Grumpy Old Deafies

Hi Jen,

Yup, u right. I was speaking to MP Malcolm Bruce last night at the CoDUK reception, and he was saying no way is BSL reconised. It's just a bit of verbiage by DWP that they will accept it as a language for admin purposes. Doesn't affect Education etc. Don't quote me, i'm paraphrasing here.

He gave quite a big speech on it to the whole CoDUK reception, about 150 ppl, and was comparing the chickenfeed we get to the funding for Welsh and Gaelic, and said he believed the Govt's inaction was a breach of human rights etc... Nice to see someone getting worked up about it.

Paula told me Malcolm was less strong on the topic in the past, but he seems to be fired up on it now.

There were a lot more Deaf faces at CoDUK than before - almost all the BSL Deaf orgs and BSL Deaf companies had reps there.

Its worth trying to get a copy of malcolms speech - it was the keynote of the evening.

xoxo T

Of course BSL isn't recognised, the deaf were told this at day one of the premature celebrations after the euro directive (NOT a UK supported one), was installed to much blowing of trumpets. I blame the leaders of the signing community for misleadingthe deaf and not reading the small print (Or even the larger). Perhaps they were hoping of some tide of feeling that would force the BSL agenda through,in education it won't happen, on the street,it matters little how many deaf use BSL there isn't the terps for them, and too many dropping out of attaining the high level of expertise needed.

I am a 39 year old CODA / HMFD / CSW in University also doing Level 3 NVQ at City Lit and only found out recently that the so called BSL "recognition" is limited!! Only £1.5m thrown at BSL as a token!!

http://www.schoolofsignlanguage.com/petition.php is a small start to putting this right.

Some very good dialogue in bsllearners group on yahoo too about it.

I will be posting some controversial stuff about different attitudes and issues when the time is right.