1) NATIONAL AUTISTIC SOCIETY - The British autism website, based in London, with a slight London bias, methinks.
2) KEVIN PHILLIPS - What can I say? An brilliant website that was apparently an inspiration from this one. Read all about his observations on life in general as well as his school days, his memory for putting days to dates in the past, and of course Asperger Syndrome and much more besides. It's thanks to him that ASFTHM was "reborn" on Angelfire, so thanks Kevin! He deserves his own newspaper column! Don't mess with him - he comes from Barnsley!
3) JOHN MUGGLETON - The National Autistic Society's Surrey division. A website probably created with HTML never to be seen elsewhere on the Internet.
4) ALISON HALE - I had not heard of Alison Hale until doing a Google search on Asperger Syndrome. I may have been the only one not to have heard of her as she has just written an autobiography about herself. See her website for more details.
5) WENDY LAWSON - Although Wendy lives in Australia, her website is still within John Muggleton's domain. When people talk about females who have been diagnosed, they usually talk about it with Wendy in mind.
6) TONY ATTWOOD - Author of many books on Asperger Syndrome. Had he still lived in the United Kingdom, he would be either Sir Anthony or Lord Attwood by now. Still, Australia is a lot richer thanks to his presence.
7) ASPERGER ARTFORMS - David Andrews' Scandinavian based Asperger Syndrome website.
8) BRADLEY OLSON - One of the many international websites out there.
9) AUTISM CONNECT - Brilliant for collating autism related stories from newswires and newspapers around the world, some of them appear on the news page of this website. However I do have difficulty linking them as they seem to change a lot.
10) AUTISM IN SCOTLAND - The National Autistic Society's Scottish division.
11) TIM NICKSON - All I can say is that Tim can certainly write! They would make a great autobiography.
12) AUTISM CYMRU - The National Autistic Society’s Welsh division.
13) PARENTS AND PROFESSIONALS AND AUTISM - We always like to keep all of the United Kingdom covered. Here is the National Autistic Society’s Northern Ireland division.
14) DAVID MIEDZIANIK - Just like Kevin Phillips, David comes from South Yorkshire. I think that he is probably the only Miedzianik to live in the whole United Kingdom!
15) NoRSACA - I suppose that they have a lot to answer for, as my diagnosis wouldn’t have been made if it wasn’t for them.
16) ASPERGER MARRIAGE - It was once stated that 80% of Asperger marriages end in divorce. I, for one have problems with relationships, and marriage is a little bit far into the distance. Here is a website that examines relationships of that nature.
17) ASPERGER NORFOLK - The National Autistic Society’s Norfolk division. Wasn’t Alan Partridge based in Norfolk?
18) ASPERGER SYNDROME TEENS - The teenage years are often the most difficult years of your life, and so is the Asperger Syndrome years, so here is a website that combines the two…
19) ASPERGER SYNDROME PARTNERS - For wives and partners of those who have been diagnosed, so obviously someone with Asperger Syndrome would have to be married to fit into this category!
20) OASIS - Nothing to do with Noel or Liam Gallagher, but one of the biggest Asperger Syndrome websites on the Internet.
AUTISM-RELATED FORUM THREADS
1) THE MAUSOLEUM CLUB3) PRISONER: CELL BLOCK H - You need to register to see the thread.
TEN SELECTED "UNITED KINGDOM" LINKS FROM THE INTERNET
Some very British things that I have one or two observations on...
1) WHAT AGE CAN I? - In the United Kingdom, you can legally harm yourself from one's 18th birthday onwards by putting a stick inside one's mouth and setting fire to it, along with consuming poisonous substances from a glass, as well as looking at the fashion pages in women's magazines and responding to what you see. Even more outrageously, one can be two years younger and get away with practicing disgusting acts with someone of the opposite gender. Because of my Asperger Syndrome and the fact that I live in an area where I cannot get on with anyone, I also suffer from Involuntary Celibacy and so therefore it wouldn't matter to me if these lewd acts were raised from 16 or 18 to 100. A telegram from the Queen at 18, anyone?
2) COME TO NEW BRITAIN - Chris Longhurst's accurate observations on life in the United Kingdom. He tells it better than I do.
