8 reasons decent people might mistakenly vote Conservative

There are some arguments worth having. We're about to have a general election in the UK and while it is likely that the Conservative Party will remain in place, it is worth arguing for every vote against them. Politicians and political parties are at their most dangerous when they feel safe and unopposed.

This argument is worth having because many people have not made up their minds yet and others may be thinking one way but could be talked around. In recent weeks, I've been frustrated with those who share my approximate politics but seem to have lived their entire lives in communities where everyone votes in the same way, allowing them to imagine and then declare that people who vote Conservative are universally wealthy, self-interested and prejudiced in all variety of ways. If this were the case, political arguments would be pointless. As it is not the case, such rhetoric risks pushing folk off the fence in the wrong direction.

Some political arguments are not worth having. Some people have such extreme and hateful opinions that talking to them about politics is not only pointless, but can only feed their thirst for attention and power over others. If such a group of people were about to take power on June 8th, our strategy would need to be very different. 

As it is, there's a possibility we can still win this one, or at least minimise the damage. So I thought of everyone I've ever known who admitted to considering a vote for the Conservatives and (having eliminated the ones who fancied John Major or wanted revenge on their socialist father) I compiled the following reasons a decent person might mistakenly vote Conservative. 

1. Some folk have always identified as Conservative-voters:

I've known builders and hair-dressers who have always voted Conservative because of this idea that a Conservative government will work in the interest of the self-employed. I've known Christians (who have not all been middle class and white) who have always voted Conservative because of this idea that a Conservative government will support roughly “Christian” values (I've put this in inverted commas because most Christians I know care very much more about child poverty or the plight of displaced people than they do about tax breaks for married people. However, they still might vote Conservative depending on how they understand such issues.).

Where I live in rural East Anglia, voting Conservative used to be a mandatory condition of employment; once working men got the vote, any suspicion or rumour that you were going to use your vote otherwise would lose your job with the lord or landowner. Most local people worked for the lord or landowner. Left-wing city-dwellers sometimes imagine that safely blue rural seats like mine are populated by tweed-addled gentry or commuting investment bankers – that we don't have a housing crisis, foodbanks and the rest – but the reality is that generations had no choice about who to vote for (it is still perfectly legal to fire someone for their political affiliations on the UK mainland) and our local identity as Conservative-voters kind of stuck. 

Even today, the most prominent political campaigning I see are the big Conservative billboards erected in fields by the road. People who own fields still hold a lot of political power in rural areas. Conservative Governments tend to look out for people who own fields – green, brown and otherwise.  

2. Theresa May is not Donald Trump

(or Marine Le Pen or Geert Wilders etc.)

Since 2010, the Conservative government have stirred up and exploited fears about immigration, writing new laws which split families apart and more recently, hare holding EU migrants, upon which our communities, public services and economy depend, to ransom. Oh and now there's Empire 2.0. This government's treatment of disabled people has been so appalling that the UK has been condemned by the UN. The demonisation, interference and deprivation some of us have experienced has been fascistic in nature, but even so, we are not living under a fascist regime. 

There's a huge difference in a government which does this stuff under the guise of "security" or "austerity" and a government whose leader makes explicitly racist remarks, hangs out with unashamed white supremacists or mocks disabled people to the cheers of their supporters (if prominent Tories have done any of those things, even I am unaware of it). If I was a US American, I would struggle with the knowledge that any friend, family member or neighbour of mine had voted for someone who repeatedly spoke of people like me with utter contempt and promised to remove the free medical care upon which my life depends. When I meet folks who admit they voted Conservative, I assume (usually correctly) that they don't know the first thing about Welfare Reform and haven't heard of Yarl's Wood. 

People who vote Conservative don't have to be racist and they don't have to hate disabled or poor people. If everyone was equally and thoroughly informed about politics, it would be a different matter - what's happening is wrong, lives are at stake and everyone who knows about it has a duty to do the bare minimum by voting against it. 

But not everyone knows about it or understand things the same way. 

3. Some folk are much more comfortable with the idea that people are rewarded for wrong-doing than the idea that innocent people are punished.

In conversations with non-disabled people (and even the odd disabled person) about the damage caused by benefit and  social care cuts and the rhetoric surrounding them, I have never heard that disabled people deserve to be demonised. Instead, I hear that disability fraud is endemic and while of course “genuine” disabled people – people like me – deserve much better treatment, the blame lies firmly at the door of people who have been exploiting the system. The governments own stats put this fraud at around 0.7%.

Of course some people do genuinely hate disabled people. But far more common is the hatred of an imagined mass of non-disabled people who are exploiting a system designed to support disabled people. People believe in that and of course, fraudsters – though rare - do exist and are often frustratingly conspicuous.

In the same vein, some people believe we should halt all immigration, but more common is the belief in significant numbers of benefit tourists or criminal gangs trying to get here because we're a “soft touch”. We're sitting on our hands during the greatest refugee crisis of a generation, but "genuine" cases (that word again) would be welcome if it wasn't for so many villains knocking on the door.

There is a bit of a chasm between people who tend to get involved in social justice and those that don't. Those of us actively involved (however modestly) in trying to make the world a fairer place know how extremely unfair it is already. And that hurts – usually, it has hurt us personally and deeply. However, it is very difficult to effectively communicate these ideas with people who are not yet prepared to accept that many of life's misfortunes are not pure bad luck, but the work of prejudiced, power-hungry, uncaring or malicious people.

It's not that those of us who see this are looking at a bleak world, but merely a world which requires work and self-awareness. Hordes of limping fraudsters and Romanian ATM-robbers may be easier to stomach.

4. The big problems in the country are invisible to many people.

There are currently 75,000 families (consisting of at least one parent and at least one child) living in temporary accommodation in the UK – that's B&Bs, and not the sort like that nice cottagey place in the Cotswolds with too many doilies. 75,000 families is a lot of people. It's a scandal. But there are 65 million people in the UK, so there's no guarantee that you know any of them (or that they would let you know how they were living if you did).

There are more empty houses than homeless families. There is planning permission for thousands of more houses and developers who have promised to build them. However, there is an awful lot of private money to be made out of house prices and rents that most people can barely afford and some can't afford at all. It costs the state a fortune to keep a family in even the crappiest guest house, but this particular government favours the interests of the very rich (on account of them being very rich people themselves).

I use this example, because it was something I only learned about a few months ago. I knew quite a lot about other aspects of the housing crisis, but had no idea so many families were homeless just now because I don't think I know any of those families.

