Capt SpaceBat

Dear Mr Obama,

I am writing in the hope that you will consider recalibrating your government’s stance over the proposed extradition of the UK citizen Gary McKinnon.

You will not doubt be aware that people with Asperger Syndrome are often far more vulnerable than initial appearances would suggest, frequently isolated, often bullied and sadly many experience severe mental health problems if they do not get the right support.  Many consider that his extradition is unnecessary, avoidable and disproportionate as such a process has not taken place in other similar cases.

I too am one of those people.  I have Asperger Syndrome, co-morbid with other mental health issues, and like Mr McKinnon, have a deep fascination and extreme skill with technology.  Were it not for my heightened sense of clinical paranoia, I too would probably have done just what Mr McKinnon did in his search for what he perceived to be the truth.

The fact that a number of the systems that he accessed had default passwords - that is a blank field - shows recklessness on the part of the systems administrators responsible for your national security, all the way up the chain of command.

Without a wholesale overhaul of these systems and censure of those responsible, your government’s actions appear to be persecution of one of the most vulnerable members of our or any society for highlighting the failures of others.

Mr McKinnon is now a scapegoat for pointing out that the Emperor’s new clothes were in fact illusory and so I implore you to reconsider your government’s request for his extradition.

Yours sincerely,

Ian Springham

Apologies to my followers and readers for being out of the loop for so long, but I have been - finally - working on my autobiography.

“Between the Cracks” is a bit of a (so far!) life-long work in progress, having undergone a range of name changes, abortive starts, diversionary tactics and writers’ blocks.

Synopsis: I am an adult survivor of extended childhood abuse.  I only started addressing these issues in 2005, undergoing psychotherapy and taking legal action against the local authority responsible for my childhood “care”.  They settled out of court in 2008.  I have obtained access to most, if not all, of my early life records and am compiling them into a book – along with my thoughts and recollections, art and photographs – to highlight how easy it is to fall “between the cracks” and be failed by the social and other services.

This is in part to encourage the others as well as to help me continue to come to terms with the pervasive after-effects of such neglect, oversight and exploitation.

What a week! Missed out on a job performing online support within the public sector because I was “over experienced.” Then I had an application for help with essential flooring materials turned down.  To top it all, one of my potential long-term clients has “run out of cash” just before launching their innovative scheme to direct vulnerable young people towards positive rôle models and life choices and have decided that the new aim is to provide a few links without any of the social bookmarking, geomapping and streaming video that I have spent months developing …

The immortal words of Tony Hancock spring to mind: “stone me! what a life …” or to misquote Frankie Howerd, “Twitter ye not!”

It’s only being so cheerful that keeps me going when surrounded by such shining examples of what the ancients called a “Causas Banjo “

May is “Mental Health Awareness Month” - a fact of which I was reminded by Chato B Stewart (Mental Health Advocate - Cartoonist - and a few other things! http://www.mentalhealthhumor.com & http://www.mentalhealthcartoons.com“Using Humor to Heal and Educate with badly drawn cartoons.” - Chato B. Stewart)

Replied to as follows:

1. • # CaptSpaceBat
     Great to see you back at it. Will try to keep pace with you at CaptSpaceBat.Today.com
     Today, I am starting my book, after having a lumbar epidural at lunchtime: might as well start as we mean to go on!
     Keep in there :¬)
   • # CaptSpaceBat
     http://mentalhealthhumor.today.com/2009/04/30/its-here-its-here-the-cartoon-a-thon-is-here-i-have-my-paper-i-have-my-pen-and-im-drawing-the-new-cartoon-for-mental-health-month-now-is-the-time-to-let-every-one-know-about-it/
     What a wonderful link!

So, back to my new year resolutions …

… I have a new title for my book: “Forever Changed” inspired - of course - by Arthur Lee, Love, Lou Reed & John Cale - film at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzupngqP6VA

Call over ‘blacklist data’ row

The Government has been urged to take immediate action to outlaw the blacklisting of workers after new evidence that the practice was “rampant”.

