(no subject)

Potential future Tory leader and post-Boris Prime Minister Michael Gove (oh yes, the next 10 years is just going to be a cascade of competence) continues to bear the brunt of criticism and scorn for his mission to spread the Gospel to Britain's schools, but he is imperturbable—he understands better than anyone how neatly the work of the Lord dovetails with the aggrandisement of Michael Gove.

The latest to ping slings and arrows his way are the “disability bullies”, as the right wing has definitively identified anyone with an impairment or a special need, who are pointing out that paper Bibles are no good to children with visual impairments or dexterity problems, and that the Education Secretary has made no allowance for this or even mention of it. As a man of exquisite faith, though, Gove knows intimately something that Guardian-reading disabled-lovers never will—the eternal Word of the Lord:

For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach: a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or any thing superfluous,
Or a man that is brokenfooted, or brokenhanded,
Or crookbackt, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken;
No man that hath a blemish... shall come nigh... unto the altar, because he hath a blemish; that he profane not my sanctuaries...

Leviticus 21:18-21, 23

You may have erroneously thought that the coalition's drive to stamp out tolerance for disabilities, special needs and health impairments was based purely on the witless prejudices of privilege, but in fact Iain Duncan Smith is right after all: they are doing God's work. With that in mind, if being ignored by the Education Secretary is all that special-needs kids have to kvetch about, they're doing pretty well. They should make the most of that exalted state while it lasts.

A clarification

Some people claim to have detected an element of hyperbole in some of the things I have written about the coalition. They point, for example, to my claims—rooted in observation but admittedly open to accusations of over-extrapolation—that the government is not merely denying the existence of disability out of ignorance and austerity-inspired parsimony but is actively pursuing an extremist, almost National Socialist agenda born of a furious hatred that is barely suppressed whenever any of its architects are pressed about its more offensive aspects. “You're just plummeting down the Godwin chute,” they say. “You can't just shout 'Nazi' just because, say, the government is openly lying to the media about disabled welfare claimants and stirring up prejudice about them.”

To be clear: any such ostensibly exaggerated claims fall into a particular category of writing known as “Prove Me Wrong, You Cunts”. The moment they did, the way would be clear to retract—but the longer they go on, the less it looks like there'll ever be any danger of that.