(no subject)

[webofevil]

Really, honestly, this is what is going on in Conservatives’ heads. From Lords Question Time today:

Lord Low of Dalston [Cross-Bench]:* It appears that [the new disability] assessments will seek to distinguish between those who have not adapted to their disability and those who have and who will be at risk of having their benefit reduced or losing it altogether. Does he not agree that people may have adapted to their disability by reason of the very help that they have received from disability living allowance... and that reduction of benefit for those who have adapted to their disability may, in fact, be self-defeating and undermine the integration into the community of the very people the benefit was designed to help?

Lord Freud [Conservative; Minister, DWP]: My Lords, this is clearly a quite nuanced issue. There are people who are climbing Mount Kenya on prosthetic limbs who are, I suspect, less challenged than many of us would be in doing that. It does not make sense to go on treating them as disabled in any way, although they may need ongoing support to keep that particular disability support going.

I’m so glad I never have to mix with these people. You can just imagine the dinner party conversations: “... and of course they’re all fit to work; half of them spend their time running up bloody Kilimanjaro, while I get tired out just climbing all the stairs in Daddy’s house. And no-one’s paying me to do that, are they?"

* The only blind peer in the House.

Comments

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

quercus, while your obviously satirical comment very effectively reflected your anger at Lord Freud's extraordinary contribution, there might be some people unfamiliar with the context who might have been forgiven for taking it very much at face value. That isn't something that I could risk being associated with on the blog, given where I work, so I hope you won't take it amiss if your purely metaphorical comment quietly disappears down the memory hole...

[quercus.livejournal.com]

Sure, merely a light-hearted suggestion that his own Kilimanjaro times could be improved by levelling the playing field a little.