Just Because You're Paranoid Doesn't Mean They're Not Out To Get You.

The media rhetoric around, and the threatened government cuts to, disability benefits are filling people with fear. They are contributing to deep suspicion and even aggression from the general public towards disabled people, and lots of us are feeling more than a little petrified.

From Nadine Dorries' Shop a Twit campaign, to virtually everything put out by the Daily Mail, many disabled people are becoming scared to go out, to have occasional treats, to try something normally outside of their limits, such as walking a few steps, or to put their name to anything they post on the internet at all, in case someone should see them, report them for benefit fraud, and accuse them of 'faking it'.

Of those who have continued to post on twitter, despite previous threats, many feel more limited about what they can say, lest they are judged to be faking, scrounging, or wasting taxpayers' money. Still more are finding they feel they have to justify everything they say, just in case somebody is watching. And programmes like the BBC's Saints and Scroungers do little to help, either people's attitudes, or the overriding fear and paranoia experienced by disabled benefit claimaints.

So I was saddened, but not surprised, to see one person's response to this build-up of fear.

I started to worry that my heavy use of twitter could be used against me in this process. I have already explained how and why I can use twitter without that meaning that I am fit to work, but I also worried that my tweets could easily be taken out of context. For example, a tweet about undertaking an activity of some sort could be used as proof that I can do that all the time. What an investigator would not see is how good or bad a day I was having, how much I had to prepare for and work around the activity, or how much pain and exhaustion that activity would cause for days afterwards.

So Steven Sumpter, aka latent existence, took, "the drastic step of deleting all 12,272 of my tweets". All of them. And why? Fear. Fear they would be used against him. Fear that they would portray an image of him actually being fine. Now, I follow him on twitter, and it's not like he's endlessly talking of weekends away skiing and trekking up mountains, and decided he'd better suddenly get rid of the evidence. This is the twitter account of someone who is clearly not well enough to work. This is someone who talks about a good day being when they open their curtains 'without fleeing in pain from the light'.

This someone who nobody could accuse of faking it. Anyone with a chronic illness can recognise straight away that these aren't a series of made-up tweets by someone imagining what it might be like to be ill, and even so he felt so threatened by the current atmosphere of suspicion and attack, that deleting over 12,000 tweets felt like the only way forward.

But he's not the only one scared. It's not a paranoid or psychotic illness which is making him have these suspicions, some of the most mentally healthy people I know concur with him. And I want our progressive, equal society to take a look at itself, and wonder just how progressive and equal it is.

(cross-posted at incurable hippie blog).

Threats and Fear.

It's impossible to overstate how terrified some disabled people are, in Britain right now.

The fear of benefit cuts is so high, and so real, and attitudes like those of Nadine Dorries add to the climate of terror.

Already people are scared to leave their house for fear of being reported to the DWP for faking their illness, now those who find networks like twitter to be a lifeline are becoming frightened to post.

If you are stuck in bed, and you've found a way to use your laptop lying down, or you can use a phone or iPad, sites like twitter are perhaps the only way for many to actually communicate with others. It may be the only conversation someone has for a week.

One purpose that these threats serve is, I suspect, to keep us all quiet. We can't complain about the process of reapplying for DLA, or of the ATOS assessments, if the very complaints we type will be used as an additional stick to beat us with. Even if typing those 140 characters used up so much energy that we then had to sleep for an hour to recover. Or hurt our eyes so much that we have a migraine for 3 days.

On days that I can't leave the house, and can't use the phone, the internet is the only tool I have to communicate with the outside world. I don't want to lose that. But the fear affects me as much as anyone, and right now so many of my outlets feel threatening.

This is what the threats to disability benefits are doing to me. It is worsening my madness significantly, which, ironically, will make me less and less able to work, not more.

Shop a Twit!

It feels like forever since I was last well enough to write here. Over the last few weeks I've had to put up with my dodgy stomach putting me through hell and preventing me from sleeping and a slight cold which has aggravated my always crap sinuses making sinus pressure pain and the migraines it triggers almost a daily occurrence (I tried to explain on my own blog how severe my sinus pain is).

I've been feeling rather guilty about it actually. WtB was, after all, my idea. I should be leading from the front and posting regularly. But how can I write intelligent, well researched posts about benefit reform when I can't even muster up the spoons to call back the Choose and Book people about my referral to the migraine clinic?

The one small contribution I have been able to make to WtB over the last few weeks is that I've been able to post links and other really short updates to the WtB Twitter account and the WtB Facebook page. Tweeting and Facebooking only takes a few seconds and doesn't require much brain function so it's something I can do using my iPod in bed, in the dark, when I'm too ill to be anywhere else.

Today Tory MP for Mid-Bedfordshire Nadine Dorries said on her blog about people who tweet a lot:

if it's someone you know is on benefits, contact the DWP.

That was 2 paragraphs after saying that people who tweet a lot should:

[get] a job which involves being sat at a key board because there's nothing much up with their fingers, brain or attention span!!

That's right; she'd like to see me reported to the DWP for having the audacity to write 140 characters from my bed when I'm too ill to get out of it.

Lots of disabled tweeters have hit back. @beccaviola Tweeted:

Thank you, Nadine Dorries. Obviously, being able to Tweet via assistive tech indicates that I am in fact not profoundly disabled after all.

Becca also points out that:

I tweet usually immobile from bed, using switches, inbetween nursing visits and personal care.

While Mind in Flux and Writer in a Wheelchair have both written passionate blog posts in response to Dorries.

While Dorries implies that we're scroungers if we're capable of using Twitter it's worth remembering that when it comes to scrounging: The pot probably shouldn't call the disabled kettle black.

Edit: She's written a follow up post!

She says:

If you Twitter all day, every day about claiming disability benefit in one tweet whist arranging a night out in the pub in the next. If you tweet about claiming six months rent from the social fund whilst tweeting how bad your hangover is and if you stride into political meetings and shout the odds with energy and enthusiasm with no sign of any physical disability and if you claim to work for the Labour party and write porn at the same time as claiming your disability benefit - then don't expect someone like me not to a) inform the authorities and b) tell you to get of your Twitter [sic] and get a job.

Or as @TaobhCle paraphrases:

you can't be disabled and express political views. 'Stfu and be glad for your benefits'

Edit #2: Blogger and tweeter Ms Humphrey Cushion has revealed that she is the Twitter user Dorries was referring to today.