Late Capitalism, Globalisation, Easter, Covid 19 and all that.

I am running out of things to say about the current situation, but late Capitalism and Globalisation shares part of the blame for both its spread and the failure of Go vernments and Economies to cope.

One of the prime culprits is the just in time paradigm of supplying both components for industry and food to our supermarkets. Information technology and rapid transport of goods around the world has facilitated this, and it seemed like a good economy at the time as space was not required in superfluous warehouses along with the staff to maintain them, through times of shortage. Well it ain’t so any more, and the extra demand of people stocking up for lengthy lockdowns, and the health service increasing the demand for PPE and specialist equipment has shown this up most readily.

The other consequence of this has been exacerbated by Governments failure to plan for such emergencies and to maintain essential supplies of medical equipment. Back during the cold war when nuclear annihilation, chemical and bacteriological warfare seemed real possibilities there were such stock piles in the anticipation of massive  injuries and disease pandemics.  With the false peace benefit of the Gorbachev era, much of this was sold off on the surplus markets, and what remained expired a natural death. Nobody thought it was necessary anymore. No excuses though because the prevalence of national emergencies due to climate change, ie extreme weather events like floods and hurricanes, and the knowledge that sooner or later there would be a pandemic (and now indeed there is) have proved this to be as false an economy as Capitalism resort to the lazy Just in time policy I have described in the paragraph above.

Learn we must or perish we shall. I mean it is not as if the warnings were not engrained in our Western/Middle Eastern cultural history, with the dreams of Joseph and the plagues of Egypt which Jews and Christians both remember at this time, with the hope that the Angel of Death passes over. Well if you want the Angel of Death to pass over, you have to make the right precautions and preparations.

Lies, Trump lies and COVID 19 statistics

We may  (if you are in the same bubble as me) know that Donald Trump is the extreme so far as believing whatever suits his ego, however we do all need to be aware of two things at this time of disinformation, incomplete information and too much information.

First: confirmation bias. As stated psychological research indicates that we tend to be selective in our evidence when it comes to seeking confirmation of our pre existing ideas. At this time people are looking for signs of hope “new shoots” whilst others are seeking to alarm. The evidence itself maybe neutral but what we do with it, is not.

Second: unreliability of statistics, apples and pears in the same basket. It is clear that statistics regarding the pandemic are kept differently in different legislations, in some cases it may be deliberate suppression, in others it may be a lack of apparatus to collect reliable statistics as we have seen with the variable rates of testing around the world. Hospital admissions cannot be relied upon either in a world where there is an uneven distribution of hospitals, they will be higher in those States with a more advanced Health Service.

Even crude mortality statistics are unreliable, as there are a variety of ways to interrogate them. Do they record people who died from the virus or with the virus? Again that is going to be subject to the human element, the opinion of the doctor who signed a certificate.  We have also seen in the UK that there is inaccurate reporting because of delays in reporting a death.

We will never know for sure even when it is long over, as figures and the conclusions drawn from them can only ever be an estimate within certain confidence levels. One thing is for sure, it will take as long as it takes for a vaccine before we have the leisure to sort out the jumble of figures we are getting now.

More lessons from COVID19

You have to be careful what you write not to add more to the mass of disinformation, so this is basically comment and observation on the political aspects of all this.

Our leader of the opposition Jeremy Corbyn has stated to the Prime Minister Boris Johnson, that much of the emergency action he is taking to mitigate the economy and protect workers is coming out of the last Labour Manifesto, the one which the voters rejected.

At times of crisis Socialism and strong Government intervention is the only way as it has been previously in wartime. The economy has to be directed towards the production of essential goods and the supply of essential foods. In wartime the Government would be paying a huge conscript army, now they are having to pay people to stay at home.

Elements of commerce, such as Richard Branson (Virgin), and Tim Martin (Wetherspoons) and Mike Ashley (Sports direct) don’t like it, but they and many others have been the robber barons of commerce, accumulating smaller companies, and behaving in a generally socially irresponsible manner to there workforce.  They won’t escape, the virus is for everybody, it is a very democratic virus.

What we have seen is Governments take strong and unprecedented action to close down non essential industries, restrict travel abroad and at home because of a very real and present emergency.

I hope that after this has passed, (and it will) they can learn from this, that they can act just as strongly against the biggest danger of all, climate change.

Lessons from COVID 2019

I had practically forgotten this blog exists, so rarely have I used it in longer than recent time, however events prompt me to put a few scribblings out, which I think deserve a bit more posterity and presence than Facebook ephemera does.

