Screenshot links to all four of my new posts on http://www.londontu.be
In my previous post here I indicated that there would be a number of new posts appearing on my London Transport themed website. I now provide links to them.
Each link will come in the form of a screenshot…
A post created from my experiences at the Marxism and Nature day school which took place at Student Central, Malet Street, London on Saturday.
This post is based on a day school organised by the International Socialism Journal titled Marxism and Nature which took place on Saturday. To set the scene, here is the timetable for the day:
The travel should have been straightforward, since Malet Street is walkable from King’s Cross, but engineering works intervened. The first effect of the engineering works was that I had to get the 6:54AM rather than 7:54AM train from Lynn. After getting the replacement bus service from Ely to Cambridge the next train to London turned out to be a stopper, so reckoning on saving a bit of time overall, I alighted at Finsbury Park and took the Piccadilly line line to Russell Square. Having a little time to spare, I avoided the most crowded route, opting for a slightly circuitous walk which had the bonus of taking in this splendid commemorative plate:
This post will be followed by several on http://www.londontu.be focussing specifically on the public transport elements of the day.
Here before getting to the real meat of the post are some photos taken at the event. The event took place at Student Central, formerly known as the University of London Union (ULU). The opening and closing plenaries were in the Upper Hall, which when I first visited the building was known as the Badminton Court (although these are both beaten in the changeability stakes by The Venue, which was Manning Hall when i first visited, and then became Room 101).
The pictures produced below come from all across the day…
I have included some of Ian Rappel’s slides above, so this section will focus mainly on the other speaker at the workshop, Sarah Ensor, who is researching the history of class struggle in Iceland and whose blog can be found here.
The closing plenary featured Ian Angus, many of whose slides I have already shown, and Camilla Royle, deputy editor of International Socialism Journal, who had played a key role in organising the event. The event ended with a show of solidarity with antu-fracking campaigner Tina Rothery.
Knowing that a non-stop train to Cambridge would be leaving Kings Cross at 17:44 I headed that way in no great hurry, and was comfortably aboard the train. Here are some final photographs…
Three little things for you….
This thunderclap currently has 1944 supporters with a total social reach of approximately 12.5 million. If you would like to support it and have an account with any of facebook, twitter on tumblr (you can, as I have with my facebook and twitter accounts support it with two accounts if you have them) please click on the screen grab below…
Here in the UK we are lumbered with an antiquated voting system that has enabled a party with the votes of 24% of the electorate to form a ‘majority’ government. For this reason Make Votes Matter have put up a petition on the official government petitions website (which means it is only open to UK citizens to sign). To view and sign the petition click the screen grab below.
As you can see, when I screen grabbed the above image there were just over 9,000 signatures. There are now almost 14,000 and growing.
The photographic wall calendars that I have created for next year are now in my possession. I am delighted with how they have come out.
Once I had picked up the calendars this morning I had time to kill before catching the bus, but not enough to warrant a return to the flat, so i took a little loop through The Walks, where I got this picture…
Cricket, Politics and Photographs – enjoy!
I have a few other things to share, but I will be starting this post with cricket.
England’s men are in Bangladesh, currently endeavouring to chase down 278 to stay in the series and making a decent fist of it (107-1 off 19 overs – 169 needed off 31 for victory). This is not quite a full strength England, but nevertheless winning the series would be a considerable feather in Bangladeshi caps.
Meanwhile half a world away in the West Indies England’s women are tied at 1-1 in a five match ODI series, with the three remaining matches counting in the ICC championship (the first two did count, and please do not ask me to explain as working out the rationale behind such administrative decisions is beyond my capabilities). The two matches in this series so far have been low scoring, with the highest total in the four innings being England’s 149 in the first game. The West Indies are current world T20 champions, while England blitzed Pakistan in England this summer, so we have two sides who are used to success in action.
This is a new campaign that has been set up to defend the Welfare State from ever increasing attacks by the Tories. More details are available at:
Please get involved!
A report from the National Audit Office has just come out revealing that even in crude financial terms the proposed Garden Bridge across the terms is a shockingly bad idea. In terms of its negative impact on the South Bank it is an even worse idea. Here are a couple of links for you to follow:
Our unelected prime minister Theresa May does not intend to give Parliament a vote on the details of Brexit. Many are dissatisfied with this display of arrogance. Alexandra Runswick of Unlock Democracy has put together a petition calling for a change of mind – click here for more details and to sign.