I would guess that most people don't know the difference between ESA, PIP or universal credit (several politicians are muddled on the subject). I have heard people speak with absolute bewilderment as to how anyone might need a foodbank because they've been poor or unemployed and they never did. Folk just don't know the scale of what has been happening in the country because it is extremely bad on a relatively small scale. We don't have very visible problems such as high unemployment. However, to be unemployed right now is to live far more precariously than it was ten, twenty or thirty years ago.

5. The media is biased (but it is not a conspiracy).

The media is made of a diverse group of people, mostly employed by wealthy individuals motivated primarily (though not exclusively) by money. Money is made by selling newspapers, attracting clicks or viewers and so forth. The people who own large media corporations tend to (not always or exclusively) prefer right-wing governments because they (a) look after rich people (b) tend to (not always or exclusively) create economic and social instability, which in turn creates dramatic headlines, which in turn sells copy. This is not a conspiracy – this is capitalism.

I installed a Chrome extension which replaced pictures of
Nigel Farage with kittens at a point his unelectable face
was everywhere. It's an improvement, isn't it?

Even organisations like the BBC, who are very heavily obliged to be politically impartial can never present a truly balanced view of events as they unfold. The need to present “balance” occasionally winds up with a guest campaigning against drink-driving contrasted with another guest who thinks he's a better driver after he's had a few. And of course, they too need clicks and ratings, which conflict and controversy drive along (thus, for example, the endless appearance of Nigel Farage, who was repeatedly rejected as an MP and whose party's parliamentary power peaked at a single seat, now lost).

Not only do we mere mortals forget all this, but we simply don't have the time or energy to consider the way every story we hear or read is being told. I am extremely interested in this stuff – I love both statistics and story-telling, and am both fascinated and appalled by the way these are combined to present the most sensational possible news. However, even I get tricked about subjects I'm not especially invested in.

6. Misinformation happens easily and quickly even without manipulation and “fake news”.

One day, a few years back, a stranger came to the door raising money for the local Air Ambulance. They explained that the Air Ambulance received no state funding as our government preferred to spend our taxes on putting Indians in space. This was one of those remarks where you're not sure quite what's going on in a conversation, but it feels like you probably want out. I can't stand up for long anyway, so I said as much and promised to look the charity up on-line.

A few days later, I mentioned this strange exchange to a friend and they said, “Oh yeah, it wasn't that the UK was putting Indians in space, but rather some of our foreign aid had been used by the Indian government towards their space programme.”

I didn't disbelieve my friend, but I turned to Google anyway. The story was from three or four years earlier, when the government froze levels of foreign aid to India. However, there was an argument made at the time (by Philip Davies MP, incidentally) that we shouldn't give any aid money to a country which is rich enough to have its own space programme. This BBC article explains some of the complexities within foreign aid.

Absolutely no UK money has ever been used in the (modest) Indian space programme.

Most people don't buy newspapers. There's some evidence that even when people link to a story on Twitter or Facebook, they often don't actually read the story. In any case, most of us consume most of our news in small snippets – in headlines, in tweets, in the first few minutes of TV news, in the on-the-hour bulletins on radio and in disjointed conversations. It's not people's fault when they end up with the wrong end of the stick, especially when it confirms pre-existing prejudices.

This is why it is always important to talk to folk about what's going on in the world. Human beings are extremely social, and we wield an awful lot of power over one another. Arguing directly “You're wrong about this!” is often hopeless, but telling stories, telling our own stories and experiences or discussing subjects we know well can help prise open folks' eyes.

7. Lots of people vote local at General Elections.

If you're not especially interested in national politics (and goodness me, I'm not interested – it just effects me and those I care about too profoundly to ignore it), but your sitting MP helped out your uncle with a boundary issue or put in a good word for your friend when they lost their benefit (because some Conservative MPs seem to really care about their constituents in crisis, even if their own voting choices have caused the trouble), then you're going to vote for that guy rather than a stranger you know nothing about.

8. It's could be worse.

Remember after David Cameron resigned last summer? I wanted Theresa May to be prime minister. I remembered this was the lady who confused a man'spartner and his pet cat with the words “You can't make it up!” (she just did). But remember our other prospects? Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Andrea Leadsom. Theresa May was by far the best of a very bad bunch. Of course, it's not impossible the Conservatives stay in Government but May loses her seat... best not think about that.

Things do not feel very stable just now, and even though May and her colleagues are demonstrably part of that instability, the entire general election campaign is based on the idea that the Conservatives under May somehow are “strong and stable” in comparison with other options. If people's quality of life has not deteriorated (and it hasn't for many people, even while it has plummeted for some) but they feel nervous for the future, they're likely inclined to vote for the status quo. Even though of course, we're about to leave the EU – the status quo is completely and utterly off the table.

Image descriptions & attribution:

The first image is a photograph of two dogs outside a polling station. The most prominent dog is a small terrier who is wearing a blue rosette. Behind them sits a black dog whose type I couldn't identify. This image was found on Flickr, belongs to Ashley Coates and is used under a Creative Common's License.

The second image is a photograph of a scarecrow in a field. The scarecrow wears a hardhat and long grass or cereal comes up to its waste. This image was found on Flickr, belongs to Peter Pearson and is used under a Creative Common's License.

The third image is a photograph of a van on the side of which it reads "In the UK illegally? Go home or face arrest" and there follows details or who to contact. This image was found on Flickr, belongs to Ian Burt and is used under a Creative Common's License.

The forth image is a photograph of a terrace of houses where the windows and doors have been boarded up and the front gardens left to become overgrown. This image was found on geograph, belongs to Carl Baker and is used under a Creative Common's License.

The fifth image is a photograph of a tabby kitten rolling on its back while gazing at the camera. This image was found on Pixebay, is by EugenieM and is in the public domain. 

Blogging Against Disablism Day 2017 will be Monday, 1st May 2017

As with last year, I've given BADD2017 its own page, so please click here to read all about Blogging Against Disablism Day 2017.

Thirty Six

Today is my thirty sixth birthday.

A chaotic December meant I didn't do this last year, but I thought I should try to review this year, particularly as it featured such big chunks where I've been decidedly unwell, and there were so many things I wanted to do, had agreed to do or half-started that I then had to give up because of my deteriorating health. Before I started writing things down, it felt like there would be very little to say, but I did really quite a lot in the spring and haven't been completely idle since. This is going to read like a dreadful bragging Christmas Letter, but it's my birthday and this is mostly for my own sake.

• I had started doing a bit of editing for the F-Word towards the end of last year, but I think it was at the beginning of this year that I officially became Features Editor. Then my health deteriorated and I had to give it up this summer, but it was a very interesting and satisfying experience - I had previously enjoyed the mechanics of editing other people's work, but the best bit was facilitating others to say what they wanted to say to a significant audience. 

I model a winter lettuce - a woman with a lot of hair holds
a lovely green lettuce as big as her head.

