Deaf diplomat loses fight with Foreign Office over

[housesparrow]

Clearly disability can make someone incapable of doing a particular job.

On the other hand, if the difference between working and not working is a stairlift or a special phone, it would be churlish (and illegal) t deny it.

This woman's disability finds her falling between these two stools. Clearly a diplomat needs to be able to communicate, and she has chosen a career which not only requires these skills, but requires her to communicate with people who speak a foreign language. Spending nearly a quarter of a million pounds* to enable her to do it seems over the top to me.

Sesley, if there were spare managers floating around, I dare say the FO has got rid of them ages ago. There seems to be an idea that civil servants sit around twiddling their thumbs. Okay, some public bodies are top-heavy on admin, but that's because of the hoops they have to jump through to convince (whoever) that targets have been met and various other bureaucratic requirements complied with.



*The Telegraph puts the cost at £0.5 million over a two year posting, so the £240,000 is presumably for a single year. You would need to have an awful lot of children to cost the FO that much in school fees, even if they all went to Eton.


www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatnews/8102630/Deaf-diplomat-who-sued-FCO-for-discrimination-loses-fight.html

[riotgrrl]

At the risk of being nasty, I'm a bit sick of the Deaf (capital D) community. (They like the capital D bit. Deaf with a lower case d apparently refers to just a medical condition, but Deaf with a capital D is the correct term for their community, which they would like to have classified as some kind of ethnic group.)

I can go along with the politically Deaf when they say that sign language is their first language, and that it should be treated with the same respect as other minority languages in the UK - e.g. provision of interpreters, material in understandable forms, etc. I can go along with them along all of that.

But, and here's the rub - if you could not speak English (say you spoke only Punjabi) then you could not really get a job in the diplomatic core abroad, could you? It just wouldn't happen.

So if the Deaf community want us to treat their condition not as a disability but as a question of language, culture and ethnicity (and they do), then they can hardly complain when that then excludes them from seeking jobs which require the ability to communicate verbally in English.

[riotgrrl]

P.s. I am awaiting Jean or Weyland telling me that 'diplomatic core' should be 'diplomatic corps' or something. That has always confused me.

[jean]

I'll tell you, then - it should be 'corps'. It's a French word from Latin corpus, corporis meaning body. We pronounce it 'core' because the French do - they're even more careless than we are about pronouncing all the letters in a word.

'Core' comes from a different Latin word cor, cordis meaning heart (French 'coeur').

[Weyland]

Nov 16, 2010 10:10:38 GMT jean said:

But (I've read the article now) they pay hundreds of thousands of pounds for the
Public School education of diplomats' offspring.

I suggest that having children is a disability the cost of support for which means a diplomat should not expect an overseas posting.

Hear, here! Let them put their kids in local schools, and/or pay any fees themselves.

At the very least, Public Schools should be an automatic nono. (I'd say they shouldn't exist at all, but that's a whole nother issue.)

I still don't believe the salary numbers.

[Weyland]

Nov 16, 2010 10:16:52 GMT @riotgrrl said:

Yeah Weyland,I quite fancy working in Kazakhstan for £48k.

Aye, right, as they say in Inverness. Aff with ye.

[riotgrrl]

You know Jean, I think we should forcibly educate everybody in Latin. they didnt' do it at my school, and the only latin I know are the odd phrases of legal significance I have picked up through study/work.

But, so many French and English words come from the same Latin route (well, half of English is just French anyway!!!). And, I don't know if the Slavonic languages come from latin, or if they just have a huge number of loan words, but I did (while very drunk on rakia) come up with a theory that anyone could speak Serbian . . you just add Ski (or ska) on to the end of the French word.

It sort of worked. Vaguely.

I wish I knew Latin; I think I could speak EVERY useful language in Europe if I did (just about.)

[jean]

Nov 17, 2010 15:46:22 GMT @riotgrrl said:

You know Jean, I think we should forcibly educate everybody in Latin.

So does Bettany Hughes - she was telling everyone on WH this morning

And, I don't know if the Slavonic languages come from latin, or if they just have a huge number of loan words...

They don't come from Latin, but they share a common ancestor in the conjectural Proto-Indo-European.

