Thread 6: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

The Observer The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were ...

Second article in the Observer
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-whats-in-the-book-and-what-the-observer-has-found

Third item in the Observer
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-the-truth-behind-the-blockbuster-book-video

Thread One ^www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5368194-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?^

Thread 2 Thread 2. To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film? | Mumsnet

Thread 3 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5369425-thread-3-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

Thread 4 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5370609-thread-4-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

Thread 5 Thread 5: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film? | Mumsnet

Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement Raynor Winn

NB Please be careful when it comes to naming or implicating people who aren't in the public eye or have no connection to the story, especially where details are unclear or still emerging i.e. DON'T DO IT.

Keep on the path. No saltiness. Thank you.

New posters welcome. It would be helpful to read at least the three Observer articles before posting.

I can't bear to look at pics of Ian McCulloch as he is now. I'm nowhere near ready for that kind of reality!

(Echo and the Bunnyman frontman)

It just shows how scammers pretending to have cancer for gofundme scams get away with it - it's taboo to even suggest someone may not be being truthful.

Recent photos reminded me of A Flock of Seagulls.

What rhymes with Orange?

Exactly. Anyone in real life who had a doubt just wouldn't have been able to voice it.

Until that one person who spoke to Chloe H.

And when they did, she immediately wondered if they bore the Walkers a grudge!

Note that she says THE experiences not OUR experiences.

Also the bit about the council not thinking he was ill enough doesn't make sense if he had such a shocking and terminal diagnosis? Surely he would have been a priority then?

I have a friend with severe progressive MS and she was prioritised for a ground floor flat.

There's no way her solicitor would have okayed that waffling ,badly written statement,it's awful!

Can someone explain what the LinkedIn post said please? I haven’t been able to read it or find a copy of it anywhere and it hasn’t been reported

Did they want a council house in the first place? Was the application actually made? These are questions that should be answered by both of them.

That LI post was deleted so probably best not to revive it.

I think this is one of the major issues with illnesses though. It's taboo to question, but that ultimately means people who do suffer from illnesses that have no obvious proof are also doubted.

It should be such a no go area to fake illnesses that people don't go there. But people are afraid to challenge, which means nice people are doubted real diagnoses, but people who are scam artists, will make use of that.

There was that Harry potter quote. Something like:
"Good people are easy to manipulate" and that's very true.

The people that are harmed by faking illnesses are not the people who have done it; it's the people with those illnesses that then suffer from others assuming they have faked it too.

Having walked a fair few LDPs in the UK one of the features about TSP that didn't ring true was the constant encounters with rude or unhelpful people on the SWCP. That hasn't been my experience at all, nor many of the people who have commented on TSP on various social media platforms. By and large, people I've encountered in the UK on LDPs have tended to be helpful and kind in my experience.

There is significant commentary from people who know those criticised in TSP, that the observations in TSP are simply wrong or malicious. I get the sense that SW is transferring her own psychological issues onto those that she meets on the walk and casting herself in the role of victim. It skews the book in my opinion, from an uplifting account of redemption through nature to a rather nasty self entitled criticism of much of what she encounters en route.

I suspect that SW has a significant personality disorder - pathological lying, self entitlement, embezzlement, narcissism, emotional manipulation, unwillingness to accept responsibility for one's actions. The list goes on.

According to Tim, "This really is heaven - it's not an illusion. Within the confines of the property, everything is harmonious." From the BBC archive post Feb 2009

Sounding a bit Stella Gibbons there. I think the foundations for this grift are deep.

They are clearly massively exaggerating Moth’s medical condition and I don’t feel like trying to tie yourself in knots to give them the benefit of the doubt is worth the effort. People who think all disabled people are making it up will feel more justified and not less justified in their opinion if someone who is, by their own admission of medical evidence, not as ill as they said they were, is automatically believed. The boy who cried wolf is a classic for a reason 😁

While I didn’t have any suspicions about the book while reading it, I did find the way she spoke about the people that helped them, curious and a little uncomfortable. I’d be interested to find out what happened with the friend that offered them somewhere to stay during the winter (if I recall correctly) of that first walk. She seemed to be implying something in the book and I’m really curious what the reality was - I think she made out that the woman had misled them about the availability of the property, or something like that? I want to reread that bit now.

