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The Guardian - Rod Liddle vilifies disabled people. I’m tired of the hate. We all should be (2019) Frances Ryan

Discussion in 'Psychosomatic news - ME/CFS and Long Covid' started by Cheshire, Mar 19, 2019.

  1. Cheshire

    Cheshire Moderator Staff Member

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    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/19/rod-liddle-disabled-people-hate-media-me
     
    leokitten, shak8, MeSci and 24 others like this.
  2. Jonathan Edwards

    Jonathan Edwards Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    A sympathetic enough piece but I have a feeling that any reasonable person could have written that.
    It is a pity that nobody is prepared to pick up on the back story.
     
  3. Andy

    Andy Committee Member

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    Hampshire, UK
    Hate to sound ungrateful but <shrugs> "meh"
     
  4. Cheshire

    Cheshire Moderator Staff Member

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    Yes, it's not the important media article taking on the PACE story we're waiting for, it's more against Liddle. But it's not bad and it's way better than the other articles that swallowed the Reuters' narrative.
    (and it links to @dave30th open letter and Hilda Bastian's piece.)
     
    inox, MEMarge, Dolphin and 18 others like this.
  5. Hutan

    Hutan Moderator Staff Member

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    I thought it was fine. Its focus was that it's time mainstream media stopped giving hate merchants like Liddle a platform, rather than ME.

    But, yes.

    Edit: I've only just caught up with some other threads, where I see that there was pre-publication hope that this article would have been a lot more useful to our cause, and that there were lots of offers of assistance to Ryan from PwME. So, I better understand the disappointment now.
     
    Last edited: Mar 20, 2019
  6. Stewart

    Stewart Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    I'll admit it's not the piece I was hoping for - but I'm not going to complain about an article that includes links to the open letter to the Lancet, Hilda Bastian's recent blog and the Centre for Welfare Reform's takedown of the BPS model of disability.

    And it's in The Guardian of all places - for that fact alone it deserves a short round of applause. Of course on past form they'll give Michael Sharpe a right of reply tomorrow....
     
  7. Andy

    Andy Committee Member

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    I guess, I just wanted to see more, explicit support for us.

    And I actually don't get why more people elsewhere aren't viewing the behaviour and speech from Sharpe, in particular, and his various cronies as the ones spewing the toxicity - or perhaps they are and they just don't call it out.

    I'd love to know at what point does Sharpes behaviour start to bring the psychological profession(s) into disrepute? And if there is a point, when do his colleagues start taking some sort of action. @Brian Hughes @Carolyn Wilshire , any ideas?

    After all, my default assumption, probably like a lot of pwME out there, is that if you are a psych of any sort, you basically don't know shit about anything, all you do is bluster through the day making it up as you go along, and if it goes wrong then you patient blame. I have to be convinced that any psych has any competence or common sense, and I have to say that the list who have managed that is very short.
     
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  8. Barry

    Barry Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    It's horses for courses. It's easy here in S4ME to forget that the major proportion of the population would not grasp or identify with anything deeper, and probably not bother even to read it. Yet those are some of the most important people who need to be enlightened. Good advocacy is about educating and enlightening all walks of society, not just those we ourselves most identify with. So I think this fills an important gap, and credit to Frances Ryan for doing that. Maybe plenty of other people could write it ... but they haven't, whereas she has.
     
    inox, MEMarge, Dolphin and 16 others like this.
  9. Estherbot

    Estherbot Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Yes, a mixed bag with the focus on Liddle.There are links to articles on the science. Obviously S4ME members know the science & politics inside out despite both being complicated to explain to the lay person.

    Bless them, Frances Ryan's advisers aren't the strongest on the science though.

    The implications of PACE have been picked up by professional controversialists like Liddle and previously to a lesser degree previously by David Aaronovitch.

    Both have major depression and see the illness through the lens of mental health.

    If it generates further interest in PACE rather than Liddle then it will be a success.
     
  10. Estherbot

    Estherbot Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    PS thanks to @JohnTheJack for contacting Frances to correct a few things.
     
    ladycatlover, pteropus, Amw66 and 4 others like this.
  11. Hoopoe

    Hoopoe Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    He is past that point. However not everyone knows the story.
     
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  12. andypants

    andypants Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    I'm with @Barry on this one. I think it could bridge the gap for some people, or give them something that will help frame furter attacks from Sharpe et al in a more nuanced light. Hopefully someone will pick up the deeper story soon, and this could help get us there. I also think she deserves credit for pulling this together in a day.
     
  13. Diluted-biscuit

    Diluted-biscuit Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    I can do without the guardians support given how they treat people with ME.
     
    ukxmrv and Andy like this.
  14. JohnTheJack

    JohnTheJack Moderator Staff Member

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    I knew Aaronovitch had talked about his being helped by therapy. I hadn't heard about Liddle. Would you have a link to something that mentions it, please?
     
    Estherbot likes this.
  15. Dx Revision Watch

    Dx Revision Watch Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    "Liddle uses the resignation of a researcher into ME, Michael Sharpe..."


    He's not exactly "resigned" - but threatened to remove his snout from the funding trough.

    Wessely was claiming back in 2001 (Guardian, Sarah Bosely) to have quit the field:

    “Prof Wessely has quit the field – and is not the only professional to have ceased involvement with CFS.”

    “Simon Wessely, of the Department of Psychological Medicine at Guy’s, King’s and St Thomas’s School of Medicine in London, is a former key figure in the study of ME/CFS who has felt the heat and largely backed out of the kitchen.”


    By 2007, I'd counted over 20 CFS papers Wessely had his name on, published since having claimed to have quit the field in 2001.

    I suggest keeping a close eye on PubMed over the coming years.

     
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  16. chrisb

    chrisb Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    He is clearly an exponent of foreign tactics. "Reculer pour mieux sauter."
     
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  17. Cheshire

    Cheshire Moderator Staff Member

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  18. Dx Revision Watch

    Dx Revision Watch Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Even allowing time for any ongoing studies at the point he was interviewed, in 2001, to reach completion, plus time for publication of papers on any ongoing studies, Wessely racked up an impressive number, post "having quit the field".


    Here's the links for the 2001 Sarah Bosely articles:

    Storm brews over ‘all in mind’ theory of ME, Guardian, 20 September 2001

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,554693,00.html


    A very modern epidemic, Guardian, 27 September 2001

    http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/medicalscience/story/0,,559001,00.html


    Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...
     
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  19. Estherbot

    Estherbot Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    I'm trying to find where I read it. I believe it was revealed when Liddle's 2014 book Selfish, Whining Monkeys came out.

    It was also a factor when Isabel Hardman wrote a piece on ME for the Spectator. She later revealed he suffers from depression.

    When people with depression are told ME is not psychological, they naturally get defensive
     
  20. Inara

    Inara Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Where's that?
     
    MEMarge likes this.

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