• Early on in the year, I planted a load of vegetables. As the spring progressed into summer, my health meant things got a bit out of control, but those things that weren't killed off by neglect included tomatoes, lettuces, a small amount of pak choi (the caterpillars do love the stuff), radishes, baby sweetcorn (that was particularly good), peas, strawberries, French beans and runner beans. Oh and potatoes - lots of potatoes grown in sacks. I now have two table-height vegetable patches in the garden so I don't have to bend down.

• I had written this article last December but it was published this year and I'm very proud of it.

• We looked after a lovely old border collie for about a month, which was rather nice.

• I have had a lump in my armpit for the past six months. After the first two, it triggered NHS Lump Panic, eight individual strangers got to see my naked breasts in one afternoon but it was all fine. All this happened at a time when I could really have done with a break, but the care I received at the Breast Clinic was extremely good. Do get your lumps checked out.

I model the mermaid's tail - an enormous
mermaid reclines in a wicker chair with a
somewhat seasick expression on her face.

• I made a mermaid's tail sleeping bag for my niece. I scrapped an earlier attempt because it was a bit too small - at least, a four year old would grow out of it in no time. The finished version should serve her well if she is still interested in being a mermaid into middle age.

• I wrote quite a few blog posts and a couple of features for the F Word in the first half of the year. My favourite is this about women who, by virtue of being disabled, old, fat etc. are considered sexually and romantically unattractive by our culture.

• I drove a car! I have had a provisional license for a few years, but this year, on one occasion, I actually drove. It was awesome!

• It was the twentieth anniversary of my becoming sick in August, so I wrote a series of posts about chronic illness and coming to terms with loss. As, if you're reading this, you are almost certainly aware.

• I have been writing and editing fiction. Just not nearly as often or as enough as I would like.

• In the midst of everything, they happened to discover that I was very deficient in Vitamin D. I've now got an evangelical zeal about telling folks who also might not get out much that they should get their Vitamin D checked. However, I am too polite to give unsolicited health advice, so this may be the only time I ever mention it. 

• Purple Prose, a book about being bisexual in the UK was published. It includes some of my words as well as the words of far more interesting and brilliant people.

• My Dad retired, which has been absolutely great. His work was stressful and now he is not only very much more relaxed, but we see a lot more of him and have had some modest adventures together.

• I had lessons in the Alexander Technique to improve my posture, which is something I have fancied doing for years. Of course it hasn't fixed anything, but it has dramatically reduced certain kinds of pain in my back.

Snuffles the hedgehog - a fluffy brown hedgehog eats from
a dish of mealworms. She was one ill-tempered hedgehog.

• We installed a camera to watch the garden after we'd gone to sleep, to monitor the full extent of hedgehog activity. We saw a lot of hedgehogs and one night, a tawny owl landed in the garden and sat down with one of the hedgehogs to have a meal.

• Stephen acquired a tabletop game called Zombicide, where you go round killing zombies with dice rolls. This turned out to be tremendous fun and we have spent several happy evenings liberating prison blocks from the zombie hoards. 

• We saw a little more of our nephew and niece this year and had some really good times with them. They are both fantastic children and so much fun to be around. 

A young blackbird - a brown bird with pronounced beak and
speckled breast, sitting in a bush with white flowers.

• We think at least one hedgehog was born in the garden this year, as were some sparrows and a blackbird (left). This chap startled me when I was trying to see if he was still in the nest.

• Politics has been pretty grim. The world's progress towards being a more peaceful, freer, happier, healthier place - which has been considerable, even in very recent times - is in grave danger of stalling. A very great number of good folk have brought that progress about through hard work and I hope, a similar effort by very many people in both big and small ways will get us back on track. That may sound a bit crass amid all this light personal news, but like a lot of people, politics has been deeply personal this year.

• We managed to get to the theatre for the first time in a few years to see the Cambridge Greek Play do Antigone and Lysistrata. The latter was particularly brilliant, satirising the ongoing political nonsense and with songs in Ancient Greek we were all invited to sing along with. 

Two happy people at a picnic bench
with a field in the background.

• As everyone knows, Stephen is an amazing person, but he has been particularly heroic this year. We've always performed care for one another in ways which merge with everyday kindnesses and physical expressions of affection, but this year the work of keeping us going has shifted very heavily onto his shoulders. While it has been tough, we have not only survived, but we've often had a great deal of fun.

• It's been a very difficult year for several of our friends and family; other people have had major health crises, bereavement and money worries, as well as the personal effects of the year's disastrous political events. Thus I come to the end of 2016 with a heart full of love and hope that next year is much much better and brighter for those who have had to battle through to this point.

I hope that anyone who actually read down this far has a wonderful, peaceful holiday season whatever you're doing with it and a very happy New Year.

The EU Referendum, Hope & Despair

When they announced that there was finally going to be a referendum on the UK's membership of the EU, I thought, "Well, that's it then. We're out."

The European Union is a truly excellent idea, imperfectly - and sometimes badly - put into practice. I felt sure we would vote to leave because it has long provided a political scapegoat for domestic politicians of all stripes - it is rather like an absent wife, who a husband might moan about and use as an excuse for his own inaction and inadequacy. All his mates think he would be so much better off without her, but then one day they actually meet her and wonder how such a woman puts up with a twat like that. Not that she's an angel, mind you. But he is a complete twat.

Whatever happens, the EU will still exist tomorrow and honestly, that is a wonderful thing. My parents have got into their sixties without seeing any outright conflict between the countries of Western Europe - possibly the first generation to do so since people started organising themselves into approximate nations. I grew up at the tail end of the Cold War, but a further conflict between us and one of our close European neighbours has been and still is completely inconceivable, because of an idea borne out of discussions that started at the end of a war which killed around 3% of the world's population. This is an incredible achievement.

But of course the EU is a collection of countries with different political cultures and mostly muddles through, sometimes failing to act on urgent matters, sometimes acting badly. Fairness is an extremely messy question when you're talking about such a diverse group of countries with equally diverse needs and resources. The EU is one of the best political ideas that anyone ever had, but you know, it's not brilliant. It is merely better that we should be part of the effort.

The European Convention of Human Rights has been by far the most successful application of the tenets first written down in the Univeral Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. In principle - although again, far less often in practice - people in the EU have these rights. Our governments can't kill us unless we pose an immediate threat to others. Our governments can't torture us or imprison us indefinitely without trial. They can't interfere with our family life, our religious practices or our private lives in general. I can characterise the government of my country as a twat - I can say pretty much whatever rude things I like about them without fear of interference.

