Tags
(not satire – it’s Toby Young!)
UPDATE: Young has today (01.01.2018) deleted his 2012 article. Unfortunately for him, there is a screenshot of it at the bottom of this blogpost. It’s back up again now. But with an added explanation at the bottom.
UPDATE 2: Please sign and share this petition to sack Toby Young from his new post as Theresa May’s university regulator. Thanks.
Tory spokesman and Free School advocate Toby Young, writing in The Spectator, thinks disabled children should be excluded from schools.
No – I’m not exaggerating – he really does say that wheelchair ramps in schools are an example of ‘ghastly, politically correct’ inclusiveness as well as comparing disabled children to “illiterate troglodytes”:
Of course, if you’re in a wheelchair – wheelchair ramps are not just political correctness. Not having a ramp WILL exclude you.
But perhaps Sun columnist Toby thinks that educating children who can’t walk would in some way mean more ‘dumbing down’ of the level of education in our schools?
As opposed, presumably, to allowing more ‘dumbing down’ of the level of education by accepting children of the rich and influential who fail their exams into exclusive universities? (bear with me and I’ll explain what I mean by that in a moment).
This nonsense about excluding children with disabilities is particularly interesting if you consider the fact that it was Toby’s father, Michael Young, who coined the phrase ‘meritocracy‘ – you know the seemingly radical idea that people’s position in society should be based on merit rather than on what family they were born into or what school they went to.
His father, a Labour peer, must be turning in his grave.
Still – Toby likes to boast about how he is a perfect example of how anyone can succeed because he still managed to get a place at Oxford despite failing most of his O’ Levels.
He managed to do this because apparently Brasenose College, Oxford sent him a letter of acceptance ‘by mistake’ (No – I’m not making this up).
Of course Toby, you were accepted into Oxford ‘by mistake’.
It had nothing to do with the fact your father was MP and life peer, Baron Young, and your mother a well-known artist, writer and BBC Radio producer.
No – it was just a mistake – the kind of ‘mistakes’ which only seem to happen to the children of the rich, the influential or the well-known.
Toby – I’d like to explain to you why excluding disabled children who use wheelchairs from schools is not one of your best ideas, by making a technical point about biology – clearly one of the O’ Level subjects you must have failed.
People don’t think with their f***ing legs you bonehead.
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After Toby Young’s infantile idiocy, why not refresh your brain with some much needed common sense from think-left.org on the important subject of inclusion and exclusion in education:
Integration or Inclusion
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Related articles by Tom Pride:
ATOS to reduce ‘fit for work’ test to one question: “Are you alive?”
Public displays of poverty and disability to be banned
Scientists Confirm Deniers Were Right – Global Disability Is A Hoax!
‘Tory’ Syndrome – symptoms include knee-jerk reactions and offensive outbursts
A4e Claims Success In Getting Taxpayers Money Off Benefits & Into Its Own Pockets
The government has finally done something so outrageous even I can’t be bothered to satirise it
Tory minister – no shortage of jobs for disabled toddlers
Government – Light-Touch Regulation Of The Disabled To Blame For Economic Crisis
.
Please feel free to comment – you don’t need to register and I’m extremely minimal with the moderating – so fire away.
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By the way, if you click on any of these buttons below, you’ll be doing me a huge favour by sharing this article with other people. Thanks:
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Not often that words fail me but I cannot think of anything sufficiently odious to apply to this vile individual!
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He obviously doesnt need a wheelchair, but perhaps a mental test would fit nicely, just think yourself lucky you cretin you havent needed a wheelchair !
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Any chance you can amend the wonderful line, “People don’t think with their f***ing legs you cretin” and lose the ‘cretin’ as it kind of undermines the rest of the piece a bit, please?
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You’re right – apologies. I’ve changed it to bonehead. Which he is.
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Hey, if he writes for the sun,what can you expect. Free press is a wonderful thing, It means we can all give as good as we get. I think a certain Mr Young will probably regret this and if he’s so thick skinned he doesn’t care then it’s his editors that should be taken out and given a damn good slapping for making him believe he could have a publishable opinion on the subject.
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Unfortunately, I suspect his editors couldn’t give a monkey’s toss about what he says on disability just as long as they continue to get readers.
But people should know what he’s been saying.
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I think that Toby Young’s issues with his father are being spewed up over the nation via his column. Vile man…
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I cannot begin to describe how incredibly angry, and sad, this makes me.
My brother was disabled in an accident as a kid. He is in a wheelchair. He is also skilled in mathematics, computers and engineering to a level that I confidently consider near-genius. But that is beside the point, he is a person.
He has accomplished all of his academic developments SINCE the accident, not before. It was precisely because the area he lived in had good wheelchair and disabled facilities that he’s been able to be as fully involved as he has. Being able to participate fully in school gave him the motivation to succeed *despite* his disability. As a result, he is now a fully-independent successful self-sufficient adult.
It’s taken years of work for him to achieve his education. Far more work than I’ve put in because I am privileged enough not to have the added bonus of disability to overcome, and the added bonus of peoples ignorance. No one ever doubts my capabilities because I can walk, but when people meet him they speak down to him because they assume can’t walk = impaired cognitive abilities. He has learned to deal with how offensive that is without accidentally wheeling over their feet.
I generally refrain from name-calling if I can, but based on Toby Young’s own words, Toby Young is nothing but trash.
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An excellent comment beardly – your brother’s experiences illustrate everything that’s wrong with Toby Young’s attitude.
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I think you’ve hit the nail on the head Sue – as you so often do.
But I wish he’d keep it between himself and his therapist.
And if he hasn’t got one he should get one – fast
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Good idea.. but not me!
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He claims it was badly written and he was misunderstood.His attitude shines through ,despite these protestations.My wife happens to use a wheelchair and unfortunately this attitude is a hard one to break.Such stupidity(at best) or misanthropy (at worst) does not help.
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Yes – he seems to be trying (very badly) to wriggle out of it. He’s put a ‘clarification’ at the bottom of the piece which doesn’t clarify anything.
This is what he originally wrote, and it’s clear as day what he meant:
“Inclusive. It’s one of those ghastly, politically correct words that have survived the demise of New Labour. Schools have got to be “inclusive” these days. That means wheelchair ramps……”
If he regrets writing it now, why doesn’t he just man up, apologise and try to mend his attitude instead of pathetically wriggling like a worm stuck on a hook?
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Indeed.
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Two tier exams may have worked for him but WHY in hell would we want more of *him* in the world????!!!! No amount of education, inclusive or otherwise can fix STUPID!!!! My daughter is disabled, she is also in the top 5 in 8 of her 9 subjects – something she has acheived despite her legs not working and whilst continually having to face the ignorance and stupidity of discriminating arseholes like Mr Young!!!!
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Hey, thank you. I know it isn’t personal so I don’t mean to get ranting, but having met so many people with physical disabilities and seen the level of added difficulty they have to overcome to lead independent lives, anything like this reaaaally gets my hackles up:) I’m fairly confident that 100% of puerile comments about disability would stop if everyone making them had to spend an hour or two in a wheelchair on any average street.
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It’s past the point of satire now. People like this are given a free ride by the likes of the BBC (while of cuorse decrying the beeb as some loony lefty liberal new labour organ). We have to fight them. Once upon a time the idea that you rose above and ignored people like this would have been valid. Not anymore, not in the pro-right wing 24 hour rolling news environment we have now. So it’s encumbent on us to stand up to scum like Toby Young and set him straight.
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He can’t help it……He’s got bad memories of his own school days. He still has the bruises on his arse from stepping off the pavement. Small man, small mind. Stick to rice lad……..the chip on your shoulder will be your down fall…..sad very sad.
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Vile creature.
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I’m disgusted by this! My grandson has Angelman’s syndrome, and whilst he will never be in the this small minded rat (no offence to rats) found himself in (being accepted to uni by mistake (he loves school). I’m afraid if I’m perfectly honest this Toby Young never actually got much from his university education as this is the bile of an uneducated,ignorant moron
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Reblogged this on Representing the Mambo and commented:
Toby Young is a complete wanker, isn’ he……
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Totally
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It wont become policy but to even to think of it reveals a worrying extremist trait in right wing thinking. Fortunatley this sort of attitude is dying out; students who are educated in a setting where there are wheelchair users will grow up with none of the prejudice that Toby Young displays
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Uneducated and ignorant. Going to Oxford will never change it.
Disgusted is the right word.
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Yes. He is.
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The problem is that people like him are setting up free schools which will be free to set whatever policies they like.
On the whole I think you’re right, Liam, it’s a generational thing and hopefully this kind of primitive thinking is dying out.
But what an utter cock, eh?
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Yep, that is how I feel!! Pond-scum!!
