Steve Allen, who is apparently some old fart of a radio DJ, recently felt the need to randomly have a go at Gordon Ramsay’s 19-year-old daughter who is currently taking part in Strictly Come Dancing.
He said:
“She’s a chubby little thing, isn’t she? Have you noticed? Probably her dad’s cooking, I should imagine.”
Now, I am reliably informed that “you used to be able to say anything to anyone” and “this is how comedy works”. Whose comedy are we talking about here? Frankie Boyle’s? Thanks but no thanks. Seriously, is there anyone out there who finds the above quip funny and/or clever? Because I for one really don’t. Every single word is designed to put her down.
Chubby: ad hominem attack, doubly hurtful since criticising a woman’s appearance is much more powerful in this world then criticising a man’s appearance.
Little: quite literally a belittling word, often used when describing women’s skills. If he had paid her a compliment instead, I’ll bet you anything he would have said “she’s a bloody good little dancer” instead of “she’s a bloody good dancer”.
Thing: the ultimate objectifying word.
So far so misogynistic, isn’t it? And then it turns out the whole thing is actually a dig at her dad, so she’s being used to make fun of someone she’s related to through not fault of her own. She’s not even a person anymore, just a tool.
This guy was trying to get a (weak) laugh out of his listeners by gratuitously insulting not only a complete stranger, but also a very soft target. That is nothing less than bullying.
Of course, Radio DJs generally are the scum of the earth anyway so we really shouldn’t be surprised. Using a young woman to have a go at her male relative seems to be a popular tactic of theirs: remember Sachsgate?
To be fair to Steve Allen, I have to hand it to him: when you’re that good-looking, you can afford to laught at others, can’t you?
Fair warning: this interview of Eddie Izzard in the Guardian is prompting in me some thoughts which will definitely be considered transphobic by modern society. Of course, it doesn’t take much these days.
So, Eddie now identifies as a woman but still wants to be in ‘boy mode’ when he feels like it, including playing male characters in films.
It’s a bit convenient, considering that’s not exactly how it works for us ‘cis’ people – no way would Eddie Redmayne be cast as a trans woman in The Danish Girl if it was being made today, let alone get an Oscar nomination for it!
But, at the end of the day, whatever. Not my circus, not my monkeys.
What is more annnoying is this bit:
Would she like boobs? “Yeah! I’ve had boob envy since my teens. Just when teenage girls of my age were going ‘I want boobs’, I was thinking yeah me too. But I couldn’t say it. They talk about penis envy, and I believe some women suffer penis envy. I cannot for the life of me get my head around this. But yes, I’ve always had breasts envy.”
So you had breast envy, did you? Did you have period envy, too ? You can’t get one without the other, after all. How about constant objectification and sexualisation by society envy? Or being put down and belittled by men when you’re cleverer than them envy? Or unwanted pregnancy and abortion envy? Or street harassment and sexual assault envy? Or being murdered for daring to walk down the street envy?
Did any of these things which are also part and parcel of the female condition ever cross your mind as a teenager, or even later? Of course not, it’s so much more fun to pick and choose the best bits without having to put up with the more unpleasant aspects. A Barbie girl in a Barbie world, basically.
Now, I am sure coming out and living as a trans woman cannot be a bed of roses, but the hostility you can experience is totally different from what biological women have to put with from childhood.
Izzard shows me how people used to laugh in her face. She moves her face forward so she is virtually headbutting the screen. “People would stand this close, and say: ‘What the fuck is that? What the fuck is that?’ They turn you into an it.” Did it scare her? “No, it infuriated me. I want to fight everyone that says things like that.”
The above would obviously never happen to someone who was born a woman. This is an expression of fear and incomprehension: “You’re a bloke! You should look and act like a bloke! What’s wrong with you?”
Whereas women traditionally get :”You’re a second class citizen and dont you forget it! Men get to define what you should look like, how you must act in public, how your sexuality will be expressed!” etc, etc, etc.
