Recycling Scam, Dyslexia, Plastic Crown, Care Workers

 

Whitewashing
John Lavery (1856-1941)
Photo Credit: Glasgow Museums Resource Centre [CC BY-NC-ND]

Plastic recycling is a scam. You diligently sort your rubbish, you dutifully wash your plastic containers, then everything gets tossed in landfill or thrown in the ocean anyway. OK, maybe not everything  - but the vast majority of it. According to one analysis, only 9% of all plastic ever made has likely been recycled. Here's the kicker: the companies making all that plastic have spent millions on advertising campaigns lecturing us about recycling while knowing full well that most plastic will never be recycled.

A new investigation by NPR (National Public Radio) and PBS Frontline (Public Broadcasting Service) reports that the large oil and gas companies that manufacture plastics have known for decades that recycling plastic was unlikely to ever happen on a broad scale because of the high costs involved.

"They were not interested in putting any real money or effort into recycling because they wanted to sell virgin material," Larry Thomas, the former president of one of the plastic industry's most powerful trade groups, told NPR.

There is a lot more money to be made in selling new plastic than reusing the old stuff. But, in order to keep selling new plastic, the industry had to clean up its wasteful image.

"If the public thinks that recycling is working, then they are not going to be as concerned about the environment," Thomas noted. And so a huge amount of resources were diverted into intricate "sustainability theatre".

Multinationals misleading people for profit? Hold the front page! While the plastics industry's greenwashing will come as no surprise to anyone, the extent of the deception alleged in NPR's investigation is truly shocking.

... Perhaps one of the most effective bits of propaganda that big business has come up with to shift the burden of combating the climate crisis on to individuals is the idea of the "carbon footprint". BP popularised the term in the early 00s, in what has been called one of the most "successful deceptive PR campaigns maybe ever"... 20 fossil fuel companies can be directly linked to more than one-third of all greenhouse emissions, an analysis by leading climate researchers found last year...

(Arwa Mahdawi, The Guardian, 2020)

More publicity needs to be raised about how plastic recycling is a scam. By collecting our plastic and putting it into special bin containers we assume it's going to be recycled. This article tells a different story. Most of it, apparently, does not.

Dyslexia

The Reading Lesson
John Burnet (1784-1868)
Photo Credit: University of Aberdeen [CC BY-NC-SA]

... Until the 70s, dyslexia had been a way to explain why intelligent children couldn't read. But in the 80s, research started coming out which suggested that your IQ had no bearing on your ability to read or write. Intelligence and reading ability weren't connected, meaning that dyslexia could no longer be defined as a condition that affected only bright children who struggled to read. Anyone, with any level of intelligence, could be dyslexic.

... (Julian) "Joe" Elliott, a professor of education at Durham University, has made it his mission to challenge the orthodoxy on dyslexia. He argues that there is essentially no difference between a person who struggles to read and write and a person with dyslexia - and no difference in how you should teach them.

... According to Vivian Hill, professor of educational psychology at University College London, "All Joe is doing is telling people what the scientific research is saying"... For Elliott, this is not just a matter of scientific accuracy. He also believes that the current system entrenches inequality, because children from poorer backgrounds tend to be less likely to be diagnosed with dyslexia.

... I found Katie, a local authority educational psychologist working for a London borough.

"There's a terrible injustice in this borough because we have a very wealthy half, and a very underprivileged half," she said. "Wealthier parents are paying private educational psychologists and the dyslexia association £900 to get their child a diagnosis of severe dyslexia, even though that child might be scoring at age-appropriate levels, because that's just not good enough for these parents... So they get this professional diagnosis of dyslexia quite easily - you only have to pay for it," she said. "And then they use that at tribunal, which they can afford barristers and lawyers for, to get private educational placements in special schools."

Katie described middle and upper-middle class parents as effectively "sucking the life out of the SEN (Special Educational Needs) budget", and she thinks that abuse of the system is worsening, as parents share knowledge online, in private Facebook groups and forums such as Mumsnet.

... Like Elliott, Snowling (a professor of psychology based at Oxford University) is alarmed by the practices of independent educational psychologists - the professionals who are paid directly by parents to diagnose children with dyslexia.

"I think it is a racket...You wouldn't have doctors giving diagnoses that are inappropriate."

She also agrees with Elliott's view that dyslexics and non-dyslexics can basically be taught to read and write in the same way.