Whilst the corona virus call it what you will (the name is a product of linguistic hegemony and social construction anyway) has caught Governments and Society off guard, it is an entirely natural phenomenon, and in the scheme of things inevitable given the concentration of populations, and travel patterns led by easy availability of cheap air travel. The encroachment of human society on the animal world has also made this more possible.

What it has done, apart from revealing some of the worst of human herd behaviour, has forced Governments into recognition that they do not control the waves as it were. Eventually they will all be forced into taking similar actions because that is what circumstances demand. The fact that here in the UK and elsewhere popular institutions have acted before Governments as a means of logical self preservation shows that ultimately Government is a reflection of society rather than a model or leader of it.

Anthropologists and Sociologists will be loving this, and although there is already a flurry of self publishing and blogs like this, the long term studies and books will be written when academia settles back into normality, probably with a technological shift which has been quickened by the events, just as wars have led to changes in industrial process and ultimately led to health reform in the form of socialised medicine.

Capitalism has been dealt a blow, make no mistake, look at the stock exchange that outdated and artificial barometer of capital that represents the triumph of notional financial capital over real fixed capital, supply and demand etc.  Panic buying instincts have led to there own market adjustments as wholesale retail recognises that there are physical limits to supply and therefore take rational (reasonable rationing) action.

Maybe this may signal the decline of populist governments as the blustering  demogogues prove to be as powerless as the mythical King Canute’s episode with the waves. (Ironically Canute ruled the waves rather well as the King of a mighty trans European sea power)

As Alec Douglas Home once said in answer to his political critics “events, dear boy, events”

National Autistic Taskforce

Life of late has had its ups and downs, and I have certainly been feeling both precarious and gloomy with the shortening days.

However there are some exceptions, and earlier this week I was in London, for the launch of an important new project called the National Autism Taskforce at the House of Lords no less.

My colleague and fellow Birmingham Alumnus Damian Milton sums up the aims in his speech here.

Why it is of so much importance to me, as although this might not be the first Autistic led project out there, we have had Autscape since 2005 and there was ANI at least a decade before that, is because this is the first that I am aware of which has had it's launch in such an auspicious public setting, with members of the NAS and Autistica present as well as well as politicians so nobody can pretend to be unaware of us. We are not hidden behind the curtains any more.

It was also good to see Professor Emeritus Rita Jordan there from Birmingham, another old sparring partner as it were from my first days at Birmingham back in 2002 (so long ago now).

Dinah Murray is also a key figure, without whom this would not have happened, undoubtedly one of the key figures in the history of Autism in the UK who recieved a well deserved lifetimes award from the NAS this year.

I also think we have to thank Dame Steve Shirley who might seem to be an unlikely figure in this, given the way things stood a decade or so back. I can remember however hearing her speak about her attitude to funding and wanting to see concrete results from whatever she was investing her charitable funds into, and in that respect she has not changed, which is why it is so gratifying that she is funding this project, led by a group of Autistic people who are not known for not being "neurodivertistas" who are certainly not going to give any ideological ground on the goal which we are seeking, which amongst other things is to bring the Government and agencies to account for the shocking failure to implement a set of policies which have been built into law, which are supposed to safeguard vulnerable autistic people, who have lacked the advantages and access to advocacy that they should have had.

So it is not a project about us, it is a project about what we can do with our expertise and knowlege to make real changes.

Yes Tuesday 12th of December 2017 was a very important day for Autism and I am as chuffed as the proverbial bowl of badger fat to be a part of it.

The world of the 1990's

I am a bit of a sucker for buying second hand textbooks from the charity shops, you can usually pick up something that might not be the latest edition, but certainly costs you a lot less than the present edition would. I picked up a couple today on psychology.  I should have checked the publication dates of one of them a bit more carefully however. It is called "The Handbook of Clinical Adult Psychology, second edition" I will not embarras the editors by naming them. Its date of publication is 1994. I guess it only serves as a historical artefact showing the state of play at that time.  It is not irrelevant though, as a perusal of the index has not one mention of autism or asperger's syndrome anywhere. I was eventually diagnosed in 1999, but it shows you pretty much why I did not recieve a diagnosis in earlier adulthood, it just was not on the horizon of most clinical psychologists.

