Having received confirmation that my own name has been added I now share this is the hope that some of you will sign…
Source: Sign our open letter: Deaf and disabled people in support of #JeremyCorbyn
Category: Uncategorized
Images and Other Stuff
Highlights from today at work, a mention of yesterday, a comment on the Melania Trump story and lots of pictures.
INTRODUCTION
This post is about today at work and a couple of other things.
TODAY AT WORK
Apart from the fact that it is so hot that for the first time in over three years as a James & Sons employee I went to work in shorts, the things I did at work covered three areas…
RESOLVING QUERIES RELATING TO THE JULY SALE
These numbered five, one of which was a repeat question therefore requiring no new work. Nos 2 and 3 which I will treat together featured a mishap over coin lots, which I was easily able to sort out, by producing and uploading the following images:
Query no 4 related to a medal – someone wanted to see pictures of the rim, which are fiendishly difficult to produce, but I came up with these…
The final query was more involved, requiring detail as to whether the item was still in working order, and more info about its provenance. To help with this I produced these images:
The main bulk of my day’s work was…
IMAGING FOR THE AUGUST SALE
There were some interesting items today and a decent variety. I will start with the non-coin items…
Finishing the August images where the queries started, here a few more…
COIN LOTS
I am not going to share all the coin images I did today (even with a mere 18 lots done that would be 54 images) but here are a few of the best…
USING OTHER PEOPLE’S STUFF
I recently posted about the Lynn News taking the entire text element of a report that had the byline of one of their journalists from my blog (see here for more details) and pointed out that while I was grateful to them for covering the event I would have been even happier had they acknowledged me. Now today Melania Trump’s speech has hit the news for the wrong reasons – as whyevolutionistrue (who I am happy to acknowledge as my source for the quotes that follow) among others have noted it is all but identical to an earlier speech by Michelle Obama. For WEIT’s whole post click here, meanwhile for comparison, here are the two speeches:
Here’s the text from Trump’s speech:
My parents impressed on me the value of that you work hard for what you want in life. That your word is your bond and you do what you say and keep your promise. That you treat people with respect. Show the values and morals in in the daily life. That is the lesson that we continue to pass on to our son.
We need to pass those lessons on to the many generations to follow. [Cheering] Because we want our children in these nations to know that the only limit to your achievement is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.
And here’s Obama:
And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you’re going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them, and even if you don’t agree with them.
And Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values, and pass them on to the next generation. Because we want our children — and all children in this nation — to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.
In this latter case, of course we can be absolutely sure that Michelle Obama would not be pleased to hear her words from the lips of Mrs Trump.
To sum up this section:
- If using stuff from someone else (and Melania Trump’s speechwriters must have been aware of the origins of the words in her speech even if she was not) make sure that you are using it in a way that the original author would condone.
- Even if you have carte blanche to use stuff from someone else for goodness sake acknowledge the fact that you are doing so.
SOME FINAL PHOTOS
These last few photos come from yesterday, some of them featuring a barbecue lunch in East Rudham, with my parents, my aunt and my nephew.
Some Autism Coverage in the Lynn News
A grateful acknowledgement to the Lynn News for their coverage of the Autism Awareness Cup accompanied by a minor ethical quibble and also some images from today at work.
INTRODUCTION
At the end of this post I will be sharing some images from work today, but it is mainly about the Lynn News (and, one ethical quibble aside, positive about them).
THANKS FOR THE COVERAGE BUT AN ACKNOWLEDGEMENT WOULD BE NICE
On Sunday the inaugural Autism Awareness Cup took place on the astroturf at Lynnsport, and on Monday I produced this blog post about the event: https://aspiblog.wordpress.com/2016/07/11/the-autism-awareness-cup-a-new-event-takes-root/
Before creating the blog post I had also created a facebook photo album about the event.
Having published the blog post I then produced this email:
For clarification of the intended recipients, here is a second image…
Today the Lynn News produced the following:
You will note that save for the misplaced while between cup winners and Holland every word of this article appears in my blog post. While I thank the Lynn News unreseverdly for printing a story about this event, which will be the first of many, I would have been even more grateful had there been some acknowledgement, and maybe a mention of my blog.
