You may not have realised, but Rachel and I have now been happily married for nearly seven months. Yes, you read right, seven months. Amazing how time flies, doesn’t it?
For those of you who are keen to see the wedding photographs, all the ones taken by our official photographer, Jon Perkin, can be found here. If you’d like copies of any of these photos, simply add them to a shopping basket and purchase them. The smallest size pictures are 20p each, and they’ll be delivered to your door.
A Sign Language petition was set up on the Number 10 Petitions website, recently set up to encourage e-petitions to the Prime Minster’s Office. The petition was as follows:
“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Introduce the teaching of British Sign Language in all UK schools.”
Details of petition:
“I can think of fewer more useful skills to teach someone than a new way of communicating, unhindered by ambient noise. Think trying to order drinks in a noisy bar, trying to hold a conversation on a train station platform with a freight train rumbling through. Of course it would also make life easier for people who rely on sign language as their primary mode of non-written communication.”
It closed on 21 February 2007, with 5,011 one signatures, enough to garner a response from the Prime Minster’s Office, as follows:
We recognise the tremendous value of British Sign Language (BSL) in helping hard of hearing pupils throughout their educational careers.
The National Curriculum, however, has been developed carefully over the years to provide young people with an entitlement to the essential knowledge and skills that will equip them for success in further education or training and in the world of work. It is important that the National Curriculum should offer a broad and balanced education, but we must avoid over-prescription of what is taught and leave sufficient time and space for schools to personalise their offer to address individual needs and aptitudes. The balance we now have is the result of extensive consultation and trialling but it is not fixed for all time and we will continue to monitor and review curriculum content at intervals to ensure that it still meets the needs of all young people.
The secondary National Curriculum is currently being reviewed in order to reduce prescription still further and to create more freedom for teachers to use their professional judgement in designing subject curricula. Across the whole of our 14-19 reform agenda we are developing further opportunities for young people to exercise choice about what they study and how, with the introduction of diplomas, apprenticeships and so on. In this context, we do not feel it would be appropriate to introduce a new statutory requirement to teach British Sign Language in all schools.
It is also worth noting that the National Curriculum does not represent all the teaching that goes on in schools. Teachers are free to introduce other experiences and subjects if they wish to do so, as long as they are also meeting the statutory requirements of the National Curriculum. The SEN and Disability Act, which was introduced in September 2002, means that more disabled children are now learning in mainstream schools, where that is what their parents want. This means that schools are developing a greater understanding of the needs of disabled people and in some schools this may well lead to teachers deciding to offer sign language to help ensure a child with a hearing impairment is fully included in school life.
In conclusion therefore, it is right that schools should have the opportunity to teach BSL but we would not wish to specify that it must be taught to all pupils. We believe rather that this should remain a matter for schools to decide in view of their own local, and possibly more pressing, needs.
In relation to this response, I have a number of points to make.
In summary, kids these days are being so taught so many things, that there simply isn’t enough room to include BSL on the National Curriculum. This is just another typical wishy-washy statement form the Government, that doesn’t even attempt to address the issues here.
Bring on the BSL Act. We’ll see what the PM’s Office says about it then.
There have been a number of articles published about Daphne Wright here and here
There are some arguments circulating that because Wright is deaf, she shouldn’t be given the death penalty. Others say that she should be treated the same as everyone else.
Background
If Daphne Wright, 43, is convicted, jurors will be asked to sentence her to death by lethal injection in the slaying of Darlene VanderGiesen, 42.
VanderGiesen disappeared on Feb. 1, 2006. Wright was arrested 10 days later after a search of the basement of her Sioux Falls house yielded bone fragments and tissue that matched DNA samples from VanderGiesen’s toothbrush, according to court papers and testimony.
Parts of VanderGiesen’s body were later found in the Sioux Falls landfill and in a ditch near Beaver Creek, Minn.
In a videotaped police interview shown at an earlier hearing, Wright said she and VanderGiesen had fought weeks earlier because Wright, a lesbian, suspected VanderGiesen of trying to break up her relationship with another woman.
An autopsy determined that VanderGiesen was killed by either suffocation or a blow to the head. ((Detroit Free Press))
Arguments against the death penalty
The Defense (sic) has put forward arguments to the court specifying that Wright should not be sentenced to death should she be found guilty of the crimes committed. Note that the trial hasn’t yet started in earnest; jury selection is currently in progress, and is expected to take up to two weeks.
Court papers filed by Daphne Wright’s lawyers say that people who’ve been deaf since early childhood have severely limited vocabularies and a hard time understanding English. The lawyers call this an “information gap” that “produces a subtle, though highly significant cognitive deficit.” As a result, Wright’s lawyers argue it would be impossible for her to understand the legal process of her trial and therefore, she would be unable to defend herself in a death penalty hearing ((Keloland.com)).
browneyedgirl65 took issue with this argument, stating: “This is insane … whatever her state is, it’s not her deafness that is causing it … If she has psychological issues that prevent her from clearly understanding whatever it is she has done, that can be used instead of raising the old deaf=stupid canard” ((What’s that you said?)).
I would be inclined to agree with browneyedgirl; I object to any Deaf person using their Deafness as an excuse for anything, in the same way I object to a person’s successful attempt to reduce the cost of a ski lift pass using his Deafness as the reason. If Wright is as intelligent, coherent and fully understands the events unfolding around her, then she just because she is Deaf doesn’t mean she can escape the death penalty.
There are suggestions that the provision of ASL interpreters will not be sufficient to ensure that Wright is in full understanding of the whole judicial/criminal process. I disagree. If Wright does not have any issues relating to her mental health, and her only issue is that she is Deaf, then provided there are suitably qualified ASL interpreters during the trial and subsequent appeals, then she should be treated as a hearing person would.
The death penalty
I would like to stress that, despite the above comments, I am opposed to the death penalty. Having recently read The Innocent Man by John Grisham, I now further convinced that the death penalty is wrong. Why? Simply because if a person is in fact innocent, and they are put to death, then it’s too late to acquit them. Also, what of the commandment: “Thou shalt not kill”. It’s not ok to kill people, but it’s ok to execute them? That doesn’t make sense. Particularly as the USA has such strong religious faith; you’d think they’d be following the Ten Commandments.
On 29 January 2007, I became the proud (joint) owner of a brand new Toyota Yaris Zinc D4D. I actually passed my driving test on 19 May 1998, and up to this point, had never bought a car, preferring to spend my money on university-related costs.
Now that I’ve moved home permanently, and Rachel’s Ford Fiesta was getting on a bit (5 years this year), we decided to buy a new car, and so we did.
We’ve called the car “Yarry” (although I prefer “Inky”), and I absolutely love driving it. Despite being a small car, it is very spacious inside, and it has all the mod cons; power steering, electric windows, AC, alloy wheels, CD player. It is a metallic eclipse black colour. The engine it has, a 1.4 diesel, is equivalent to a 1.6 petrol, so it is quite a powerful car to drive.
Oh yes, and it is an environmentally-friendly car. It’s CO2 emissions are so low that the car tax is only £50 per year!
There have been numerous photos blogged to the world of the eclipse that happened in the UK today. Here’s my contribution.
