Why this blog? Why now?

So what is this new blog about then? I already keep a personal blog with entries really just to let my friends and family know what I am up to, reading, thinking about etc. But I wanted to do something which is more connected to the work I do. I have worked in the equality and diversity field now for 10 years. I was a teacher of drama for 3 years before that, but in 1999 I decided to leave teaching and wanted to become a disability employment adviser. More about that later. I will use this blog to give some background info to my journey as a disabled person. Since leaving teaching I have worked for the RNIB, the Mayor of London and the Disability Rights Commission.

But forgetting the back story I now head up a small unit leading on equality and diversity for a healthcare regulator and although this blog won’t be about that work, in my job I come across a lot of information, media stories and anecdotes relating to equality and diversity. It is these non day job snippets I want to share and explore.

We are living in a peculiar time at the moment. An economic crisis or any kind of disaster always raises questions relating to equality, and individuals rights with the public; we feel threatened we draw ranks. The Great Fire of London was blamed on the Dutch and many were set upon by gangs. The recent cry of “British Jobs for British Workers” is an understandable and predictable response to job cuts in an economic down turn. I am not saying it is the right response but it has been the usual response in such circumstances. The recent Carol Thatcher Gollywog incident and the call by a few for a children’s TV presenter, who has part of one arm missing, to be removed from our screens incase she scares the kiddies, are just the kind of stories I want to explore and shed some light on. It seems odd to me that the media are full of such stories and voicing opinions about political correctness gone mad when across the Atlantic Barack Obama has been elected the first black president of the US. Yet here in Britain the government, the public and the police themselves are arguing about whether the Met Police is still racist 10 years on from the McPherson enquiry.

It seemed timely for me to start chronicling these strange diverse times that we live in from my equally “strange” but practcal view point.