[Everyone] Disabled Peoples' Day

Phil
Fri May 22 08:54:54 GMT 2009


Hi all,

A memo has been sent round the executive executive's rung from the  
company lawyers to the effect that the term "Disabled Day" could be  
construed as offensive in this enlightened day and age.

Please refer to next Tuesday as "Disabled People's Day" instead.  
Related events should be renamed similarly, eg "Disabled Peoples'  
Olympics".

Here's the pertinent excerpt from the summary of the lawyers' report's  
annex:

"In the UK, the term 'disabled people' is generally preferred to  
'people with disabilities'. It is argued under the social model that  
while someone's impairment (e.g. having a spinal cord injury) is an  
individual property, 'disability' is something created by external  
societal factors such as a lack of wheelchair access to their  
workplace.[4]. This distinction between the individual property of  
impairment and the social property of disability is central to the  
social model. The term 'disabled people' as a political construction  
is also widely used by international organisations of disabled people,  
such as Disabled Peoples' International (DPI)."

So, let's all look forward to Disabled Peoples' Day! (Paul, please get  
the t-shirts, posters, pens and window stickers re-printed.)

Dziękuję.


-- 
Phil BA(Hons)
VP of Visioning Management and Corporate Resourcing
http//:www.pretendoffice.co.uk
tel: +44 (0)20 7946 0372
mob(ile): +44 (0)7700 900837

"You have to pretend you're 100 percent sure. You have to take action;  
you can't hesitate or hedge your bets. Anything less will condemn your  
efforts to failure." Andrew Grove



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