• Cheese and onion is favourite crisp
• Mandelson ’slimed’ by protester
• Green slime thrown at Mandelson
• Green ’soup’ thrown at Mandelson
• Bomb threat drag queen sentenced

Are they in any way related?

“The information watchdog has shut down a company which it says sold workers’ confidential data, including union activities, to building firms.

A raid on The Consulting Association in Droitwich, Worcs, revealed a serious breach of the Data Protection Act, the Information Commissioner’s Office said.

The ICO said a secret system was run for over 15 years enabling employers to unlawfully vet job applicants.”

From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7927487.stm

Concerned that the recruitment industry might be using similar blacklists more widely, I followed up the story with the following post to the BBC’s website:

“One thing that concerns me is that this practice may be more widespread and extend beyond the construction industry: Information Technology and financial services would seem the most natural users of such data.

I would have assumed that, collectively, the recruitment and human resources sectors would operate such blacklists in the same fashion as credit reference agencies; arguably for their clients’ protection.

We can only hope that these revelations regarding the actions of The Consulting Association open up the metaphorical floodgates relating to protectionist policies.”

As well as political affiliation and activity, other personal data such as economic factors, physical and mental  health status, disability and other issues - many of which are subject to anti-discrimination legislation - might well be secretly traded between recruiters and their clients.  Does anyone have any evidence or experience of this?

I was telephoned on Sunday by someone claiming to be helping raise awareness of the work of a UK charity against child cruelty.  I said that I was not in a position to offer funds in support but the caller insisted that I listen to the sales pitch, which I did.  After hearing about cruelty and exploitation of children and the uphill struggle suffered by the charity in trying to find help and support for these victims, I explained that I am an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse, that it had taken me over 20 years to pluck up the courage to tell anyone, that I had taken legal redress against my abuser’s employers (a local authority) and that the post traumatic stress has left me with such mental health issues that I am considered disabled and thus unlikely to be in a position to have enough money to hand to make a financial commitment to any cause, no matter how keenly felt.

I explained that, as such, the sales patter was extremely “triggering” for myself and was likely to be too for any other adult survivor.  The insistence that I listen to all the terrible things to which exploited children are prey seemed to me later to be somewhat akin to “grooming” – another experience that would be shared by many of those who had suffered in such ways and - I hope - quite contrary to the ethos of the organisation.

Being the member of several adult groups (online and ‘in real life’) concerned with mental health and sexual abuse issues, I have found it to be common practice to warn fellow members if a discussion topic may contain “triggers” that some may find uncomfortable or distressing; would not this be a sensible precaution when spreading the word of such work to people who, by the very nature of their interest, may well have been affected in some way by the issues that such charities seek to alleviate and address?  An unsupported person in their own home having a stranger phone them out of the blue saying what seems like “help us to help people who have been damaged just like you were – oh, as a reminder, here’s what happened … please carry on listening” is a hardly a recipe for helping an already fragile person for whom such services are available woefully too late.

One of my Facebook (& Freecycle) friends tagged me today with “25 Things about me” which spurred me on to write 25 (non-litigious) things about myself.  “Where do I start?” I thought.  So, being methodical, I went through each of the first 25 years of my life with a highlight or two from each year.  The number of things that I had to gloss over: abuses, psychological & physical traumata, more active self-harm, paranoia, emptiness and confusion to name a few.  “Where did it all begin?” was the next question - “somewhere between 0 and 7″ was the proto-Jesuit answer.  “Who shall I tell?” was a further question; as I have only a score or so of friends on Facebook, the selection of the lucky 25 was going to be difficult. I managed 13, one of whom was me, so I felt that as I had failed in even the simplest of revelatory and self-censored chain letters, the battle to crank out something in the order of 75,000 words plus photographs and illustrative artwork was going to be an uphill battle against my natural lethargy, indolence and shame.

