April 16, 2008
Guru's hopes of being able to claim a blue sticker so that he can park in the 14,000 disabled bays outside his local supermarket suffered a blow to the temple today when a judge ruled that having no hair was not a disability.
A retired Glasgow school teacher had claimed constructive dismissal on account of being bald, because students taunted him with the spellbindingly original chant 'oi! baldy!'.
But now he is relying on getting some sympathy – and cash - from his employers, having had his case dismissed by a tribunal.
The judge said: "If baldness was to be regarded as an impairment then perhaps a physical feature such as a big nose, big ears or being smaller than average height might of themselves be regarded as an impairment under the Disability Discrimination Act."
Guru quite agrees, and feels that the law should be extended to cover all these areas, except maybe height (Yours Truly may be follically challenged, but does not suffer in the stature department).
Guru can sympathise with James Campbell, as he does not have fond memories of working in a school in the Far East – struggling to maintain control of the unruly pupils, who would ignore pretty much everything he said, and pretty much do their own thing.
The fact that their own thing tended to involve lying around chewing rubber toys, and gibbering on about little of any consequence is neither here nor there.
Admittedly, that does sound a bit like the House of Commons, but Yours Truly, truly suffered during his short stint as tea maker at the Raffles Nursery in Singapore, so he has an amount of sympathy with Scots teacher James Campbell, 61, having spent literally days shouting until he was blue in the face.
Guru feels the least the judge could have done was to lend Mr Campbell his wig. Then the pupils could have added 'wiggy' to the list of insults.
He also recommends that Campbell contact legendary Vietnamese sports psychologist L. O. Pe-Sha, as it was only after consulting him that Yours Truly was able to gain the confidence to talk about his ordeal.
Be assured that Guru has not given up his bid to gain blue sticker status for the weekly shopping trip, however. Athletes foot should come to the attention of a tribunal judge some day soon, and there's every chance that 'big hands' will be classified as disabled. After all, you know what they say about men with big hands...