You can tell they split off from the Western European language families very early, because Polish for example retains a locative case which had disappeared from Latin by the Classical period, and the word for 'father' is quite different from the 'pater-father -Vater' pattern you find in W Europe. The word for 'ten' is quite different, too.

But later on, they also borrowed lots - both direct from Latin, and from French,. when it was the most fashionable language in Europe.

[housesparrow]

Nov 17, 2010 14:27:23 GMT Weyland said:

Nov 16, 2010 10:10:38 GMT jean said:

But (I've read the article now) they pay hundreds of thousands of pounds for the
Public School education of diplomats' offspring.

I suggest that having children is a disability the cost of support for which means a diplomat should not expect an overseas posting.

Hear, here! Let them put their kids in local schools, and/or pay any fees themselves.

At the very least, Public Schools should be an automatic nono. (I'd say they shouldn't exist at all, but that's a whole nother issue.)

I still don't believe the salary numbers.

The Independent article speaks of private education, not public. That could mean an international school in the country of posting. The diplomat's daughter I spoke of in an earlier post was a neighbour; "diplomat" might have been going a bit far because her dad was a senior civil servant and I'm not sure what role he had. But I think that when they were posted in Bankok she went to an English speaking school there - I don't know who paid for it. Neither do I know who paid for her education at Kent College; it was ony for a couple of terms while the family was settling back in Britain.

But suppose Jane Cordell happens to have a family (and she might). There may well be no free education in Kazakhstan and even if there is, would you really expect her to send them to a school where no English is spoken? There may be a suitable school in the city where she is based, but free it won't be. And from a salary of £45,000, that could be quite a chunk.

[everso]

Nov 17, 2010 12:40:16 GMT @riotgrrl said:

At the risk of being nasty, I'm a bit sick of the Deaf (capital D) community. (They like the capital D bit. Deaf with a lower case d apparently refers to just a medical condition, but Deaf with a capital D is the correct term for their community, which they would like to have classified as some kind of ethnic group.)

I can go along with the politically Deaf when they say that sign language is their first language, and that it should be treated with the same respect as other minority languages in the UK - e.g. provision of interpreters, material in understandable forms, etc. I can go along with them along all of that.

But, and here's the rub - if you could not speak English (say you spoke only Punjabi) then you could not really get a job in the diplomatic core abroad, could you? It just wouldn't happen.

So if the Deaf community want us to treat their condition not as a disability but as a question of language, culture and ethnicity (and they do), then they can hardly complain when that then excludes them from seeking jobs which require the ability to communicate verbally in English.

Quite. Well put, Riot.

[housesparrow]

British deaf people can communicate verbally in English. It was drummed into me by a one-time lecturer that "verbal" covers writing as well as speaking . Deaf people may have problems with oral English, especially if they were born profoundly deaf, which I've always considered a far worse handicap than being born blind.

The grammar school attended by my deaf acquaintance in the '70s didn't encourage sign language and focused instead in teaching their students to lip read and talk. Then thinking seemed to turn in the opposite direction and I'm not sure where things stand now. But from the links, it appears Miss Cordell required a "lip-speaking" interpreter. I had tyo look this up, so here is a link:
www.knockhundred.com/interpreting-lip.html

I have no idea why this would be so expensive to find/train but the cost does not seem to have been challenged.

So I'm now wondering why on earth I'm batting on the side of the parents. Children are a choice; deafness is not. I suppose from a pragmatic point of view it would be hard to find parents prepared to take a posting and fork out for the necessary private education - and probably also be in breach of the equalities laws.

[Patrick]

Nov 18, 2010 0:31:55 GMT everso said:

Nov 17, 2010 12:40:16 GMT @riotgrrl said:

At the risk of being nasty, I'm a bit sick of the Deaf (capital D) community. (They like the capital D bit. Deaf with a lower case d apparently refers to just a medical condition, but Deaf with a capital D is the correct term for their community, which they would like to have classified as some kind of ethnic group.)

I can go along with the politically Deaf when they say that sign language is their first language, and that it should be treated with the same respect as other minority languages in the UK - e.g. provision of interpreters, material in understandable forms, etc. I can go along with them along all of that.

But, and here's the rub - if you could not speak English (say you spoke only Punjabi) then you could not really get a job in the diplomatic core abroad, could you? It just wouldn't happen.

