INTRODUCTION Now we’ve got I think about a quarter of an hour for questions as we’re running a little late. We’ve got some microphones so please put your hand up and we’ll bring the microphone over to you and I’ll repeat the questions and invite the panel to answer
>>: Hi there. My name is Alex Cowan hi. I was fascinated to see all of you there, actually. When I was nearly 23 I had a very serious head injury. I got run over, and I lost my career, I was in the final year of dental surgery at Guy's Hospital in London, so I lost that career, because I shake so much now, I have what is called Post Traumatic Ataxia I cannot that if I were to be a dental surgeon now it would be like a chain saw massacre, so I think that probably wouldn't be the best idea.
Now I was looking to all of you and thinking my goodness, I have attempted a law conversion at one point, I have applied for 72 jobs at the BBC, to no avail, obviously, I tried a couple of acting things at some point, I, being a dental surgeon, I was actually offered to go into science at one point, but I was so angry and so frustrated, I was like no, I want nothing to do with any of this. I want nothing. But I met somebody once, somebody called Stephen Duckworth, who used to run Disability Matters, and he said don't do anything to do with disability because it is too easy to fall into.
And I think after listening to you, Niall, that I have denied myself so much, because for the 12 years since my injury I have been isolating, okay, I have travelled the world, I spent a fortune, absolute fortune having the career that I had, I was given quite a lot of compensation money, and I spent most of it traveling the world, but I did isolate, I would go to the gym, get myself really fit and everything, and then go home, lie on my front, in my front room and just watch television and I was so depressed, I was so lonely, I was so frustrated, I actually ended up taking myself up to Earls Court station and diving under a train. And that did break my back, but as my therapist in Houston said to me, at least your penis still works and I said, "Well thank you". So I'm interested in the disability and sex thing. That's great because I love anything sort of inappropriate. I think it is wonderful. Since my head injury I'm slightly disinhibited, so that would fit very well with me.
NIALL I'm sure there is a career out there somewhere for you.
>>: But what I was most interested in hearing, Niall, was the fact that you've had the complete antithesis of experience post-accident to me. Okay, timing has a lot to do with it, in that my accident happened when I was in my final year of training as a dental surgeon, and they couldn't give me a BDS degree because with it comes a licence to practice, and as I said, I couldn't practice. So I would be interested in talking with you at some point after this event because I really would like to find out how it is I can turn around diving under a train because I'm so, I have been so depressed into something which is great. Stephen Duckworth who I know you've heard of David, wrote a book, and this is a guy who was, I mentioned earlier, is a tetraplegic, and he wrote a book that was published a few years ago called ‘the best half of my life’, and that half of his life was post his accident when he was a student also at Guy's, where he had a rugby injury, broke his neck, and became tetraplegic. But he has had had his four boys so it is all very possible, and his wife is a physiotherapist which obviously might help a bit. Anyway, yeah, so at some point I would love to know how it is you can turn being so disabled and having things so bad, I have been so depressed because of it, how you can turn that round to being something beneficial and something positive and something to help others. Thank you very much to you all.

RICHARD >>: Great. Thank you. Now, there is a reception afterwards and I'm sure that you will have the opportunity to talk then. Niall, would you like to comment on that now?

NIALL >>: Yeah. It is a strange one really because I think I was very angry about what happened to me, very angry and very bitter, and that's not really my, in my character. But then I decided to just, instead of letting it get on top of me I just thought, well, actually, hold on, I'm quite gobby, I'm relatively smart, and I could do something really good with this, because without sounding too sappy, I kind of got to the point where.. people used to say to me when I was in rehab, if this was going to happen to anybody, it is almost good that it happened to you, because you will be able to deal with it. And at the time I wanted to punch them because I was like how can you say that, that's so patronising. But weirdly, they were right. Because actually, when I got out, I have got an active mind and I wanted to start doing stuff, and I thought well, I could just sit around and do stuff, gardening, or just being in the kitchen, I thought hold on, this is nice but I can do this in the evenings or on the weekends and I thought actually I can use my skills to do something, to help someone else who doesn't have the same ability to speak, or to be obstinate like I can to get things done, so that guy at the council whose email inbox was stuffed was purely down to me saying I don't think that's right that this woman is losing her job because she represents 20,000 people that cannot necessarily vocalise in the way that I can. I don't mind falling out of my chair in front of someone's car to make a point but lots of people would find that inappropriate, or that it is not within their character, so I thought well, hold on, I could do something with this, so I just thought I will start dabbling with it, and then other people pick up on it and it kind of snowballs into this weird thing where I'm now writing a column every two weeks and Oxford think that my opinion is worthwhile and started to pay me for it. I just think it is not hilarious but it is -- it really has come from just a point of being, like, well, there is something I can do to make things better for other people. I can sort my own life out, I'm fine, but other people cannot necessarily who don't have the strength of character that I happen to have through my parents, or my upbringing, or whatever gives you the character that you have, so that was, that's what I have. You've obviously got lots of character. I say go for it.

