pk1 wrote:I'm 30 mins behind on Newsnight but just watched the bit where Davis was talking to a paraplegic from the Times (?) about the guy who was successfully treated after severing of spinal cord & can now walk.
He kept asking her about "your community" & despite accepting I might be being hyper-sensitive, I found myself cringing every time he uttered it & I wanted to scream at him that actually, it's your community too ! Some of us are in wheelchairs but we still live in your community - IDS hasn't managed to completely segregate us yet !
Some able-bodied people have no idea how their casual language is so insulting to others.
With you there, @pk1. I shouted
exactly which fucking community is that you prat!? the first time and then just seethed, instead. I might be hyper-sensitive – having well-meaning people ask, recently, if you might be better off living in a
sheltered-community does not, exactly, endear one to the word! (Answer, no thank you, I like living in the diverse community I already live in.) But I am certain that Melanie Reid's eyes widened and mouth slightly tightened every time he repeated it. And she did, gently, point out that different people with spinal cord damage have different injuries/symptoms and different hopes, wishes, and expectations both for their own lives in general and for what Prof. Wagih al-Masri' and Prof. Geoff Raisman's experimental treatment might mean for the future. If it has a long-term/permanent effect, who it will work for, etc., etc., It is certainly not a 'quick fix.' Yet.
Yes, Melanie Reid is a journalist, has written for The Times for years and started writing her Spinal Column while in hospital after breaking her neck and back in a fall from her horse during cross-country training in early 2010. (Hah! There are at least nine of the
communities she belongs to, just in that one sentence! And I'm rambling, so I'll shut up...)