So if the Deaf community want us to treat their condition not as a disability but as a question of language, culture and ethnicity (and they do), then they can hardly complain when that then excludes them from seeking jobs which require the ability to communicate verbally in English.

Quite. Well put, Riot.

........and as for that couple who "specified" a deaf baby! Just because they themselves were........

[housesparrow]

Hmmm, Patrick Frm a quick internet search I see they were not alone. see

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1584948/Couples-could-win-right-to-select-deaf-baby.html

from that article:

Now a deaf couple have turned this on its head: far from wanting a flawless child they actively want a baby which suffers the same hearing difficulties as they themselves.

The couple have become icons in a deaf movement which sees this impairment not as a disability but as the key to a rich culture which has its own language, history and traditions: a world deaf parents would naturally want to share with any offspring.

Moreover, they argue that to prefer a hearing embryo over a deaf one is tantamount to discrimination.

BUT this is followed by :


The Royal National Institute for Deaf People does not support the choice of deaf embryos over those who would not be born with hearing problems.

"No-one should be forced into having genetic testing if they don't want it. But if they do, we would want the embryos without the gene to be implanted," says its chief executive Jackie Ballard.

"Deafness is a disability and we have spent a long time campaigning to improve the lives of people who live with it. But it is certainly not a slight to the deaf to say it is better to bring a child who will face the least difficulty into the world, when there is a choice to be made."

[everso]

The deaf thing has gone from being a disability to being something positive, which it is not. Parents who wish to bring a disabled child into the world rather than having one who is not disabled (having the choice of the two) don't deserve to be parents, imo.

Housey, the deaf v. blind thing. To me, being short sighted, with a relative who's totally blind and another who is partially sighted but registered blind, the thought of being without my sight terrifies me. Never to see my families' and friends' faces again would be awful. My aunt has never had the confidence to go out on her own since she lost her sight (being crippled in old age with arthritis she never will be able to now) but I'm sure had she lost her hearing instead of her sight she would have been able to lead a more independent life.

For instance, how about the everyday mundane things like housework, ironing, cooking? All these things can be done without the ability to hear. Things like choosing which clothes you'll wear today, doing your hair and make-up, doing a bit of gardening, all much easier when you can see - hearing is not essential to carry out these tasks. How about writing a letter or even sitting at your computer posting on Stub Crouch?

Certainly, being deaf would mean a loss of much enjoyment in the world, but on balance I think one is less disabled by being deaf.

[housesparrow]

It was wrong of me to try to make this comparison, Everso, but I was specifically talking about people who had the disabilities since birth. I do get the impression that people born blind are not as isolated as those born deaf. It is dreadfully difficult to learn a spoken language when you can't hear, and I can understand why deaf people have formed themselves into a kind of community, relying on signing.

Things are probably very different for those who acquire deafness or blindness in later life. Losing one's hearing in adulthood is a real nuisance, but the sufferer has at least been able to learn the language with ease. On the other hand someone who loses their sight and has not been trained since birth to cope with those everyday household chores is in a right fix!

That's my impression, anyway.

I've just discovered that Jane Cordell lost her hearing as a "young adult"

(http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/diplomat-denied-foreign-post-due-to-her-deafness-2078434.html)

and therefore did not have to face the language struggle of those born deaf.

[everso]

Nov 18, 2010 11:58:53 GMT housesparrow said:

It was wrong of me to try to make this comparison, Everso, but I was specifically talking about people who had the disabilities since birth. I do get the impression that people born blind are not as isolated as those born deaf. It is dreadfully difficult to learn a spoken language when you can't hear, and I can understand why deaf people have formed themselves into a kind of community, relying on signing.

Things are probably very different for those who acquire deafness or blindness in later life. Losing one's hearing in adulthood is a real nuisance, but the sufferer has at least been able to learn the language with ease. On the other hand someone who loses their sight and has not been trained since birth to cope with those everyday household chores is in a right fix!

That's my impression, anyway.

I've just discovered that Jane Cordell lost her hearing as a "young adult"

(http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/diplomat-denied-foreign-post-due-to-her-deafness-2078434.html)

and therefore did not have to face the language struggle of those born deaf.

Ah, yes. Sorry Housey. I understand now what you meant, and I agree with you in respect of trying to learn a language when you can't hear how it's spoken.