Published by The i paper (6th November, 2023) The Covid inquiry last week performed an invaluable service. It seemed as if we were watching a savage new political satire […]
Disability / Health / Policy / Social care
A grotesque denial of human rights is dragging on
Published by The Times (7th August, 2023) When Franco Basaglia took over a huge asylum in Trieste in 1971, the charismatic psychiatrist found a place that felt like […]
Disability / Europe / Health / Holland / Policy
Euthanasia is a slippery slope
Published by The i paper (17th April, 2023) There are few more sensitive political issues than legalisation of euthanasia. On one hand we hear emotive pleas from patients […]
Disability / Europe / Russia / Ukraine
People with disabilities abandoned in Ukraine
Published by The i paper (4th April, 2022) It is almost six weeks since Vladimir Putin unleashed hell on Ukraine. His forces have pulverised cities, shattered communities and […]
Disability / Health / Policy
A stealthy new age of eugenics
Published by The i paper (27th September, 2021) Heidi Crowter is 26 years old, married last year and is full of life. She loves music and follows Liverpool […]
Disability / Health / Policy
We have failed people with autism
Published by The i paper (31st May, 2021) Dannielle Attree has spent half of her life being subjected to state-sanctioned abuse. She is only 24 years old but […]
Covid19 / Disability
The inhumanity of deeming some lives ‘more valuable’ than others
Published by The Daily Mail (19th January, 2021) Deborah James is a deputy head teacher, a mother of two children and, since her devastating diagnosis with bowel cancer, […]
Covid19 / Disability / Policy / Social care
Britain is callously indifferent to disabled people
Published by The Daily Telegraph (16th January, 2021) When I asked my doughty friend, a working mum on the other side of London, how she was bearing up […]
Disability
Notes to a stranger: Thank you for smiling at my daughter
Published by The i paper (30h December, 2020) This is a note to the woman I passed a few weeks ago on the street. But it could also […]
Disability / Health / Policy / Social care
Fix the care system and end these inhumane detentions
Published by The i paper (30th November, 2020) Susie* is 16 years old. She has autism and special needs. And like so many others with similar conditions, both […]
Belgium / Disability / Europe / Holland
Who should decide when we die?
Published by The i paper (28th September, 2020) Yew Trees was called a hospital but sounds more like hell. It was supposed to be a sanctuary for women […]
Disability / Health / Policy
‘They are making people worse’
Published by The i paper (13th July, 2020) It is almost two years since I spoke to the distraught father of Beth. She was a 17-year-old who loved […]