Having said that, transgender people often have a strange idea of what looking and acting like a woman means, which really doesn’t help matters.
What the hell is this outfit? What woman dresses like that, unless she’s just off to work at the nearest truck stop? If trans women genuinely are a woman in a man’s body as we keep being told, why do they get femininity so wrong?
The interesting thing is, if a biological woman and a trans woman went out walking every night in a rough neighbourhood in this kind of outfit, they might both eventually end up in hospital. The biological woman would have been raped and the trans woman would have been savagely beaten up. That’s the difference.
I’m not even going to mention Grayson Perry and his ‘female alter ego’ Claire.
Oops, too late.
Going back to Eddie:
“People don’t expect a trans woman to be able to run 130 marathons for charity and it changes their sense of what a trans woman is. I can see in their eyes they go: well, fair play.”
Now this here is what we in the profession call “shoehorning”. Dear Eddie, people do not expect anyone to run 130 marathons for charity. Anyone. Let alone a celebrity. That’s all there is to it.
Also, you ran those marathons looking like a man so people saw a man. It’s still impressive.
So, this was going so well and then…
“I’d like to get to the place where we don’t have to have this fight because I’m trying to deal with rightwing fascists and what they say.”
Oh dear. Rightwing fascists, no less. And you want to be taken seriously as a would-be Labour politician? SMH, as the cool kids say on the internets.
His death is of course very sad for his family, but the attempts by this guy’s friends to make him sound like a total saint do not quite ring true. For a start, law-abiding people don’t usually get shot dead on their doorstep, unless they caught a stray bullet or it was a case of mistaken identity – and it doesn’t seem to be what happened here, or the police and family would have mentioned it.
The childhood friend who talked to the DM journalist made the mistake of sharing a litte bit too much information:
He sold his passport at school just to make money and he officially changed his name to Gucci, his favourite brand.
He sold his passport at school?
What kind of schoolboy does that? And what kind of schoolboy buys someone else’s passport, and for what purpose? The bubble of criminality some people live in is absolutely staggering. The fact that this girl is stupid enough to tell a journalist this kind of thing, especially when trying to make her dead friend look good, is also hilarious!
Alas, I bet the police will not even bother investigating the matter as it might be seen as racial profiling.
As for renaming yourself after your favourite nouveau-riche brand, it could have been worse. At least he didn’t inflict that stupid name on any child of his.
He was the last person who you’d think would die young. He was a good boy from a good family of devout Christians. Every Sunday he would drive his family to church.
Did he also help old ladies cross the road and cure cancer in kittens? Give me a break. Quite frankly, I think the passport story told me all I needed to know.
His brother Nathaniel Wegbe teaches history at Paddington Academy. He is a role model and has changed thousands of lives for the better. […] He was very professional, but we would joke with him about his brothers. We thought they were involved in dodgy stuff, but he would just brush it off.’
Dodgy stuff, huh? Looks like the model brother was a little bit in denial.
Also, where is the Black Lives Matter rent-a-mob and why is nobody able to shed any light on the killers’ race, despite several witnesses having seen them?
Four years ago, we went to a Secret Cinema production of 28 Days Later which was great fun, what with it being fictional and all.
As the dress code was “scrubs and surgical mask”, I purchased two pairs of green scrubs and a box of 100 cheapo paper masks from a medical supplies website. It was the smallest quantity available.
The scrubs turned out to be a fantastic stay-at-home outfit and we have been wearing them on a daily basis ever since. The masks, on the other hand, have been sitting in a drawer. I occasionally used one when sanding wood but apart from that, what can you do with a box of paper surgical masks?
Then the coronavirus struck.
Now the country is in lockdown and we wear the masks to go shopping. Eek.
This story is utterly grotesque. If I were a non-binary transgender person™, I would cringe at the way my community™ is being represented™ by these fuckwits™.
