I read this in Baby Billy Freeman from the Righteous Gemstones' voice - "c'mawn nah!"

It's true! Such a good piece 👏

Andry’s story, if you’re unfamiliar.

www.cnn.com/2025/05/28/a...

And if you're in the UK, email your MP to ask them to oppose the Bill. takingthepip.co.uk/write-to-you...

but really I think you'd be better off engaging with the above-mentioned groups, reading amazing work by disability scholars (The Disability Archive at the Centre for Disability Studies in Leeds is a good starting point, ditto International Journal of Disability and Social Justice, ijdsj.online).

I did an LLM and PhD in human rights because I felt otherwise I didn't have anything to offer human rights activism. As time goes on, I realise that my empathy and anger were and always have been more than enough. If you want the in-depth legal/socio-legal analysis, I can provide that no bother;

Instead you should talk and listen to disabled people. You should engage with resources by @crips-against-cuts.bsky.social @dis-ppl-protest.bsky.social @disrightsuk.bsky.social @nsunnews.bsky.social Scope and many others. Scope's Disability Price Tag report is a helpful starting point.

You shouldn't need legal and economic arguments to convince you of the sheer wrongness of the current Government's approach to disability, welfare, and addressing the profound health crises gripping England (largely driven by spiralling poverty largely driven by 40+ years of neoliberalism).

Think about how rubbish it made you feel when at your lowest someone said to you, "Have you just tried thinking positively?" or otherwise implied that it was your fault that things were the way they were, that you were inherently wrong and broken and the problem.

Punishing people for being disabled is wrong. Framing it as getting people into the workforce is wrong. Thinking that people who have been hospitalised due to mental health conditions should get job coach visits is warped.

They should be free to use their brilliant mind and big heart to do all the other things they want and need to do day to day. So should everybody, disabled and non-disabled alike.

A dear friend has spent weeks pushing their body and mind to the limit doing this work. PIP assessors would see this as them proving their ability to work without supports. Anyone with a modicum of human decency would see it for the cruel waste of their brilliant mind that it actually is.

I could develop a big long thread about all the human rights, legal, economic, and policy arguments against the Bill and Paper, but honestly it doesn't deserve the energy. I'm so angry that disabled people, activists, policymakers et al are having to waste time, energy, and heartache doing so.

It has been one culture shock among many to see just how deep the hate for disabled people runs in politics and discourse here in England. The Green Paper and "Welfare" "Reform" Bill typify it.

I'm not saying it's much better in Ireland. But I think there's more of a positive attitude to human rights there. And for the most part we've embraced the radical idea that disabled people, trans people, and the other groups of people so often vilified here are in fact human and deserve respect.

I am in the near-constant horrors at the profound hatred for disabled people in this country.