I'm sure it's a complete coincidence but one of the clues in today's Observer Speedy crossword is 'With true identity exposed' (answer 'unmasked ') I had a chuckle

I used to work in non-fiction publishing and I just cannot imagine an editor asking an author to prove that their spouse had a life-limiting condition. To do so would imply you didn't trust them, and the relationship between author and editor has to be one of trust. I agree with PPs that SW's contract would include a clause making her liable for the contents of the book, not the publisher.

In terms of the stuff in the book (which I haven't read) that seems questionable - the commissioning editor would send it out to a copy editor for a line edit. A good copy editor would certainly query anything in the narrative that seems unconvincing, but would be very unlikely to say that it all sounds like a pack of lies. It's got past the commissioning editor after all. It's more a question of timescales etc - could they have been in x place on Thursday if they were in y place on Tuesday? As for the reason why they lost their house - if the copy editor thought it wasn't clear, they would ask the author to flesh it out a bit but they wouldn't challenge what actually happened.

Publishing is very much built on trust and instinct - maybe it will be a lot less so in future.

Yes, she promised them a roof forever, if they wanted/needed it, but then one of the sheep shearers says it’ll do him nicely now that they’ve finished the work on it. And then the friend admits that she needs the rental income (and of course R and M still don’t have paid work).

BufferingAgain · Today 16:21
Better the ‘clean soft hands of an office worker’ than the ‘sticky fingers of a bent bookkeeper

Brilliant!

That’s it, I just tried to read a bit of that extract, it looks like it was something about how she ‘Polly’ showed somebody around ‘secretly’ because she needed to earn some money from it (ETA I think that was what people suggested it sounded like, rather than what the author specifically said) and they felt hard done by, perhaps? I think the inference was that they had worked really hard and now she just wanted to earn money from the property. I really do wonder what the reality was there now. There are original discussions on goodreads about this part and how Polly took advantage of them. I wonder whether there’s a quite upset ‘Polly’ out there somewhere, if she exist.

So much shit is thrown at people with disabilities and I don't want to do that, because the letters indicate there is something going on. Even the Observer is being very, very circumspect at the moment.

I agree and as the OP I've made it very clear all along that any posts questioning people with disabilities in general, including about disability benefits, are not welcome on these threads. It would be unhelpful, not what these threads are about and not in the spirit of these threads. This stance has been accepted and even strongly supported by everyone, I'm very glad to say, and we will continue with it.

Here, our focus is on 2 individuals in the light of the apparent discrepancies between what has been reported by the Observer and others and those they have interviewed, and Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's claims in her books, numerous interviews and statement including the medical letters she has chosen to release. I think that's reasonable and in the public interest, for the reasons I explain in my pp. If anything I see reasonable questions about the books and health claims are a positive action towards people with disabilities. It is of grave concern to me that some may have been misled, confused distressed and given false hope. That can't be ignored.

It's mentioned in the Big issue email that they got turned down because he 'wasn't ill enough'

Agree, what they have done is deeply harmful to people with actual disabilities, firstly because they will be met with scepticism it they "look well" . Secondly because of the deeply harmful narrative that a bit of grit and positive thinking can reverse the irreversible

And if publishing companies don't want to do their due diligence then quite frankly they need to stop publishing this stuff

It's just another in a long line of people or organisations or businesses she dismisses with unfounded allegations from her entitled view on life. From the critism of the judge dismissing evidence as 'just another piece of paper' to telling us that rural communities pass judgement on anyone in local authority housing. Her statement starts will how hard the article is for her and how much it effects her life. Nothing about the impact on other sufferers of the condition or the charity. It's a litany of self absorbed entitlement that has received validation through her books. There's no doubt she believes the narrative she has created. She's very quick to use words like other people's 'prejudices'. Hopefully she pays all the money she owes and then just goes away.