Richard Barnbrook and Dyslexia

I wasn't going to post this, but if I don't it will be rather like catching syphillis and not getting some penecillin. It would eat me from the inside. Richard Barnbrook, London's GLA member has used the excuse of his dyslexia for making a Youtube video full of porkies about murders in his London Borough. When he was found out and suspended, he blamed the fact that it was noisy, he's dyslexic and he got confused.

I'm dyslexic. I play in a punk rock band. Does that make me get all confused and start making up porkies? No of course it doesn't. Most people don't understand what it's like being dyslexic.It never occurred to me that a scalliwag might chose to hide behind it in this manner, but as Barnbrook has, we really should examine his claims a bit more carefully. I tried to explain how dyslexia works (for me) in THIS BLOG. I asked my wife if she understood my condition any better after reading it. She said no.

I've developed what we call coping strategies for my dyslexia, which is why I have ended up writing blogs. My use of grammar is terrible. I put apostrophes in all the wrong places. I sometimes write complete gobbledegook, which I try and catch by proof reading (if I'm unsure I ask my wife who is a linguist).

In this blog in the Telegraph, Barnbrook says that if he read out his statement, it would come out as unintelligible gibbereish. In this he's actually probably quite right. When I was kid I got completely traumatised by having to do a reading at church. I did it and thought I'd done well, then got clobbered by my dad for taking the piss. They'd all sat through an unintelligible string of words, sentences read backwards etc. I don't think taking the piss out of Barnbrook for saying the following is fair :-

Statement of Richard Barnbrook to be verbally delivered at the hearing

Before you hear what I say, I would like to make a clear point that due to my dyslexia there will be difficulties in reading this out.

He's actually right in this. No one would tolerate the lampooning of someone with a wooden leg for walking funny, so this isn't something to beat him up for.

Later in the blog, however he says this :-

I have tried very hard throughout my life to overcome my dyslexia and I have excelled in spite of it. I have refused to let it hold me back. I am not the sort of person to wallow in self pity and I have always got on with the job no matter what. I do not feel that that I should be penalised for what was in effect an unintentional mistake which occurred due to my disability.

This is where Richard descends into scalliwagery. He's a professional politician, working for a large political party. If he has problems with dyslexia, he has a duty to mitigate it. He made a Youtube video. Now I know a bit about making videos, films etc. I had an acting career as a child and appeared in many TV commercials. You don't just turn up with a camera and spout "I love Heinz Beanz". You script it, you work out what you have to say. I'd assume that if you are a politician you also check your facts. This wasn't an off the cuff session, it was a promotional video for a campaign.

If Richard Barnbrook is telling us he makes videos for his campaigns, off the cuff, with no pre planning, no scripts and no checking of facts, this isn't dyslexia, it's being a total fool. I'm sorry to say that having seen the video and knowing what the lies were in it, there is no way that any of this could be attributed to Dyslexia. If I wrote a blog and I said in it "Jack Cohen the Leader of the Liberal Democrats in Barnet is from Planet Zob" and Jack Cohen challenged me to prove it, saying "Oh, I'm dyslexic, I meant to say he came from Childs Hill" would not wash. I might get way with saying "Liberal child Jack Cohen comes from Democrat Hill", but no form of Dyslexia I know involves substituting one set of facts for a completely different and bogus set of facts.

Dyslexics have enough to cope with, without people like Barnbrook using it as a fig leaf for their dishonesty. Assuming Barnbrook actually writes his blog, I'd say his dyslexia is in the same region of the spectrum as mine.
Let me give you an example of how much dyslexia affects the truth and honesty of what people may say. Brian Coleman's lawyers poured over every page of this blog, checked every stat and they couldn't find a single decent example of a lie or untruth to use in there defence. I'm not a professional politician and I don't have paid assistants. For Barnbrook to use dyslexia as a defence for telling porkies is repulsive.