RICHARD >>: Great. Thank you. So we'll take a second question.
GARY>>: Can I just add --
RICHARD>>: Please do.

GARY >>: Just very briefly because I think it is interesting, I think that feeds back into what David was saying earlier about everyone's experience of disability, even with similar disabilities being quite different. I think there is a pressure sometimes on people who become disabled to sort of snap out, pick yourself up a bit. I think there is a sort of a public narrative out there that, you know, go and be plucky, you know, if you are not grateful, be plucky, and I think that puts on a lot of pressure, and I'm sure you felt that pressure too and I mean it is impossible to say, I remember the policeman in Northumberland, David Rathband who was shot by Raoul Moat 18 months ago or whatever and he killed himself, didn't he, just a few months as might I remember a lot of the coverage at the time was a sort of, I found it annoying because it was very, it was quite gentle and it was quite sensitive but there was a hint in all of it of, well, you can sort of understand yes did that. And I don't understand that, and I think, you know, a bit of me died when he did that, and I feel guilt. I never knew the man, but the fact that he got to that point where we let him kill himself because he couldn't see any more is a ridiculous shame. You know, no-one -- I mean, these things take time which is a banal and stupid thing to say, and for some people it will be quick and for some people it will be a lot longer but I think you just, I think you have to find a meaning, a bit of meaning somewhere, and realise one's usefulness. Realise what one has, and, you know, focus on what one, what things you can do. Another cliche I know, but focus on what is good about you. Exploit it and share it out a bit.

RICHARD>>: Thank you. Thank you. A lady just there in the middle.

>>: Hi. Thank you all for your inspirational talks. My question is mostly to Gary who said early on about, like, realising whether it is people who are stopping you by being discriminatory about disability, or maybe sometimes you need to realise it is actually you, and I wasn't really quite sure, I guess which side you are coming down on. Could you elaborate? Because, for example, I have currently at the moment this feeling of, well, there are people holding me back and seeming to be discriminatory and then I have doubts where maybe it is all me, I'm just not good enough I need to try harder so I find it very interesting, if you could elaborate on that please.

GARY >>: Yeah. I mean, I think it is a very, very difficult thing to try and work out, because in a sense you are trying to stand in objective judgment on yourself and of course there is a philosophical problem with that in its own right. You cannot fight every battle, and as David said, you know, no-one, you know, being a victim is tedious and boring and it gets you nowhere in the long run. So it is about, I think we know when the line is crossed, if I'm honest. I think you can sort of smell it when it is a really bad example of someone standing in your way, and I think you have to be self-disciplined about how you deal with that, you have to be at all stages reasonable, you know, and if it continues, then you start being forensic about it. You write it all down. You keep writing it down. You log it. You remain reasonable. And if the moment comes when you think it is really getting in the way and stopping you doing what you want to do, and has become serious, and you have to really pick those moments, I think, and they should be few and far between over the years, then you present the evidence, and, you know, I have had one or two instances like that in the last 20 years, far outweighed by the positives, I will say, far outweighed by the good people, but once or twice where I have thought actually there is a line that has been crossed there, and it is no good emoting about it, you gather the evidence, you analyse the evidence, you present it, and you make it impossible for people to deny what you are asserting. And that's hard, and it is exhausting, and, you know, and depressing, and sort of a distraction from what you really want to be doing and all that kind of thing, and hopefully it is very, very rare. But there are moments, I think, where you have to do it.

