"You are being lied to about people with disabilities - we are capable of incredible things"

Work and Pensions Secretary seems to spend more time defending the Prime Minister than protecting the disabled, according to Fleet Street Fox

Therese Coffey

I don't remember becoming disabled. A seizure knocked me unconscious, hit the concrete with my face, then spent a few weeks healing and waiting to see a neurologist.

He then announced that, as this was my second seizure, I was officially epileptic, with the kind of internal short circuit that could either knock me out, kill me, or just cause me a whole lot of pain. worry life.

The really memorable part was when the neurologist asked me what I should do to fix it. "You are the brain doctor!" I exploded. "You tell me!"

That was a little rude, but then I was a little unhappy. It's not nice to hear that you were born with a defect that a brain surgeon can't fix. And even harder to accept that dealing with it will be your problem, not his.

Susie Boniface says people with disabilities are capable of amazing things, contrary to what you might be told

That's part of the nature of epilepsy. But it's also because in this country disability is treated as a distant moral issue, one we all expect someone else to fix.

That's why people who want you to vote for them tell you they have the cure. It's usually economic and comes in the form of a crackdown on thieves, work programs for those who really need it, and an overall budget cut because the real problem with disability, we've all been told for the cradle is how much it costs everyone else.

Except what people with disabilities are, do, and are capable of is much more than economics. And what they need is a government that will not crack down, but rather reach out.