In anger

I cannot believe what the government of this country are doing, and for which they have no mandate. If, as is often said, you can judge a society on how they treat the most vulnerable, then our society is currently failing very, very badly. 

It's not just the government, in fact - sections of the media are essentially acting, as one might expect, as the government's propagandists. Yet when a right-wing, normally pro-(conservative) government paper like the Daily Mail publishes articles like this, it shows just how far - and rapidly - we've travelled in a very worrying direction.

I know I don't often speak out on here about political issues, but increasingly over recent weeks and months I've had a growing sense of unease, which is now developing into rage and despair. We ignore issues like this at our peril. Legislation like this doesn't affect me, you might say, since I don't have a disability. No I'm not disabled, but it's hardly a stretch of the imagination to consider that I might be at some point in the future. I hope not, of course, but if I were I would hope to be treated with a basic level of decency and understanding. At the moment, that appears to be too much to ask.

Combined with the ever-more-punitive treatment of anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves out of work (thankfully, some of which is starting to get the response it deserves), it appears that there is a concerted attempt to change attitudes. It would be wrong-headed to say that because someone has a disability, they have a problem - however what's even worse is reaching a state of affairs in which if someone has a disability, they are seen to be a problem.

How did we get here, and how is this even considered to be acceptable?