This is amazing. We think it's normal, but it's not normal. It is justice, it is right, but most people in the world do not have nearly this degree of freedom. And it is freedom. Human Rights are often framed as protections - which they are - and of course, most people feel comfortable and comfortable people don't feel they need any protection. But the reason we feel so comfortable is because we are free! And those of us who care most about Human Rights are usually those who are less comfortable or who know that, elsewhere or not so long ago, our lives would be dramatically blighted by governments who would wish to control, silence or eliminate people like us.

And of course, in reality, Human Rights are still abused in Europe, including the UK. There are outright violations like police brutality and abuse, and there are still actual laws on our books which fall short of those sacred tenets. 

And this is relatively young legislation, so there have been some fabulous newspaper headlines about ridiculous cases being brought under Human Rights legislation, with no follow up article when such a case is thrown out of court. But after a bloody long battle, our Human Rights Act remains the most fantastic delicious and brilliant piece of legislation ever enacted in our country.

Whatever happens tomorrow, this is still the case. The EU remains intact, whether we're in it or not and you and I and the rest of the planet will still be better off for that fact. The EU gave us Human Rights and we'll still have them tomorrow. We'll always have to fight our government for them - this one has threatened to scrap ours - because people in power always want more power. The EU has also given us a (metric) tonne of equality and workers rights legislation. It has made us a safer, healthier, freer and more just country. That can't be undone overnight.

Like I said, when they announced the referendum, I thought it would be straight-forward. I have been both gratified and disappointed at how wrong I was. Gratified because an awful lot of people - far more than I imagined - feel as I do or have come round to my way of thinking. Disappointed because the argument has become so ugly. I had imagined any argument would have been about bureaucracy, about future expansion of the EU's powers and about money - how much money goes into the EU and how much comes out. I'm appalled at the racism and hatred I have seen in the last few months. Appalled and frightened.  

Whatever happens, our country needs to do a lot of healing from all this.

We all need to be careful about our bubbles. I've seen a lot of racism (often with a sizeable pinch of homophobia, disablism and misogyny mixed in) because I've seen it on Twitter and because it has been highlighted by anti-racist friends and allies. And I won't say "but clearly, 50% of the country aren't racist" because we live in a racist society and such a statement would wrongly exonerate the other 50% as well. However, many Leave voters will simply not have witnessed this behaviour from their fellow voters. Some will only have seen the debate as reported in a particular newspaper, in the local campaign literature or as portrayed by friends, family and colleagues. Some will not have seen much of the debate at all, but will be voting according to their own values or priorities which have absolutely nothing to do with being scared of or feeling superior to people from other countries and cultures.

So if we vote to Leave, we ought not to despair of our fellow countrymen, women and others. We're in a mess - as I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, there was greater and greater acknowledgement that racism was a problem which decent people tried to combat in themselves and others. In recent years, increasing Islamophobia has twisted that trajectory and in the last few months, I feel that public discourse has taken a firm step backwards. However, whatever happens now, we need to start sorting this out and that won't work too well if we start from the perspective that half of everyone around us is a raging Nazi.

Some people are afraid we're about to swing even further to the right but I think that's the one good thing about this referendum; it answers a question which has been used to stir up anger for the last few decades. That momentum is about to drop away. If we vote Leave, the economy is about to take a dip - even if things work out well long term, this is pretty much inevitable. If we vote Leave, our Prime Minister may resign and there may even be a general election in a few months, but the EU will no long be a factor in that election - why vote for someone offering independence and almost nothing else when that's already been achieved?

That's not to say this whole debacle has not been immensely damaging. It has been by far the most divisive set of political events in my lifetime. It has brought out the very worst in some of us, including some very powerful people who hold significant influence over our lives. The devil is now a regular feature on our TV screens, even though he doesn't yet control their content. 

We will need to deal with all this, whatever. But the EU will still exist, we will still have Human Rights and it would be a great mistake to fall into despair at any outcome of this referendum, given how much work now needs to be done.

Blogging Against Disablism Day 2016 will be Sunday, May 1st

I'm putting this year's Blogging Against Disablism Day on its own page (linked on the sidebar), which will also be the place where I compile the archive.

Please head over there, please spread the word and please do write something and report back on or around May 1st if you are able.

Thank you in anticipation!

Mother's Day, 2010

I had read that you should try to write fiction with just one particular reader in mind, even if your reader is an entirely imaginary person. It’s a mistake, I read, to write for a broad audience. It’s easy, I read (and found out for myself) to get distracted by the idea of different people reading your work. You can’t please everyone. You may shock, annoy or offend some of them. And you don’t want to write the book that wouldn't shock, annoy or offend anyone at all. 

Instead, I read, you should identify someone who you think will really enjoy what you’re trying to do. If you don’t know anyone like this, invent them. Make them up and keep them in mind.

I didn't know anyone like that, so I made them up; my imaginary ideal reader. Not someone who would unquestioningly adore every word I wrote, but someone who would love what I wanted to achieve. I made them up and kept them in my mind. They were quite appealing to me so they became a secondary character in my novel, a love interest in a rather unromantic book.

I made them up. Then a friend sent me to their blog.

………..

My novel was near completion when 2010 came around. I had worked so hard, for so long, with so many damn set-backs. There had been periods of months where I couldn't write, because I was too sick or because all my energy was otherwise spoken for.  There had been periods of months where I couldn't write because my confidence had been comprehensively flattened. And now, finally, I was nearly there.

A satellite image of the UK in January 2010.

This was a long, hard winter, the coldest in my life time. There was snow about for weeks. My then husband had had an argument with his family at Christmas and was spiraling into depression. In January, my friend Jack died suddenly – the third friend who, having enthused about my writing and looking forward to my completed novel, had died before I was done (I’m putting this in the context of my novel-writing; this was not my first, second or third thought on hearing of Jack’s untimely death). This was the year I would turn thirty and I started doing a Project 365, taking a photograph every day. 

There was something else going on. I would like to say that a rational calculation was taking place, but it wasn't. I would like to say that I was beginning to stand up for myself, but I wasn't. I often say, of this time, that my marriage was falling apart, but I didn't know that. Not yet.

I was very happy. I was not happy. I felt extraordinary well-loved; for much of my adult life, I’d been lonely, believing I was little more than a convenience or a useful ear to my friends, but that had all changed. Despite pessimism from my then husband (nobody will turn up and I’ll have to pick up the pieces!), I was planning a thirtieth birthday party with my three close friends. Two of them were old friends by then, but I’d only recently realised what that meant.

And thus, I felt full of love, but a love like molten lead; I was weighed down by it, burning up with it, in danger of starting a fire if I stood too close to the curtains. Sometimes I basked in the warmth and light of it all. Other times, I wanted to open a window and scream for help. That last sentence isn't a metaphor.