Come to think of it, I have managed some 50-plus psychotherapeutic sessions of 50 minutes each: say 2,500 minutes, rounded down to 2,000 of me talking@ 120 words per minutes is nearly quarter of a million words.  All I need to do is to think of my autobiography as a series of private one-to-one sessions rather than addressing the world at large.  I wonder if I can remember everything I said …or does that count as cheating?

A really useful site that I trawl for news relating to Borderline Personality Disorder is David Oliver’s “Borderline News” which he describes as “Your One Stop Source For Information On Borderline Personality Disorder.” It is an aggregation of articles that he has come across.  He is quite unapologetic that many of the stories do seem to be negative - put it this way, apart from my blog, how many positive BPD articles have you read recently? - but, to his credit, he does usually include at least one link each week to a scientific or academic paper on some aspect of the subject.

What does this tell us? It is hard to find uplifting stories about BPD and probably fairly tough to get them published in the first place and that there is some ongoing research on BPD but much of it seems to be within the wider social remit of “mental health” issues.

The latest campaign “Time To Change” with the avowed intent to inspire people to work together to end the discrimination surrounding mental health, is a breath of fresh air. “Time To Change” is a programme of 35 projects is led by Mental Health Media, Mind, and Rethink, funded with £16m from the Big Lottery Fund and £2m from Comic Relief, and evaluated by the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College, London.

There are links on challenging discrimination: how to do it, how to get involved, what others are doing, support, experience and views.  With a bit of luck, their social networking badge is below:

I, for one, will be finding out how I can “do my bit.”  I urge you all to follow suit.

Borderline News
http://www.borderlinecentral.com/borderlinenews.shtml

Time to change
http://www.time-to-change.org.uk/

In July 1790, Baron von Grimm wrote, “We are obsessed by the idea of regulation, and our Masters of Requests refuse to understand that there is infinity of things in a great State with which a government should not concern itself.” [Inappropriate emphasis, mine.]

Today has been a prime example of this for me, as the deadline for submitting tax returns draws ever closer.  Without revealing too much detail, our attempts to interact with the Inland Revenue’s successor - HMRC - over the past few months has been quite Kafkaesque; especially with regard to registering for and accessing the online wealth-sharing system.  The process was further complicated by the fact that supposedly unique numbers were not, in fact, unique; rather unsettling for a person with a diffuse personality to find they are considered the same entity in both singular and multiple forms.

To top this off, I have spent some days tracking the progress of an item of jewellery that I had purchased about a fortnight ago from the United States.  According to the tracking data available, an attempt was made to deliver it at a quarter to five this morning: an unlikely circumstance.  It transpired that it has been delivered into the hands of the person responsible for collecting the excise duties due to - guess who?  - none other than HMRC.

What is the Borderline lesson in all this, I hear you ask.  Dealing with bureaucracy - and not being stressed out doing so - is the answer.  Trying to so unsupported is a minefield which many prefer not to attempt to cross, or even think about, which is why so many people with mental health problems have their affairs in a terribly confused state.  Getting diagnosed, accepted for treatment, registered with the necessary governmental and support services and one’s financial affairs in order is really hard work, even for those with perfect mental acuity; trying to do so whilst hanging on for dear life is a near impossibility.  One of many reasons I suppose why the care and treatment rates are so abysmally low and the attrition rates so high, as I highlighted in recent posts.  Support is vital, but so hard to find if it is not already there.

I have even more bureaucracy to deal with tomorrow; I am almost looking forward to it, which is some form of progress, I suppose.  Today’s machinations made me miss my Art class, so it had better have been worth it.  It will be, I know, but it’s one of those “Daddy or chips?” situations

Links etc.

Baron von Grimm:
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Melchior,_baron_von_Grimm

Mental Health among Adults in England, 2007:
 http://captspacebat.today.com/2009/01/27/mental-health-among-adults-in-england-2007/

Self-help groups:
http://captspacebat.today.com/2009/01/23/self-help-groups/