Recalling the incident in December, Myla said: ‘I’d picked up some shirts and jumpers from the menswear section and went into the changing rooms nearby. There was no attendant so I just went on in. I left the changing room to grab a bigger size in one of the jumpers and a female attendant approached me on the shop floor.
She told me I couldn’t use the changing rooms there as they were “only for men” and said that I had to use the changing rooms downstairs which are for women. I was utterly shocked and the only thing I could think of to say was “I’m not female” to which she looked me up and down, apologised and walked off.
Here is a picture of Myla for your perusal:
Sorry, I meant this one:
Yeah, clearly totally not female-looking at all. What was that shop assistant thinking?
‘I felt sick, like I was being accused of some kind of crime just for trying on clothes.
Laying it on a bit thick there, aren’t you love? Who said anything about a crime?
Afterwards, I went home and cried. I have never been accosted like that in a store before. I had to go back in and speak to someone in store because no one took it seriously the first time and I started crying even trying to talk about it again with them.’
I don’t want to be accused of championing misogyny or anything, but how about toning down the blubbing a little bit if you don’t want to be taken for a woman?
An M&S spokesperson said: […]’Clearly on this occasion a mistake was made, we have apologised to our customer for this incident, additionally our store manager wrote a personal apology assuring the customer they have spoken to the team.’
Massive overkill. How on earth can calling someone who looks like a woman ‘a woman’ be a mistake? And all that apologising and arse-licking is frankly pathetic.
Myla said: ‘I don’t think the apology was enough to be honest, it shouldn’t have ever happened to start with and I have lost confidence in Marks and Spencer as a company for standing up for trans folk like myself. I still feel scared to shop at Marks and Spencer in case it happens again elsewhere or if I have to deal with that same person again.
“Scared” FFS. Fuck off to H&M then, they’re Swedish and probably just woke enough for you.
‘The fact that I saw a female using the space at the same time in full view of the attendant when I left the changing rooms just made it so much more of a personal attack.
Oh, “a female”, is it? How the hell do you know that person was female, pray tell? Would that be from the way she looked, by any chance? Well I never.
Not to mention the “female attendant” who was mentioned earlier… Snowflake can’t even follow their™ own rules.
‘I am still very much upset by what happened and if I were to go back I wouldn’t go on my own and I would not be shopping for clothes there again.’
May I suggest you stick to the food hall in future:
This new BBC column is rather fascinating. It involves members of the public keeping a money diary for a week and telling the world about their spending habits. Reading this kind of thing makes me realise that I am amazingly frugal and calculating compared to a lot of people. For instance, the over-reliance of many people on corner shops due to a total lack of advance planning never fails to surprise me!
This week we’re getting a treat: getting inside the head of a stupendously vacuous bint. It’s really spectacular.
This isn’t her but quite frankly it should be.
• Olivia is 20 and is currently a second year student at Salford university, studying broadcast journalism. She also works 20-30 hours a week at Nando’s.
This empty-headed creature is a student and a future journalist! There is no hope for the world.
As every girl knows, we’ve got this obsession to keep on top of our eyebrows, lashes, skin, and body
Notice the conspicuous absence of “mind” from the above list. She probably just forgot.
Also, let’s pay extra attention to the “As every girl knows” bit, as we will soon find out this sheep only feels validated when she’s doing what everyone else is doing.
I’ve met girls like that. I wanted to drown them.
I ended up buying Bondi Sands everyday gradual tanning milk as everyone knows how much easier this is than trying to get that perfect streak-free finish with instant tan at 23:00. I also bought myself some facial wax strips! Being a dark-haired girl, the moustache and mono brow is always there.
I got these products through Pretty Little Thing, where I’ve got free next day delivery for a year! So I only ended up spending £14, including delivery. I tried to get student beans discount on these products but they don’t do it on beauty for some reason.
A student with a part-time job spends £14 on overpriced beauty stuff without batting an eyelid. Don’t they have a Boots or Superdrug in Salford?
