Jason Arday #3

[Witchfinder Sargeant]

Assuming he was a member of the USS pension scheme, it's a defined benefit scheme and does have a child pension attached to it, so should pay his children a pension until they're 18, or up to 23 if they stay in full-time education.

He'd taught at post-1992 institutions for most of his academic career, so the majority of his pension is more likely to be with the Teachers' Pension Scheme, which offers a death in service lump sum, a spouse/civil partner pension but no dependent child pension that I can see from a quick skim of the documents.

He may not have accrued enough contributions with the USS to be eligible for any benefits apart from the return of his contributions. Edit I don't know if You can transfer your TPS pension into your USS one but you'd be an idiot to do that as you'd lose the benefits of a defined benefit scheme, they'd go into the defined contribution part of your USS pension.

 

[Falkor]

He'd taught at post-1992 institutions for most of his academic career, so the majority of his pension is more likely to be with the Teachers' Pension Scheme, which offers a death in service lump sum, a spouse/civil partner pension but no dependent child pension that I can see from a quick skim of the documents.

He may not have accrued enough contributions with the USS to be eligible for any benefits apart from the return of his contributions. Edit I don't know if You can transfer your TPS pension into your USS one but you'd be an idiot to do that as you'd lose the benefits of a defined benefit scheme, they'd go into the defined contribution part of your USS pension.

I thought it was possible to transfer into the USS DB section, but looks like you can only do that if you were a member of USS before April 2016, which from what you say he probably wasn't. That's a shame.

 

[taffygirl77]

Started reading then got to the dedication and felt like i’d slipped into ‘the book’. Is it normal to have a dedication at the start of a thesis? It detracts from the academic content somewhat.

Acknowledgements yes, it's common in masters thesis onwards.

 

[drmortimer]

Assuming he was a member of the USS pension scheme,

I’m not saying the later Star Trek series were dull, but…

 

[Witchfinder Sargeant]

I thought it was possible to transfer into the USS DB section, but looks like you can only do that if you were a member of USS before April 2016, which from what you say he probably wasn't. That's a shame.

I've just looked more closely at the TPS website and there is a child pension if the employee dies in service, and I'm assuming JA's death counts as a death in service, from my understanding of defined benefit schemes.

 

[10%]

Meanwhile, we have ‘Dr’ Jessica Taylor, another serial fraudulent fabulist making money from vulnerable women and girls, acting far outside of her qualifications and issuing actively harmful advice which reaches hundreds of thousands of people. I would so much rather have seen her get taken down this summer. Not ‘hounded to death’ or any of that nonsense - just an interruption of her grift and exposure of her fraud. Over on the DJT threads we think this day will surely come. Or we will collectively combust into a national wildfire!

I think she's slowly cancelling herself with how she's lied so much in her failed mission to take down tattle and release a book with a made up stalking drama.

I've seen several viral posts on X, FB and TT about her. And of course the registered professional and credible Kerry Daynes.

It's not explosive like Jason Arday, but her time is coming. And no newspaper or blogger needs to worry about it unfolding like this case as it's totally different and won't be main headlines.

Jason Arday didn't want to cause anyone harm, Jessica Taylor does. She's a snake that would eat her own eggs.

 

[PineappleQueen19]

Jason Arday didn't want to cause anyone harm,

Come on now

 

[10%]

Come on now

He undeniably did. But I don't think he set out to do so. By the time he got carter ruck to threaten I think he thought he was a victim and believed his own stuff.

Dr Jessica Taylor sets out to ruin the lives of vulnerable people who were sexually abused as children.

 

[PineappleQueen19]

He undeniably did. But I don't think he set out to do so. By the time he got carter ruck to threaten I think he thought he was a victim and believed his own stuff.

Dr Jessica Taylor sets out to ruin the lives of vulnerable people who were sexually abused as children.

He didn’t set out to call the police on fellow academics and at least one journalist? Just by the by?

Sorry not following

 

[Abominatrix]

He undeniably did. But I don't think he set out to do so. By the time he got carter ruck to threaten I think he thought he was a victim and believed his own stuff.

Dr Jessica Taylor sets out to ruin the lives of vulnerable people who were sexually abused as children.

And encourages people to ditch their meds and distrust their doctors. She's dangerous as hell.

 

[10%]

He didn’t set out to call the police on fellow academics and at least one journalist? Just by the by?

Sorry not following

I think he was delusional and enabled by a lot of people so genuinely thought any criticism was racist and the police should investigate. He believed his own hype as how could Cambridge and all the reputable people that told him he was amazing be wrong? Even in his death you have so many people who have distilled the whole thing to racism, which is doing more harm to the cause they're supposed to be helping!

The point is he's very different to DJT and how she's so dangerous and could have easily caused so many people to have a mental health crisis with devastating outcomes.

 

[PineappleQueen19]

I think he was delusional and enabled by a lot of people so genuinely thought any criticism was racist and the police should investigate. He believed his own hype as how could Cambridge and all the reputable people that told him he was amazing be wrong?

