About

I write about the things that get left unexamined: old institutions and what actually happened inside them, policy that affects disabled people written by people who have never needed it, and the technology industry's habit of describing its costs as someone else's problem.

Who I am

I'm Jason Boyd. I live in Whitburn, West Lothian, by choice, in a town officially classified as an area of high deprivation. I'm 52, autistic and physically disabled. I've spent my working life in technology and I now work for myself as a WordPress engineer, which pays for the time this writing takes.

My writing has appeared in Bylines Scotland, the Scottish title in the Bylines Network. Some of the pieces here first ran there and have been revised since.

How I work

Evidence first. Where I state a fact, I link the source, and I would rather link a primary document than a report about the document. Where I state an opinion, I say plainly that it is mine rather than dressing it up as neutral analysis.

For the historical pieces that means archive material: health board minutes, admission registers, inspection reports, National Records of Scotland holdings. Where I cannot establish something, I say so rather than filling the gap with a plausible guess. Where a piece has no real photograph or archive scan available, it carries a plain placeholder rather than decorative stock photography standing in as evidence.

What I get wrong

I get things wrong sometimes. When that happens I want to know, and I correct it in place with a note saying what changed. If you are named in something I have written, or you think a fact here is wrong, there is a page for that.

Contact

Email is the only route: blog@jasonboyd.scot. I do not take phone calls. I'm autistic and they cost me more than they're worth to either of us, so anything worth discussing is worth writing down.