On many other points, however, Snowling disagrees with Elliott. She points out that dyslexia has a hereditary component: studies have consistently shown that children with dyslexic parents are more likely to be diagnosed with the condition, and often have conditions including attention deficit disorder and dyscalculia, indicating that dyslexia is a heritable disorder which affects the part of the brain that processes speech and sound...

(Sirin Kale, The Guardian, 2020)

*My heart leapt when I saw your long read (Dyslexia) but returned rapidly to its normal position as I read it. No mention of the new rules for dyslexia assessors in schools. No mention of oculomotor dysfunction. No mention of behavioural optometry. How disappointing.

Dyslexia, an information processing error in the brain, certainly exists, but many of the children diagnosed as dyslexic are suffering instead from oculomotor dysfunction of the eyes. To read fluently, the eyes have to perform five processes simultaneously, and a surprising number of people can't do them all satisfactorily. But when these people go to an optometrist and read the chart, they do so perfectly well. That's because reading one letter at a time is a static process, unlike reading paragraphs of text, which is dynamic, so they go undiagnosed. Some children shuttle back and forth from optometrist to hospital for years sometimes even resorting to surgery, when the solution is often simple: a course of "physiotherapy" for the eye known as vision training.

The efficacy of vision training was recognised in 2018 by the SASC accreditation body, which sets examination criteria for dyslexia assessors. They created a new protocol: any child with reading difficulties has to be seen by an optometrist and if there is nothing organically wrong and spectacles don't work, then they should be referred to a behavioural optometrist, specialists trained to treat oculomotor dysfunctions. Unfortunately, most children slip through the net because schools don't have provision for dyslexia assessment, or because assessors are reluctant to practice the protocol, or because they - and the parents - don't know about it.

(Irfaan Adamally, Chairman, British Association of Behavioural Optometrists, The Guardian, 2020)

Thank goodness we have someone who rightly points out that when  children have reading difficulties there could be any number of reasons for that condition.

Plastic Crown

Edward 111 (1312-1377)
British (English) School
Photo Credit: The Queen's College, University of Oxford
[CC BY-NC-ND]

A plastic crown worn by the US rapper the Notorious BIG has sold for $594,750 (£461,000) at Sotheby's first ever auction of hip-hop memorabilia in New York.

The $6 crown was used by the photographer Barron Claiborne in portraits made three days before Notorious BIG was murdered in a drive-by shooting in 1997, and is signed by the artist. It features "one point broken off, some general light wear and abrasions", according to the listing. It sold for double the estimate.

(Ben Beaumont-Thomas, The Guardian, 2020)

Obviously cheap at the price.

Care Workers

Heroism and Humanity
William Allan (1782-1850)
Photo Credit: Kelvingrove Art gallery & Museum [CC BY-NC-ND]

Every one of the UK's million-plus care workers should be paid at least the real living wage, Angela Rayner has demanded as care homes brace for a feared resurgence of Covid-19.

Labour's deputy leader said the government must tackle low pay in the industry as she challenged Boris Johnson to follow lockdown applause with meaningful change.

"I'm afraid that applause, empty gestures and pats on the back don't pay the rent, keep the lights on or put food on the table."

Almost 18,000 residents died from confirmed or suspected Covid-19 in UK care facilities during the first wave of the virus, prompting calls for fair pay for care workers battling to help the vulnerable.

The average care wage is £8.10 an hour, a figure Johnson could not identify when Rayner asked him at prime minister's questions this week. Half of the UK's million-plus care staff earn below the real living wage, seen as the minimum needed for people to live.

... "Tory ministers have fallen over themselves to clap for our carers and salute their sacrifices, but their understanding is skin deep at best, as their immigration bill dismissing care workers as 'low skilled' and unwelcome just went to show."

... In a statement yesterday Rayner called for concerted action over care:

"On his first day in office the prime minister promised to fix the crisis in social care with a plan he said he had already prepared. Now it turns out that it won't be published until next year... When I listen to care workers telling me they are working themselves into the ground for a wage that they can barely survive on, I know how it feels because I have walked in their shoes. I'm proud of the work that I did caring for those who needed it. It made me who I am today and it means that when I stand up in parliament I know who I'm standing up for." 

(Peter Walker, The Guardian, 2020)

Good luck with your attempt to get the wages of the care workers increased. As for fixing the crisis in social care - a crisis  that has been known about for many years - that will be even more difficult.