The last two blog posts I wrote before I finished my novel were On Not Being Beautiful #1 and #2. These are strange to me now, because what I wrote is perfectly valid, but I know they are written by someone who is regularly being told that she has the face of a Klingon, the skin texture of a pizza, her arse takes up all three lanes of the motorway or some variation of the above. At the same time, she has friends who casually tell her how good she looks, who greet her “Hello gorgeous!” or sign off e-mails, “Keep smiling, beautiful.” She's trying to navigate the dissonance.

Everything was rather like this. My friends were excited as I moved towards the end of my book, while my then husband said I wasn't going to make it and mocked every error or slur in my speech with, “I thought you were supposed to be good with words.”

………………

During the last month of novel writing, I went a little mad and this madness was that bloody novel. It sounds dreadfully pretentious - suffering for my art - and I do know it was completely unnecessary. If my life had been better, it would have not made me sick and, crucially, my work could have improved.  I didn't have to bleed all over the page (metaphor), I didn't have to go into hell and back just to get the words down (not sure). These days I can write with greater power and much less pain and mess. Back then, I was in pain. I was a mess. 

This is the sort of thing I got up to at this time.
(A sort of pyramid made up of white blister
packs on top of a wall socket against a red
wall. A tiny metal angel looks on.)

I couldn't work all day long, but it became very much harder to shut down my mind or escape into other things. I couldn't sleep when I tried and fell asleep with my fingers on the keyboard. I lost interest in food. I was sometimes confused about whether I was living in the story of my life or the story I was writing.  

I listened to music of flight and music of falling. I did a little yoga every day and always finished playing Otis Redding's cover of (Can't get no) Satisfaction. I played the Cranberries’ No Need To Argue album an awful lot, just as the daffodils came into bloom. 

Other things too, I would understand differently later on; my long exaggerated startle reflex was now ridiculous. Someone could casually approach me, no loud noise, no sudden movement and I would cry out in alarm. Then there were moments of high drama, threats and shouting where I noticed I felt nothing - worse, I was thinking about some trivial aspect of my novel, as if what was happening in the room was some unfathomable soap opera on the TV in the background.

I was also trying to help my then husband, because he was really very unwell. Every day I spend time looking for jokes or funny stories to provide a moment's relief. I rented movies I thought he'd like and watched every one by myself first, in case there was something that would upset or annoy him. At one point, I bought him smiley potato faces in a desperate childish attempt to put a smile on his face.  

The night before I finished the novel, I told him that I was starting to panic about the deadline I had set. He responded, “I don’t care.”

The next moment, an e-mail from Stephen; How It Ends by Devotchka. I began to listen, thinking, Oh god, this is long and I have no time, it’s got accordians in it and I’m going to have to say something polite about it! but then the piano started. It was oddly perfect. I listened to it on repeat as I worked. In the morning, I played it again four or five times until I got up the courage to send the long rambling e-mail I’d been writing, complete with a 144,000 word file attached.

In this e-mail, I tried to tactfully address the fact that Stephen might recognise himself in one of the characters, but he mustn't read anything into it. After all, Stephen has a different reason to walk with a stick and references Dawn of the Dead rather than Chopper Chicks in Zombie Town as an allegory for human endurance. The personalities may be identical, but I wrote all that before I knew him. I made him up! I don't want Stephen to think I am secretly in love with him or anything. 

I couldn't say all that. So I wrote around it. At a great length. 

 ..................

(The bottom of an unsent e-mail, reading
"Got to... click... send... button..")

It is Sunday morning; Mother’s Day 2010. I take this screen grab and put it on Flickr. Only one other person, apart from Stephen and I will see it and know what it means. But I am compelled to make some public record.

Then I click send.

Everything has changed. I've written a novel. I am not the same person I was yesterday, when I hadn't written a novel.

Stephen e-mails me with photographic evidence of my novel safely on his e-reader. He then sends the Thomas Truax cover of I’m Deranged in response to that weird rambling e-mail.  Half an hour later, he e-mails to tell me he’s read the first chapter. He's loving it so far.

(An e-reader held in a hand.)

I haven’t mentioned the fact that I've finished my novel to the man I am inexplicably still married to; I really hoped he would ask. But I tell him that Stephen's read the first chapter. No congratulations. He says, “Sure he’s not on top of a tall building, about to throw himself off to avoid reading the rest?”

My then husband is thinking about death a lot and imagines I have the same effect on everyone.

It’s Mothers Day. I must spend time with my mother.  

My parents and I go to my cousin’s house, where we have a meal with two cousins and an aunt (we’re supposed to be eating with my Granny, since it’s Mother’s Day, but we've managed to mislay her). We catch up with what was happening with everyone’s life, apart from mine. We talk about my sister, brother-in-law and nephew, we talk about other cousins, their partners, aunts and uncles, we talk about Granny and the great uncles and aunts. Even a couple of second cousins are mentioned at one point. Nobody asks me a damn thing.

I notice this - I do notice it, from time to time, the way my family believes I have absolutely no life to speak of - but I especially notice today because I’m thinking, 

This is the most important day of my life!

This really is. I consider blurting out, “I just written my first novel!” but I don’t. And to be honest, it’s just good to be out of the house and away from everything, to hear about other people's lives and dramas. People write books; it's not all that extraordinary. It's just extraordinary that I should.

It’s also good to have some time away from my laptop where I might anxiously await e-mails from Stephen. When I get back, he's e-mailing to complain that he had a sleep during the day and my book gave him nightmares.

The produce of my imagination has entered another person's subconscious. 

…………

On the Monday, while Stephen is still reading my novel, my then husband and I have a big talk. He tells me that he doesn't love me anymore. I am boring, unattractive and very difficult to live with. He knows he’s depressed and things may well change in time, so there's no point doing anything about it right now.

I have heard something like this before, several times. The routine is that I go on a sort of probation; try harder, avoid pissing him off so much and after a while, I will say I love you and I’ll get it back: “I love you too.”

But this time, I take it badly. A big chunk of the lovely awful molten lead inside me breaks off, leaving a deep physical pain, a gaping aching space in my chest where there should be no space. I weep. It is like witnessing a death, the totality of loss I feel.

Yet, straight away, I feel lighter. Lighter in a lost and listless way, but definitely lighter.

A friend and I have talked about me staying with her in Wales for a week sometime. I call her and we make a proper plan.

…………

On the Tuesday, Stephen finishes reading my novel. We talk on Skype for about two hours. He loves it. He is brimming with praise and talk of the bits that scared, moved or amused him. He is so proud of me, he gets a little choked up saying so. There are issues with pacing. There are a shameful number of typos. There are a few points of slight confusion. But he loves it. 

