Our friend Nadine Dorries has shown herself, yet again, to be the quintessence of human decency, a Mother Theresa-like figure to whose lofty heights of loveliness we should all aspire:
Nutters
My association is an election winning machine run by my Chairman, Andy Rayment and Deputy Chair Political, Steve Male.
Both are busy men and run the association in a regimented and disciplined manner.
As focused driven individuals, neither Andy or Steve suffer fools lighlty.
So when a ‘nutter’ began bombarding my association with telephone calls and emails, this made me laugh out loud http://www.bedfordshire-news.co.uk/Blogs/John-Balls-Diary/Monday-September-20.htm [this goes to a story reporting on how blogger Tim Ireland has contacted Mr Rayment]
I have heard that when a copy of this was leaked to my local newspapers, in indignation, it caused much mirth in the newspaper offices too.So, my former Lib Dem opponent carries handcuffs around in her handbag. I’m not even going to ask….
Please note that the quotation above is taking verbatim from Ms Dorries’ own blog. I therefore apologise for the multifarious stylistic errors. She would not have made a fabulous secretary, but then she doesn’t make a particularly good MP either, does she?
Both Seaneen (here) and I (here) have written recently on the use of humour – which can include certain what seem to be pejorative terms – in the discussion of and even in destigmatising aspects of mental illness. By and large we both concluded that the intent of a particular term or allusion was what served as the clear demarcation between amusing and offensive.
So, if a friend who was familiar with my circumstances poked fun at my mentalism and described me as a ‘nutter’, I would probably treat it as gentle teasing. No big deal.
However, two things strike me on Dorries’ use of the term. One: Tim Ireland, with whom she has had a long-running public spat, is not to the best of my knowledge diagnosed with any mental health difficulties (not that, if he were, there is any reason for shame, and not that her imbecility would be excused). She doesn’t like Mr Ireland, and he represents a very public inconvenience for her; ergo, her terminology is evidently used in a critical fashion.
It reasonably follows, therefore, that if she uses such a term antagonistically, she feels that being a ‘nutter’ is a Bad Thing, which in turn follows that she thinks people with mental health problems are flawed people – probably lazy benefit frauds, in her estimation, as her asinine anti-Twitter rant would appear to attest. (If you can concentrate on a number of tiny messages several times a day, then there’s damn all wrong with your concentration, ability to type, yadda yadda).
Secondly, it almost doesn’t matter in what fashion Ms Dorries uses derogatory terms because she is (to the regret of many) a public figure. Even if it had been innocent and little more than a gentle dig, using a possibly offensive word whilst basking in a public limelight could potentially have the effect of normalising such thinking – “bad person = nutter // nutters = bad people”.
We’ve all heard of the headlines in The Scum screaching “schizo”, “madman” and, indeed, “nutter”, when the individuals to which they allude don’t always even have mental illnesses. In the cases where they do, reference is rarely made to what is actually wrong with the individual (unless (s)he conveniently enough has schizophrenia, which is of course totally mis-represented by the pathetic little rag) and even more uncommonly is there a discussion of the fact that the vast majority of mentally ill people are not remotely dangerous nor particularly sensationalist. But that doesn’t sell rags.
Dorries’ nonsense isn’t all that different. OK, it’s on a small-ish scale – she isn’t that well-known – and she certainly doesn’t have the influence of The Scum, but she is still in a position of responsibility, and is choosing to abuse that. She has berated the aforereferenced Mr Ireland as not being a constituent to whom she is therefore not accountable. Fair enough, but she is accountable to everyone in her constituency (regardless of whether or not they voted for her), and a proportion of those people will be certified “nutters”.
For the record, I personally am not particularly offended by Dorries’ asinine rambling, but I think that it is representative of a wider and more concerning issue.
Consider this. Try replacing the term ‘nutter’ with any one of ‘queer’, ‘nigger’, ‘kyke’, ‘mong’ etc (God, it pains me even to write those, and I’m far from ‘PC’). It’s not so long ago that some of these words (and many others) were used simply to criticise people, whether they belonged to the subset of the population to which the phraseology applied or not. I don’t think anybody but the likes of Nick cuntface Griffin would deem most of these slurs acceptable in today’s everyday parlance…so why, then, is it still considered widely acceptable to use deliberately prejudicial language to reference mental illness?
Certain otherwise pejorative terms are considered acceptable in this arena whenever the intent behind the statement is clearly not malicious. Being an ignorant, self-important arsehole with an attitude problem is not, however, tolerable. Phil summed up Dorries best to me in a blog comment yesterday: she’s the sponger, living off my taxes.
—
Thanks to @humphreycushion, one of Dorries’ current objects of ire, for drawing my attention to this matter. The Conservative Party Conference is ongoing in Birmingham this week, and the lurrrrr-vel-ley Nadine will be in situ. If you’re in the area, do go along and tell her what you think.
—
EDIT TO ADD: @humphreycushion has published a very interesting list of articles out there in the blogophere discussing Nadine Dorries’ recent comments on this post of her blog.
EDIT TO ADD II: There is an excellent post refuting Nadine Dorries’ one-sided, ill-informed opinions – specifically regarding mental illnesses – here.
New Blog Post: Nadine #Dorries on “Nutters” http://j.mp/bkUDgd #mhuk #mentalhealth #nadinedorries @humphreycushion
RT @serialinsomniac: New Blog Post: Nadine #Dorries on “Nutters” http://j.mp/bkUDgd #mhuk #mentalhealth #nadinedorries @humphreycushion
Yes, do! > "If you’re in the area, do go along and tell her what you think" http://bit.ly/cpfWAX @serialinsomniac #Dorries #dorrieslaw
RT @humphreycushion: Yes, do! > "If you’re in the area, do go along and tell her what you think" http://bit.ly/cpfWAX @serialinsomni …
Yes, do! > "If you’re in the area, do go along and tell her what you think" http://bit.ly/cpfWAX @serialinsomniac #Dorries #dorrieslaw
Nadine Dorries on “Nutters”: Our friend Nadine Dorries has shown herself, yet again, to be the quintessence of h… http://short.ie/4pa320
Nadine Dorries on “Nutters”: Our friend Nadine Dorries has shown herself, yet again, to be the quintessence of h… http://short.ie/4pa320
RT @serialinsomniac: New Blog Post: Nadine #Dorries on “Nutters” http://j.mp/bkUDgd #mhuk #mentalhealth #nadinedorries @humphreycushion
Excellent post, @serialinsomniac -> Nadine #Dorries on “Nutters” http://j.mp/bkUDgd. <- Many thanks for the support, too.
RT @serialinsomniac: New Blog Post: Nadine #Dorries on “Nutters” http://j.mp/bkUDgd #mhuk #mentalhealth #nadinedorries @humphreycushion
RT @serialinsomniac: New Blog Post: Nadine #Dorries on “Nutters” http://j.mp/bkUDgd #mhuk #mentalhealth #nadinedorries @humphreycushion
RT @serial_insomnia: Nadine Dorries on "Nutters" #PTSD #borderline http://bit.ly/bkUDgd
Nadine Dorries on "Nutters" – http://bit.ly/bkUDgd
RT @serialinsomniac: New Blog Post: Nadine #Dorries on “Nutters” http://j.mp/bkUDgd #mhuk #mentalhealth #nadinedorries @humphreycushion
New Post: Nadine Dorries on “Nutters” http://bit.ly/bkUDgd #borderline #PTSD
[...] New post – Nadine Dorries on “Nutters” via [...]
Yes, do! > "If you’re in the area, do go along and tell her what you think" http://bit.ly/cpfWAX @serialinsomniac #Dorries #dorrieslaw
New Post: Nadine Dorries on “Nutters” http://bit.ly/aRyIkN #borderline #PTSD
RT @Serialinsomniac: New Post: Nadine Dorries on “Nutters” http://bit.ly/aRyIkN #borderline #PTSD
RT @humphreycushion: RT @Serialinsomniac: New Post: Nadine Dorries on “Nutters” http://bit.ly/aRyIkN #borderline #PTSD
Blogpost from @Serialinsomniac: Nadine Dorries on “Nutters” http://bit.ly/aRyIkN (contains some swearing, understandably enough).
RT @humphreycushion: RT @Serialinsomniac: New Post: Nadine Dorries on “Nutters” http://bit.ly/aRyIkN #borderline #PTSD
Nadine Dorries on “Nutters” http://bit.ly/aRyIkN (by @serialinsomniac)
RT @humphreycushion: RT @Serialinsomniac: New Post: Nadine Dorries on “Nutters” http://bit.ly/aRyIkN #borderline #PTSD
I watched Nadine on the Tower Block of Commons last year and I thought she came across as a nice person – if I recall correctly she appeared to mentor a young man who smoked far to much weed and seemed to have a few issues once the program ended – obviously the program would of been edited.
I have to say that Im not really sure what this comment aim is because I haven’t read that much about the above situation but yes!
Comments are always welcome regardless of aim
Sure virtually none of my posts have any purpose anyway!
To be honest I had only heard of Nadine Dorries before this fuss broke out in two instances – one was the Damian McBride affair, in which I genuinely felt terrible for her and supported her 100%, and the second was when she brought a Bill to the Commons about reducing the time limit on abortions. I’m pro-choice so that didn’t endear her to me particularly, but neither did it make me strongly dislike her because I recognise how emotive and difficult that issue is. So I suppose what I’m saying is that my previous perspective on her was pretty neutral.
However, I was very annoyed when I heard of her comments about how people claiming benefits shouldn’t be using Twitter; I know it sounds melodramatic, but Twitter saves lives. Also it does so in a way that no other social networking site, or even in some cases direct contact, can. Why I’m not sure – perhaps simply because it is so short and to the point, so people with various disabilities can use it more than others. And through hashtags or even just general searches it’s very easy to meet people with common interests, a state of affairs which a lot more convoluted on Facebook (which in my view is an awkward and annoying medium anyway, but nevermind).
Whatever the case, it has been a lifeline for me – I am utterly convinced I would not be alive right now but for Twitter, and I definitely wouldn’t have started blogging – and I know it has for countless others with disabilities too. Her contentions that we can’t use it any more than to send a few tweets a day is deeply worrying – what else aren’t we allowed to do? Send text messages, emails, letters? Force ourselves to a shop when a necessity regrettably arises? It’s a slippery slope argument, I suppose.
The issue of this post actually offended me a lot less in personal terms, and in fairness to her I don’t actually think she meant to offend those of us with mental health problems. However, as I said I fear it’s reflective of a more general societal trend; bandying pejorative language about as nonchalantly as this just seems to reinforce the idea that it should be part of common, everyday language, which itself suggests that people with mental illnesses are somehow flawed individual. Moreover, I think that the responsibility of political office calls for measured debate rather than mudslinging like this.
Though mind you, when you look at what goes on in the Commons each Wednesday, that last statement may well suggest some political naivete on my part!
Anyhow, I suppose this is a (typically) long-winded way of saying that I am sure she could well be a nice person, and quite possibly a good constituency MP (despite what I said in the post). Nevertheless, I think her recent comments have reflected an ignorance – unwitting or otherwise – surrounding issues of disability, and she needs to be called up on that. I’m not sure I believe that she’ll actually listen, but we can try
Take care x
Nice is probably the wrong word I guess she appeared to be likeable or caring maybe! I have no knowledge of her apart from what I saw on the program and then what I read on your blog! Re. language it’s a tricky one but I do agree with the points you have made.
Anyway I decided to read her blog entry on twitter so that I’m a little bit more informed on that!
I have to say I don’t get twitter I’ve looked at it a few times and it’s gone straight over my head on every occasion so some of what you say relating to hashtags etc that you talked about in your third paragraph I’m clueless about!
Although I have only recently started reading blogs and writing my own blog in the last few months I’ve had an online diary for the last decade and have been a regular poster on various mental health forums for the last 5 years and at times the above have really helped me ‘survive’. When I used to work i’d spend several hours on an evening reading and replying to various posts and since being out of work my time online has increased but not dramatically purely because there is a limit to what you can do online before it becomes dull I guess the maximum amount of time I can spend online excluding watching tv programs on the catch up services and doing work for my masters would be roughly 5 hours a day when I was in work it would be more likely to be 2 and since being out of work I guess it’s 3 – 4 hours.
But the one thing that puzzles me or that I can’t get my head around is that I’ve always seen twitter as a continuos media – e.g. you post ‘tweets’ regularly throughout the day unlike on say a blog which tends to be done in one chunk.
If I’ve got the above right then looking at the figures quoted which is 35,000 tweets in under 6 months I make to be a minimum of 200 tweets a day how much time would that take because for me as a non twitterer imagining that someone is awake for 16 hours and thus has 12 hours free to tweet during the day that still comes to roughly 17 tweets an hour If each tweet takes an average of 2 minutes that means that someone is tweeting for half an hour or 6 hours solidly a day and that doesn’t take into account time spent reading other tweets so that means someone is spending up to 7 or 8 hours a day purely on twitter nothing else. I don’t know it just seems a huge amount of time but as I say I don’t know how twitter works so I’ve guestimated the above figures.
From her blog:
Is there such a thing as Twitter addiction? How can anyone live a normal life who can do that?
I kind of agree with the first bit I spend a lot of time doing sweet FA online and whilst I’m not addicted to the internet I would struggle to live without it and Im not as prolific a user as is mentioned above. Re. the second bit sadly at the moment I don’t live a normal life at the moment due to being ill and I do think that she hasn’t taken into account how hard it can be to live life normally when your suffering from an illness be it physically or mentally.
Another bit from her blog
Surely these people cannot be in employment because if they are, how can they work? if they aren’t then it’s time they got a job which involves being sat at a key board because there’s nothing much up with their fingers, brain or attention span!!
My thoughts if you are spending 8 hours a day on one website having a full time job is going to be pretty tricky so I agree with the first part although the 8 hours would be spread across all the waking hours but still most employees wouldn’t take kindly to someone spending large amounts of time on twitter.
The second part Im sure is that technically I could get a job where I sat at a keyboard and typed all day BUT she isn’t taking into consideration the fact that I have been signed off sick for a reason and I think this goes back to the above point I made about her not taking illness into account.
But if I look at her blog at no point does she refer to someone who is ill tweeting a lot the first person appears to be an MP and the second is a ‘political/personal’ twitterer and providing they work is it anyones business how often they tweet though yes I guess there is a chance they are addicted to twitter in the say way someone can be addicted to the internet (http://mashable.com/2009/08/23/restart-internet-addiction/ just a random example). So if I took the illness stuff out of the equation and purely looked at someone who was able bodied I have to say that I would agree with her blog post.
I hope this makes some sense!
I can’t really explain the attraction and support of Twitter; it’s something I really, really didn’t get until I started using it, and to that end I can only say that it’s a case of seeing is believing really. But it truly is a lifeline.
As regards the amount of time spent on it, Clarissa wrote best about this here, particularly the paragraphs under the headings Discriminator and Sterotyper. She argues much better than I could on the issue, but put in its simplest form, her point – correctly I believe – is that the number of tweets specified by Dorries as being overkill is in fact very little really (about a page and a half of A4, she concludes).
This blog of mine has been entirely written during absence from employment, and most of my posts are 2,000 to 3,000 words long. There is one that was 8,000 words (and yes, it was all written in one fell swoop!)! This is opposed to 7,000 mere characters that Dorries feels is excessive Twitter use. There are various reasons which allow me to maintain the blog whilst being unable to work which aren’t really very interesting, but I’m happy to share them if anyone is in fact interested
Anyway, on another note, Humphrey Cushion (HC), who is the constituent that Nadine Dorries has been complaining about of late, suffers from arthritis. I don’t know HC’s exact circumstances (I understand, though could be wrong, that she is off work ill at the minute, rather than out of work altogether, but again, I’m not certain, so don’t quote me), so am only hypothesising here, but I know from knowing others with arthritis that in many cases it leaves the sufferer mostly housebound.
Dorries complained because HC had discussed a night out on Twitter, which she (Dorries) took as evidence that HC does not in fact have a disability at all. Therein lies a key point in my view: a lot of illnesses, including physical ones, are very variable. So it’s entirely conceivable that HC had a night of respite from her normal pain, and decided to take advantage of same by going out with her friends. I don’t think it’s particularly reasonable to begrudge her a small pleasure like that and, particularly, to call her up as an exemplar of benefit fraud because of it.
In terms of Twitter (or the internet in general), I can’t speak for arthritis sufferers or anyone else suffering from a severe physical disability, but in my experience it doesn’t really require much physicality (unless, presumably, it’s your fingers that are the most severely effected region of one’s disability, which I imagine would seriously inhibit a person’s use thereof). So even if an addiction to it exists, it seems to me to mostly be mutually exclusive from a person’s illness.
Meh, I don’t know VM – part of me sees what she’s trying to say – there are cheats out there, and if people are claiming disability benefits and are online all day bragging about their conquests and binges of all night, then they’re probably part of that contingent – but I think she’s made her point rather brusquely and has greatly generalised the issue. Also singling out one of her constituents like she has with HC seems a bit off when she’s her elected MP.
Still, I’m sure she’s not an all black or all white individual, to be fair.
x
even if your fingers are out of action you can use voice recognition software.
off a room
Amusingly, the previous post on her blog contains:
Iain and his team, which includes the fantastic Philippa Stroud and everyone at the Centre for Social Justice, have not only thought the unthinkable, but have begun to make it happen.
which, when you think about it, is kinda… nuts. How do you make “the unthinkable” happen, and why is that a good thing? The unthinkable used to mean nuclear war. Is she saying that the benefit cuts are the equivelant of nuclear war?
Did you like mine Pandora: http://rielouise.wordpress.com/2010/10/07/nadine-dorries/
Guess not.
No, I do like it – I think it’s a great post. It’s just a bit awkward to reply/edit via the iPhone. I have tweeted it, was just waiting until back at my computer before adding it to the post above. I thought you argued the points really well and leave her with a lot of questions to answer. x
thankyou i was just mean ignore me
your niceness made me cry.
sad now
i’m a big, growly meany monster.
Sorry
*hugs* x
You suggested that ND thought of people with mental health problems were “probably lazy benefit frauds”.
Described Stephen Fry to a T, doesn’t it?
A sort of corollary in CA up until a few years ago: birth certificates had no field for marital status. One legislator, just delivered of her late husband’s posthumous child, found out that parents on the document who had different last names (like many modern married couples have, myself included) were being interpretted by social statisticians as: an unmarried couple, the woman being shiftless, poor, on welfare, and likely a cheat.
Assemblywoman (or was she a State Senator at the time?) Speier was steamed. Then she wrote a bill changing the birth certificate form to reflect marital status.
Did you know that, in addition to being “a lazy benefit fraud” for being a nutter, I’m also “an unwed mother welfare cheat”? Yep, my son was born before the form changed.