Or this, even.
I’ve finished work! And the beauty of working at Nando’s, free food! So, no spending money on my lunch when I’m on a shift, happy days.
Nothing wrong with this but it will soon become relevant.
I’m going out next weekend to Newcastle and of course, I need a new outfit
No, you tragic case, there is no “of course” about it. Need is not the same as want.
but recently I’ve been trying to buy new outfits off Depop and not off the original sites! It’s so much better to buy second hand and do your little bit to recycle clothing, so I had a scroll and found a perfect little red Oh Polly dress for only £23 with delivery. The dress on the original site is £38 so saving myself a lot of money considering it’s only ever been worn once.
“It’s so much better to buy second hand and do your little bit to recycle clothing”, “so saving myself a lot of money”: this is some first-class rationalising here.
If I decided not to bring my own breakfast, I could’ve had some at work, I could’ve been very tempted to get a McDonald’s breakfast from the restaurant next door.
McDonald’s? Whatever happened to the beauty of working at Nando’s being free food?
Jordan, my boyfriend, decides it’s time we need to go to the Trafford centre and get him the Vans he’s wanted for so long!
And the boyfriend is just as bad… “The Vans he’s wanted for so long”. Then again, his name is Jordan, you can’t expect too much. The object of desire. Nabokov clearly didn’t have a clue.
If I ended up with a boyfriend called Jordan who craves Vans, I would take a long, hard look at my life and wonder where it went so dreadfully wrong.
Just imagine the conversations between the two of them. I bet they call each other “Babes”.
We buy his Vans and debate getting some tea but we choose the option, “we have food at home”. I swear we’ve grown old already!
Your medal is in the post.
I also took a look round some shops for some wet-look leggings, as they seem to be what everyone wears nowadays, but I can’t find any I like, and I’m not about wasting money so I leave it! Which leaves me spending a grand total of absolutely nothing today!
I had to google “wet-look leggings”… Who invents this shit? And how hard are they laughing all the way to the bank?
This is so educational, isn’t it?
“As they seem to be what everyone wears nowadays”, here we go again. She doesn’t want the stuff because she likes it, but because she absolutely must look exactly like everybody else in her social circle. It’s a bit sad.
I’m not saying I never bought the same things as my friends when I was at school (although in my case it tended to be gadgets and accessories as clothing was and is terminally dull), but only if was made aware of its existence by someone else turning up with it and only if I thought “I really like that”. I would never had bought stuff out of fear of being seen as uncool if I didn’t have it. Goodness me, if your friends are like this get better friends!
At 20 she should be considering growing out of this behaviour and becoming her own person anyway. If that is possible.
“I’m not about wasting money” AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!
No, of course not dear. It’s a trick of the light.
My mum’s actually started doing gym classes, and she’s desperate for a stopwatch to time her classes and make sure she’s filling the classes right, so I have a look on Amazon for her, I find a nice blue watch but the delivery wouldn’t let me have it for another week… too long, I’m impatient. I did have free next-day delivery but it was a trial for six months with being a student, so I decide to wait until tonight and use my boyfriend’s account to order the watch and save some dollar.
Uh… don’t they have an Argos in Salford either?
“Save some dollar”… *puke*
Fast forward time a little bit and I’ve gone to the gym but I’m now waiting for the next class to start. While waiting I get a little thirsty but I forgot my water bottle, so I have to buy one for £1.
Wow. “I’m not about to waste money”, huh?
So, as you do, I start scrolling through Instagram and see this gorgeous make-up artist. I’ve been looking for someone to do my make-up for my birthday in a couple of weeks. I message this MUA and she immediately replied, £20 now as a deposit, and £20 on the day, which somehow to me, makes it seem that little cheaper in two instalments… so that’s me £20 down within a matter of minutes.
