Wheelchair vs buggy

This January the Supreme Court of UK has ruled that bus companies must end first come first served policies and do more to accommodate wheelchair users.

Wheelchair user boarding a bus. 

 Source: http://www.rica.org.uk/content/buses

Disabled activist Doug Paulley from West Yorkshire brought his case after he was denied access to a bus in 2012, when a mother with a pushchair refused to make space for him and the driver did nothing to force her to move.

It has not been a straightforward journey, though. Doug Paulley’s appeal, which has been funded by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, was upheld after the successful county court case outcome against FirstGroup in 2013 had been overturned by the court of appeal the following year.

                                                                

 “It has been amazing the amount of support that I have had of so many people, disabled people, organisations, lawyers, families, LAs. This hopefully is going to make a major difference to disabled people’s travels”, said Mr. Paulley. 

A ruling on the case is expected before the end of 2017 and the brave traveller hopes that the Supreme Court will finally make the right legal and moral decision that supports the major objective of social inclusion for physically impaired people who are too often left in distress while travelling:

 “Not all the justices agreed (…). There was a significant disagreement on some details (…). What this judgment means is that the drivers have to make their own decision as to whether or not the person has been unreasonable in refusing to move. If they are, the driver has to tell them they are required to shift and if necessary refuse to continue the journey until they move over”.

Wheelchair and mobility scooter-users are highly dependent on buses to get around and while a buggy can be easily folded, the same solution does not apply to wheelchairs, especially when the disabled passengers are travelling alone.

Those who are physically impaired face challenges while travelling in London, too.   
Insufficient wheelchair-friendly transport is a widespread problem in the capital, where only few tube stations have step-free access. 

The Transport for London (TFL) website reads: “Around a quarter of Tube stations, half of Overground stations, most piers, all tram stops, the Emirates Air Line and all DLR stations have step-free access”.  

However, some of these stations still have a gap and step between the platform and the train.

Season's Greetings

Image: http://wondrouspics.com/seasons-greetings-2/

As we near the end of 2016 and look to the New Year, I want to say a massive thank you for visiting my blog and enjoying the monthly stories. I hope you will all continue reading “All around UK” in the months and years to come. 

Wishing all of you a very Merry Christmas and a Wonderful 2017.

Deny, Deny, Deny

From right to left: Eve (J. Sharkah) and Joyce (S. Marks) are facing fierce 
competition and challenges. Source: https://www.parktheatre.co.uk

Deny, Deny, Deny is Jonathan Maitland’s five-handed drama on professional athletes taking performance-enhancing drugs.

The story is set in the future and Eve (Juma Sharkah) is an ambitious sprinter who has come to Shepherd’s Bush in London from a deprived background in Sierra Leone, to win gold at the 2028 Boston Olympics.

She is already a rising star, ranked 58^th in the running, and to raise her game Eve switches to an unscrupulous and incredible results-achieving coach called Rona (Zoë Waites), who targets the athlete’s vulnerability and encourages her towards a radical gene therapy treatment: a form of DNA refashioning that leaves no detectable traces of toxins in the bloodstream.

Eve will become the world’s first genetically modified athlete.

Throughout the process, Rona pits Eve against rival runner Joyce (Shvorne Marks) and progressively gets her to dump Tom (Daniel Fraser), her sport journalist boyfriend.  

The transformation does not only affect her personal life, though.  Despite Rona’s promise that injecting RNA drugs is as innocuous as drinking orange juice, Eve can no longer see the colour green once the drugs take hold.  In addition, her eyes start glazing with robotic intensity during the second act of the play.

Eventually the athlete will succeed.  However, is it worth crossing ethical lines in order to cross winning lines?

The final scene between Tom and Eve may answer to the question by clearly showing the human cost of Eve’s overriding ambition.  She is now a coach herself and has not seen Tom for several years.  

Interesting in Maitland’s play is the set design of a rectangular sports arena with the audience on all four sides, while the lighting transforms the arena itself into a running track. 

Through short and dynamic scenes the author paints a saddening portrait of a world in which you are only cheating if you are found to do so.  

The anti-doping enquiry towards the end of the play, which is conducted quite informally, sees Rona shouting abuse and proclaiming that cheating is a nationalised industry.

The coach also emphasises:  

“Where there is no doubt, there is no progress.

“Some of the greatest things in life happen when we cross the line”.

It is in the court scene that Sarah Finigan, who plays various characters throughout the play, brings new energy and the way she challenges ruthless Rona is cause for reflection.

Deny, Deny, Deny is a tale of ambition, love and jealousy which runs at the Park Theatre until December 3.

Full stop to sexual harassment at school

Sexual harassment at school
Source: www.demandthechange.wordpress.com

Compulsory anti-grooming lessons could soon be held in schools all over the UK.

Labour’s shadow Women and Equalities minister Sarah Champion put forward proposals to ensure sex and relationship education sessions take place in academies, free schools and new grammar schools for pupils aged 5 and above.

Under the current UK curriculum, in fact, only sexual health education is mandatory and from Year 7 onwards, while teaching young people about relationships and sexual consent is not.

The move follows publication of a worrying 64-page report from the Women and Equalities Committee. 
The document, which was made public in September, contains striking statistics: almost a third of female students aged 16-18 has experienced unwanted sexual touching in schools across England (2010 data), while 59 per cent of girls and women aged 13-21 has faced some form of sexual harassment at school or college in 2014.

Sexual violence, which can also be visual or verbal, undermines the self-esteem and confidence of its victims and therefore cannot be taken lightly. 

The House of Commons document has been an opportunity for MPs to highlight an alarming inconsistency in how schools deal with sexual harassment and violence, reason why educational institutions are urged to collect and publish data on reports of such crimes, while the police should record the incidents they investigate.

More specifically, MPs heard evidence that many institutes are either under-reporting incidents or failing to take them seriously and stressed that the Government should give schools national guidance on how to tackle the issue, while Ofsted should follow by assessing how well they are recording, monitoring, preventing and responding to incidents of harassment and violence.

Parents interviewed during the investigations seemed to agree on what the House of Commons declared and reported lack of proper and quick action by schools.

Teachers have however answered by stressing that children and teenagers spend most of their time outside school and even though parents sometimes struggle to spot how they can best support their progeny, tackling sexual harassment is not a straightforward task for teachers either. Tutors are often overwhelmed by long lists of targets to meet and paperwork to complete and need better support and guidance to make change happen.

Moreover, a culture of internet and pornography can play a role in the problem and being boys and young men an important part of the solution, Government should tackle the ‘lad culture’ since primary school.

Ms Champion's proposals could be the beginning of a new approach to fight sexual harassment and violence at school, according to the priciple that educational institutions should always be safe and empowering places to stay.