the speaker, Lockwood Smith.
She is involved in an argument with him over the money to fund support staff for the electronic note taking she needs to do her job.
It's important to remember that in news, the person who writes the headline is almost never the person who writes the story.
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The 3 News item tonight made Mathers look awesome and Smith like even more of an out-of-touch idiot.
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Hard News: NZ On Screen: The…, in reply to Hebe,
A mission?
No, it wasn’t: thanks to Vincent Burke at Top Shelf and Philippa Mossman at TVNZ, who swiftly agreed to make it so.
But it isn’t standard practice for TVNZ to give whole programs to NZ On Screen, so it was very pleasing.
It was good because you captured Gerard very well
I believe I have written before how much I liked Gerard that day. I aim to turn up at that man’s house with a couple of good bottles of wine some time.
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Hard News: This Is Not A Complicated Issue, in reply to Islander,
As a matter of course – in order to communicate with their friends & neighbours – the hearing-able learned sign/Ameslan from the time they were wee kids. And I think it would be a brillant idea if matters would move in this way, here…
I've seen two hearing-able people use sign as fast private communication in a crowded room. It was kind of badass.