DAVID >>: Can I just say one thing? I mean, I think this is all very difficult, because, I mean, my perspective is I frankly found it more useful to assume that good things are going to happen than bad things but there is no doubt that there is crap out there. But if I -- when I was in private practice my department, we used to get lots of requests for us to act for them, and we actually had to turn down at least 75% of it because either the judgment, either we couldn't do it because we were so busy or the judgment was we wouldn't be able to get very much for them so we took a lot of calls and sometimes from disabled people, because I was in private practice when discrimination law came into force so we took a lot of the early cases, not only schools but we did a lot of discrimination law as well and I would get a disabled person, if I got a disabled person ring me, within three seconds I would know whether I would be wanting to take them if I could get the evidence, and these are two extremes. At one extreme I would get somebody who would be complaining about every single thing that has happened to them, and I actually didn't like them. You know, I just thought well, you know, we cannot live like this. You just have to, we have to get on with our lives, and actually you are making me depressed with this, you know, we have to take, you know, we have to take the punches sometimes, or go with the flow, or move on, and there would be other people who would, it is clear to me that they had tried the best they could, and they had been treated so appallingly, and within three seconds I was so outraged by the treatment of them that I didn't care whether we had the evidence, I was going to take their case. Now this is somebody who, ie. me, who is reasonably aware of oppression and disability and that must be true for everybody else out there so that's why I was kind of saying we kind of have to, it is very difficult to are articulate, there is no kind of like roadmap but we kind of have to choose our battles, and notice that when we're being a victim and notice where it is time for us just to make a stand, or when it is time to say okay, well, maybe, you know, bad things happen to all of us, and, you know, we just have to move on. It is very, it is tricky, but the point that you are making, and also the gentleman over here is, you know, we're all on a spectrum, and sometimes we just need to move along the spectrum, and sometimes we do have to fight.

RICHARD>>: Would anybody else like to comment on that wider question?

NIALL >>: I always find this dilemma interesting because up until three years ago I was able bodied, quote-unquote normal, and I thought I had quite a kind of good attitude towards diversity on the whole. And then when it happens to you and you see the other side of the coin, you are like oh my God how could I have been so naive and so stupid, but it is not, I use the word, "Ignorant", sometimes which is difficult because people take it as meaning rude, but I don't mean rude, I mean just ignorant. They just don't know. So I mean that's one of the reasons I quite enjoy my newspaper column is that I don't have a remit. I'm allowed to talk about whatever I like, and I often do really, really kind of benign things, like I did an article about wet leaves, wet leaves really do my head in. And you just wouldn't think about it, someone is like oh, isn't it so pretty, I'm just like oh my God I have got a month of hell coming my way, so it is just trying to get people to think. I mean, that's what I like, why I like what I do because I have the ability to kind of make people think like I used to think, so take them from where I'm now to where I was, so I suppose in the context of the title of this, if did I knew now what I knew then, is that the kind of thing. So I think if you can help educate people but in a normal way, like you probably didn't think about it, rather than just being aggressive, but, you know what, you are not meant to know about this, but I can help you, and then together we can make things better for the next person.

RICHARD>>: Great. Thank you. Now, do we've -- yes. A gentleman just over there.

>>: Hi. Councillor Martin Curtis, Cabinet Member for adult services at the County Council. I came here to listen and learn tonight and it has been fantastic so thank you very much. For somebody like me who is supposed to be an influencer, I'm just wondering what is the message that I can take away to try and influence potential employers and open up their minds? You know, to some of the issues that Jenny in particular was highlighting? You know, I led on the Olympics for Cambridgeshire, and one of the messages that came from that, quite clearly, was about this thing about you know, forget disability, focus on ability, and I just wonder if that is it, and actually taking that message and trying to hit that home with employers because actually they do miss out on a lot of talent because their minds are not open.

RICHARD>>: So, yes. I think that would be a good place for us to finish, but can we, so the focusing on disability as opportunity. What should people be doing?

JENNY >>: I mean, there are so many different politics around disability/ability and all the kerfuffle, it is about people. And so many disabled people feel so disenfranchised about the opportunities that are out there for them, that they don't even go out for them, so we become an invisible minority, or a majority, and we're just hidden away, and I think what we need to be doing is exactly what Niall has been saying, is about educating people, who is out there, there is a wealth of talent and expertise that is just not being utilized. Because there is a fear factor. I think it is the biggest disabling barrier of anything. People are scared to be around us and I can never quite work out why that is, and I suspect, I don't know, I might be completely wrong, but I suspect that all of us possibly inherently know it could happen to us, and therefore they don't want to have that relationship with other disabled people because they are scared of that, if you know what I mean. And I think employers need to be aware of tapping into talent that's out there, knowing about Access to Work. I wouldn't be able to do my job without Access to Work. I wouldn't be able to have my interpreters, I would be buggered completely but I have them and it means I can do my job. And so many don't really know about getting Access to Work. It is there to support employment, and I think it is about, I think, doing disability equality training across an organisation is one thing, but that could be so heavily jargon-based, that -- and you become fearful of all the laws and regulations that you might cock it up and therefore you don't employ a disabled person, and I just sort of, to plug Graeae, sorry, but we do arts-based disability equality training. It is not disability equality but it is like looking at the human side of what it is to be disabled, looking at the human side of access, looking at people being able to ask the questions they might not necessarily ask, so I think that's what you need to do, everybody needs to be doing it, right across the board, otherwise with the cuts, people are becoming even more oh my God we cannot employ them and that has got to change. We cannot allow that to happen. Does that make any sense whatsoever?

