Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

Reported in various corners of the media over the weekend - including on the site - was the story that the UK Independence Party has suspended one of its candidates, John Houston, prior to a full investigation, following an outburst of incredibly politically incorrect views on a variety of topics. But it's the - in a story that's sadly not available online - that had the most detail about what the UKIP candidate for East Kilbride in Scotland had to say regarding disabled people. The would-be MP, according to the Express report, called for: "the killing of mental patients and the forced labour of people with learning disabilites ... the creation of special communities only for people who speak the same language and for those with facial disfigurements ... labour-intensive initiatives to provide work for the unskilled and people with learning difficulties ..." And that's just for starters.

Apparently, also according to the Express, Mr Houston was chosen to be the UKIP candidate in December, some four months after he had submitted his proposals to party chiefs back in August.

Hollywood star Clint Eastwood may have scooped seven Oscar nominations for his boxing drama Million Dollar Baby, but he's also picked a fight for himself with disabled activists.

Several groups are reportedly planning Oscar night protests against the film, furious at its portrayal of a female boxer (Hilary Swank) begging to die after becoming quadraplegic in an accident. They say the image of Swank bedridden and neglected in a nursing home gives the impression that being disabled is worse than death.

Campaigners and have accused Eastwood of having a "vendetta" against disabled people. It's not the first time the star has run into trouble with disabled campaigners: in 1996 he was taken to court under the Americans With Disabilities Act for failing to make his Carmel-based hotel accessible, and he later testified in Congress in support of a bill preventing people from suing under the act without giving defendants 90 days to make alterations.

Let round two begin.

It's not often that I, Crippled Monkey, am lost for words, but even I don't quite know what to make of this Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ News headline: . Apparently, this theatrical extravaganza is due to open in the West End in April, and a "well-known rock star" has been lined up to play the great man himself.

No, we weren't surprised to learn that they haven't cast a blind actor in the role.

Naturally, this story has caused all kinds of excited debate around the Ouch office, from who the star of the show might be - suggestions so far include Ozzy Osbourne, David Bowie, Meatloaf, Robbie Williams and, er, Suzi Quatro (!?) - through to what scenes might be included in the production. Favourite ideas of ours include Sadie, David Blunkett's faithful mobility aid, being given a main speaking role as a commentator on the action (we look forward to seeing someone dressed in a furry dog suit). Or that all the Blunkmeister's previous guide dogs might form a chorus line for a song and dance routine. It might seem extraordinary, but in a world where the Blunkett story becomes a musical, surely anything's possible?

Do drop us a line at the usual address with your casting ideas, titles of possible songs featured in the show (there are bound to be a couple of numbers featuring excruciatingly bad puns on being blind, aren't there?) and scenes you'd like to see on stage (keep it clean, please).

As they say in showbiz, this one's gonna run and run.

A quick heads-up about the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ's exciting new Voices project, which has just gone online. From Aberdeen to Truro, they're asking for your help to map the languages, accents and dialects of the United Kingdom - and that includes British Sign Language. There's an article on BSL usage today, as well as its history, but best of all is the chance to take part in the BSL Language Lab experiment, which aims to discover the different signs used across the country.

An Ouch fan from NYC has contacted us following our request for comments from people who've witnessed Whoopi Goldberg cripping up in her Broadway show.

Kathleen has CP and says she felt like offering Ms Whoopi some pointers, as she "clutched one arm up against her chest, contorted her neck, slurred her speech, and internally rotated one leg" in an attempt to portray the condition. "Most people I know with only one side affected don't have nearly the contortion that she acted out," says Kath, who was equally unimpressed with the storyline. "For one, the woman works in a nursing home, and said something like: 'Nursing homes like to hire people like me because our presence makes the old people eager to die' (better to be dead than disabled?!) The guy at work asks her out, and she turns him down because she feels unworthy."

After a bit of convincing, Whoopi's character starts dating and having "life changing" experiences like, er, wearing a bikini and dancing for the first time (ahhhh). "He eventually proposes, with reasons like: 'you're my friend', and 'I want to take care of you'," says Kath. "To me, it came across as patronizing, as if he feels sorry for her. First she says no, but then accepts because 'how many proposals am I ever going to get?' (as if people with disabilities should take whatever we can get!)"

Not quite the next Ghost, then.

