Hi everyone,

I’m so pleased the issue of wheelchair users having to pay more than everyone else for U2 tickets has caught the attention of the mainstream media, sometimes there’s nothing more powerful than the voice of a reporter on your side when you’re trying to affect change! I just wanted to point out a couple of things:

• We’ve succeeded in changing the minds of the promoters! They’ve decided to make some of the wheelchair seats available in the cheaper price categories, so to my fellow wheelchair users, I hope you can make it to the show by taking up this offer!
• For what it’s worth, not once have I contacted the media myself, all coverage of this has been initiated by reporters calling me, and I’m so grateful for their support of this cause

Last week I was down in Wellington for a youth forum on the ratification of UN Convention on the Right of Persons with Disabilities (link to document in PDF format) where I met Mike Gourlay, who runs the ‘One in Five‘ show on National Radio. The show runs at 7pm on Sunday nights, and addresses a range of issues facing New Zealanders with disabilities – it really is worth a listen. If you can’t make it to a radio, the

Some things really baffle me. One of those things is when a teenager with Down’s Syndrome is prevented from participating in a mainstream schooling environment because he isn’t allocated sufficient support funding, and, by mere virtue of the fact that he’s disabled, is seen as “a potential danger to themselves and others”. I’ve just been reading about Wellington 16-year-old Edward Watkins, who is only attends 14 out of his 25 weekly classes in a mainstream environment – the other time

I shake my head in bewilderment… Melissa Barton said she is considering legal action after her son’s kindergarten teacher led his classmates to vote him out of class. After each classmate was allowed to say what they didn’t like about Barton’s 5-year-old son, Alex, his Morningside Elementary teacher said they were going to take a vote, Barton said. By a 14 to 2 margin, the class voted him out of the class. Barton said her son is in the process

Okay, so James is a 4-year-old boy who has Down’s Syndrome, and is currently funded 10 hours of one-on-one care per week, equivalent to two hours a day at his local Kindergarten. While other kids attend for 17 hours a week, James can only go for 10, because that’s all his support allocation allows. His mother is upset because this entitlement has just been cut from a previous two and a half hours a day, down to just the two.

“Don’t worry, we won’t be removing your support, it’ll just take 3 weeks for you to get your notes from your notetakers from now on.” That’s the message that disabled students are getting from the Manukau Institute of Technology, as they look to make budget cuts. As it is, the disability support office has had one of its three staff culled, and while students are assured they’ll still receive support, it will “operate under a more constrained budget”, MIT’s PR

Well in case you were worried that we were still living in a country where disabled people weren’t expected to go to Uni until they were 21, you can now rest easy again. Thanks to a hasty Cabinet meeting to correct an archaic funding anomaly which prevented Ryan Leitch going to Uni, Ryan can now get funding for the support he needs, and start his Geography degree. Good stuff, I reckon, but wow – not before time!

I’ve written about Ryan Leitch before, but for those of you who don’t recognise the name, he’s the 18 year-old Auckland boy who topped the world in the Cambridge Geography exam last year. He’s also got muscular atrophy, and I reckon he’s a real inspiration for young disabled people in this country. Yet despite this, for some absurd reason, he can’t get funding for a support person at University, despite wanting to continue with his passion – Geography – at

This is what I love seeing, disabled people doing awesome stuff. It was reported today in the Herald that year 13 Westlake Boys student Ryan Leitch “topped the world” in his NCEA Level 3 Geography exam, such a grade achieved by only around 36 students every year. It is of little consequence to his academic success that Ryan also has muscular atrophy, but nonetheless the entire article has this tone of “Wow, look how well this kid has done, even

Because you could end up like the guy in this video. Be warned: this doesn’t feature some Disney-esque happy ending. The production is great and the suspense is high, but don’t say I didn’t warn ya…