RICHARD>>: Thank you.

CAROLINE>>: I would honestly say that I think everybody has something to contribute, something very real to contribute, so I think this chap over here I can tell he is an intelligent man and he has got something to contribute. And there are always strategies that you can use to get around a number of situations. I can’t use the phone; I use closed captioning, and that enables me to make a real contribution towards making medicine, so I think it is a two-way thing. I think it is not only the employers, it is the potential employees as well. I think potential employees have to find that within themselves so I'm somebody who can really contribute and make a difference, and I'm going to go out and do it.

RICHARD>>: Thank you.

DAVID>>: Well, I mean, I suppose what I think about all of this is that we're on a major, we're on a huge journey and so I think about my impairment happens to be called arthrogryposis, if I think about young people being born with arthrogryposis, their life chances are going to be different, thank goodness but they are going to face oppression and I don't know how long it is going to take, we're on a 50, 100 year journey but basically the oppression of disabled people is predicated on a perception that to be disabled means to be poor, lonely, ugly, boring, unintelligent,

JENNY>>: Asexual.

DAVID>>: Asexual, miserable, friendless, I mean it is not a very appealing image, frankly. So it is not surprising that people are going to feel that this is unappealing. Of course it is all a lie, you know, the fundamental thing is like all oppressions, it is a complete lie, and everything that any of us have spoken about, or any of the many people here who are disabled and whose journeys they are on, is about contradicting that lie, so I think I don't really know the answer to your question, except that anything that any of us can do to contradict those lies in whatever way that's, where it is in the employment field, whether it is flirting which is my current favourite activity, or whether it is performing, or whether anything that we can do by, you know, throwing fabulous parties, anything we can do to contradict that lie, is going to move all of us on.

RICHARD>>: Right. I think that would be a great place to finish.

GARY>>: Can I just -- can we have two quick ones? You go first.

GARY>>: You were asking about what sort of, how to talk to employers, and I think that's a really good question, because, you you know, after all, they control the access to the market, et cetera, et cetera. I think there are a couple of things. One is I always think you need to tailor the message with employers slightly. There are some employers you can turn round and say, you know, do you want your organisation to look like the world in which you live, right? And for some organisations, particularly in the public sector, that might bring them up short, okay? There are other organisations, other businesses, who are a bit more hard headed than that, it doesn't mean they know much but they are hard headed about these sort of things so I will give you one quick example. A friend of mine used to work as a disability employment adviser and he came across one of the companies that made sandwiches for the train operators, and their problem was turnover, staff turnover. They just didn't stay. And he got, he persuaded this employer to take on a bunch of people with learning disabilities and they were good and they stayed and the turnover problem was solved overnight. Now, a lack of mobility in the employment market for disabled people is not necessarily a very good thing but while it is true, use it.

NIALL>>: Very briefly, first thing I would say is to anybody who is employing anybody, just ask them first of all what they can bring and what they -- who they are, so, you know, I'm not disabled, I'm Niall. First and foremost. Yeah, I'm in a wheelchair, so what get over it. There is a way around it. There always is. It might be a longer route, whatever, and because people with disabilities often have to find coping mechanisms, they actually make really great employees because you've to be a problem solver. You have to keep the face on when things get tough. There is lots of things that actually, if someone interviewed me for a job, I'm sure I would do quite well because I would be able to trump most other people because you can say well actually, you probably haven't thought about this but, and this and that and the other so actually I think disabled people are an asset not something to be kind of dismissed.

RICHARD>>: Thank you. Thank you. Can we thank the panel in the usual way, please, everybody? It has been the most interesting and inspiring evening, and it was all organised by Kirsty Wayland who is just sitting over here and I would like us to thank Kirsty as well. There are some refreshments outside. You would be most welcome to stay and chat, and those of you who are going home straight away, please travel safely and thank you all for coming. Thank you everyone. Thank you.¬¬¬