INTRODUCTION

I have a number of interesting links to share, along with thoughts and photographs of my own and solutions to my last set of puzzles.

AUTISM RELATED LINKS

My first link in this section is to a post titled “Why Is It Necessary To Intervene With The Natural Course Of Being Autistic” published on THE BULLSHIT FAIRY. Here is the most important section of the piece:

“Early” implies that there is a need to “catch” things early, before it progresses.

Autism is not a disease. It is not progressive. It just IS.

It is disrespectful because it ignores our own timing. Autism is a developmental disability and respecting that is important, instead of applying a neurotypical timeline of neurotypical milestones to neurodivergent children.

And while some aspects of occupational therapy and life skills can be beneficial, if there is no respect for each child’s timing, and if it is done in a manner that is compliance based/reward based, and if this is called “Early Intervention”, then it is just another name for ABA”

My next link is to thge early stages of wbhat looks set to be an excellent series of posts. Blogging Astrid is writing a series of posts about autism under the banner #Write31Days. I have two links for you:

• Her Landing Page which started the series and…
• Autism and Friendship

My next two links come from firebrightstarsoul and both concern education and autism:

• “Enough to break your heart” which deals with a school day which (due entirely to failings on the part of the school) went very badly wrong. I quote one paragraph, which comes near the end of the story:
  We were told we’d be given parent codes to log in to the school’s app so we could find her missing assignments and help her on the weekend until she’s caught up. She didn’t know where to even find this information on her laptop, and when she tried to tell the teacher she didn’t know what she was supposed to work on, the teacher smirked at her and dismissed her with the pithy remark, “I bet you do.”
• “The one-room school-house” which (unsurprisingly given the above) looks at the possibility of homeschooling. Here is a picture from this piece:
  

This section concludes with…

TWO SEGUE LINKS

My last two pieces in this section are at the intersect of autism and public transport. First, from the i newspaper comes a piece titled “Travelling as a disabled person: I have autism – it takes me days to recover from one Tube journey“, one of a series a pieces by members of campaigning group Transport for All being published there this week. Here is the image which heads the article:

Finally, a petition on the official site for petitioning the UK Parliament, which means that it is only open to UK citizens, calling for a necessary change to the PIP rules. Below is a screenshot link:

Please visit, sign and share.

LINKS RELATING TO RENATIONALISATION AND TRANSPORT

My first link in this section is to a piece on Vox Political titled “McDonnell States Labour Will Take Back Rail, Water, Energy and Royal Mail | Beastrabban\’s weblog” This excellent piece sets the stage for the rest of this section. Below is the single most important paragraph, by way of a tempter:

And if Labour does, as I fervently hope, renationalize those industries, I would very much like a form of workers’ control implemented in them. One reason why the Tories were able to privatize these industries was because, when Labour nationalized them after the Second World War, the party was too timid in the form nationalization took. The state took over the ownership of these industries, but otherwise left the existing management structures intact. This disappointed many trade unionists and socialists, who hoped that nationalization would mean that the people, who actually worked in these industries would also play a part in their management.

Since that piece was produced Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK has put up a post titled “The public want nationalisation because nationalisation makes sense” in response to a hand-wringing editorial in The Observer, which started from noting that a recent study had revealed the full extent of public support for renationalisation (water – 83% in favour, electricity and gas – 77% in favour andr railways – 76% in favour – leading the way) and went full-on Tory from there, regarding renationalisation as a bad thing and coming with ideas for how this ‘threat’ might be dealt with. Professor Murphy, like me, takes the opposite stand-point, and points out how flawed the Observer piece is. 

PHOTOGRAPHS 1

This set of photographs is of Lot 553 from the auction of Monday September 25th (see this post):

SOLUTIONS TO PUZZLES

The first of three puzzles I set that I have not yet provided answers to was a question from Triva Hive:

In which country is Europe’s only desert located?

a)Italy
b)Greece
c)Poland
d)Spain

I am sufficiently well informed about Italy, Greece and Spain that I was fairly sure that none of them is the answer. Thus, having ruled out the impossibles I was left withe one answer that however improbable must be the true one – Poland. The screenshot below shows that my Sherlockian approach to the question bore fruit:

The second puzzle was Abbot Fox‘s “street scramble”:

Unscrambling this gives “Pilling Park Road”, and the map below shows the location of said street:

The third problem came from brilliant and featured a treasure hunt. Below is the answer:

PHOTOGRAPHS

Just before I publish this and head out for a spot of ecotherapy and to top up the photo collection here are some non-tree pics from yesterday: