[nfb-talk] Fw: Guardian Article about David Blunkett and Being a Politician Who Is Blind

[Joe Orozco]

Subject: Guardian Article about David Blunkett and Being a Politician Who Is 
Blind



>Blunkett was a minister in Tony Blair's government, and talks about
>the difficulties of being a blind politician in a sighted world. This
>is from today's Guardian website.
>
>
>Sometimes in politics, there are none so blind as those who can see
>In this final diary extract, David Blunkett talks about the issues
>arising from blindness - such as well-meaning, but patronising,
>colleagues
>Friday October 13, 2006
>Guardian
>
>It was some months [after my birth] before it was recognised that
>there might be something wrong with my eyes. Once it was clear that I
>could see only a tiny bit (normally referred to as "light and dark"),
>efforts to trace the cause were under way. It was only my mother's
>tenacity that prevented [doctors] from what now would probably be
>described as a medical fetish - namely to remove the eyes of the
>child in order to avoid further damage. There was no tumour, and it
>was a one-in-several-million chance which led to the failure of my
>optic nerve to develop.
>I have rarely done interviews about the way I work and the challenge
>of overcoming blindness. But it seems appropriate to offer a better
>understanding of what it has been like to deal with avalanches of
>paper, to have all print material read on to tape and to be on top of
>the material in a way that would never allow people to be able to
>say: "If only he could see, he would have understood that better."
>When I first entered parliament I struggled to get additional
>equipment (for brailling) and additional staffing hours for reading,
>and will never forget a remark made to me by one colleague who became
>a very senior cabinet minister when we came to power in 1997: "It's
>all right for you with the extra resources you get. No wonder you can
>churn out the press releases." My reply was fairly succinct: "I'll
>swap with you any time."
>When I first entered the House of Commons in 1987 I came across many
>who were patronising, even if they meant well. Of course I was very
>sensitive about people being indulgent to me, and my pigheadedness,
>my inherent independence and sometimes my unintentional rudeness soon
>put paid to any do-gooding. I didn't want to be promoted out of
>sympathy, though it was never easy to pull off the feat of being seen
>to be effortlessly on top of things. Sometimes I have thought of
>nothing else but how I was going to get through the masses of tapes
>that arrived in the box each weekend or the nightly tapes that had to
>be done either that evening or at least first thing in the morning.
>In these early years of government the sheer volume of work left no
>time for "gallivanting around in London", as my mother would have
>called it. I was at that time very much what the press saw (and
>wanted me always to be): the dedicated, workaholic, almost obsessive,
>dour northerner.
>Feeding and grooming a guide dog, and of course making sure that it
>is exercised and has a chance to do what the Guide Dogs for the Blind
>Association call its "spend", are all-important. So each morning my
>dog and I would set off walking. We would have a decent walk and the
>car would collect us. We would then run the dog properly (often but
>not always in New Palace Yard at the House of Commons) before going
>into the office.
>Each morning I would, however, have had a phone call from the press
>office. They were lovely young - forgive me if I call them that -
>people who volunteered to do a rota for what increasingly over the
>years became an extremely grumpy man. The more difficult the coverage
>we received, the grumpier and more bad-tempered I became.
>Every minute of every travelling hour had to be spent working. It was
>the only way. I kept a braille machine of my own on my desk so that I
>could make notes. Contrary to common assumption, I didn't always rely
>on my memory, although I did try to develop it, much in the way that
>one develops a muscle, to ensure that with particular aspects of the
>job it was possible to achieve better recall than would normally be
>the case.
>The same is true of my hearing and my ability to be able to sense
>what is going on around me. I am still learning, and I still
>sometimes get it wrong. When I am chairing a meeting I often ask
>people to indicate to me when they want to speak with a quiet word or
>cough, or make some other sound to show that they would like to come
>in on the discussion.
>And I also have to be careful not to blunder in. This is a particular
>issue for blind people. Speaking at the wrong moment, intervening
>just when someone else has their hand up and is about to be called,
>or failing to recognise a visual indication (which often can be
>discernible body language) that this is not the moment to speak out,
>is something that has been difficult, to say the least.
>Honesty is a mixed blessing. Saying what you think, you cannot see
>the thunder in the faces around you. It does lead to honest, plain
>speaking, but it also undoubtedly sometimes makes you a pain in the
>rump.
>Using tape machines which allowed me to speed up the sound has
>helped, but even with recordings half as fast again as the normal
>reading speed, it is still substantially slower than anyone who is a
>reasonable speed-reader of print. Speaking in the House was never a
>problem, though it was certainly challenging when I first came into
>parliament, when I thought I knew it all. I had already been on the
>public stage and had substantial media exposure, but the House of
>Commons was different from anything else I had ever experienced. In
>the space of a few sentences the atmosphere can change from positive,
>uplifting support to resentful animosity.
>In many ways, not being able to see required me to be much more alert
>and alive to what was going on around me, as well as knowing when
>people wanted to intervene and being ready to sit down and allow them
>to raise a question or make a point. It is possible to work out where
>someone is most likely to be sitting. It is possible to know from
>their voice who they are. Question time, which for departmental
>questions is once a month and lasts for an hour, I always found easy.
>After all, the secretary of state has the last word.
>But I found delivering written - what are known as "oral" -
>statements very difficult. They are oral in the sense that they are
>delivered to the House, but they are written and have to be read
>verbatim. And here is the rub: I am not a good reader. Very few
>people appreciate just what a nightmare it is in such circumstances
>to use braille, where there are no capital letters as there are in
>print, no highlighting, no underlining and, given that braille is so
>bulky, masses of paper. Even a short statement requires a large
>number of sheets. Delivering a statement to the Commons was my worst
>nightmare.
>If I had my time again, I would do two things. First, I would look
>after my fingers a great deal better, because the skin was burnt from
>cooking and toughened by manual chores, resulting in clumsiness. I
>would also have made sure that they were cared for, using whatever
>ointments or creams were necessary (even if that did make me a big
>girl's blouse). Second, I would have practised braille over and over
>again. I do regret that now, because it was certainly an achilles
>heel noticeable not simply in my awkward and sometimes stumbling
>delivery of the statement (in contrast to answering questions, where
>I was easy, confident and articulate) but in my whole body language -
>the tension, the hunched shoulders, the unrelaxed facial muscles,
>which came from what inside was frankly downright fear.
>January 2000
>
>Frank [Dobson] patronised me about not being able to see. If there is
>anything that absolutely gets my goat, it is other people pretending
>to be nice while being deeply offensive. Give me someone who is
>clearly just deeply offensive any day and I can deal with them, but
>save me from paternalism. Frank will never know - or perhaps he will
>- just how offensive his introduction of me as "my blind friend" was.
>He went on: "What a remarkable achievement it is for someone who
>can't see to have made the progress that my friend has made" -
>perhaps the kind of remark that some well-meaning but ill-informed
>distant acquaintance may make, but not a fellow cabinet minister of
>two and a half years' standing. I could at that moment have walked
>out of the room and finished Frank's campaign there and then, but I
>managed to get a grip of myself, and, as so often, I let it go.
>
>July 2000
>
>One of the problems of not being able to see is drinking orange juice
>when there is a wasp in it. This happened to me. I had it in my mouth
>and was about to chew it when something told me to spit it out. I did
>so, but it stung me and my mouth, face, arms and hands all started to
>swell. It was one of those frightening experiences when you think:
>"There's no one around, what do I do?" Living on my own is sometimes
>quite frightening.
>
>February 2001
>
>Once, when I was leader of Sheffield city council, the Queen and the
>Duke of Edinburgh came to Sheffield for an official visit and I was
>hosting lunch. It was one of those very pleasant occasions when it
>was possible to sit next to Her Majesty and have a genuine
>conversation, but (and I know she will forgive me for recalling it)
>it was strange when twice she asked me if I would like my meat
>cutting up - strange not because it was not a kind and thoughtful
>question, but because of the comment she made when I politely
>declined: "You know, I often do it for the corgis." Well, well, well.
>
>April 2001
>
>I hate buffets for obvious reasons.
