Angela helps her husband wash with a plastic bowl each day because their bathroom sink is too high for his wheelchair. This is actually a better arrangement than their last home. The bungalow they lived in previously didn’t have a wet room, so Colin, who is partially tetraplegic following a severe spinal injury, had no […]
I’ve written on assisted dying several times, but – as a journalist and one with a disability – the question of where disability fits into the issue is not an easy one. I’ve argued in The Guardian and New Statesman that, with cases of the late Tony Nicklinson and Paul Lamb taken to the courts, Parliament will eventually need to address a disabled person’s […]
For the past couple of months, I’ve been speaking to Rob – a forty year old single man in social housing who, after having his housing benefit stopped, has been homeless for six months. “Each day is a fight for survival just to get somewhere to stay and something to eat. I’ve not had a […]
In writing about feminism and disability (and being a disabled woman), I often think about the way the two cross-over. At times, I’ve looked at those issues: abortion on the grounds of disability; the forced marriage of people with learning disabilities; the domestic abuse of disabled women. But I’m aware, very much, how little attention these subjects get […]
I was sitting in a green room with a politician once and he asked me “How long have you been like that?” He was referring, I was aware after a few long seconds, to my wheelchair. I would like to say I said something suitable back, the sort of retort that is both angry and […]
“I don’t buy into the idea that being on benefits is a lifestyle choice,” says one claimant. “I’d much prefer to be in my old £38k job, with a life of hope ahead of me, instead of worrying about how to make half a loaf of bread an onion and half a bottle of ketchup […]
I wrote a New Statesman column a couple of weeks ago, titled ‘Immoral or incompetent? With the DWP, it’s no longer a choice.’ It summed up what I’d been thinking for a while; the sheer scale of damaging, cut-inspired ‘reforms’ and the depth of carelessness that was accompanying it. As if confirmation, one week later […]