The point is he's very different to DJT and how she's so dangerous and could have easily caused so many people to have a mental health crisis with devastating outcomes.

No two fraudsters will be exactly alike.
Anyone still thinking Arday did not intentionally cause harm is naive. Arday knew exactly what he was doing and used every weapon at his disposal.

 

[TrashleenMoron]

I'm still absolutely baffled by that autobiography. I was thinking about it in the context of interviewing someone for a role, and how I might ask about a time someone encountered X, and they respond something like, 'We had a difficult project. My manager said we'd never deliver it, but my colleague believed in me. I was determined not to give up. Eventually we delivered it successfully and everyone was delighted.' It has the shape of a nice story but you're left with no useful information about what they actually did. And that's his whole book.

Spoiler: Continued...

He starts at Point A, reaches Obstacle B, Obstacle C, then Triumphant Point D.

It looks like a narrative and has the signals telling the reader how to feel. Bully doubted me. Friend/stranger believed in me. Villain told me I'd amount to nothing. Nobody had ever seen someone like me try something like this before. They laughed at me. I nearly gave up. Nobody thought a person like me could do it. But I persevered. And now look at me. Aren't I amazing?

WHAT THE duck HAPPENED AT POINTS B AND C? That's the interesting part, which he omits every. Single. Time.

'Giff had me moved to a mainstream school. She 'campaigned''. Did she? How? With whom? What did she do? What worked? What didn't? Why was that the right thing to do? Why was it better than the alternative?

'Debs taught me to read and write.'
Did she? And how did she do that? What techniques did she use? How did she know about them? Why, specifically, did she succeed where Giff and at least three schools, presumably staffed with teachers, had failed? What was it like, after a lifetime of being unable to read to suddenly have a world of incredible literature and information available to you?

You got a PhD? How? Why? What did it entail, what did you research and how, what parts of the subject did you find challenging, what did you get wrong, how did you course correct, what exactly did you learn, what surprised you?

But every story is just... nobody believed in me, Giff battled for me to go to a mainstream school so that's what happened, aren't we amazing? Debs taught me to read somehow, but more importantly she's thin and beautiful and other men are jealous of me, aren't I interesting? I did a PhD on a Thinkpad branded laptop. Nobody thought I could do it but I knew I was like the character Rocky played by Sylvester Stallone in the Rocky films and I thought about Rocky and succeeded! Like Rocky!

All the supposedly verbatim dialogue and beige detail acts as a stand in for this juvenile superficiality, but there's not a second of agency or self reflection.

Everyone is childishly divided into the goodies, the baddies and the hero and his triumph over evil. We know literally nothing about him by the end of the book except for the externally imposed dramatic events through which he demonstrates he is special.

Perhaps that's why people create these wild stories? If you have no internal sense of yourself or why you're doing anything, then I suppose a dramatic external narrative is one way to anchor yourself to... something. Create the idea of a person and construct the narrative around that. But you can't reverse engineer a life.

I think he just drifted through life, either having other people do things for him or otherwise putting the minimum effort into everything, and skating through because he was black and neurodivergent; his diversity points coupled with his fictional backstory, he was given an easy ride for his shoddy work.

That's probably the reason his autobiography gave absurdly detailed accounts of every bus or train he took, and how he knew which stretch of the journey was best to have a bowel movement; but gave no useful details as to how he achieved anything.

 

[FourSeasonSoupObsessive]

I'm still absolutely baffled by that autobiography. I was thinking about it in the context of interviewing someone for a role, and how I might ask about a time someone encountered X, and they respond something like, 'We had a difficult project. My manager said we'd never deliver it, but my colleague believed in me. I was determined not to give up. Eventually we delivered it successfully and everyone was delighted.' It has the shape of a nice story but you're left with no useful information about what they actually did. And that's his whole book.

Spoiler: Continued...

He starts at Point A, reaches Obstacle B, Obstacle C, then Triumphant Point D.

It looks like a narrative and has the signals telling the reader how to feel. Bully doubted me. Friend/stranger believed in me. Villain told me I'd amount to nothing. Nobody had ever seen someone like me try something like this before. They laughed at me. I nearly gave up. Nobody thought a person like me could do it. But I persevered. And now look at me. Aren't I amazing?

WHAT THE duck HAPPENED AT POINTS B AND C? That's the interesting part, which he omits every. Single. Time.

'Giff had me moved to a mainstream school. She 'campaigned''. Did she? How? With whom? What did she do? What worked? What didn't? Why was that the right thing to do? Why was it better than the alternative?

'Debs taught me to read and write.'
Did she? And how did she do that? What techniques did she use? How did she know about them? Why, specifically, did she succeed where Giff and at least three schools, presumably staffed with teachers, had failed? What was it like, after a lifetime of being unable to read to suddenly have a world of incredible literature and information available to you?

You got a PhD? How? Why? What did it entail, what did you research and how, what parts of the subject did you find challenging, what did you get wrong, how did you course correct, what exactly did you learn, what surprised you?