When we've finished talking, the man who doesn't love me anymore warns me, quite seriously, that I mustn't trust Stephen. He’s too nice. He couldn't possibly be being honest about it.  

I believe otherwise.

The 10th Bloggerversary Post

This morning I thought, "It must be about ten years since I started Diary of a Goldfish." and indeed it is - Sunday was the tenth anniversary of my very first post. I started on the casual suggestion of my brother-in-law, before I ever really read a blog. I feel quite lucky that I plunged into it without much thought - if I had had a particular agenda or theme, it might not have proved so useful.

A lot has happened in ten years. I wrote a novel and am almost done with my second. I got married to the wrong person for the wrong reasons, met Stephen, divorced and married the right person for the right reasons. I learned to paint. I've seen a fair amount of bereavement but I've gained a nephew, niece and a new extended family. I moved home four or five times, depending on how you count it.

As a result of blogging, my words have ended up all over the place; The Guardian, the BBC, education resources, disability studies periodicals. I got my face on the front cover of The Cambridge City News (along with some rescued kittens - it was a real slow news day). I've been invited to join Where's the Benefit? and the F-Word. I never had any ambition to do any kind of non-fiction writing, so it's been great.

I've also made some very good friends and had some very interesting and important conversations. I founded Blogging Against Disablism Day, which I know has come to mean a lot to many people.

However, this blog is really a gift you give to me, dear reader. I don't imagine I'm providing any kind of public service or useful function - it's really nice when something I write is useful or interesting to someone. But the person who has benefited the most from Diary of a Goldfish is me. It's given me lots of writing practice and helped my writing to improve. It has given me a place to express myself, vent and lecture people on subjects that matter to me without awkward social consequences. And I know you're there, in varying numbers, so I can pretend you're hanging on my every word. I sometimes get lovely comments, here and elsewhere and that stuff is huge to me. At a particularly difficult point in my life, I had an A4 print out of the nicest things people had said about my writing.

My blogging has changed a lot in ten years (as the world of blogging has). Earlier on, I was more or less keeping a diary, which was useful because, at the age of twenty-four, I was still struggling to be the protagonist in my own life story. Later on, some of these posts became downright disturbing. While it was going on, nobody knew about the violence in my first marriage and I rarely had to explain anything - my face was never bruised, I never sought medical attention. However, after my divorce, when I went through my archive in order to completely anonymise my first husband, I found that it was as if I had been compelled to write on days where there'd been violence and instead tell a funny or sweet story where no-one got hurt. I was spinning stories to myself, in public. Sometimes I told abject lies - entirely unnecessarily lies.

I find that baffling and weird, even now. I took all these posts down, by the way. There are plenty of posts where I express ideas or opinions I no longer agree with, but I took down anything I found where I actually lied.

There have been a few points where I thought about ditching the blog, possibly starting afresh, but I'm really very attached to it. If I had thought more about my 10th Bloggerversary coming up, I would have prepared a better post.

Stephen suggested that I should post links to my "Top Ten Posts". I don't know if these are my favourites - there's almost a thousand to choose from and I'm not going to spend the next week reading through my entire archive. However as a fairly evenly spread selection (2005 was just too weak):

1. Love is real, Real is love (2006)
2. Above and Beyond: Butch's Diary (2006)
3. Propaganda (2007)
4. I thought I was someone else, someone good (2008)
5. How to be a Disabled Villain (2009)
6. It Was Thirty Years Ago Today (2010)
7. Looking After Yourself as Radical Political Activism (2011)
8. Domestic Violence: Why Zero-Tolerance is So Tough (2012)
9. How Marriage Became More Meaningful (2013)
10. The History of My Adult Life in About 100 Objects (2014)

And now, having skimmed the archive to retrieve these links, I realise I really ought to organise some pages of links to the three or four subjects I keep coming back to.

Thank you all very much for this. Where on Earth are we going to be in another ten years time? 

The Potato Harvest

Stephen and I finally moved into our own place.  It's weirdly blissful. Weirdly because there's a lot going on and we've still got a huge amount to organise and work out. But it's so peaceful. We're very busy and very peaceful; quietly productive.

We live opposite a junction and watch a lot of agricultural traffic passing through; enormous slow but very deadly looking farm machinery, mud-splattered jeeps, the occasional horse. Every now and again, we'll be sitting quietly in our living room (our living room) and Stephen will exclaim, "Potatoes!" as a truck, bearing enough spuds to feed the village for a year, goes by.


For almost two weeks, I couldn't believe we'd really done it. We've talked about a home of our own for four and a half years. We've talked so much and planned and schemed, so that actually moving in felt like a further exercise in fantasy, as if we'd been allowed to play house for a few days before having to go home. Home - I was finally given my own key to my parents' house on the day I moved out.

This spell was broken by a new washing machine - strictly speaking, a washer-dryer. Turns out, when the machines achieve singularity, they won't take over and enslave us, they'll simply humiliate us by undermining all logical steps we might take to wash our clothes. We could have fantasised about the peace and quiet, the freedom and the flat-pack furniture (it's so satisfying). I wouldn't have fantasised about spending the best part of a day trying to get one load clean and dry(ish). So it had to be real.  It's real.

When he was a boy, Stephen heard the Strangler's Golden Brown and understood perfectly; Golden brown, texture like sun - Hugh Cornwell was quite obviously singing about his love for potatoes, a love that young Stephen could relate to.

This is one reason why I love him. I've known a few people who have survived periods of adversity by holding fast to some positive in their life; a dream for the future, a passion in the present, a pet cat. At some point, Stephen learned to find joy in the minutia; the pattern of veins on a leaf, the comfort of woolen socks or the glorious versatility of the humble spud. He's carried me through difficult times this way. Bad morning? Then let's make lunch an event. To say every day is special sounds both corny and slightly nauseating, but the truth is occasionally like that.

Manna From Potato Heaven; a large, still rather dirty
potato embraced by a pair of manly white hands.

As the potato-laden lorries turn the corner, they lose a little of their load. You often see this in the countryside, at this time of year; mostly root veg and sugar beet, scattered along the outside of sharp corners, usually cracked by the fall and crushed by the proceeding traffic. The gutter outside our house is strewn with spuds, partially-mashed.

A large specimen lands in our garden, perfectly intact. We'll have that. Vegetarian roadkill.


We've always lived in other people's homes, one way or another. Stephen has always lived with his parents. I've lived with my parents, my ex-husband and briefly, a friend, but I've always had to fit myself to other people's routines and rituals, the way other people want to do things, sometimes infuriating in their futility, sometimes just impossible to abide by fully. When I first left my ex-husband, the relative freedom was overwhelming; when you've had someone else dictating everything from what you wear to how you make a cup of tea, it's hard to know where to begin.