I was in fact diagnosed by a clinical psychologist not a psychiatrist, and that was at my own insistence at the time. For various reasons my GP had wanted to send me for psychiatric evaluation (being himself a part time psychiatric consultant) I managed to sidestep that by suggesting that I should be evaluated elsewhere for possible asperger's syndrome. The cynic in me suspects he only agreed to that to "humour me" figuring that eventually he would be able to slap a neat little psychosis on me by default (as you do). Turns out I struck lucky though, and the clinical psychologist who evaluated me, had been trained by Digby Tantum, who prior to his move "oop north" had been collecting street lamp numbers at Warwick University.

However to get back to the point, the text book shows that for the most part asperger's and autism was not even on the street map until the very end of the nineties.

In 2002 I met the man who had been largely responsible for getting asperger's syndrome in the the American Psychiatrist's Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. editon four. I say met, but it was more like I confronted him. After he had given his presentation, he called me aside, and I expected he was going to give me a going over, for having interupted his presentation with my objections and questions, but instead we settled down to a long conversation about our respective viewpoints. I don't know if it was an education to him, but it was to me, especially so far as the workings of the DSM go.

DSMIV has come and gone since, and the guy is now in a minority, as asperger's syndrome did not make it to the next edition. I amongst many others submitted a paper to the consultation process and for whatever others might think about the outcome, I was pleased that it went the way I had wanted, and left poor Fred Volkmar (for it was he who I had conversed with in 2002) in the shade somewhat.  But you know that is psychiatric politics. Having this time had the privelege in 2014 to be a presenter myself for the UK launch of DSM talking about the impact of diagnosis on me.  Again co presenter Cathy Lord also mentioned the politics behind the scenes and why asperger's syndrome gets "grandfathered in" under the general heading of Autistic Spectrum Disorder.

Well fast forward back to 2017 and I have my doctorate as "academic without portfolio" now. One of those awkward autistic academics who are busy trying to make a mark on the landscape of autism.

I have recently written the first draft of an overview of "Autism in England" which includes a historical romp through the phenomenon, going back beyond Langdon Down, and back before Shakespeare was the Warwickshire Lad. (William not Tom I must remind people who can't remember anything before 1990) It is in part my answer to the vexed question of where the autistic person sits in all of this narrative, but here you go, the editor for this is none other than that guy I had a conversation with in 2002.

Some say that Nadesan was the first to get into print with the idea that autism became part of the psychiatric and psychological narrative as part of a historical necessity (not her words, mine) arising from the rise of particular professions and their focus. I know that I got there before her, I was in fact contemplating a book on that subject myself when I discovered that she was writing something on the same theme. I gave up.

Well anyway this text book I unearthed today, might not be of great value for the psychological landscape of today, but considered as a historical document, it is enlightening.

What does an Academic without Portfolio do?

Continuing the theme from my last blog, what does an academic without portfolio do? Well it is like gardening I suppose, you can't really stand still or the weeds start to grow, and if you leave it too long you despair at the task ahead and lose the energy, so it gets worse.

So what are to be my continuing links with the world of academia, whilst I seek a post and funding?

Well I suppose there is the Autonomy journal, and that nearly did succumb to the aforementioned gardeners problem, as I left it to seed for too long, but I do have another edition in the pipeline and I need to keep on top of that.

I also need to keep my name in the headlines, not so much through writing articles for small circulation, subscription only journals, as that will never do, they will never see the light of day.

No I think I can continue to do the rounds of conferences and seminars, presenting at them wherever I get the chance. I actually think that is likely to have more influence. It will be expensive and I don't know where the money will come from, so perhaps I might even consider crowd funding for this.

I certainly do not want to miss the next CEDR conference in 2018, as there will be a neurodiversity stream next year, and that could be the next biggest gathering of the clans since Autscape, which I really also cannot afford to miss.

There is definately work to be done as the weeds are getting strong already, by which I mean, that so called school of critical autism studies, that has colonised us and threatens our roots and out legitimacy.

I have been speaking with fellow autistic academics and academic autistics this week at Autscape and there is very strong feeling that something needs to be done, to ensure that we are not forever just the performing dogs on the circuit, or food for other peoples research. Autism is a discourse, and that discourse needs to be owned by those who have the most personal interest in its outcome, and that is us.

It is not the only work to be done, again as evidenced at Autscape through the work of Dr Yo Dunn who gave a powerful presentation concerning the disenfranchised Autistic people who do not have the links and community support of our growing band of merry Academics. Those who are deemed to lack capacity and who increasingly find themselves in long institutional stays.

However for the moment, I must take a holiday, and let the weeds on my allotment flourish for a little longer.