I end with some photographs. The photographs feature boats moored at the pontoon jetty, one of which had the name Cheetah Marine prominently displayed on its side…
Some stuff about autism, and on World Mental Health Day some stuff about mental health.
I have various things to share in addition to detail of this document. Also, of course, there will be some photographs.
Here is a link from which you can access the document and below my own saved copy:
draft-norfolk-all-age-autism-strategy-october-2016-word
Overall I am not unhappy with this document, but there is one thing on which I have to pick them up – their use of the word ‘autistics’, which to me feels dehumanising as compared to such phrases as ‘autistic person’ or ‘person wiith autism’.
The Sybil Elgar school in Ealing, which is run by the National Autistic Society, has had a visit from the Mayor of Ealing, who had the pleasant task of handing out awards to 13 students who have successfully completed the ASDAN transition challenge. To read more about this story click here.
For general information on World Mental Health Day and what it is all about please read this article. Also on World Mental Health Day is this courtesy of the TimetoChange twitter account:
Video originally posted by imajsaclaimant and shared by DPAC:
Source: Watch John McArdle giving evidence to the Scottish Parliament on Social Security
I have some pictures to share, and a few links, but no main subject matter, hence the title of this post.
This is a signpost to my London transport website, and simultaneously a mention of James and Sons’James and Sons’ next auction, since the post was built around lot 737 in said sale…
How does this poster connect to the Museum of London? To find out follow the link below.
This story is about a 4 year old boy who was hospitalised after being fed a ‘holistic cure’ for autism on the advice of someone describing themselves as a ‘naturopath’. The notion of any sort of ‘cure’ for autism is of course offensive nonsense. Equally, the idea that a ‘naturopath’ should be entitled to prescribe remedies for anything should probably be considered offensive nonsense. The combination of one person’s belief in the offensive nonsense of a ‘cure’ for autism and one person’s cynical willingness to exploit this gullibility created a situation that was very dangerous for an innocent child. The full piece can be viewed here.
Some of you will know that the Dishonourable Sajid Javid has recently made a decision to ignore the will of a community and give Cuadrilla the go ahead to frack there in defiance of clearly expressed local wishes. Mr Javid receives big money from fracking companies and as such should have had the decency to admit to a conflict of interest and say that this was a decision that he could not be involved in making, but of course Tory and decency do not go together, and so unsurprisingly he made a decision in favour of his rich mates and against the community and against the environment. I end this section by linking to a piece that details the environmental impact of fracking.
I am presenting this pictures in two tranches, starting with the general…
I bring this post to a finish with some pictures of the new £5 note, which before I got this one in change I had not seen in the flesh…
A Must watch-video and some good accompanying notes from DPAC:
Source: Please watch and share this video on the £30/week ESA Cut for people in the WRAG #NoESACut
To comment please visit the original post and give credit where it is due.
A sneak preview of the 2017 Photographic Wall Calendar.
As some of you know I created photographic wall calendars last year. I recently mentioned that I was going to do again this year. This morning my inbox contained an offer from Vistaprint that was too good to refuse, so the calendars will be arriving with me some time around October 20th.
This time, there will be no borders, and no added text. It will surprise few who have followed this blog recently to find out that I have chosen an Inlandsbanan picture for the front cover…
The actual calendar will be much bigger than this of course.
Here are the individual pages for each month…
An account of “Autism Positive”, An Amazing (and exhausting!) Day for Autism, in the fine city Norwich.
On Monday the Theatre Royal Norwich, located right in the heart of that fine city, played host to “Autism Postive”, an event organised by Autism Anglia. This post is about my experiences at that event, and has been delayed until today because I was exhausted when I arrived back home on Monday evening and was working yesterday. Before I get into the main meat of the post here is a map of central Norwich (I have put a red square around the theatre to highlight it) and a timetable of what was on besides the various stalls people had at the event.
I had decided I needed the extra flexibility given by the First Eastern Counties X1 route (as opposed to the Stagecoach X29 route which stops quite early in the evening), so got the 7:51AM bus (I had arranged a meet-up in the foyer with the other person who would be running the NAS West Norfolk stall at approx 10AM). My journey was slightly affected by traffic, and the bus pulled into Norwich bus station only just before 10AM, but it turned out that the traffic affecting my journey was comparatively minor – it would be another 15 minutes or so before the other person arrived. Here are some photos from the journey in…
The set up was further delayed by because Autism Anglia had failed to realise that we would be coming, so we had to wait while space was located for our stall to be set up. This is what our stall looked like once the set up was complete…
Here are close ups of some of the stuff we had on display….
