I did not mean to say that these men did a bad job at running the country directly because they are disabled. However I did and have withdrawn the comment as requested, and Roz has given me a chance to explain myself.
I'm prejudiced. I don't think that anyone can do anything they set their mind to, no matter how much effort they and others put into it. For most people, most of the time, this is not a problem; nor is it for anyone else, because the consequences of failure are relatively small (e.g. failing to break an athletic personal best, winning a game against a master practicioner). It also occurs relatively rarely if the person and whoever helps them (if anyone) applies themselves to the root of the problem. The old sexist saw that women make bad fire-fighters because they're "naturally" weaker and so can't pull people out of a burning building (still far too common to this day) has been circumvented by the greater adoption of carrying kit and a buddy system which gets more people out safely (including the fire-fighters).
The same applies to disabilities: most of them, most of the time, simply don't matter because there is nearly always a way for someone who's disabled in one way or another to achieve the same desired result as someone who isn't. I've done a lot of work on this in IT for over a decade: pointing out that she's got extra bits on her chair because otherwise she'll be feeling like she's got a red-hot wire running down her back all day, that the policy of everyone having the same desktop with the same font size may make the helpdesk's job easier and presents a good corporate image but it really doesn't help those with degenerating eyesight. And so on.
But I'm prejudiced, because I believe that eventually there is a limit. And now I get back to what I was trying to say earlier.
Tinnitus is hell. I get it sometimes. Jack Straw has it all the time. That's why he got all the flack about not allowing face veils in his surgery: he needs to see the lips of people who are speaking to get a good sense of what they're saying. It's a reasonable thing to ask, but all I recall from the press at the time was a load of bull about how he was anti-Muslim, which he isn't as far as I can tell.
Tinnitus is debilitating as well as disabling. You hear it all the time, there is no let-up, and with the best will in the world it will from time to time leave you stressed and annoyed because it will not leave you alone. And it's bloody difficult to give all your concentration on the job at hand while that's going on. If the job at hand is Home Secretary, well, make a bad decision and there will be bad consequences for a lot of people.
I've worked with blind, or near-blind, people. I'm not as crap at it as I once was: I think I've begun to understand what it's like. If you lose the visual part of a conversation, things can go horribly wrong if you don't know the speaker well (it's why teleconferencing isn't the way of the future we thought it once was). So your staff and your PAs, your Cabinet colleagues, you get to know what's going on with them. More or less the same for the opposition, you hear them often enough. You might not trust them, but you grok them.
However, there are a lot more people outside that comfortable zone than in it, and the clues to their intentions in their speech aren't as easy to work out. You don't grok them, and that can lead to untrust.
And none of this is a good place to be if you have to run a country. In these cases, I don't think it was an excuse for their decisions and their attitudes towards the public. It was, however, a reason, a contributing factor: not the greatest, not all the time, but it was there.
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On disability and ability
Date: 2010-05-11 10:43 pm (UTC)I'm prejudiced. I don't think that anyone can do anything they set their mind to, no matter how much effort they and others put into it. For most people, most of the time, this is not a problem; nor is it for anyone else, because the consequences of failure are relatively small (e.g. failing to break an athletic personal best, winning a game against a master practicioner). It also occurs relatively rarely if the person and whoever helps them (if anyone) applies themselves to the root of the problem. The old sexist saw that women make bad fire-fighters because they're "naturally" weaker and so can't pull people out of a burning building (still far too common to this day) has been circumvented by the greater adoption of carrying kit and a buddy system which gets more people out safely (including the fire-fighters).
The same applies to disabilities: most of them, most of the time, simply don't matter because there is nearly always a way for someone who's disabled in one way or another to achieve the same desired result as someone who isn't. I've done a lot of work on this in IT for over a decade: pointing out that she's got extra bits on her chair because otherwise she'll be feeling like she's got a red-hot wire running down her back all day, that the policy of everyone having the same desktop with the same font size may make the helpdesk's job easier and presents a good corporate image but it really doesn't help those with degenerating eyesight. And so on.
But I'm prejudiced, because I believe that eventually there is a limit. And now I get back to what I was trying to say earlier.
Tinnitus is hell. I get it sometimes. Jack Straw has it all the time. That's why he got all the flack about not allowing face veils in his surgery: he needs to see the lips of people who are speaking to get a good sense of what they're saying. It's a reasonable thing to ask, but all I recall from the press at the time was a load of bull about how he was anti-Muslim, which he isn't as far as I can tell.
Tinnitus is debilitating as well as disabling. You hear it all the time, there is no let-up, and with the best will in the world it will from time to time leave you stressed and annoyed because it will not leave you alone. And it's bloody difficult to give all your concentration on the job at hand while that's going on. If the job at hand is Home Secretary, well, make a bad decision and there will be bad consequences for a lot of people.
I've worked with blind, or near-blind, people. I'm not as crap at it as I once was: I think I've begun to understand what it's like. If you lose the visual part of a conversation, things can go horribly wrong if you don't know the speaker well (it's why teleconferencing isn't the way of the future we thought it once was). So your staff and your PAs, your Cabinet colleagues, you get to know what's going on with them. More or less the same for the opposition, you hear them often enough. You might not trust them, but you grok them.
However, there are a lot more people outside that comfortable zone than in it, and the clues to their intentions in their speech aren't as easy to work out. You don't grok them, and that can lead to untrust.
And none of this is a good place to be if you have to run a country. In these cases, I don't think it was an excuse for their decisions and their attitudes towards the public. It was, however, a reason, a contributing factor: not the greatest, not all the time, but it was there.