And why not? Funny old thing, the way people feel the need to speak on behalf of another group. For example, who dictates our own right to live and die as we choose? Who dictates that a word is offensive? Not the group who are supposed to be taking offence!

Consider the above image. Does it shock you? Why should it? It came from a pack of stickers I found in an old book. The object of the stickers was purely benevolent. Sometime in the last few years, the word became taboo.

What doesn’t seem taboo, however, is the need to patronise one group by speaking on behalf of it. As if “oh, those poor simple people, I’d better interfere. They’re clearly not capable of thinking straight for themselves. Bless. While I’m at it, let’s use the sinister term “learning difficulties” as a catchall for any mental problem. That way, we can ensure that help doesn’t get where it’s needed.”

Or mothers “forgiving” the killers of their sons.

Every now and then, a voice of reason speaks out. I was very moved when I heard Debbie Purdy speaking on Radio 4 about her plans for euthanasia, and deeply angered when I heard the patronising twaddle from “Church leaders”. What gives them to right to inflict pain and suffering? Again, more recently, I read this letter in The Telegraph.

Sir - When any attempt is made to reduce the amount of disability in the population by embryo screening and other means (News, May 11), the holier-than-thou, “suffering is ennobling” and “what a wonderful example disabled people set to the rest of us” fraternity comes out of the woodwork.

As a disabled person myself, I can assure them there is nothing remotely ennobling about being disabled; if they don’t believe me, they are welcome to take on my disability for a week and see how ennobled they feel by the end of it.

The rise in disabled rights leads people mistakenly to believe they should somehow see disability as being a positive thing. I regard my disability entirely negatively; it is not pretty or sexy and has made my life far more of a struggle than it would have been without it.

All I ask is for the able-bodied to see me, the person, behind the disability, to realise that being disabled is a misfortune not a crime and to refrain from discriminating against me or other disabled people. But as for disability itself - if it were possible to wipe it off the face of the planet, I would.

Dinah Foweraker

Which is why Bush’s Stem Cell Veto is just so wrong. Especially when he says:

“The issue is whether or not it is morally right to use the taxpayer dollars of millions of pro-life Americans who find this research morally objectionable.”

So, exploding Iraqis and electrocuting your own people is fine, but research on stem cells due to be discarded anyway, which could help millions of people, isn’t.

Categories: political_correctness