Further to my posting yesterday relating to the sad fact that Inside I'm Dancing didn't get any BAFTA nominations, which followed hot on the heels of an entry from the day before revealing that it didn't get any Oscar nominations ... I can also confirm that the Ouch team's favourite move of 2004 (ahem) didn't get selected for any either.

Is anyone spotting a theme here?

Hands up anyone who can do an impression of a spazza?

Further to my posting of yesterday relating to the sad fact that Inside I'm Dancing didn't get any Oscar nominations ... well, we forgot to report last week that it didn't get any either.

Has the Disabled People's Direct Action Network (DAN) decided to take its fight against big charities to the next level and embrace chemical warfare? Monkey hears that the offices of , a particular DAN favourite, may have been struck by a food poisoning incident in the last few days. Up to fifty staff have fallen ill with a nasty tummy bug and investigations are underway to discover whether the water supply or air conditioning are contaminated, or whether it's all just a coincidence. Will they unscrew a water pipe and discover a crouching Danner inside, clutching a vial of egg white? Watch this space.

So, the big surprise of this year's is the 15 nominations that Inside I'm Dancing has picked up. After all the criticism it received from many disabled people, Crippled Monkey is completely flabbergasted.

OK, I'm lying. It didn't really get all those nominations. In fact, it was nowhere to be found. Shame, eh?

However, there is at least some disability interest. Nominated in the category of best documentary short subject is a film called . Narrated by actress Julianna Margulies of ER fame, it had a limited theatrical release in the US last year, and is due to air on CNN sometime during 2005.

If you're an American Ouch reader who has seen this documentary, please do drop us a line and tell us what you thought of it.

I've got another blog to tell you about, but I think I'll just let this particular disabled blogger speak for herself, thanks to the email she sent to the Ouch inbox:

"I'm Kris. My journal's called . I'm a 19 year old Law student with Erbs Palsy (left arm don't work - DOH!). I think you should put my journal up on your site because I am the most random person in the world ever ... just look at my rubber duck picture collection, and my story Lord of the Frisbees. I also do have a life beyond rubber ducks, which you can read all about. It's usually about me getting drunk, and causing a rampage around my university."

It's not every day that we get emails like that, I can tell you.

According to all the I was reading on the way to the Ouch office this morning, Matt Groening - famed creator of The Simpsons - is a huge fan of the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ comedy series Little Britain, and wants some of the characters to pay a visit to Springfield. This begs the question: with the characters of Andy and Lou (a wheelchair user and his carer) having already caused equal parts hilarity and controversy amongst both disabled and non-disabled UK telly audiences, what on Earth are our American cousins going to think of them?!

Did you know that there's now such a thing as a 'Disability Champion' in the corridors of power? No, neither did I. Turns out that the respected political website holds an annual to "honour the hard work, time and effort devoted by MPs and peers to charitable causes during the parliamentary year". And one of the categories is (you guessed it) the Disability Champion.

So who were the nominees for 2004? Who are the MPs worth keeping a lookout for, as they try to get a word in edgeways to speak about disabled people in Parliament? Well, . The winner was David Cameron MP, who represents Witney in West Oxfordshire.

Of course, Crippled Monkey is not politically biased, and I would like to point out that there are many other political parties out there fighting for your vote. Ahem.

A couple of disabled bloggers emailed over the weekend in response to our continuing request to let us know about YOUR site out there on the interwebnet. So a big out shout out (as the kids say) to , written by Aaron Witts, and also to , from Adam Cohoon in Toronto, Canada.

Remember, if you're one of them disabled blogger types with a site you think we should take a look at, then drop us a line.

Yesterday's Daily Mirror, under the headline (which Crippled Monkey shouldn't approve of, but couldn't help admiring), reported that the filming of the new Doctor Who series, featuring Christopher Eccleston in the title role, has been hit by a shortage of small actors (the Mirror, of course, threw the terms "midget" and "dwarf" around, but sadly that's not surprising).

It turns out that the nation's small actors have all been snapped up for the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie, and to play Gringotts Bank staff in the new Harry Potter film. This has resulted in a shortage of short people (sorry), so if you're an appropriately-sized Ouch reader with a desire to chase a man in a long scarf and his glamorous assistant around identical corridors, why not get in touch with (the Big Agency for Short Actors) and show them your skills at playing an alien? This could be your big chance! Don't forget to tell them that Ouch sent you. [link via ]

Could pink bananas be the latest amazing cure-all? Monkey, obviously being fond of bananas, has come across a great bit of creative writing by a disabled bloke called Andy Berry.

is just one short story you can find on - a website that bills itself as a "disability discussion forum for stories about awareness, rights, inspiration". Why not pop in and share your own disability inspired creation?