SOME IMAGES FROM TODAY
#PIPFightback Videos images and tweets from the day of action
Coins and Militaria for Auction, Records for Ebay
An account of a day’s imaging, including some of the most interesting pictures.
INTRODUCTION
This post is about the imaging I have done at James and Sons today. In total I have produced 180 images today (no, I am not going to share them all!), using the scanner for the coin lots and the camera for the rest.
THE BULK JOB – THE FIRST TRANCHE OF COINS FOR THE AUGUST SALE
The coins I imaged today were lots 1-50 in the August auction, except that lot 3 was missing. Images of both faces of each coin were required, which meant two sets of scans, and then some editorial work, resulting in three images for each lot. Here to further explain the process is lot 1…
I scan these many lots at a time at very high resolution (600 dpi), the exact number of lots depending on the size of the coins, and on the number of coins that make up the lots. The 49 coin lots I scanned today were achieved in four tranches (i.e eight scans in total). Here some of the more interesting specimens…
RECORDS FOR EBAY
There were some interesting items here. In total there were 11 separate items, all boxed sets of multiple records, and I offer you a selection of images…
THE FINAL SESSION – MILITARIA
Having finished the records it was time to image some items of militaria. This once again required the camera. Here are are a few highlights to conclude this post…
Pictures, Links and an Open Letter
A post prompted in part by Mike Sivier’s excellent open letter to Angela Eagle and in part by having a few other things to share – enjoy.
INTRODUCTION
This post is a bit of a pot-pourri, although one of the links and the open letter are related.
THE OPEN LETTER AND RELATED LINK
The author of this open letter is Mike Sivier of Vox Political, on whose blog I found it. Here is the open letter in full, followed by a link to the blog post in which I found it:
Dear Ms Eagle,
As a Labour voter of many years’ standing, and a member of the party for the last six, I am writing to express my outrage at your comments following the vandalism of the Wallasey party office.
We can agree that the damage to the window – like any crime – is unacceptable. However:
How dare you claim that it was carried out by a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, “in his name”? Do you have any evidence? Do the police already know who did it? I think not – otherwise we would no doubt have heard about it.
In fact, Mr Corbyn has made it abundantly clear – many times over the past few weeks, that he finds such behaviour abhorrent and wants members of the party to discuss their differences in a cordial manner. This leads me to my second point:
How dare you try to pontificate to the rest of the party about “bullying”, after the behaviour you have forced Mr Corbyn to endure, together with the other 170+ PLP rebels?
Look at the behaviour that has occurred in YOUR name:
Months of secret plotting against Mr Corbyn after he won the Labour leadership last year;
The intention to mislead the public into thinking the Labour ‘coup’ was prompted by Mr Corbyn’s performance in the EU referendum when it had been pre-planned over many months;
The co-ordinated, on-the-hour resignations of shadow cabinet members throughout June 26 in an effort to BULLY Mr Corbyn out of the Labour leadership;
The purchase of a web domain entitled ‘Angela4Leader’ the day before those resignations;
The hasty and unconstitutional calling and passing of a vote of ‘no confidence’ in Mr Corbyn in another attempt to BULLY him out of office;
(It has been implied that some, or indeed many, Labour MPs were BULLIED into supporting that vote)
The attempted BULLYING of Mr Corbyn himself at a Parliamentary Labour Party meeting;
The many letters by your fellow Labour MPs, trying to BULLY Mr Corbyn into resigning; and
The fabricated smear stories intended to undermine Mr Corbyn’s support among members and, again, BULLY him into resigning – including your claim today about this broken office window.
If you are serious in your claim that bullying “has absolutely no place in politics in the UK and it needs to end”, then perhaps the best way to start would be by ending your own challenge to Mr Corbyn’s leadership, submitting yourself to the mercy of your constituents who are holding a ‘no confidence’ vote on your conduct later this month, and considering your own future in politics.