3) WHAT CAN YOU NOT DO IN A POLLING STATION? - One good thing about being over 18 in the United Kingdom is that you can (to a certain degree) express oneself politically. (I voted Conservative in 2010 - anyone want to take issue with that?) My first stint in a Polling Station was for the 1997 General Election at the age of 18 years and eight months. But here you can dress like Spiderman and you can still set foot inside a Polling Station to vote! (It's probably the only way if a Fancy Dress event is held on the same day as an Election). I didn't know the laws inside a Polling Station were so liberal (with a small L of course...)
4) TV LICENCING - DO YOU NEED A TELEVISION LICENCE? - People in the United Kingdom often regard the TV Licence as "the new Council Tax", but at the end of the day, receiving the right to use a television set is a privilege and not necessarily a right. My address has been a Licence Fee paying household for so long that I doubt that John Logie-Baird was even born when we first started paying for it. I pay my £145.50 (as of August 2010) Licence Fee to receive Waltham transmitter programmes through an analogue aerial (something that will end in about 2011), and also a few more channels courtesy of Sky Digital, which allows an East Midlands Licence Fee payer to watch BBC One North East wherever they live - how about that! And going back to the Election issue, the quality of the BBC's General Election coverage in May 2010 would have suffered if it wasn't for the Licence Fee providing revenue to keep it going - and without DFS and Tesco commercials every 15 minutes as well! But please make the BBC save us some money and make them axe EastEnders as it is a waste of our money!
5) DEED POLL SERVICE - RESTRICTIONS ON NAMES - I have always had the same name that I was born with, but I would hazard a guess that Elvis Presley is the most common name that people change their name to when they use this service. The majority of people who use the Deed Poll service to change their name are often celebrities (presumably those people such as any supermodel who was unfortunate to have been born Edna Doris Pratt); transsexuals (a woman named Steve?); those who were born Tom Jones and would like to change it to avoid confusion (and also a lot of Mickey-taking); and rather oddly men who take their wife's maiden name because she doesn't want to take his, and even more ludicrously, women who cannot wait to get married and take their fiance's surname prior to marriage, which seems like a waste of money considering she would be changing it anyway to the same name on the day of the wedding. And what about those people who change their name to Humpty Dumpty or Mickey Mouse? And going back to the foray of celebrities, Jimmy White calling himself Jimmy Brown, Austin Mitchell MP calling himself Austin Haddock, Christine Hamilton calling herself British Battleaxe, ad infinitum...
6) ROYAL MAIL - PROHIBITED GOODS - I am a frequent user of the Royal Mail's service just like most people in the United Kingdom. I make a date with the red post box not too far from where I live in order to put three or four full envelopes inside. Basically an average letter contains at least one piece of paper with lettering on it that is ink - and ink is poisonous! However it doesn't quite make it to the list of prohibited goods that the Royal Mail cannot carry, which ranges from Filth (that is what the toilet and the dustbins are full of, not the Royal Mail); indecent material (women's magazines methinks) and batteries, which probably is the main source for that old phrase "Batteries Not Included", which brings despair to both children and adults on Christmas Day each year. I only want to send a letter to Norwich for goodness sake!
7) PREMIUM RATE PHONE SCAM MISERY - Although robbery, fraud, theft and deception is illegal in the United Kingdom, these laws do not apply when it comes to telephone services. "Wouldn't it be great if calls made within the United Kingdom cost more than a call to Australia?" someone who needed to see a psychiatrist probably once said in about 1986. And so this misery was born. ICSTIS did sound as if it was a mental illness, and so much so, because it is chillingly ironic that the word AUTISTICS (I very much doubt it has ever appeared on Countdown even if it is nine letters long), is an anagram of ICSTIS AT U, and yes, they were at us for years. ICSTIS was the bureaucratic acronym for that "regulated" elitism by telephone services, and were regarded as the British National Party of the British telephone industry. Besides, telephone services were regulated by Oftel and later Ofcom, so why weren't Premium Rate telephone services regulated in this way? ICSTIS might as well stand for "I Can't Stand This Idiotic Service", and one wonders whether idiots like George Kidd or Alastair Graham either had connections with the British National Party or were just "faintly" autistic? There is also a "hole in my bucket", vicious circle of double standards as well: A) People with Asperger Syndrome have problems with relationships, and so therefore they would use these services; B) People with Asperger Syndrome are least likely to work and so therefore they would not earn too much money; and C) People who don't earn too much money have difficulty paying high telephone bills. Mind you, bailiffs and debt collectors would be almost out of a job if wasn't for the Premium Rate telephone industry, and I certainly agree that ICSTIS, and its successor PhonePayPlus (even though its an improvement on the name), is regarded as a toothless lion and is "full of crap". This sort of thing should be criminalised, rather than regulated, and don't get me started on the television scandal in 2007. I wish I was born in 1878 and not 1978.
8) POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND POSTMAN PAT - Just like Chris Longhurst's link above, this is about the unusual combination of Political Correctness and Postman Pat. It was originally published in the Daily Mail and it speaks for itself.
9) GULLIBLE GUNNERS - HOUSEHOLDERS AND BURGLARS - To be burgled or robbed in the United Kingdom is an ordeal in itself, but to defend oneself in such an incident is even more of an ordeal. These days one can get a life sentence just for tapping a burglar on the back in force while trying to stop the culprit from murdering you. One of the most recent cases was that of Munir Hussain who had the unfortunate Double Standards of getting a stronger penalty than his attackers just before Christmas 2009. It is ironic that Tony Martin also had Asperger Syndrome (and even more ironic that back in 2000 on ASFTHM I actually said that he wasn't autistic!), but it was not because of his diagnosis, which is coincidental. He had the guts to do something about the scum who had terrorised him over 32 times - and they say that lightning doesn't even strike twice in the same place? I would rather have Tony Martin as a friend or neighbour to confide in rather some inner-city "hoodie" chav who is under the influence of drugs. I was a victim of a walk-in burglary in April 2008 - it was thanks to the fact that I am a so-called wimp and a coward that kept me on the right side of the law at the end of the day.
10) HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN AND THE ROYAL FAMILY - Despite the negative points that I have made about the United Kingdom in this list, there is one thing that I do like to uphold and that is the Royal Family; they are based in the United Kingdom but are also international thanks to the Commonwealth. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II had been the country's monarch long before I was born and her ten minute speech at 3.00 pm every Christmas Day is one of the things that I look forward to on the day itself, followed by a two hour film to allow the turkey and Christmas pudding to go down smoothly. I am dreading the day when the time comes, but on the other hand we will know that Prince Charles will become King with a Coronation just around the corner. I really enjoyed the Golden Jubilee celebrations at a local church in 2002 and I got to meet many interesting people as a result, which I wouldn't have ever done had this country had been a Republic. Let's keep the monarchy and the Queen and let's keep them for generations to come. God save the Queen!
TEN SELECTED “DOUBLE STANDARDS” LINKS FROM THE INTERNET
It’s a case of “tales - you lose, heads - you don’t win…”
1) ANTHONY JENKINS - Incontinent and cut short in public? The staff of the store you are in refuses to let you use their toilets in an emergency? Have the choice of either wetting or soiling yourself and have the public take the piss (no pun intended) out of you, or be arrested and charged with Criminal Damage. It seems that you can’t do it when you Pee and Queue it.
2) CODIE STOTT - The fact of the matter is that everybody on this planet are racists, simply because none of us can understand every single one of the 6,000 languages spoken on Earth. Well, Codie Stott made an observation about not being able to understand Asian pupils she had to work because they spoke different languages, and she was arrested by the police and accused of racism! I don’t understand the Tamil language, so that obviously makes me a racist, doesn’t it?
3) ANDY MILLER - Any doctor would tell you that a heart condition is more important than an outstanding debt, although a bailiff would tell you completely the opposite. Never mind, now that Andy Miller has dropped down dead, it will be one less thing for the “legalised” robbers (not quite an oxymoron) to worry about.
4) KEITH HIRST - The old saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” is rather misleading if you happen to be Keith Hirst. He was accused of dropping an imaginary apple core and marched to a police station and kept in custody for about 12 hours before being bailed, and his poor family didn’t know where he was, and was telephoning police and hospitals, for Mr Hirst had a heart condition, which increased concern even further. Interesting that the biased rag The Grauniad was the only newspaper that referred to him by surname in their news reports. Mind you, I do hope that The Sun avoided the obviously ironic headlines such as “Core Blimey” and all that if they did report the story.