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Danny: “I don’t advise a haircut, man. All hairdressers are in the employment of the government. Hairs are your aerials. They pick up signals from the cosmos, and transmit them directly into the brain. This is the reason bald-headed men are uptight.” Withnail and I
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I suspect Withnail and I might hold the answers to a few of the world’s problem within its sacred text.
Not sure about hairdressers being in the employment of the government though…. 😉
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Well the few government hairdressers the government employs are probably being outsourced to Serco and G4S as I type…..
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loose lips ?? Remember don’t talk in the hairdressers seat, they pass it on 😉
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Toby young is an example of stuck up failure with a chip on his shoulder so he can blame everyone else for it.
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Did Toby young read the stuff from levenson enquiry on the depiction of disability in the media . It was produced by inclusion London something that Toby is against .
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I’ve tried to formulate a reply to this odious piece of crap, but once I take out the swear words there is little left . Stephen Hawkins is in a wheelchair, I can’t help thinking Toby Young would have a hard time telling HIM he shouldn’t have received an education.
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What Toby Young is saying is disgusting and i wonder why has he not being reported to the police for inciting hatred towards disabled children, because this is clearly what it is. Inciting such is against the law and to belittle children who have to fight ever harder each day is a low blow by someone who clearly has no idea what it is like to look after a child with special needs.
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Does that mean Toby won’t be invited onto the Daily Politics anymore? Or is the BBC duty bound to give a regular platform to right-wing shitheads?
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The BBC must think it’s part of their mission to give regular platforms to right-wing shitheads.
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Toby Young, son of a Labour peer and a creative force. Proof that talent and intelligent thought are not always hereditary. Oh, odious toad go play on the road, get hit by a truck you vile little fuck!
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Pure poetry!
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My gorgeous girlfriend Sheena ( fibromyalgia, dyslexia, aspergers syndrome, IQ 130+) and I – chronic arthritis cervical spondylosis, depression, diabetes) call this the ‘does he take sugar syndrome. What a twat. Not even a complete twat – something has to be missing.
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“He has learned to deal with how offensive that is without accidentally wheeling over their feet”. – Thank you both .. that made me laugh out loud.
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Something does seem to be missing. I found the logic of this piece to be agreeable… and this T. Young person to be coming from a disagreeable place. Although, there is at least to my mind a thread of reason to Young’s seemingly misguided remarks regarding the “disabled.”
From my own experience, and observing the various experiences of my class-mates who were seemingly shuffled through “special education” (in n. america) and into the “juvenile justice” system… and then after that, hopefully it was not psych wards, jail, and then prison.
In the spirit of the “Freedom Schools” or “Liberation Schools” founded in trenches (so to say) of various Liberation Movements since the beginning… perhaps it is a nice idea to consider how this could relate to those w/ “disabliities” as often it is the progress of the “disabled” that is set back (or Re-) by the constant pulling and shoving of the body from an “integrated” (a room that claims to meet all educational needs) class room to a “special” room.
I dunno… just a few thoughts about something i’ve been mulling over for quite some time.
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I wonder if Tom Pride has school-age children whose education might be adversely affected by the presence of children with learning disabilities, and suspect he has not.
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Your suspicions would be wrong Claire.
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what a complete and utter moron he must be mentally impaired to come out with rubbish like that
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Toby Youngs father also started an organisation called ACE – Advisory Centre for Education. They were running 50 years, a free advice service for parents of children having difficulty in school. From exclusions to SEN, and everything in between. They relied on government funding and went bust last year. I used to work for them, often wondered what his father would think about his views and wishes for a system that would significantly disadvantage the people we were set up to help. Shameful.
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Keeping the disabled out of schools isn’t the main point of the article at all. which is suggesting that children do challenging exams rather than unchallenging ones and that ‘inclusiveness’ should be subordinate to real education.
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Jeffrey – straw man alert!
Where did I say it was the main point of his article?
Nowhere.
But did Young really say wheelchair ramps are an example of “ghastly” inclusiveness.
Yes he did.
If a child is in a wheelchair and there are no ramps – the child can’t go to school.
Now stop tilting at straw men and try justifying that.
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LT – shameful indeed. I have a therapist friend who believes Toby’s whole raison d’etre is to challenge his father in his own mind.
I think she might be onto something.