With kind regards,
Mike Sivier
A NEW POST ON WWW.LONDONTU.BE
I have just put up a new post on my London Transport themed website centred on the Institute of Education.
SOME NEW PHOTOS
Just a few photos that I have not previously shared:
Imaging for the August Auction
A brief account of today at work, with pictures.
INTRODUCTION
I have lots of new pictures, relating to the James and Sons’ August sale (Wednesday 31st). Today’s imaging has involved two types of item…
MILITARIA
You will notice that one item that has been included with militaria is actually not so, but most of these items do count as militaria…
Now it is time to move on to the other auction items I had to image…
EPHEMERA/ BOOKS
This section starts with lot 361, which can be thought of as an anatomisation of a rolls-royce…
The rest of the items were not quite this impressive, but there were a few other good moments…
EBAY IMAGES
In addition to the auction lots I had to image a few records for sale on ebay (the pictures I have included were only some of the records I imaged).
Marxism 5: The Final Day
The conclusion to my series of posts about Marxism 2016.
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to my fifth post in this series about Marxism 2016. Since Marxism adopted its current format of running from Thursday afternoon through to Monday afternoon in 2005 (before that it used run from a Friday evening to the afternoon of the following Friday) the Monday morning has usually been the quietest time of the event, before the closing rally finishes things with a flourish.
GETTING THERE AND THE PLAN
I wished to arrive early at the event so as to have time to deposit my main bag in the left luggage room for the morning and then prepare for the day. I was accompanied on this last journey in from Walthamstow to the Institute of Education by the other person who had been a guest in the house I was staying at, and who I had discovered was also autistic. We left in good time and had a very smooth journey to the event.
THE MORNING MEETINGS
My first meeting, Lewis Nielsen on What Would a Revolution Look Like? down in the drama studio was interesting, and well worth attending. The second meeting, Camilla Royle on How Big Pharma stops us making progress in Nunn Hall was excellent. As well as stuff from Bad Pharma (Ben Goldacre’s classic) she mentioned the Martin Skhreli case. This meeting was a worthy lead up to the closing rally, due to start at 2PM in the Logan Hall.
THE FINAL RALLY
The Final Rally was quite simply magnificent. After several prominent campaigners, including a trainee nurse and a junior doctor, the last two speeches were by Richard Boyd Barrett TD and Michael Bradley. I left during the applause at the end of Michael’s speech, wishing to retrieve my bag and leave the building reasonably swiftly. This meant that I missed the singing of the Internationale.
HOMEWARD BOUND
My departure during the applause for Mike Bradley enabled me to make a swift exit from the building, which had the extra benefit that I got to King’s Cross station at 15:37, so was able to travel back on the 15:44, which I had not expected.
The Autism Awareness Cup -A New Event Takes Root
An account of the inaugural Autism Cup, played yesterday on the astroturf at Lynn Sport, which raised £75.55 for NAS West Norfolk.
INTRODUCTION
Yesterday saw the staging of the inaugural Autism Awareness Cup on Lynn Sport’s artifical pitches a mile and half from King’s Lynn town centre. The event was a great success, and fundraising collections on the day netted £75.55.
THE TEAMS
Five teams had entered, with names being selected on a European Championship/ World Cup theme. The five names selected were England, Holland, Italy, Republic of Ireland and Spain. The tournament was organised in two phases, a mini-league after which the top two teams would contest the final.
THE PRELIMINARIES
As well as our own NAS banners a sponsors banner was on display. We also had two tables set up displaying various items, including the cup and sets of gold, silver and bronze medals.
THE LEAGUE STAGE
None of Italy, The Republic of Ireland or England ever looked convincing. England managed a 2-0 win over Italy which also featured a penalty being saved (justice done – it should never have been given, although in fairness this was the only bad decision of the day) but this came too late to be of much value. In one of the final pair of matches (matches were played two at a time at this stage, side by side) Spain beat the unfortunate Italy 5-0 to confirm their position as league winners. They would face Holland in the final, while England secured the bronze medals.
