Posts by Sacha
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
And it shows in the Washington Group work too, unfortunately.
-
That's encouraging, Hilary, but ICF is still very medicalised too.
-
Cuntstruck is best used when it really suits.
Like on Outrageous Fortune? (just checking who watched the swearing segment on Media7)
-
I doubt they would be given much choice by the airport about where to dock or park.
-
thinking seriously
Statistics NZ do seem to have been listening and things should improve, especially if disability is added to better-framed surveys like GSS. I have done a bit of work with them myself to progress matters that government agencies had not picked up adequately. I also developed localised disability demographic statistics myself because no one else was taking responsibility for that. Am having to update those figures this weekend (unpaid) to send to the select committee, so please excuse me feeling a tad uncharitable.
Frankly, government agencies have all had 8 years to respond to the NZ Disability Strategy's Objective 10 about evidence. I understand it takes time and that there was no extra funding allocated to implementing the NZDS but progress has been slow at best and we have missed out on many opportunities. Talking about "rights" does not get you very far in an evidence-based policy environment. I trust you'll understand why "thinking seriously" after 8 years does not seem enough to me.
The size of the population group (about 800,000) and the scope of the issues is not even close to being matched by the statistical and research efforts of our public servants and funders. Worth remembering when you read the optimistic summary of NZDS progress to 2007.
Here's how bad it is compared with other significant population groups. There is still no standard definition of disability (let alone as part of POSS) that is consistent with the Disability Strategy and other modern approaches. Disability is treated as if disabled people are diseased, with a consequent focus on how many of us there are with various things wrong with us. Stats NZ persisted with a medicalised 1980 WHO definition in the most recent 2006 post-census Disability Survey (though more recent WHO standards do not seem much better, reflecting poor international understandings). Unfortunately, organisations like District Health Boards and even the Human Rights Commission parrot those tired medicalised definitions in their own uncoordinated and irregular statistical work. Competent analytical capacity is low but unvalued.
That national Disability Survey remains our sole regular data series (updated only every five years) because no one has made Stats NZ include a consistent disability cross-tab in the rest of the publicly-funded data they administer with their $90m annual budget. For example, in the quarterly Household Labour Force survey that would enable us to compare employment rates regularly. I suggested a viable cross-tab last year, so we'll see whether that gets picked up. It's not that hard.
There were some concerns about the validity of the 2006 Disability Survey and its results have still not all been released - though that sadly didn't extend to selected measures and misleading headline totals which have been repeated by others (and which amount to Stats NZ miraculously 'curing' well over 100,000 disabled Kiwis between 2001 and 2006). Using the wrong totals produces wrong calcuations about things like employment (where the rate of labour force participation was stated to have again miraculously increased from 40% to 60%). No one seems to be challenging the results.
External advocacy about this crucial underpinning for change is weak, fragmented and under-informed. Government accountability seems close to zero, without forceful representation or significant work programmes from any agency. Extremely long way to go, trust me. Don't want to get into a detailed discussion here, but am available offline for consultation in this area. :)
-
Heh. You weren't thinking of this one from their home page?
-
Does the "seabed" in this context include exploration rights to gas/oil and jurisdiction over using water/seabed for energy generation (tidal/wave generators)?
I imagine those might constitute some of the "competing allegiances" Hilary alludes to. I don't think there is a strong iwi presence on the Southland coast where the current oil rush is going on, so less fraught than the rich aquaculture pickings of Nelson. Tidal Cook Strait or Kaipara Harbour might prove interesting.
-
The offensiveness is even more basic than that for me - the idea that there should only be one show, when we make up one in five of the population. Who the f$%k do they think pays for their funding?
-
I can imagine that, Steven. Was I also stroking a cat?
-
I know what you mean but I'm not PC, Hilary, and I don't think Sally was using it with either malice or laziness. I found her story about broadcasting funding being turned down because Attitude was the only disability show instructive. We need a wider market of disability representations. Then we could have a broader conversation amongst the different ways of understanding it, not just amongst academics.
What annoys me is the spending of public funds in ways that undermine the official position government has signed up to in the NZ Disability Strategy and the UN Disability Convention. Most of our scarce research funding is still spent in clinical frameworks that amount to poking disabled people with a stick and recording the noise they make. Archaic and doesn't help at all.
Last ←Newer Page 1 … 1658 1659 1660 1661 1662 … 1971 Older→ First