Something similar is happening now, although it's shared between us. We need to work out how to manage our energy, now that we can do pretty much what we like, whenever we like. Fending for ourselves, we need to use a lot of energy on the basics, but those basics don't need to accommodate anyone else, whether in terms of space or timing or anxiety that if there's food on every shelf of the fridge, it may stop working altogether.


It's a long time since I lived in a town; I've never lived in the city.  But I don't know what comes next, once all the potatoes are gathered in.  I'm sure onions came earlier - late August, early September. You could smell them, even if you couldn't see them.  Once the potato lorries drive away (Potato Merchant, one of them declares on the side), is that it, for the winter?

I'm so tremendously happy right now.

This is what the Devil looks like.

We never take enough time to consider why tyrants are popular. Some of them, including Northern Europe's own mustachioed bogeyman, were elected by the people. Elsewhere in the world in recent years, people have voted for Putin, Morsi, Mugabe, al-Assad, even if the count is often rigged. But we’re not baffled, not really; these people who believed that the Devil was their best option either lived in the past, or they live in the developing world, which is as good as living in the past. They are vulnerable, gullible, much less sophisticated than us. The Devil walks in, horns polished to a shine, fork-tail swishing in the cloud of sulphurous gas that surrounds him and they have no idea at all.

Only this is what the Devil looks like. The Devil looks just fine. He can talk okay, is arguably charismatic, but his magnetism is not supernatural. He comes across as a decent sort of chap. He makes a few extreme statements - so sometimes he goes a little too far - but at least the man is honest, horns unpolished, refreshing in his candor. And he's funny. Charming rather than seductive. His blunders only prove that he is human.

He is nothing special, this Devil. I don't mean merely that he doesn't look that special, but if we’re honest (and we rarely are about this), evil is quite commonplace. The Devil has many guises; tyrannical regimes come in many bitter flavours. Yet there are three things all tyrants have in common:

• They happen to have massive, massive power.
• They use fear-mongering and scapegoating to maintain their power.
• They are in love with their own reflection, with an anxious need to protect and manipulate their image, as they imagine it to be, in the eyes of the world.

The massive power is what makes all the difference. It's an external factor; something that other people, circumstances, history or brute force makes happen. Look around for a leader who merely meets the second and third criteria and you have three out of our last five Prime Ministers. We only point and say, "Look, it's the Devil!" when they've been completely let off their reigns. When hundreds or thousands of their own people are imprisoned or violently killed.

So this is what the Devil looks like; like so many other politicians with a suit and a sound bite. And that’s part of our trouble when discussing his rise. People called Thatcher a fascist. People have described Blair as a murderer and Cameron as a man with no conscience. We’re not talking about people you’d leave your pet goldfish with – not if you didn't want it be sold off, drowned or abandoned with nothing to eat.

Only none of them made a bid for power on a platform of socially-retrograde authoritarian nationalism (or, you know, Fascism), suggesting we be afraid of our neighbours, with fellow candidates advocating the execution of minorities and political opponents. Other sinister political figures of my lifetime had a far nicer image to preserve. That's part of the reigns I mentioned.

A lot of people can smell the sulphur just now.

There’s a now much-quoted blog post by poet Michael Rosen which includes the passage:

"Fascism arrives as your friend.
It will restore your honour,
make you feel proud,
protect your house,
give you a job,
clean up the neighbourhood,
remind you of how great you once were,
clear out the venal and the corrupt,
remove anything you feel is unlike you..."

On Twitter, Steve Graby objected: “Worth remembering fascism comes as your friend IF you are white, straight/cis and non-disabled. Otherwise it's pretty blatantly your enemy from the start.”

That would surely be the case if everyone knew what the Devil stands for. But it is not a civil duty to keep track of all the political goings on, to read the full manifesto rather than the single-page pamphlet. It is not morally irresponsible to zone out while the politicians bicker on the breakfast news. And many ordinary fallible people do. Most people who vote for the Devil care about one or two issues and see that guy as the guy who’s going to fix them.  A lot of people vote for the Devil just because they don’t like their other options. Evil is commonplace, but naivety is pandemic. It's part of our charm.

This is what the Devil looks like. The horns and the fork-tail? All that's in the small print. There’s good and bad news about all this:

The bad news is that ordinary and fallible people can be taken in by the Devil. They don't have to be very bad or stupid, just misguided. Worse news is that you are as ordinary and fallible as the next person. He would have to wear very different clothes to fool you, of course. And maybe you do read the small print, and maybe you’d never place your vote on anyone less than a saint (abstention again, is it?), but at some point, in some context, you may well shake the Devil’s hand.

The good news is that people who support the Devil, vote for the Devil, are not evil or beyond reason. There’s as little reason to despair of your neighbours as to fear them. Better news is that a population of ordinary, fallible people in a country not yet overwhelmed with despair due to famine, mass poverty, internal divisions and war are more than capable of keeping the Devil in his place.

Despair is always the danger. Right now, politicians are so despairing of their own people that they grit their teeth and flare their nostrils, trying not to gag on the sulphur and give away the fact they can smell it. Meanwhile, some of them are, themselves, a little bit evil and the presence of the Devil beside them can only improve their own precious image. But politicians aren't very important.

Last week, I was rolling round my village, looking at potential places to live. And the thought crossed my mind,

"What if people put party political posters in their front windows? What if we find somewhere perfect but we know, without meeting them, that the neighbours are a bunch of bastards who hate people like us, our friends and families?"

And I knew I was wrong at the time (and I saw just one poster, in the house of someone who always parks their sports car on the pavement so that my wheelchair is in danger of scraping the paintwork as I pass). Then this weekend, I hear that I should prefer not to live next door to Romanians and I felt even more guilty. It would be reasonable to assume that people with those posters in their windows are ordinary, fallible, just not paying so much attention, maybe with a little less to lose.

This is what the Devil looks like. His potential power lies in our despair at each other.

Blogging Against Disablism Day 2014

Welcome to Blogging Against Disablism Day 2014!

Thanks very much to everyone who helped to spread the word and to everyone who has blogging against disablism, ableism and disability discrimination these last few days.

If you have a post for Blogging Against Disablism, please leave a comment including the URL (web address) of your post and the catergory your post fits best. Please also link back here, wherever possible (we're at http://tinyurl.com/BADday2014).

We'll carry on updating this post as any late-comers arrive. We've also been posting links to every blog using the Twitter stream @BADDtweets and these will automatically be posted onto our Facebook Page.