A combination of late arrival and subsequent delays eliminated the possibility of attending Callum Brazzo’s talk, which I understand was a huge success, but once the stall was set up I had an opportunity to take a look at what other stalls there were.
I got some more pictures a little later after a period covering the stall…
Due to the communication failure mentioned earlier we did not have lunches booked for us as others did, so Karan bought us sandwiches. She then went to a talk given by a friend of hers while I covered the stall for that period. Post lunch there were a couple of sessions I wished to attend, so Karan covered the stall while I did so.
I thought that as an autistic person with a lot of experience of volunteering this would be a good session to attend, and I did enjoy it. However, rather than being about autism and volunteering in general, it was touting one particular volunteering organisation who work with autistic people.
Vicki Howling of Volunteering Matters gave the talk, with an assist from one of their volunteers, William Taylor, who talked about his experiences and how valuable it had been to him to become a volunteer.
Here are some pictures from this talk…
However, it was the the final session in the main auditorium that I really wanted to attend, titled…
Anne Ebbage from Autism Anglia opened the session before introducing various people from organisations who were already doing good stuff. Here to set the scene is an outline of the Autism Charter and a picture of the Auttism Friendly logo…
Anne had various other slides to accompany her talk…
The webiste shown above: www.autism-connect.org.uk
Although these are no presented in strict chronological order, I start with the person who was actually first to be called in this section, Matthew Piper who is Access Manager at the Theatre Royal Norwich itself, who deserve huge thanks for the job they did in hosting this event and for their willingness to stage ‘relaxed performances’. I have a photo of a leaflet about this which will follow this little bit of text – a leaflet I was more than happy to display on our stall when asked. While a ‘relaxed performance’ means a loss of income ion the immediate term because you can only half sell the auditorium, and of course fewer people being there also means that attendant sales are also reduced it is bad thinking to allow this to influence you against putting them on. Matthew Piper was able to provide evidence of people who have come to a ‘relaxed performance’ and subsequently, having managed this have had the confidence to come to ordinary performances.
As well as telling us about what they are doing, the three people from Norwich International Airport were receiving their ‘Autism Friendly Badges’, and a bag full for the rest of their staff. They have an aeroplane that is kept permanently on the ground so that they can give people a sample of the journey through the airport from arriving there to boarding the plane. They told us about a family who have never been able to travel before who having experienced this sample trip through the airport will be going to Lapland this December. I have already linked to the airport’s website, but here is an extra link to their page on special travel assistance.
Having already featured the theatre who were also hosting the event it was time for a cinema to be in the limelight, with Ellie, Acting Manager and also Autism Friendly Screenings Co-ordinator at Cinema City explaining what they do. Cinema City is part of the Picture House group, who were the first cinema company to do autism friendly screenings – the very first was at the Clapham Picture House 10 years ago, while Cinema City have been doing them for two and a half years. What does an autism friendly screening entail?
There are two such screenings coming up at Cinema City: The Lion King on Sunday and Finding Dory in November. As well as the website to which I linked earlier, there is also picturehouseblog.
I have saved to the last Tom Blofeld, who runs BeWILDerwood. In addition to making every effort to ensure accessibility for all to this attraction, autistic groups from schools get admitted free during term time. As with Cinema City they have a blog.
Tom Blofeld, special guest Mildred and to the left as you look Anne Ebbage of Autism Anglia.
When this session finished it was time to get back to the stall for the final stages of the day. Even at this late stage we got plenty of attention, and we spoke to plenty of people through the day, with many leaflets and contact cards going out. The event was a tremendous success, with lots of information and inspiration on display. Once we had taken down our stall I took the opportunity to visit the library before heading home. Here are some photos from that journey home…
Here are pictures of some of the leaflets that were available at the event…
I have included many links within the text, but these do not belong there, although ebing autism related they do belong in a large post that has been autism related.
The National Autistic Society have a survey running at the moment which you can see here.
Yesterday I saw these two posts, written by sisters (the first, from autism mom, linked to the second), and having read and enjoyed them yesterday, I share them to finish this post…
aspiblog 