THE FINAL
This was an excellent game, with possession fairly evenly balanced between the teams. The trouble for Spain was that Holland did more with their possession – while the Holland goalkeeper was never seriously tested Holland scored twice. Thus the final score was Holland 2 Spain 0. Spain as league winners collected the gold medals, while Holland became the first holders of the Autism Awareness Cup and collected silver medals for coming second in the league.
THE PRESENTATIONS
The cup and medals were presented shortly afterwards, out on the field. Congratulations to Holland for winning the cup and to Spain for winning the league element. Congratulations also to Helen Van Riel for assembling the Holland squad. Finally of course, massive congratulations to Grant Cotton for organising the event.
Marxism 4: Sunday
My account of the Sunday at Marxism 2016.
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to my fourth post about Marxism 2016 (see here, here and here), focussing on Sunday. Like the previous post, this one will be formatted slightly differently from my usual Marxism posts, again because I wish to focus on two particular meetings.
GETTING THERE AND THE DAY’S PLAN
It being Sunday I was even more generous than usual in allowing for transport problems. In keeping with Sutcliffe’s Second Law of Travelling by Public Transport I therefore had my best journey of the week.
To help explain both my schedule for the day and the rest of this post here is the timetable for Sunday, with my choices marked…
What I am going to do now is write briefly about meetings 1,2 and 5 before covering the two disability meetings in a bit more detail.
MEETINGS 1, 2 AND 5
My first meeting, Kate Hurford on White supremacy and the creation of “race” – where does racism come from? took place in Clarke Hall, which is on level three of the institute. The speaker was not well but still managed to deliver a very good introduction after which there was a lively debate.
For the second meeting I had chosen Shahrar Ali on How left is green politics? Although I am grateful that both he and Natalie Bennett were speaking at this event, and regret that a timetable clash prevented me from hearing Natalie speak I felt that there were important questions not dealt with, such as the roles of greens in office
in various parts of the world (like the Aussie green party doing deals with the Liberal National Party, that country’s equivalent of the Tories). However, this caveat aside I enjoyed this meeting, and have no regrets about attending.
I will be covering meetings 3 and 4 in the next section. Meeting 5, for which I had chosen religion was an interesting meeting.
TWO MEETINGS ABOUT DISABILITY
Both of these two meetings, the first a panel meeting and the second the official launch of Roddy Slorach’s book “A Very Capitalist Condition” were excellent and in their different ways inspiring.
The first meeting started with a number of speakers talking about what they are doing, and about various campaigns before then being opened up for discussion.
Roddy’s meeting (we have previously shared a platform at a public meeting in Norwich) began with him introducing ideas that are contained within his book, which I have since read and enjoyed.
I suffered a double frustration because I had carefully planned contributions for both meetings (there are as yet no meetings at Marxism focussing specifically on autism, although this year the Silberman book was on display – if anyone involved in the organisation the event is reading this please take this as a hint) and did not get to make either although I indicated clearly on both occasions.
AN OUTLINE OF THE UNMADE CONTRIBUTIONS
I had planned two different but linked contributions, each tailored to the specific meeting in question. For the first meeting, which focussed exclusively on campaigns My contribution would have covered the following:
- A full introduction mentioning my role at NAS West Norfolk and the fact that I am #actuallyautistic and giving details of this blog
- A skate through some of NAS West Norfolk’s activities including a brief mention of the Positive Autism Awareness Conference and the upcoming launch of adult activities and the inaugural Autism Awareness Cup.
- Finishing with an account of the campaign around the Fermoy unit and our role in it, emphasisng that the Fermoy remains open.
For Roddy’s meeting I would again have given a full introduction before going on to cover:
- The envisaged but not yet fully realized sequence of: Awareness – Understanding – Acceptance.
- Emphasised that autism is a condition not a disorder – it is not a malfunctiion, it is a different operating system .
- Might have produced the line ‘nothing about us without us’
- Planned to finish by emphasising that different is not a synonym for lesser.
I finish this section by re-emphasising that these were two excellent meetings.
THE LAST EVENING
I stayed fairly late after the end of the final meeting, and was delighted to make the acquaintance of several people involved in disability activism during this period.
aspiblog 