Disability now comes with a weight limit.

Richard Littlejob of the mail (DONT READ IT) has written a lovely piece on how people are being given blue badges for simply being obese.

Aside from the obvious concern that this will increase attacks on disabled people who are bigger than whatever average is nowadays I didn't think there was a weight limit on disability.

Disabled people, surprise surprise come in all shapes, sizes, ages, colours and religions etc etc. It doesn't discriminate on any grounds (unfortunately).

I am wondering if Richard littlejob and presumably all the people agreeing with him think that all disabled people should be slender young blondes in their wheelchairs? Because I was under the impression that they also thought that disabled people had to be over a certain age, as well as having certain things different about them.

It's tough enough being a disabled person, do we all now need to enroll in a slimming programme (presumably this will be paid by the government?) and perhaps they could chuck in a few beauty treatments every so often? How about letting us in on the secret of how people who are physically restricted can possibly exercise every day?

I'm not saying we are all fat, ugly slobs. But I am also not saying that we should all be body perfect (thats a novel concept, disabled people being body perfect :).

Disability doesn't equal a certain body weight. full stop.

(o go on, have a read, and a laugh too.. copied here for your amusement and for the benefit of the dms stats.. NOT)
Richard Littlejohn.
Two stories stood out for me this week. Both are damning indictments of modern Britain and proof positive of the idiocy of the soft-headed, socialist imbeciles who run so much of what passes for our ‘world class public services’.
The first comes from Walsall, where obese motorists are being issued with disabled parking badges so they don’t have to waddle too far from their cars to the nearest kebab shop.
The second hails from York, where people arrested for being drunk and disorderly are being sent on courses to boost their ‘self-esteem’.
  
Let’s start in the West Midlands. What possessed Walsall Council to hand out ‘blue badges’ to gutbuckets? OK, so there is a minuscule number of people suffering from rare medical and genetic conditions which make it difficult to control their weight. Some of them belong in mental hospitals.
But most of those categorised as ‘obese’ are not genuinely disabled. Nor are they ‘victims’ by any stretch of the imagination. They are just fat and greedy and won’t stop stuffing their faces.
Already, the NHS spends a fortune treating patients suffering from a variety of ailments caused by self-inflicted gluttony. Diabetes and heart trouble brought on by pigging out on fast-food is said to have reached epidemic proportions.

Oh dear, how sad, never mind. Stop eating so much and start taking exercise every day, you hideous hippos. Obesity isn’t like a flu epidemic. You can’t catch obesity. It isn’t inflicted on people by dark forces beyond their control.
These selfish individuals are grotesquely overweight because they lack willpower and moral fibre.
They have the option to diet or die, but they do not deserve special  treatment funded by taxpayers.
No one should have an automatic right to an expensive gastric band provided by a hard-pressed public health service, already struggling to provide life-saving drugs to patients  suffering from real illnesses.
It is estimated that up to two million people could qualify for bariatric surgery and that by 2050 half of us will be officially ‘obese’.

By then, Britain’s population will be over 70 million. At this rate there won’t be enough gastric bands to go round and the whole country will be one giant disabled car park.
You can bet, however, that where Walsall leads, other councils will follow in the name of ‘compassion’ and being ‘non-judgmental’. They’ll be handing out blue badges by the tens of thousands to anyone who can prove they have ‘mobility issues’.
The reason these XXXXL monsters have ‘mobility issues’, though, is not because they were born with chronic disabilities, or have lost limbs in an accident or while serving their country on the battlefield.

No, their ‘mobility issues’ are caused by a revolting, self-inflicted excess of flab which their podgy little legs will no longer support over a distance of more than a few yards.
In Nottingham, they are already reinforcing the pavements to cope with the increasing bulk of the legions of Teletubby lookalikes squelching their way to the chippie, via the pub or off-licence.

A system based on need not labels?

I don't want to be sitting here writing this. I don't want to have to be in this position and to acknowledge that I even am. But if I don't write about it then I will just keep it bottled up inside and it wont help anyone, least of all me.

As some may know I am pregnant. Currently 23 weeks pregnant to be exact. I am also what most people in society would call "disabled". It is for this label and this label alone I have been subject to the scrutiny and judgement of both the health and social services. My husband and I have already been judged as having some "concerns" over our ability to parent, despite this being our first child and despite these concerns being based on assumptions about my disability, impairment and their impact on our day to day life.

I am not going to justify my parenting skills here, as I have none. I am a new Mum who innocently and naively went to her midwife seeking support. Unfortunately what I got in return was a social services assessment and my condition being called "bizarre".

I had an initial midwife assessment done at 18 weeks pregnant. She has little or no training in mental health or disability and was very much focused on the medicalisation of my impairment so the resulting assessment is skewed and focuses on what I can't do rather that what I can. It isolates my impairment from the impact that society has on it and doesn't actually focus on the things that I might need help with.

The assessment was done in a rush, after 3 missed appointments. It was done, despite me stating that we were just about to move. So such statements as the flat was a mess is pretty obviously a falsehood. The fact that the information on the form wasn't quite accurate and full of assumptions and generalisations isn't a surprise. Has anyone ever moved? at 18 weeks pregnant? Its not the best time in the world to be discussing difficult and detailed things.  Not only that the midwife added her "concerns" after we had signed it in a different pen, and we didn't actually consent for the information to be shared.

My impairment might be different, unique, etc. but it is not bizarre. It does not render me incapable of being a mother. My symptoms are well managed and I am well supported in doing this. What I could need help with is managing my symptoms in combination with a new baby and day to day life. What I am getting is being judged, scrutinized and unfairly penalised because I innocently went to them to ask for help.

My concern is that the current system we have is entirely voluntary (something that the midwife and social services seem to have forgotten in my case, I went to them, they didn't have a referral etc.). I had to ask for the help and I had to declare my disability to the midwife. By its very nature, me doing this means that I am not going to be putting baby "at risk". If I were, then why would I have asked for help? I am being proactive and being punished for it. If you were an expectant mum who didn't see themselves in need of help it is very easy to avoid the help, as it would be if you didnt want the help for any other reason (genuine or not). The problem is that at the moment the system is set up to think that "normal" mums to be are going to be perfect and able to cope with a new baby and only those with certain labels (disabled, age, social status etc) are somehow going to be defective. The system needs to recognise that ALL new mums are going to be in need of some support, and that we are all going to struggle, make mistakes and generally make it up as we go along. The system needs to be based on needs rather than triggers based on certain labels.

I have to look at this systemically, because if I didn't then I would take it personally and not be able to cope with it. If it is a system that I need to prove my status as a perfect mum to it somehow makes it easier.

This is the end of this blog post, but I am sure it wont be the end of this saga. I am sure there will be more blogposts to follow.