Blogging Against Disablism 2014

Employment (Disability discrimination in the workplace, recruitment issues and unemployment).  Benefit Scrounging Scum:  Hard Working Species, The 'Striver Scrounger' EmsyBlog:  Access To…oh forget it Murder of Goths:  Employ me? Work and disability hurdles Random Happenings and Observations:  Attitudes towards Disabled People Scope:  ‘You’ve got so much stacked against you’ This ain't livin':  Sheltered Workshops Education (Attitudes and practical issues effecting disabled people and the discussion of disability in education, from preschool to university and workplace training.) Friendly crips and our friends:  How ablism stopped me learning how to teach against ablism Queen Cakeface:  Academic Ableism - How Formal Education is Failing the Disabled and Chronically Ill Rolling with the Punches:  Academic Battles That Crazy Crippled Chick:  One Year Ago - What Ableism Didn't Do Yes, That Too:  Not what I was planning on but it's ableism and I'm against it Other Access Issues (Posts about any kind of access issue in the built environment, shops, services and various organisations. By "access issues" I mean anything which enables or disenables a person from doing what everyone else is able to do.) Black Telephone:  The Prom Dress A Blind Man's Journey:  Housing for All Crippled, Queer, Anglo-European Ranter: Product Packaging Problems & Solutions?) Damn the Muse:  Service plans gone haywire Planat Community Blog: Accessible travel - issues and solutions World of Accessible Toilets:  Dignity Down the Pan Definition and Analysis of Disablism/ Ableism The Bardo Group:  Still Here bottomfacedotcom:  Are you disablist/ableist?  Low Visionary:  From disableism to human rights Making rights make sense:  Blogging against ‘disablism’ pseudoliving:  Nothing About Us Without Us? The Language of Disablism(Posts about the language which surrounds disability and the way that it may empower or disempower us.) Murder of Goths:  Worst things you can say Disablism Interacting with Other 'Isms' (Posts about the way in which various discriminations interact; the way that the prejudice experienced as a disabled person may be compounded by race, gender, age, sexuality etc..) Indigo Jo Blogs:  Dudes Disablism in Literature, Culture and the Media Bridgeanne art and writing:  Thoughts re writing ‘Girl with a White Dog’ Cracked Mirror in Shalott:  I'm Not a Side Story Diary of a Goldfish:  Against "Awareness" Funky Mango's Musings:  Writing semi-autobiographical fiction about disability A Hot Bath Won't Cure It:  Invisible Disability – disablism from different perspectives Kink Praxis:  Imagining Disabled Characters in Erotica Maijan ilmestykset:  Nasevaa ableismia / Snappy ableism Thoughts of a crinllys:  Rejection in a sci-fi world Tsana's Reads and Reviews:  Blogging Against Disablism  Visibility Fiction:  Getting it wrong – Writing disability in fiction A Writer In A Wheelchair:  Not such an equal “ism” History Disability Studies, Temple U.:  Wikipedia Against Disablism Relationships, Love and Sex Journeymouse:  Teaching Someone Else to Live With An Invisible Disability Living Disabled:  Peace, Anger, and Other (blasted) People Sport AthletesFirst:  A challenge to coaches AthletesFirst:  Not quite visible Other Feminist Sonar:  Valuing the Life Criptastic I (heart symbol) the Phylum Chordata:  Repercussions Philip Patston:  Blogging against blogging against disablism Powerful Bitch:  The Big BADD Cripple The Social Worker Who Became Disabled:  Are Social Workers Part of the Problem?  Poetry and Fiction against Disablism As Your World Changes:  Weary Words from a White Cane Warrior Ballastexistenz:  When we died, we found each other Diary of Mister Goldfish: Clippity Cloppity Goat and the Dragon Here be Prose:  Someday Same Difference:  Disablism is Everywhere Untitled:  BADD14

General Thoughts on Disablism Accessibility NZ:  Don’t use disability as the bogeyman AZ is Amazing:  Don't put words in my mouth Bigger on the Inside:  The fundamental interconnectedness of all things The Chronic Chronicles:  Ignorance, Exclusion and Invisibility - the reality of being disabled in the UK Dannilion.com:  Internalised Disablism Diary of Mister Goldfish:  Need for Speed The eGremlin:  Things are not always what they seem The Haps:  The Question Journeys:  Disability Stories - Resistance, Resilience, and Community Meriannen Mielessä: Pyörätuolityttö | The Wheelchair Girl  Minister of Propaganda for the Decepticon Empire:  Blogging Against Disablism Day More Than Disorganised:  Internalised Disablism Naked Vegan Cooking:  Special Blogging Against Disablism Day Post Nightengalesknd:  Why it matters that "ablism" isn't in spell-check Stand Tall Through Everything:  I’m A Reluctant Advocate Sticking the Corners:  Tried and True Ways to Eliminate People with Disabilities The Notes Which Do Not Fit:  That is such an obscure... Rolling with the Punches:  Support and Independence This Is My Blog:  Less hostility, please! Words I Wheel By:  Dis/Ableism, Privilege, and Assumptions yetanotherlefty:  In-between Parenting Issues(whether disabled parents or the parents of a disabled child.) Will Write for Tomato Pie:  Blogging Against Disablism Impairment-Specific Prejudice Blogging Astrid:  Mental Illness Is Real Illness Too Brain under construction:  Monster in the Midst Endocrine Gremlin:  Blogging Against Disablism Day 2014 The Eternal Pursuit of Love and Laughter:  Blogging Against Disablism Day 2014 The Hidden Village of Aspergers:  Crying On The Webcam Life In Deep Water:  The Relationship Between Depression & Alcohol & Its Effects On Relationships Mitäpä jos sä pelkäät turhaan:  Bloggaus vammaisuuden ennakkoluuloja vastaan The Not-So-Simple Life:  It's Time To Talk  Sticking the Corners:  Just Say No to Needy Busybodies Personal Journeys Posts about learning experiences and realisations authors have had about the nature of disability discrimination and the impact on their lives. Ballastexistenz:  I am not your fairy tale miracle cure story Katherine Hayward, my life with cerebral palsy:   Blogging Against Disablism Day 2014  My thoughts. About me, and ME:  Help! Never That Easy:  Hulking Out People Aren't Broken:  An InConvenient Truth Disablism and Politics (For example, the political currency of disability, anti-discrimination legislation, etc.) Write To Protest:  The Right to Life Bullying, Harassment and Hate Crime Ballastexistenz:  After this, I am never again putting up with bullies telling me that my medical conditions are imaginary The F-Word:  Disablism and microaggressions Radical Neurodivergence Speaking:  Parents are the worst ableists That Crazy Crippled Chick:  Disability Is Not Your Get Out of Jail Free Card Disability, Life and Death Ange's blog:  Carers should act in solidarity - not martyrdom  Ballastexistenz:  Love, Fear, Death, and Disability The Voyage:  Stop Excusing Murder