This post comes from The Art of Autism, altough on this occasion I am keeping comments open here. It is a superb explanation of life on the spectrum.
This wonderful post from The Art of Autsim can be viewed in its original niche by clicking here. I have also reproduced it below:
Although I do not usually do so when sharing other people’s work I am on this occasion keeping comments open here.
A fabulous video showing a jaguar catching itself a jumbo sized meal.
This is a wonderful video first brought to my attention by Why Evolution Is True:
An initial to response too a couple of excellent ideas brought to my attention by a tweet from John McDonnell MP. Please share widely.
This post comes from a tweet by shadow chancellor John McDonnell:
I am supporting call for Labour to develop an Autism Manifesto and appoint a Shadow Minister for Neurodiversity & will consult on details.
— John McDonnell MP (@johnmcdonnellMP) May 13, 2016
It will not surprise anyone that I am in full agreement with Mr McDonnell about the excellence of the ideas mentioned above. While I have a few ideas as what an Autism Manifesto should prioritise, most notably doing something about the shameful statistics relating to Autistic people and employment in this country. 75% of all adults on the autistic spectrum in this country are unemployed, while good portion of those in employment are in low paid and/ or part time work – 85% of us are classed as ‘underemployed’.
More important however than the precise details of the Autism Manifesto (at least to me) is the question of who will be involved in creating it. While I am not arguing for the exclusion of neurotypicals from this process (never in a million years) I do repeat the autistic person’s mantra:
We must be involved in this process, and I conclude this section by saying to Mr McDonnell: if you are prepared to involve people from outside your party you are welcome to contact me.
Again, an excellent idea. For similar reasons to those mentioned above in connection with the idea of an Autism Manifesto I would prefer if possible the the holder of this post be someone who is themselves neurodiverse. Other than that I have no further comments to make as yet, although you can expect me to revisit the themes of this brief post in future.
An account with links to the three source pieces of the vile abuse of Chris Packham by the pro-hunting lobby and his dignified response to it.
I live with Asperger’s Syndrome, have previously had mental health issues including depression and am a nature lover. Chris Packham presents nature programs on TV, has Asperger’s Syndrome and has had mental health problems. Mr Packham has recently gone public about his Asperger’s and depression, and this is where the story starts…
Yesterday morning Hunting Solutions put out the following tweet, quoted in his own piece immediately after it had happened by Miles King on anewnatureblog:
This tweet was retweeted by Nicholas Soames, a politician whose own party leader has spoken of the need to end the stigma attached to mental health. As Miles King points out, given the hysterical reaction to Naz Shah having liked an offensive facebook post before she became an MP, you might think that this could cause more trouble for the party concerned. When Miles King challenged Soames about the retweet, rather than attempting to defend himself Soames blocked King. Please follow the link I provided near the top of this section and read that post in full before proceeding.
Chris Packham provided what was in the circumstances a remarkably restrained response in the form of an interview that was published on Huffington Post, which I urge you to read in full.
Miles King on anewnatureblog returned to the fray this morning because Hunting Solutions had provided a response of sorts. As this image, taken from the Miles King piece, which I urge to read in full shows it was exactly what we might expect from these people:
This is classic victim blaming of the sort that Tories specialize in. I will conclude this section with my own comments on Miles King’s posts which I once more urge you to read in full:
As someone with Asperger’s Syndrome and who has experience of depression I am in no doubt that the both the original tweet and Soames’ retweet were bang out of order, and in the continuing absence of an apology there is no doubt to give these people the benefit of. The use of the word “nutjob” in the context Mr Packham having recently gone public about his Asperger’s and depression is reminiscent of the the prolonged series of smears that functioned (thankfully and deservedly very badly) as Zac Goldsmith’s London Mayoral campaign.
And Miles’ response to that comment:
thanks Thomas – a good analogy. The hunting community, feeling threatened, are resorting to a smear campaign against high profile people like Chris Packham.
My comment on the second post:
Excellent follow up piece. I would take your reasoning re the comments about foxhunting being psychopathic a small step further and say that for true equivalence between the remarks Packham would have to labelled not just foxhunters as a group (which as you point out he did not) but an individual named foxhunter as a psychopath. As for the ‘if he hadn’t criticised us we would not have said it’ “defense”, that is simply another example of a favourite tactic of these kind of people – victim blaming.
I conclude this post with some photos…
A contribution to the developing story of the Tory election expenses scandal. I provide three links to detailed accounts of the story so far and make a brief mention of an old case that relates to this subject.
This is a story that has been running for months. As well as the Electoral Commission’s involvement, nine different police forces are investigating various MPs. In this post I will provide links to three versions of the story (all tally closely, and all are from national newspapers) and then quote a case from the past which indicates how seriously this kind of thing has been viewed.
Here are the three links:
This case is almost a century old (I read the details in Iain Wilton’s “C B Fry: An English Hero”, where it featured because Fry was involved in the subsequent by-election). The culprit was Frank Gray’s election agent, who played fast and loose with campaign finances. Gray was as shocked as anyone when he found out what had been going on, and held his hands up. The judge in this case while praising Gray for his honesty and co-operation still considered it necessary to debar Gray from seeking public office for a period of seven years.
I never like to put up posts without a picture, so here (with apologies to any such creatures who take offence at being associated however loosely with Tory MPs) is a snail from this morning…
A wonderful video from The Mighty.
A excellent video from the folks at The Mighty on stimming…
As this first appeared on facebook and not all my followers use facebook I am keeping comments open even though this is not my own work.
A celebration of the fifth anniversary of aspiblog – read, enjoy and please share!
