I will hold my hands up and admit that being able to work, to show my intelligence and other abilties, is very important to my personhood and therefore my mental wellbeing. Being paid is nice and essential for living, but it does not match the sense of achievement working provides me.

Before I go further I should say that with all my physical and emotional difficulties, on a biological level, no test is ever going to find me fit for work, and yet at 43 I have achieved more than most non-disabled people do in their lifetimes. Since my birth, I have had to fight hard to demonstrate my intelligence and my ability to contribute to society against the system and the public attitude that I am unable to contribute to society, so why bother. If I suddenly gave up work, people and the system would just accept it without fuss, supporting me into a life of passivity.

Most left wing and liberal activists believe I am unfit for work. Ofcourse if they know me they would say otherwise, as I am ‘lucky’ I can work ‘as not everyone can’, but if they were to judge me from afar as internet style voting of who can work or not, I would be seen unfit every time. My ability to work with a significant impairment scares people as it disproves people with lesser impairments at least can not work and that the whole scrapheap is a social construction. They response to this ace up my sleeve, especially when I start asking who they have personally decided is fit or unfit for work and therefore society, is online abuse and trolling.

The best I can hope for from these activist that while everyone thinks I am unfit for work, I still have the ‘right’ to work. My response is thank you so much for that permission. I am allowed to work but the left will do everything it can to stop me from working? I work despite organisations like EHRC who create a climate where I am hated to do so. If disabled people are going to be written off at birth, offering the begrudgingly the right to work if they fight for it, how will they be motivated to work?

Recently, I have been told that Labour’s scrapheap for people with impairments does not exist but what else do you call a place you put people by paying them indefinitely to sit at home doing nothing all day without any attempt to improve their situation? Labour promised in their 2017 manifesto to end reassessments for ‘the severely disabled’, a term no activist is willing to define. So this means one assessment for life, and so for people born with severe impairments, this one and only assessment without appeal will be at birth, hence throwing people on the scrapheap from birth. This is the logical conclusion, but activists demand evidence that they will accept, waiting to change their minds until the second holocaust is in full swing!

Few people really want disabled people to work. The EHRC has stated supporting disabled people into work is a step backwards and the UN is similarly angry that the UK government does not believe disabled people belong on the scrapheap. The oppression I face has got worst because of the bigotry of other activists as I am now abused and trolled for working and daring to want to be a citizen. I will always fight back as I know time will prove me right.

If you like my blog article, have a look at some of my products;
Achieve Support – Coming soon
Having Pride – http://www.balsy.me
Stevens’ Manifesto – Coming soon
Understand Assistance – http://www.understand.tips
Understand Dysabiity – Coming soon

or visit my website at http://www.understand.tips

You can also email me at simon@simonstevens.com