If Frothing-At-The-Mouth Lunacy Was An Olympic Event, Frances Would Win Gold!

Frances Ryan uses the South African 4x400 metres relay team inclusion of disabled runner Oscar Pistorius as a lever to get out the message that the disabled are being demonised as never before.

It’s quite something to watch, actually:

… there's an undoubted achievement simply in the inclusion of a disabled person in the Olympic competition. For most people with disabilities, inclusion is the shiny medal they spend their lives fighting for but which stays slightly out of reach. This isn't new. It's the nature of being different. It is worsening though, and in the current climate, without radical change, there is little hope of it getting better.

Ah, yes. The ‘current climate’. Said with the certain hope that everyone reading CiF will understand exactly what’s meant by this.

It shouldn't be that difficult, should it? For a person to be included? Sometimes it seems difference is a crime for which disabled people are punished daily. One aspect of this will feature on the route to the Games themselves – Paralympians being welcomed to a city whose transport system is usually inaccessible to them.

Yes, well, when the various disability acts were considered and then passed, the transport system got an exemption, due to the huge cost involved which made it totally impractical. Not to mention the drain on the productive sector while the works were carried out!

Oh, don’t worry, though; other people who believe in spending other people’s time and money on grandiose schemes are right behind you in demanding changes!

Exclusion is sneaky though, it doesn't even need to be literal. Thanks to David Cameron and friends, disabled people are facing not only physical barriers but growing symbolic exclusion. This is what a climate of fear does – a climate that doesn't simply emerge from tough economic times but needs to be manipulated and nurtured. It's manipulated by a government that thinks welfare reform means arbitrarily removing vulnerable people's benefits. It's nurtured by a rightwing populist press eager for benefits-cheats scapegoats and scaremongering.

Oh, here we go again with the bonkers rhetoric!

This is a climate in which a website needs to be created to collate the number of people committing suicide as a result of the government's policies.

I…what?

Calum's List details the deaths of people where either professional or family testimony, or a suicide note cites welfare reform as the main reason for their taking their own life.

*stunned disbelief* Yes, it really exists.

And those who click for their dose of outrage probably never get to the small print at the bottom that reads:

The primary aim of this website is to research and publish a definitive list of all deaths, where deficiencies in the current UK welfare reform legislation may have been a factor.

Not quite the authoritative documentation method she implies, then, is it?

A climate in which the number of disability hate crimes reported to the police has reached a record high .

Yes, of course it has. You set a target, people will strive to reach it. Their jobs depend on it, don’t they?

As the crowds cheer, the people of this country would do well to think on that sentiment. A disabled person shouldn't have to be "super-able" to be included. Having been allowed to join the mainstream, Pistorius can strive to rise above it. For the ordinary disabled person, it would be nice to be allowed to take part.

They seem to have no trouble taking part in the ongoing pity-party and rage against the idea that we can't go on spending as if there was a magic money tree, do they?