What does the title of this post refer to? Here, courtesy of Robert Harris, backed by Edgar Allan Poe is a clue:
The special significance of lustrum in the sense of a five-year period to aspiblog is that today is the fifth anniversary of aspiblog. To view the post that started it all on May 10th 2011 click here.
There are many approaches to blogging. Some blogs deal almost entirely in original content, some blogs are devoted principally to sharing stuff created by others, and some like this one are a mixture of the two. I create new posts such as this when I feel I have stuff to write about and/or enough good pictures to warrant creating a post to share them.
Sharing can be done in various ways. There is the “Links” section was has been a frequent feature of this blog, which enables one to share lots of stuff in a single post. Other wordpress posts can be reblogged, and some other posts not on wordpress allow one the option of ‘pressing’ a link on to a wordpress blog (I have a ‘press this’ tool for my wordpress hosted London transport themed website www.londontu.be to enable me to post links to interesting and appropriate articles). This morning I used the press this button on Richard Murphy’s Tax Research UK blog to post a link to a piece of his speculating on the prospect of Mr Osborne being reshuffled into obscurity on June 24th and took some screen shots along the way to illustrate the process:
This blog features many things, but there are several recurring themes:
I spent yesterday listening to commentary of the fascinating match between Somerset and Warwickshire. While elsewhere in the country vast numbers of runs were being racked up this match was low scoring, and the better for it. The big scoring that has been such a feature of this early season is partly due to a daft playing condition introduced into the county championship whereby the visiting side can dispense with the toss if they wish to bowl first. This has resulted in a succession of pitches on which batsmen can fill their boots. There is no logic to such a playing condition – if you want to absolutely ensure that home teams cannot prepare pitches to suit themselves simply get rid of the toss altogether and award choice of innings to the visitors, although I would personally stick to having a toss for innings. If, as currently seems likely, Somerset win, they will owe it in large part to Peter Trego who in a low scoring game has amassed 94 and 51.
I heard while listening to that commentary yesterday that there are going be matches played between the North and South to give the best county players a chance to play in matches of higher standard than normal county games, taking place in the UAE in March, before the MCC v Champion County match, which I think is an excellent idea.
I have three links to share:
First, a petition on change.org calling for a statue of a suffragette to be erected in Parliament Square, which I urge all of you to sign and share.
My next two links are both related and concern a subject close to my heart: libraries. Libraries in many parts of the country are facing cuts, and one of the areas affected is Lancashire. A campaign is running to save their libraries, and they have recently created a bit of a stir by telling their MP to stay out of it, such is their (entirely justified) lack of trust in the individual concerned. Two links for you:
No aspiblog post would be complete without a few pictures, and I choose to finish with this section…
Finally to end this post a message to all my readers, and fellow bloggers who have helped to inspire me to keep this blog going…
Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK raises an interesting possibility…
A mention of politics, cricket and summer being here. Some good photographs as well.
I have various things to cover, and of course pictures to share. I will work up to the pictures, covering everything else first…
The only vote I was able to take part in was for Norfolk Police & Crime Commissioner, and although disappointed that it went the way of the Tory (by a small margin from Labour) I was pleased to see the incumbent, Mr Bett, finish a humiliating fourth.
The news from these was nearly all good. Sadiq Khan won with a record vote for any candidate in any London Mayoral election. This has probably had the added beneficial effect of ensuring that no further campaigns will be conducted under the malign influence of Sir Lizard of Oz (yes, even as the latest effort to be besmirched by his dirty pawprints was unravelling in spectacular fashion Mr Cameron was orchestrating a knighthood for him) aka Linton Crosby. Sian Berry was rewarded for the excellence of her own campaign with third place, a record vote for a Green candidate and election to the Greater London Assembly along with Caroline Russell, while Shahrar Ali just missed out on becoming a third Green GLA member.
In the first set of elections since Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader his party won 47% of the council seats contested while also succeeding in in two mayoral elections (Bristol as well as London) and two by-elections. For comparison during the first set of elections contested after the election as leader of Anthony B Liar Labout won 46% of the council seats contested, while in those days there were no mayoral elections.
The English cricket season is well under way, with some heavy scoring going on all over the country. May 9th 1895 was the day on which W G Grace played his first first class innings of that season, and just 21 days later he reached 1,000 runs for the season, the first time that feat had been achieved in May (the strict 1,000 in May has since been emulated only by Wally Hammond and Charlie Hallows, although Tom Hayward, Don Bradman (twice), Bill Edrich, Glenn Turner and Graeme Hick all reached 1,000 for the English season before June, having played some innings in April).
After a somewhat patchy spring, summer appears to have started early. For the second straight day I am in shorts and t-shirt. Here are some summery photographs to end the post (in tiled mosic form – click on an individual to view at full size)…
An account of today at work, featuring the creation of a poster, a laminated copy of which is on display in our shop window at 5 Norwich Street, Fakenham, NR21 9AF
Today as well as producing the poster which forms the first part of the title I did some more postal history imaging and imaged
a couple of lots for a small militaria sale in which i have otherwise had no involvement. Also, I assembled a metal detector for display in the shop.
The purpose of this poster was to advertise the hats and helmets I blogged about yesterday. This required selecting the images which would work best, getting brief descriptions of the items chosen to feature and fitting the whole together in a visually appealing way. The three images I selected were:
I went for the white helmet to provide a contrast withe dark colour of the other two. Putting these together with the descriptions and appropriate top and tail pieces gave this final product:
POLICE HEADGEAR AT JAMES – this is a link to the original word document – a screenshot is below…
Just a few images from today…
aspiblog 