Rod Liddle is an Arse

Something weird and kinda wonderful happened today: A right-wing tabloid published some vile disablist propaganda, and the internet gave a crap.

There's nothing wonderful about vile disablist propaganda, obviously. But we've been seeing it for a couple of years now and usually there's no backlash against it. When Melanie Phillips writes a hideously homophobic piece or when Liz Jones writes a bizarre article about semen theft; Twitter gets on its moral high-horse (rightly, of course). But when the Daily Mail claims that only 1 in 14 IB claimants is genuine, or when The Sun state that in 3 years time one in every 17 people will be claiming DLA as if this is some kind of outrage (and without qualifying that, actually, one in every 5 people have some kind of impairment) no-one usually bats an eyelid at the press abuse of disabled people. In fact, people who would like to consider themselves as "decent" start moaning about all the fakers and scroungers because the official fraud figures of around 0.5% are hidden away on the Society pages of The Guardian rather than splashed across the front of The Sun.

This week we've reached a turning point: People objecting to propaganda, 38 Degrees pulling their finger out, UK Uncut organising a protest against the WRB (even if they did forget to make it accessible...). Shame it's all a bit too late and this time next week the bill will be a done deal.