Tuesday 3 March 2009

Discrimination

Recently, it came to my attention that a cBeebies, childrens channel, presenter was getting a backlash from the parents of the children watching the channel because she scared their children. They say this is because she only has half of her right arm. Ridiculous!

Here is an extract from the first online article made regarding the issue:

"A disabled cBeebies presenter has been the victim of a disturbing campaign after parents complained that she was scaring toddlers.
They claimed that host Cerrie Burnell - who was born with one arm - is not suitable to appear on the digital children's channel.

But the decision to hire her has prompted a flurry of complaints to the BBC and on parenting message boards, with some of the posts on the CBeebies website becoming so vicious that they had to be removed.

Incredibly, one father said he wanted to ban his daughter from watching the channel because he feared it would give her nightmares.



Others claimed that they were forced to discuss difficult issues with their young children before they were ready."

My views are that those who are complaining are small minded and scrared by anything different. The age of 1 - 5 is a perfect age to discuss issues surrounding disabilities, just as you would describe people being black or white. Its a part of every day life. Children have been brought up with the lack of disabled presenters on television and grow up without any knowledge that there are diaabled people in this world and when they see them..... shock! horror!, they stand and stare thinking of them as something terrible and freaky.

My son was born with the same disability was Cerrie and this sort of response to her being on TV is terrible and makes me upset at people can say these things about somone with a disability. I sincerely hope that with Cerrie staying on this children's channel, it is a sign of better times to come and my son won't grow up in a world full of small minded people.

He is the most cheerful toddler I've met and hardly ever cries, he radiates happiness most of the day. To know that most definately he will be bullied at school, like Cerrie was makes me upset. I hope this is the start of something new and along with channels showing disability on them, I hope other channels too do not discriminate against showing disabled people so that everyday people will not discriminate themselves.

Thats that for now.

As for recent news regarding myself, not much has been happening really. I went out last friday had a quiet few drinks with my good friend James and had Kallam the next day and went to my sisters to chill and play. Then I went out on Saturday night and regretted it the next day big style. Spent most of Sunday hungover, so I didn't get much done. I do enjoy the occaisional drink, but maybe I'll stick to quiet drinks from now on lol

Be sure to check out my movie blog at http://moviepi.blogspot.com , which includes reviews, news and upcoming films. Cheers.