>
>Perhaps my hatred of buffets merits a little more explanation. In
>order to get the true picture, close your eyes and imagine you are in
>a very noisy room, with everyone standing about with glasses in their
>hands, normally at an angle just right for tipping over if you happen
>to bang an elbow. People are milling about and someone (you've no
>idea who) approaches you and begins to talk - and talk ... You are
>desperately trying to avoid being rude because, God knows, you might
>need help in the future ... So you try just to pop in, show your
>face, hope that someone really interesting will "take pity on you",
>and eat what you can. It has to be said here that this is usually a
>plate of food collected for you by someone else and which
>understandably reflects their taste in food but not necessarily yours.
>
>David Blunkett praises civil servants for reading out documents and
>transferring others to braille. But he expresses frustration with the
>civil service as a whole
>
>October 2001
>
>[Leak of email sent by Jo Moore, special adviser to Stephen Byers, to
>Department of Transport press office on September 11 saying it would
>be a "very good day" to "bury" bad news]
>
>The world has gone crackers, and the cause célèbre of the week has
>been the débâcle over Jo Moore, which is going on and on. Steve was
>intending to sack Jo Moore, but by early afternoon it had all changed
>and apparently it was because, quite rightly, Tony had perceived that
>this was a try-on by the civil service. It was felt that they were
>the ones who had received the email and leaked it, and no matter how
>appalling the email, the declaration of war by the civil service and
>their ability to leak emails and thereby bring down special advisers
>had to be countered. Unfortunately life is not as simple as that.
>Tony's interpretation of the situation is right, but Steve's initial
>decision to sack Jo Moore for the content of the email was also right
>because this story has run and run and run.
>
>In dictating this I had no idea just how catastrophic it was going to
>be for Steve Byers. I think those advising really did mean well, and
>it was a difficult situation to call. There is no doubt that Jo Moore
>paid the price, but what price.
>
>January 2002
>
>I'm having a real problem with correspondence concerning Keith
>Bennett, who was killed by Ian Brady [convicted, with Myra Hindley,
>for the Moors Murders in the 1960s]. His brother Alan had written and
>it had taken two months for the letter to come through to me. I
>replied to him personally, and now find that Mrs Johnson, Keith
>Bennett's mum, had written on November 15 and her letter has just
>floated round until Christmas, with no one taking responsibility for
>it. I've written a robust letter to John Gieve about this as I feel
>it was just grossly incompetent and insensitive. How they could
>possibly have missed that this was a significant and sensitive letter
>I can't imagine, bearing in mind that the letter began: "Dear Mr
>Blunkett, My son Keith was murdered by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. My
>life ended then ..."
>
>February 2002
>
>Steve Byers is in the mire because he's got rid of Jo Moore [who had
>wanted to stand down in October] and Martin Sixsmith [director of
>communications] and Sixsmith is saying that he never agreed to go.
>Everyone eulogises about our free, independent, apolitical civil
>service. They are apolitical all right - an island within an island,
>a government within a government. They have clearly declared war on
>special advisers and on some ministers, and they are determined to
>pull Steve Byers down.
>
>We talked about special advisers at cabinet. Steve said his bit and
>John Reid said one or two sensible things about the dangers, but the
>discussion wasn't going anywhere so I just launched in. I know
>Richard Wilson will not forgive me for this but it's too bad -
>because apparently he went grey and looked daggers at me.
>
>I said: "Well, I think if we're going to have legislation that
>protects the civil service from the government, could we build into
>it protection for the government from the civil service?
>
>"We have a situation in my department where virtually anything of any
>importance is leaked. The Immigration and Nationality Directorate is
>a complete shambles. The only reason we got a police reform white
>paper and the reform of immigration, nationality and asylum was
>because the two respective advisers worked extremely closely with me
>on them ... The civil service are very lucky that we can't sack them,
>that no one can sack them" - with the implication that they damn well
>would be sacked if I had my way, and they would be. At the end of all
>this diatribe Tony said: "Well, I think Richard Wilson's got the
>message. You really love the civil service, David. You've got a lot
>of time for them and you believe they're doing a first-class job" -
>and everybody just doubled up.
>
>Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006