Liie
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
The forum have previously noted the work of this lady:
Article: How having a disability became cool — The Telegraph
- Thread starter Chandelier
- Start date
NelliePledge
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
we have this one started in 2018
They neither believe nor disbelieve it.
What they do believe is that it is useful for their self-righteous ideological crusade.
You can never be too cynical about people like this.
JellyBabyKid
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
I mentioned this to someone I know who immediately told me that "Government statistics are all biased and fudged"
This is what happens when people in power are allowed to claim "alternative facts" and "fake news" when being held to account.
hotblack
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Yes. As Ben (who I mentioned earlier) and others have reported it also coincides with changes to benefits following austerity which meant people basically had to claim some form of incapacity to get enough money to live on. Combined with changes in how some statistics are reported there has been massive distortions and the ability for some to pick and choose a narrative they want.
From what I understand there does look to have been a real increase for some younger NEETs but that seems to be a problem elsewhere and perhaps also policy based (it’s now more expensive for an individual to stay in education, less vocational colleges and places are available following local cuts but it is also more expensive to employ young people).
Sid
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
O'Sullivan's book on mass hysteria, which I read recently, has a chapter on POTS. In it, she tells the patient who was hooked up to a monitor that her BP didn't drop when she stood up, therefore she doesn't have POTS and just thinks she does. It's clear that O'Sullivan knows nothing about POTS. The whole issue is that HR is rising in the absence of a drop in BP. If BP were dropping, then tachycardia would be an appropriate physiological response to maintain perfusion. The whole chapter was a muddle of her muddled thoughts and half-baked anecdotes about a patient who was convinced she had absence seizures, i.e. epilepsy. It is true that some people in our community have beliefs that they have diseases they don't have but this is not the norm. BPS people like O'Sullivan use cases like this to make us all look bad, though.
It's pretty much the real topic of this article, isn't it? It's nothing to do with the reality of being disabled, it's about promoting how cool it is to bash us.
Good question.
Possible sub text in view of
The UNCRPD have been investigating the UK for the last 10 years for what it refers to as "grave and systemic violations of the rights of persons with disabilities".
One of the first things I looked up on the internet after a long absence a couple of weeks ago was the current status.
July 2025
Urgent letter from UN to Labour government warns: We think your cuts continue Tory attack on disability rights
A UN committee of disabled experts has told the government that its new benefit cuts bill appears to be a fresh attack on disabled people’s rights, a year after it issued a similar warning to the C…
www.disabilitynewsservice.com
It's why the Timms review is taking place.
I also discovered that the UNCRPD has now issued a similar report concerning the Mental Health Bill currently making it's way through Parliament.
May 2025
Mental health law and the UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities
Authors:
Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London De Crespigny Park, London, UK
Legal Consultant; formerly Royal College of Psychiatrists, London, UK
Durham University, Durham, UK
Mental health law and the UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities - PMC
People with a mental illness may be subject to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), depending on definitions of terms such as ‘impairment’, ‘long-term’ and the capaciousness of the word ‘includes’ in the Convention's ...
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
My bold. Think liaison psychiatry in hospital settings. Overreach of the laws on informed consent when a patient with very severe ME is in hospital? Maeve Boothby O'Neill and others.
Also in May 2025
A report from the Joint Committee on human rights.
Like all media outlets, The Telegraph knows this.
As regards the social media side of this article I can't comment as I don't have the cognitive bandwidth to be on it.
Chandelier
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
An article from a wheelchair user that has lived through the changes in public perceptions of disability in the UK in the last 50 years.
It’s shocking to me how much physical violence he had to endure, starting in the late 90‘s:
www.theguardian.com
It’s shocking to me how much physical violence he had to endure, starting in the late 90‘s:
I had an amazing experience as a disabled person at school in the 70s. Since then, discrimination has got far worse | Mik Scarlet
Toxic narratives around ‘benefit scrounging’, fed by successive governments, have become embedded in the national psyche, says Mik Scarlet, campaigner and co-CEO of the national charity Phab
www.theguardian.com
I had an amazing experience as a disabled person at school in the 70s. Since then, discrimination has got far worse
Mon 7 Sep 2026
…
Through the course of my childhood ideas around disability had changed from “if they can, let them try” to “what can we do to help them succeed?” and even “what do they want us to do?”
That was the overarching attitude I encountered for the next...