If you’re disabled you should read this; if you look down on the disabled – doubly so.

The words that follow are not mine. They were written by Laurie Penny, who was a contributing editor of The New Statesman, in an article that may be found here: http://www.newstatesman.com/laurie-penny/2012/12/you-are-not-scrounger-letter-disabled-reader

I find it tragic that these words – to a disabled person who was considering taking their own life because of the way the government was harming people on benefits – are still relevant today:

“To my mind, the most venal, wicked thing this… government has done has been to rewrite the social script of this country so that some people feel that life isn’t worth living any more. They speak in their poisonous way about giving the unemployed and disabled people back a sense of dignity – but telling people that they’re worthless unless they hold down a job, telling people that they have no right to a decent standard of living unless they can find and keep work that lines the pockets of the super-rich, work that isn’t there anyway at the moment – that’s the opposite of arguing for dignity. That’s shame as a social manifesto.

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“If you hurt yourself now, if you give up right now, I’m sorry to say that it won’t change the minds of those who are currently making decisions about whether sick and mentally ill people live or die in this country. These people don’t give a damn – or at very least, they do a good job of acting like they don’t give a damn. If any person’s unnecessary death were enough to sway this government’s mind, it would have been swayed before now.

“Even one death is too many. There are other, better ways to make a difference.”

Take heed, Labour MPs – or shame yourselves forever.

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