You'll all be aware by now that the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ has lots of cool audio described (AD) programmes across all its TV channels. For those not in the know, AD is an extra soundtrack that you can select on your digibox menu, and is there to help visually impaired people with a bit of extra descriptive commentary to help understand what's happening on screen. Here we have a nice web page on how to receive AD.

But it's not just the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ doing this, oh no. ITV, Channel 4, Five, Sky and some other multichannel broadcasters are also in on the act.

Rather than surfing from site to site for listings information, there is now one site that tells you what programmes are audio described on any given day, no matter what channel. It's called and is a great site to add to your Favourites menu.

Just looking at today's offerings, there are about 37 transmissions with AD. EastEnders and Emmerdale have got AD, as has the big documentary Auschwitz: The Nazis and The Final Solution tonight on Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ TWO. On UKTV Bright Ideas you can catch a gardening and a home improvement type show, while Channel 4's line-up is impressive with the much-talked-about Desperate Housewives and Shameless described - wow! That's just a few programmes this Tuesday evening.

If like me you've been wondering how disabled people may have fared in the Indian Ocean tsunami, Crippled Monkey has come across a page that has gathered together disability stories from the affected region.

At the moment we're not sure how often the page is being updated, if at all, but you can find it here on the website.

For details on how you can donate, the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ has put together a page.

Our inbox goes bananas every time we mention disabled parking bays, so we figured you'd be keen to know about what the guys at the Baywatch campaign are up to at the moment.

They're putting pressure on retailers to help stamp out parking bay abuse and asking you to help them by filling in a questionnaire.

Read more about it and get involved by going to the website.

Results of the survey are due to be released in February, and we'll bring you the headlines when they are published.

Actress Whoopi Goldberg is reviving the Broadway one-woman show that catapulted her to fame in the 1980s. One of the 5 characters she plays is a disabled woman.

Whoopi, the 20th Anniversary show, has been running since mid November at the Lyceum Theatre, New York, and various blogs and websites have been reviewing it.

nytheatre.com runs this of the show, describing this monologue as:

"... about a disabled woman who surprises herself by discovering love in the non-judgmental eyes of a matter-of-fact young man. This is not only the most emotionally affecting of the evening's monologues, but also the most demanding ..."

An appears on broadway.com, describing the whole show as "anything but fresh". It sees the disabled character as the evening's one saving grace though:

"At last Goldberg shows her talent when she plays a handicapped woman, another character from her original Broadway show. Physically and vocally, she commits to the character. There's a touching moment when the woman dreams of being able to dance like Chita Rivera and briefly loses her disabilities. Goldberg then reverts to reality and resumes her disabled posture and speech. Here, one can see what all the fuss was about when she made her Broadway debut 20 years ago."

Finally, we discovered a New York blogger on evolutionofman.blogspot.com (note: we're not linking to it because of some rather bad language on the site). Will is the author, and he described his evening out like this:

"Finally, there was the cripple. This character at first made everyone very uncomfortable. She contorted her body and her speech in a way that really resembled someone who was quite disabled, but set everyone at ease from the very beginning letting us know that it was ok to laugh. Despite how uncomfortable we were, we all kept laughing. THe cripple met a man - we laughed. Then she went to a disco - we rolled. Then she went to a pool party - we died. And to shed light on her brilliance, Whoopi ended the show as the cripple describing a dream in which she's flying- releasing all her disabilities and becoming a normal human being- Whoopi Goldberg. This, of course led to a rousing applause and standing ovation. Greatness!"

Twenty years on though, is it still OK to spaz it up on stage if you're not disabled? Who is she representing and how? Or maybe that's not the point? Or is the point? And whose review understood it best?

Sadly, Ouch won't pay for me to rush off to Broadway to give a conclusive review ... but if you've been, drop us an email and tell us what you think. Those with lots of money can still see it if they hop on a plane and get to New York before the end of January.

A happy new year from Crippled Monkey's corner of the Ouch empire.

A quick nod to , a weblog written by the father of a girl with autism. Sadly, it seemed to come to a bit of a halt back in November, but hopefully will return. Interesting reading.