Bloody furious again.

This time it's Magical Aqua that's got me all riled up. Not, I hasten to add, at the author, but at what she's being put through by her L.E.A. (Local Education Authority).

Magical Aqua's author, Lucy, is a teenaged girl who suffers from M.E. From what I read in her journal she's fighting the disease tooth and nail, but she can't really attend school. This is because her symptoms (which vary over time but often include severe pain, fatigue to the point where she can barely sit up for any length of time, insomnia and nausea) are too severe.

But physical disability should be no barrier to a young person's eduaction, right? I mean, there's laws and things, right? This is what you pay your taxes for, right? Wrong, according to the relevant L.E.A. They've been stringing this young woman along since 2001, failing to provide home tuition, failing to explain why. Same old story: "You're someone else's problem, we've lost your files, it's not my department, blah blah blah." I suppose they were hoping that the problem would disappear when she hit 18.

This is a disgusting way for a bunch of supposedly responsible adults to behave. I had a lot of contact with various L.E.A.s and their so-called education advisors when I was a kid and I have nothing good to say about them. I'm sorry to see that the callousness and incompetence that I recall is still alive.