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I shouldn’t be so sensitive, Tom. It would make far more sense to establish special schools for the disabled anyway, rather than having to adapt every school. This is particularly true of the mentally handicapped who need be taught at their own level. Toby Young’s general point is that ‘inclusiveness’ is valued over excellence and this is both true and a great shame. So-called ‘special needs’ have been the only growth area in public education in the last twenty years.
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This is a link to my first blog about becoming disabled… Hearing what Toby Young has to say has made me furious. If I can in anyway help you to spread this message I will!
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Why should the disabled be separated from society? I fail to see how allowing disabled children into schools adversely affects the education of other children – on the contrary, I think it would educate them in a way that people like this Mr Young clearly needed, in showing them that people with disabilities are people with the same rights, that have additional obstacles to overcome. The reference was only to wheelchairs (which by no means implies mental disabilities) in any case.
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I suspect you gobble tory cock
P.S Shut the fuck up.
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Fuck off back to The Sun you fucking inbreeding tory cunt.
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Reblogged this on theworldofneil and commented:
Typical Tory.
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As a parent of a child with a disability, I find this man clueless. He clearly has an agenda. He wants some publicity. Say something offensive and get some free publicity. I don’t think this man has much to say; therefore, he spews this ‘hatred’. Being cruel, mean and rude, does not maketh the man.
I’d like him to explain to my daughter why she shouldn’t go to the same school as her twin sister because she has ‘wobbly legs’ and cerebral palsy. He wouldn’t because he just wants a bit of publicity. Let’s ignore this man.
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Am I the only one who wonders how Stephen Hawking would have fared under this mad regime? Or disabled teachers?
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Reblogged this on Sociology + Social Policy = Sociopolocy.
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If a child who either has walking difficulties or is unable to walk goes to a mainstream school, it should have a wheelchair ramp. Disability discrimination is wrong.
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So I take it, had David Cameron’s son survived, this would have included him eh!! Yeh sure. Is he forgetting people like Christy Brown author of ‘My Left Foot’ fame, Stephen Hawking, Beethoven, but most recently how very well our Athletes did in the Paralympics less than a year ago!!! Many people with whatever ranges of disabilities are to be congratulated for their couraage and determination inspite of what quality of life has been dished out to them. They are not less of a person because of it and some contibute so much more to society than their abled body counterparts
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My son was bottom of everything in his mainstream primary, not unusual for a child with ASD. We fought and got one of two places at an ASD Base in our city where ASD children receive a mainstream education with specialist ASD input and a base to retreat to. He is now predicted 10 – 11 good GCSE grades. My younger son is also disabled, Autism, I doubt he will work (if he does II will be thrilled, it’s his concentration / attention so could resolve I guess)- he still learns an awful lot in his SN Placement- he can now read, count money- important skills. Oh and yes me- being assessed for Asperger’s, completing my MA Dissertation. What a waste of an education eh? 😉
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That may be true from a USA perspective, here we are championing education which provides a Base- a retreat / support for disabled children alongside mainstream education which they can access as they are able.
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Claire Khaw has a rigt to an opinion: and we to an understanding of the opinions she holds. Read and weep! http://thevoiceofreason-ann.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/claire-khaw-on-victoria-derbyshire-show.html
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My son doesn’t need a ramp or a wheelchair. However he does need a great deal of help to learn.
He isn’t ‘clever’. He is no autistic savant. He will not get a load of A levels.
He IS legally and morally entitled to an education and he deserves one.
If Toby Young is repulsed at the idea of kids in wheelchairs cluttering up schools what does he feel about those with ‘low IQs’ spoiling the view?
As for Free Schools being inclusive and not just cherry picking the best and brightest…don’g make me laugh Young. You odious little tit of a man.
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Hear, hear, Minister Young! Let’s keep those ruddy disabled chaps out of our colleges. Like Hawkins – it’s not like he has achieved anything with all of his education!
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Quite simply : Toby Young should be excluded from living.
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pretty sure it was Nietzsche who coined the phrase ‘meritocracy‘
i digress my bad, the guy is a waste of skin
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Wow, what a monumental cunt. A bald, speccy, attention-seeking gimp of a cunt as well.
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People don’t think with their f***ing legs, you bonehead.
Why don’t I rephrase that for Mr. Young? Legs walk, head thinks. Legs on bottom, head on top. Different bits in different places not always do same job.
I think the above should be sufficient for most stupid people, except those working at 5% or less of their intellectual capacity. I do not include intellectually disabled people in my definition of stupid, since they, AFAIAA, always work at 100% of their intellectual capacity, they just happen to not have as much as they should.
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