I… what? Seriously? £40 for someone to do her make-up for her birthday?! With all the crap she buys, she can’t do it herself or ask a friend? For that price, Stacey Dooley should be be doing a running commentary of the entire process, dressed in shapeless overalls. At the very least.
Gym’s all done, and I’ve drove to my boyfriends, to see him of course but to also rob his Amazon Prime account to order the stopwatch wrist timer for my mum. I pop in my own card details on his account and BOOM, suddenly £14.99 less rich!
Where’s the BOOM for the £40 make-up artist? Or does it only feel like spending money when she’s spending it on others?
“I’ve drove”… *double puke*
Fast forward to the evening and I’ve finished an eight-hour shift at work, where I successfully didn’t spend a penny! But now I’m at the Trafford centre, and I’ve got a long, long list of things I need! Such as jeans, a new foundation and wet-look leggings.
And books? No? Not even a little one? With pictures? Ah, go on go on go on go on go on…
Anyone that knows me, knows I always wear the same things
Sure you do. That’s why you’re so good at saving money.
Oooh pretty butterflies oooh
I also purchased a new foundation, my skin is really dry so it’s hard for me to find anything that sits nice but I heard lots of good things about Fenty hydrating foundation so here I am, £27 more out of pocket, after treating myself to that particular foundation.
£27!!! My eyes are bleeding.
Oh, don’t worry, the spending hasn’t stopped yet, Friday 13th seems to be unlucky towards my bank account. We decided to go for a meal but I grab tap water, and a pizza so only end up spending a bargain of £10.25, happy me!
That growing old and eating at home phase didn’t last long, did it?
oh, and don’t forget the £10 petrol I need to put in every Friday (joys of driving).
So who pays for her car insurance then? The mother, I assume. That kind of skews the calculations juuust a little bit.
there’s nothing really in the house to eat as mum hasn’t done the weekly shop yet, so we nip to the corner shop and she buys me stuff to make an omelette! My favourite.
“Nothing in the house to eat” is a concept that totally escapes me. It would simply never be allowed to happen in my household. Even if we haven’t been shopping this week, the cupboards, fridge and freezer are constantly creaking under the weight! We might end up eating random bits and bobs once in a while but there would always be something and plenty of it. I don’t even remember the last time I had to resort to the corner shop.
I just don’t get it. Maybe I’m still too French to comprehend the notion of letting yourself run out of food. *shivers*
Our basement. Well, one of them.
Now it’s time for my three-nine shift today! I was so tempted to buy myself an iced latte from McDonald’s before work, everyone knows I’m an iced coffee addict! But after my heavy spending yesterday, I decided it better to make my own at work (mine are just as nice anyways)!
Medal #2 in the post. P&P is getting to be a bit of a bitch.
Today, so far, I’ve been helping my boyfriend clear out his room. I bought him a lovely bracelet for Christmas but he somehow lost it this summer and we’ve been looking for it ever since. He always seems to lose his most expensive items as just last week he lost his airpods… I’m starting to think me helping him “clear out” his room is really his last desperate attempt to find his bracelet.
What a keeper that guy is. See what I did there?
IT WORKED! We found his bracelet, and I’ve never been happier. It was hidden somewhere between all his unfolded clothing in his wardrobe, at least I won’t have to fork out for a replicate this Christmas! Win, win.
Fork out for a replicate? You cannot possibly be serious! Grow a spine and let him face the consequences of his actions, for crying out loud.
Rent – £60
Clothing – £83.35
Beauty – £61
Petrol – £10
Food and drinks – £15.25
Gifts – £14.99
Leisure – £21.99
Total weekly spend: £266.58
Not a single penny spent on even the most vaguely culturally-related items. Not even the cinema or a magazine or music. She didn’t even mention any interests apart from fashion and beauty products.
What an empty life she leads. Why on earth is someone with zero intellectual curiosity studying journalism again? Bloody hell.
Anoushka Mutanda Dougherty has been offered a place at Cambridge University, but she’s mixed-race and from a state school – and only 3% of students who started at Cambridge in 2017 were black, or mixed-race with black heritage.
