Tory councillor calls disabled children a ‘burden’

Last Updated: April 25, 2014By

This attitude probably explains why nobody representing the government showed up at the disability deaths tribunal on Wednesday.

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13 Comments

  1. vicmart009 April 25, 2014 at 10:07 pm - Reply

    Have been personally absent from my pc for a few days but was anticipating your to views, observations & challenge to this tribunal in Cardiff. Only just began to start to catch up with over 100 emails I have missed. My thanks go out to you for your postings,I feel that others in the disability movement feel the same support for your effort.
    I realise that each & everyone involved in the disability care movement have a lot of work & effort to make for our future of disability in Wales to improve.

  2. Mark Parry April 25, 2014 at 10:20 pm - Reply

    Is there a petition to have this councillor sacked?

  3. Gathering Swallows April 25, 2014 at 11:41 pm - Reply

    Unfortunately, one gets an odd feeling of tacit eugenics underlying these sorts of comments. So it’s not just the offence of saying it but the offence that it’s even thinkable to say it. What dismal people they are that blight the most vulnerable with this veiled hateful speech which equates human worth to accounting.

    • Mike Sivier April 26, 2014 at 12:26 am - Reply

      It goes back at least as far as Keith Joseph, according to fellow blogger Beastrabban.

    • beastrabban April 26, 2014 at 8:07 am - Reply

      Gathering Swallows – according to Owen Jones in ‘Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class’, Keith Joseph managed to cause a storm of protest in the mid-70s with a rant about how poor, undereducated women were having too many children, many of whom were mentally retarded, and were thus threatening ‘our stock’. This is indeed the rant of the eugenicists and the Nazis. And much of the 19th and early 20th century eugenics ideology was based on the idea that disabled people were an expensive burden on society. Hence the Nazis promoted the abortion of disabled babies with propaganda films like, ‘I Don’t Want To Be Born’, and then launched a campaign of organised murder against those they considered to be ‘incurably mentally ill’ or retarded before they were stopped due to public outrage and a campaign by the Roman Catholic aristocrat, Count Galen.

      • H. Potter April 26, 2014 at 3:44 pm - Reply

        The Oxford English dictionary classifies burden thus.

        What is or has to be borne, load, task, obligation, weight of grief, encumber, lie heavy on etc.

        I think you must agree, following that description, that however much love there is, looking after a disabled relative, be they children or adults , disabled mentally or physically, they are a burden. The fact that many people do this with care and love does not alter that fact.

        And of course they are also a burden on the state as is everything else that has to be paid for by the state, or in reality, by the people through taxes. Roads, police, hospitals, social care etc.

        Everything that ‘has’ to be done in reality is a burden. Think about before going bonkers.

        • Mike Sivier April 26, 2014 at 4:14 pm - Reply

          My dictionary defines it as “give a difficult or worrying responsibility” – and this is the issue. The councillor was describing these people, in effect, as a hassle, and he wanted to rid himself of it. That is inappropriate language for a person in his position as councillors are supposed to take on these responsibilities.

          Think about that.

      • Gathering Swallows April 26, 2014 at 10:43 pm - Reply

        Thanks – some people just like to hate other people.

  4. alistair lazenby April 26, 2014 at 5:30 pm - Reply

    SACK HIM………SIMPLE

  5. alistair lazenby April 26, 2014 at 5:31 pm - Reply

    BIGOT

  6. NMac April 27, 2014 at 12:55 pm - Reply

    He is possibly the third or fourth Tory in a position of responsibility to have recently come out with nasty remarks like this. It cannot be a coincidence and I personally believe it illustrates the loathsome mind-set of these nasty people.

    • alistair lazenby April 28, 2014 at 10:23 am - Reply

      he should be sacked if i had a disabled child,( I am disabled ) I would be knocking his front door, the vile pig

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