5) ROY NEWMAN - There is nothing quite like putting a poster up in your front windows in the run up to a General Election. Mine had a Vote Conservative one on, and thankfully everyone respected my choice of political bias; (well nobody had complained to the police if that is what you mean). Unfortunately, Roy Newman (who himself was a Conservative), made his front window campaign that said “Get the lot out” a little but too cryptic. Someone complained to the police because they thought that it was racist (the colours red, white and blue had associations with the British National Party or the National Front), and so was cautioned and nearly arrested. If the colours red, white and blue are racist, then that must mean that the Union Jack flag, the Tesco logo and the 1980s London Weekend Television logo must also be racist as well. (I was going to add the French, Norwegian and Dutch flags to the list but that might be slightly too controversial…) I suppose that he could have made his message a little bit more clearer, although as he used sheets of A4 paper he didn’t have too much room to do so. Ironically, making the lettering smaller would allow him to have room to be more specific with what he is saying, but it would probably would be too small for people to see properly from a distance…
6) BARBARA JUBB - Grandmother Barbara Jubb should have been included in the recent edition of the Guinness World Records because she had purchased the world’s most expensive crisps! Just one of them was worth a massive £40 (perhaps they should be regulated by CRISPSTIS or CrispPayPlus?) when two of them landed on the pavement when being fed to her granddaughter. One bit of irony is that they were walking down the street when it happened and of course the brand of crisps were indeed Walkers! If that is the case then it’s a good job that the BBC overpays Gary Lineker - he probably needs all the money he can receive if he happens to accidentally drop some of his own brand of crisps by mistake.
7) MUNIR HUSSAIN - We started the 2000s with the Tony Martin case and ended that decade with the Munir Hussain case. The law of the United Kingdom does not allow householders to fight back burglars who plan to murder them, and permits them to be wimps instead. If this isn’t Double Standards then I don’t know what is.
8) HANNAH GILBERT - I am relived to some extent that I don’t really make a habit of painting my nails, whether they are on my fingers or toes, be it in public or private, otherwise I might have fallen into the trap that Hannah Gilbert got herself into. I suppose this has comparisons with trying out ballpoint pens in WH Smith; if one happens to visit the store and brings in a piece of paper from home in which to do a few squiggles on in order to see whether the pens work, but the person does not purchase the relevant pen and puts the pen back but takes the piece of paper away with them after they leave, does that count as shoplifting in the same way? Security guards - wouldn’t they be bored stiff is no one tried to steal?
9) KIERON KEENAN - A victim of Positive Discrimination as a result of an Act that dates back to 1976. Thanks to racist political parties like Labour and feminist Nick Griffin-style politicians like Harriet Harman, we could have more of this to come if we are unlucky. (Why the hell did she keep her deposit at the 2010 General Election?) How about Positive Discrimination in Britain’s Next Top Model in favour of males? There are too many females on that programme, and that is sexist! What about Positive Discrimination in favour of people with autism and Asperger Syndrome? What about applying this in soap operas? Oh, does this mean that the Positive Discrimination crap will allow a black or an Asian person to get away with murdering a white person? I need not explain about how the British National Party had beat Labour in the 2008 Henley by-election and that Labour lost their deposit (and quite rightly too). We are all supposed to be equal on this planet - Positive Discrimination causes unnecessary elitism.
10) BRYAN DAVIES - I am all for children and other people to be safe, but when we have News of the World-style Naming and Shaming situations, it leads to vigilantes attacking innocent people. This is one example, which had lead to the death of the aforementioned person.
Top 20 local area links...
1) NOTTINGHAMSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL (Local government)
2) GEDLING BOROUGH COUNCIL (Local government)
3) GEDLING HOMES (Housing)
4) NOTTINGHAMSHIRE POLICE - GEDLING NORTH DIVISION (Emergency service, crime and law)
5) VERNON COAKER MP (Local politics and government)
6) GEDLING CONSERVATIVES (Local politics)
7) BONINGTON THEATRE (Entertainment and recreation)
8) ST MARY'S CHURCH (Religion and recreation)
9) THIS IS ARNOLD TODAY (News and information)
10) ARNOLD LOCAL AREA FORUM (Local information)
11) NG5 ONLINE (Local information)
12) STENHOUSE MEDICAL CENTRE (Health and medical)
13) ARNOLD AND DISTRICT CAMERA CLUB (Hobbies and recreation)
14) ARNOLD ART SOCIETY (Hobbies and recreation)
15) ARNOLD TOWN FOOTBALL CLUB (Sport and recreation)
16) ARNOLD SWIMMING CLUB (Sport and recreation)
17) ARNOLD HILL SCHOOL AND TECHNOLOGY COLLEGE (Education)
18) ARNOLD ARMY (Charitable organisation)
19) G1HTL - JOHN FOSTER (Personal website)
20) WIKIPEDIA - ARNOLD, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE (General information)
Some non-ASFTHM websites that I have created ...
1) DATE OF BIRTH - A website that is all about the fashions, music, television, what you could buy in the shops and anniversaries connected with Wednesday, 30th August, 1978.
2) ANAGRAMS OF "ASPERGER SYNDROME - FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH" - Some of the best anagrams with help from Anagramgenius.com.
3) A VERY BRITISH CHRISTMAS - Observations on how Christmas is celebrated in the United Kingdom, including that dreaded turkey!
4) HOLIDAY DIARY 2004 - Read exclusively here a detailed account into a week’s holiday in Cornwall in the final week in August 2004. Find out personal observations on Land’s End; the Eden Project; the Newlyn Fish Festival, and also how the hotel that I stayed in and also BBC Radio Cornwall became a big part of the holiday week. There’s over 100KB of text here (the equivalent to over 30 pages), so watch out for a rather interesting read. These memoirs would make any good chapter in an autobiography!
5) THE QUEEN'S GOLDEN JUBILEE STREET PARTY - St Jude's Church based in Nottingham celebrated the Queen's Golden Jubilee on Bank Holiday Monday 3rd June 2002 by throwing a party for anyone to attend, starting at 12 midday and lasting for four hours. A good time was had by all, and here are the photographs to prove it! Click on the photographs to see a Jubilee related news story from the BBC News Online website.
6) ELECTION 2005 - A brief history (or should that be His Tory?) of the Conservative Party in Nottingham East. Plus a history of the parliamentary constituency that gave the House of Commons its tallest Member of Parliament of the 20th century.
7) WHERE WAS I AND WHAT WAS I DOING WHEN... - A look at ten of the biggest things that have happened while I have been alive, and what I was doing at the time that the news broke. Obviously I cannot say where I was when John F Kennedy was assassinated; neither can I say where I was when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, as they were before I was born! But here are some classic ones from the last few years…
8) THE SATURDAY 1ST JANUARY 2000 TIME CAPSULE - A look at what life was like at the start of the third millennium - who was who in the public domain, who much things were, what was on the television, what was in the charts and a lot more...
9) THE DAY BY DAY CHRONICLE OF NEWS EVENTS FOR 1981 - It was a year that we were all proud to be British: Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer got married; Bucks Fizz helped the United Kingdom to win the Eurovision Song Contest; Steve Davis won the International Snooker Championships, and we had a white Christmas. Meanwhile, the Queen, Pope John Paul II and the newly elected American President Ronald Reagan all survived assassination attempts. So why was I too young to remember what happened in that year? Well, thanks to the Internet and old newspapers, here is a chronology of what happened in 1981, and every day of that year is covered.
10) A CHRONICLE OF THE 111 BIGGEST NEWS STORIES OF THE THIRD MILLENIUM - From the Queen's Golden Jubilee celebrations to the death of Pope John Paul II - it's all here!
11) A CHRONICLE OF THE 111 FAMOUS PEOPLE WHO SADLY PASSED AWAY IN THE THIRD MILLENNIUM - Paying tribute to those who have passed away in the first few years of the new millennium, from the Queen Mother to Pope John Paul II.
12) TRIED AND TESTED... SOUTH NOTTINGHAMSHIRE COUNCILS - Nottingham is indeed the burglary capital of the United Kingdom, so presumably that council is the worst one to live in... Find out here.