In 2011, 7.5 million people living in England and Wales (13% of the total population) were born outside the UK. Amongst the 56 million residents in England and Wales, 86% were White, 8% were Asian/Asian British and 3% were Black/African/Caribbean/Black British.
3% at Cambridge, 3% in the general population. I’m not seeing the problem here.
There’s no escaping the fact that Cambridge is a majority white and majority posh (!) institution.
Posh (!) is clearly much worse than just posh.
Born with an exclamation mark in their mouth
My mum, Anjula, is Ugandan and fled from Idi Amin’s tyrannical regime in the 1970s. The story of people like her with a mixed Indian and Ugandan background
So her mother is mixed Indian and black and her father is clearly white. This makes her only one-quarter black at best, yet she says things like “I would be one of only a handful in my year from a mixed white/Black African family” showing she only cares about her black heritage and happily ignores the Indian bit – maybe because it isn’t cool/relevant/woke enough?
The experience of minority communities has helped shape my interest in unwritten histories (you try explaining this in a UCAS statement with a limit of 4,000 characters)
I dunno, she just managed to do it in one paragraph. Also, this kind of whingeing doesnt really look very good from someone who is apparently Cambridge material.
so it stands to reason that I would focus on racial diversity in the universities I’m considering.
Because focusing on academic excellence and reputation is so white.
the fear of being pushed to behave like someone from a specific socio-economic group, just to fit in.
Like what, taking up punting?
Don’t be seen without it.
“I hadn’t gone back before and when I did I was at the train station [in London] and I was like, ‘Why are there so many black people here?’ I was just so used to not seeing them.”
Again, the percentage of black students at Cambridge is representative of England as a whole – London is the anomaly here. If this person lived in, say, the Cotswolds, she wouldn’t bat an eyelid when getting off the train (and might even think “How hideously white!”).
there was just one club that played R&B, and that it charged £12 entry – more than any other student venue she’d been to! Talk about having a monopoly on the market.
It is highly likely that the managers of this club are black. Why are they choosing to exploit their own people? And how is this anybody else’s fault?
“I have never, like, self-segregated but I did go to a Hip-Hop Society event and I’d just never seen so many black people in one room at one time in Cambridge! I was like, ‘Wow, this is where we all are’.”
Meanwhile, Sanjeev is at the library and Quentin is punting. How rude of them!
“I just thought the people at Cambridge wouldn’t be the people in my crowd,” he said. “I don’t want to be with so many white kids from private schools.”
And if a white student from a private school said they didn’t want to go to university with a bunch of black kids from state schools, I’m sure everyone would react very well to this announcement.
(I have to give a special mention here to my white friend who, for the first three years that we knew each other, thought that I curled my hair every morning.)
And this is supposed to be proof of what exactly? That this white friend is racist and ignorant? Countless other girls of all skin colours own a hair curler and do use it every morning, why couldn’t you be one of them? Only a frenemy would choose to take it the wrong way.
It is also perfectly normal not to be aware of what personal grooming involves for people of other ethnicities. I once had a black woman – a professional hairdresser, no less – advise me to stop dyeing my hair as it would eventually get damaged (needless to say, I have never dyed my hair in my life). Did I immediately scream racism? Answers on a postcard.
Just like Kier, who wants to study with people in his crowd, my girlfriends said they wanted to share university accommodation with students who “look like them”.
I mean, the things non-white people can get away with saying!
I asked her about the racial imbalance and the relatively high number of students from private schools… wouldn’t she want her son to be somewhere that more reflected the real world?
“That’s a good question. I mean I think I’d like him to go just wherever he’ll do really well and enjoy it but I must admit, I’m probably not choosing or thinking about where he should go from that basis,” she said. “You know, I just want him to go where he’ll get the best degree for what he wants to do.”
