No longer disabled enough: Cameron’s brave new world

Published in May 1st, 2012
Posted by in Issues
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Today it’s Blogging Against Disablism Day, an annual blog carnival in which we take stock of our crip status and our lives. To my shame it’s been three years since I last participated in BADD, and almost two years since I last blogged about how living with epilepsy affects me. Not much has changed, politically, [...]

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Disability Living Allowance – a personal experience

Published in June 24th, 2010
Posted by in Issues
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Tuesday’s Budget contained the not-entirely-unexpected announcement of cuts to benefits. There was a general expectation that Incapacity Benefit (IB) and its new incarnation, Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), both of which are claimed by many disabled people, would be targeted. IB is frequently in the news for its renown as a benefit that is relatively [...]

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Blogging against disablism

Published in May 1st, 2009
Posted by in Blogging, Issues
213 Comments

Did you know that one in six people in the UK has a disability of some sort? No? Neither did I until quite recently. It’s a shocking statistic, not so much because of the figure of 17%, but because disability is so underreported that when it does make the press people’s life stories become stereotyped [...]

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Ivan Cameron – a death not in vain

Published in February 26th, 2009
Posted by in Issues, News
4 Comments

Yesterday, when there was a fatal plane crash in Amsterdam and several British soldiers were killed on duty in Afghanistan, one other story dominated UK headlines – the death of six-year-old Ivan Cameron. Normally, I’d consider it inappropriate for such a private tragedy to be given priority over other news that is arguably far more [...]

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How reporting can endanger the disabled

Published in August 2nd, 2008
Posted by in Journalism, News
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Following Barry George’s acquittal for the murder of Jill Dando, today’s papers are awash with lengthy analysis of the case and profiles of George himself. My own opinion is that I think it highly unlikely that George “did it”, based on reports of his low IQ and other mental and physical problems. Why on earth [...]

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