Thursday 29 September 2011

Is Britain the Worst Place to Live in Europe?

The Guardian asked today if Britain is the worst place to live in Europe.

Is the UK the worst? I don't know, but it certainly isn't an ideal place if you're disabled.

A media that claims on a near daily basis that we're all frauds and scroungers (the Guardian is a near lone exception).

People who overwhelmingly believe that 'they're all at it' and simultaneously that if their relatives fall ill the state will instantly meet every need (they're in for a rude awakening).

People who openly state that we'd be better off dead, who urge us to go to Switzerland and use Dignitas, who attack anyone who tries to argue that our life is just as valuable as anyone's else.

Complete strangers who attack me in the street as a benefit fraud, without knowing whether I am working or not, revealing it as an attack on me simply for being disabled.

Politicians who proclaim that we are the 'vulnerable', demeaning us as less than adult, but that we are safe in their hands, then turn around and cut the benefits the most disabled of all of us depend on, proclaiming all the time that only the fraudsters have anything to fear.

I don't know if Britain is the worst, but it could be a hell of a lot better, and a hell of a lot more equal.

1 comment:

  1. When you conflated the country we live in and disability, it certainly beg the question, what would happen if there were no borders? :)

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