Oh dear, someone didn’t get the right-on memo. “The best degree for what he wants to do”? Who thinks like that?! I bet she votes Tory!
The horror… the horror…
Did I decide to wear a pink fur coat that made me look like a relic of an early-2000’s 50 Cent video? Yes. Did I question this after taking my admission test with a room of prospective law students, who were all suited and booted and ready for employment in the City? Yes.
Were you determined to make the situation as awkward for yourself as possible, just to prove some sort of a point? Yes.
I took some of my concerns about racial diversity – or the lack of it – to the press officer at Cambridge University, Paul Seagrove. He said that 58 black students got places in 2017, which was higher than the figure of 39 for 2016.
“We recognise that it is still too low,” he said.
Oh please. As per this very article, there are more white students at Bristol than at Cambridge. Where is the outrage?
It seems that there is a self-perpetuating cycle. Smart kids from diverse backgrounds won’t apply because they think they won’t fit in, because they don’t see people like them. This in turn means that the demographic of students will never change, so the view that it’s not the right place for people of colour will persist.
Yeah, it’s pretty clear everyone who’s complaining also wants somebody else to be the guinea pig.
I think this girl needs a little reminder of what she could learn from her other ethnic heritage:
For the Guardian and its readers, everything is political. Even walking for pleasure.
A reader describes her evening walks through Edinburgh and of course feels the need to shoehorn some leftie rhetoric into her prose:
The families, joggers and dog walkers in Braidburn Valley Park help me shake off the stress and insincerity of my corporate job.
Virtue signalling alert! What the hell is this woe-is-me bullshit? If her ‘insincere corporate job’ (that she presumably wasn’t forced into at gunpoint) clashes so hard with her ethics, what’s stopping her from resigning and applying for a less well-paid job at a non-profit organisation? Hmmm? Would the filthy lucre be too much to give up, by any chance?
“Hello, the She-Wolf of Wall Street speaking”
I’ll then head towards Hermitage Drive – where I might resent the obvious wealth if I weren’t so chilled out.
“Resent the obvious wealth”? Yeah, how dare these people be richer than she is! The sheer nerve!
Unspeakable. Unspeakable.
Can I just point out that she walks through that area by choice, because it’s pretty. And why is it pretty? Because the locals have the means to make it that way and keep it that way. If she doesn’t want to be surrounded by the trappings of wealth, may I recommend walking through the nearest council estate instead? Urban decay galore! Nothing to be envious of!
Welcome to the Trainspotting Experience! Your first mugging will occur in 3, 2, 1….
Then we have this other reader:
I am very fortunate that I can walk and do not require a wheelchair; however, my disabilities cause me severe pain if I walk long distances. There are millions like me who fall into the zone between able-bodied and wheelchair confined. When I hear the term “pedestrian friendly”, my first thought is “disability unfriendly”.
This person lives in the USA, where pretty much everything is car-friendly by design and pedestrian-friendly features are few and far between. The average American never needs to walk anywhere. And that’s still not good enough! She still feels discriminated against!
It is rather disingenuous to say “I do not require a wheelchair” if she can only walk short distances without excruciating pain. If she refuses to use a wheelchair when she needs one, what exactly is the city supposed to do to accommodate her? Provide conveyor belts? Or maybe she could just ignore the pedestrian-friendly areas, get in her car and drive wherever she wants!
There is a new outdoor mall near me with a pedestrian-friendly town centre design. It is a sprawling, lively place, but I can’t shop there.
Look, it’s very sad that she can’t walk very well or very far, but it’s nobody else’s fault. That mall wasn’t built to spite her personally, it was build to give pedestrians a bit of a break from the all-pervasive car culture. Not everything can be or should be inclusive (controversial statement).
Walking needs to be encouraged in a way that does not forget about the needs of the disabled.
Like how? Genuine question. What are these needs? How are pedestrian-friendly areas supposed to welcome someone who can only walk short distances but won’t use a car or a wheelchair?