But every story is just... nobody believed in me, Giff battled for me to go to a mainstream school so that's what happened, aren't we amazing? Debs taught me to read somehow, but more importantly she's thin and beautiful and other men are jealous of me, aren't I interesting? I did a PhD on a Thinkpad branded laptop. Nobody thought I could do it but I knew I was like the character Rocky played by Sylvester Stallone in the Rocky films and I thought about Rocky and succeeded! Like Rocky!

All the supposedly verbatim dialogue and beige detail acts as a stand in for this juvenile superficiality, but there's not a second of agency or self reflection.

Everyone is childishly divided into the goodies, the baddies and the hero and his triumph over evil. We know literally nothing about him by the end of the book except for the externally imposed dramatic events through which he demonstrates he is special.

Perhaps that's why people create these wild stories? If you have no internal sense of yourself or why you're doing anything, then I suppose a dramatic external narrative is one way to anchor yourself to... something. Create the idea of a person and construct the narrative around that. But you can't reverse engineer a life.

Absolutely this! Fantastic post. If there are other writers on here, then hasn’t this just made you think of the classical Hero’s Journey?

Basically, there’s a theory that this story structure is so foundational to our collective psyches that it’s almost encoded into every human brain on some level, that we all understand it, even when we don’t consciously acknowledge it. Humans are story tellers, ”homo narrans“, and we respond on a very primal level when someone presents us with a story in this familiar form.

I am taken by the idea that if you’re a person with no strong sense of internal self, which our fabulists often seem to be, that it would be very attractive to model yourself on a story that subconsciously feels “right” and “true”.

So interesting.

 

[MavisBeacon]

Absolutely this! Fantastic post. If there are other writers on here, then hasn’t this just made you think of the classical Hero’s Journey?

View attachment 4096513

Basically, there’s a theory that this story structure is so foundational to our collective psyches that it’s almost encoded into every human brain on some level, that we all understand it, even when we don’t consciously acknowledge it. Humans are story tellers, ”homo narrans“, and we respond on a very primal level when someone presents us with a story in this familiar form.

I am taken by the idea that if you’re a person with no strong sense of internal self, which our fabulists often seem to be, that it would be very attractive to model yourself on a story that subconsciously feels “right” and “true”.

So interesting.

Yes! I was talking to Mr Beacon about this the other night.

 

[TrashleenMoron]

Absolutely this! Fantastic post. If there are other writers on here, then hasn’t this just made you think of the classical Hero’s Journey?

View attachment 4096513

Basically, there’s a theory that this story structure is so foundational to our collective psyches that it’s almost encoded into every human brain on some level, that we all understand it, even when we don’t consciously acknowledge it. Humans are story tellers, ”homo narrans“, and we respond on a very primal level when someone presents us with a story in this familiar form.

I am taken by the idea that if you’re a person with no strong sense of internal self, which our fabulists often seem to be, that it would be very attractive to model yourself on a story that subconsciously feels “right” and “true”.

So interesting.

Too short.

 

[bottlewrapper]

That's probably the reason his autobiography gave absurdly detailed accounts of every bus or train he took, and how he knew which stretch of the journey was best to have a bowel movement; but gave no useful details as to how he achieved anything

I feel like this is a very common, accepted standard for celebrity memoirs. I'm thinking most recently of Margaret Atwood (enormously long memoir but glosses over how she actually writes) and Barbara Streisand (enormously long memoir but a few sentences on how she had one singing lesson decided she knew better, never went back). It's an almost messanaic structure ('I was born to do it, and I did, now bow down before my greatness'), with loads of random, almost pointless detail.

 

[TrashleenMoron]

I feel like this is a very common, accepted standard for celebrity memoirs. I'm thinking most recently of Margaret Atwood (enormously long memoir but glosses over how she actually writes) and Barbara Streisand (enormously long memoir but a few sentences on how she had one singing lesson decided she knew better, never went back). It's an almost messanaic structure ('I was born to do it, and I did, now bow down before my greatness'), with loads of random, almost pointless detail.

Sure, but by his own admission he wanted to map a "roadmap" for "other" academics, especially those who were "B"lack, so you'd think it would have details about his "accomplishments".

 

[VeniVidiVicki]

Sure, but by his own admission he wanted to map a "roadmap" for "other" academics, especially those who were "B"lack, so you'd think it would have details about his "accomplishments".

To be fair he was repeatedly invited to speaking engagements where he used lots of words to say duck all. So his autobiography is just riffing on a theme.

Why would he change the habit of a lifetime (and for someone who couldn’t speak until he was 11, he got very good at it very quickly)

 

[SwiftieNewRomantics]

I find the lack of social media interesting. I think he knew that there were a lot of people out there who could disprove his origin stories quite easily, so he kept himself away from open discussion forums.

In his writing, he comes across as really quite thick and incurious about the world around him. Not good attributes for an academic. Who do we think was pulling his strings? His mother? Sandro? Debs?

The mother I think.