These cartoonish things do still happen

[cosmolinguist]

just in time for #DisabilityPrideMonth, a candidate for today's election has been accused by his Tory opponents of faking his blindness, so that he could take a guide dog out to campaign and get voters to like him because of the dog.

To the point where the local society for visually impaired people has had to put out a whole statement about how this guy is actually blind, disclosing some of his medical history and details of how long he's been registered blind and involved with the local society, how many years it took him to get his guide dog. With the guy's consent, which is important, but ugh. It feels like Obama having to show his birth certificate, y'know? No one should have to do this.

His wife is also blind, and apparently she has been particularly hurt by these comments. I'm not surprised: if this happened to me I'd roll my eyes and shitpost about it (while also making official complaints/going to the media/etc!) but if I had a partner accused of faking a disability I'd be livid, especially if it's one I also have.

As Steve Darling rightly says, “it seems to pose the question, ‘How can he possibly be registered blind and be capable of doing something like this?’”

Anyway, his party has a good chance of taking the seat back from the Tories today, and I hope if he does he employs a load of blind people!

Comments

[davidgillon]

And the first reaction from the Tory candidate was to cast doubt on the story. You might get a single rogue canvasser, but when the candidate won't accept there's an issue, that's a systemic problem.

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah it might well have been something that one canvasser said to one person on the door, but even so you can make nice words about investigating and taking it seriously, reacting like this is just childish. But I know the Tories weren't expecting to keep the southwest and maybe just couldn't pretend to care.

Anyway, this guy is the new MP now and he beat the Tory by more than 5,000 votes.

[davidgillon]

Best answer possible!

[jesse_the_k]

Wow.

Just wow.

Reminds me of the Helen Keller was a fake nonsense that was popping up on TikTok and thence other social media back in 2020.

[cosmolinguist]

Ugh yes. The idea that a disabled person can do anything still strikes too many people as unrealistic.

[conuly]

What a bunch of fucking bullshit.

[cosmolinguist]

Well the blind guy won and the guy who wouldn't take responsibility for his campaign lost, so that's something.

[otter]

Gross. So much wrong with some people, when the rest of us are just trying to make the world a reasonable place to live.

[cosmolinguist]

Indeed. I'm glad this blind guy is a new MP now; hopefully he will try to make the world more reasonable.

[hafnia]

Ugh. Reminds me of the woman I used to work with who was constantly asked if she "needed" her wheelchair. Where do they find these people?

(I mean, it's the Tories, so "the lower levels of hell" is the likely answer, but still.)

[cosmolinguist]

People have no idea how hard it is to get a wheelchair (much less a guide dog!) -- and when you do it cuts you off from so much of the world. I can't imagine why anybody would bother to pretend to need such things if they don't.

[cosmicjellyfish]

Absolutely vile. Fuck the Tories (along with everyone else who thinks throwing “faker” accusations at disabled people is acceptable).

[cosmolinguist]

Well the Tories got pretty fucked, so now we just need to make sure everyone else who fucks around like this also finds out. :)

[cosmicjellyfish]

YEP. What a glorious result to wake up to on the other side of the world (even though they never sent my proxy vote through, despite my applying well in time… D:)

[zhelana]

Wait, you have to register as blind? For what purpose? Registering disabled people seems sort of... nazi?

[cosmolinguist]

No one has to register, no.

Registering does open up access to services like vision rehab and social care.

The registers are held by local councils (so like city or county government) and they are frequently inaccurate - I have no idea how to tell them I moved four years ago.

It's not very nazi at all.

[zhelana]

C seems to agree that it is not sketchy, though he also agrees with me that it sounds bad on the face of it. I guess you are the one who lived it, so you'd know better than me, but I'd still be hesitant. He mentions it might have something to do with the fact that health care comes from the government so they already know, anyway.

[davidgillon]

There's a lot of confusion over this and Registered Disabled.

A law passed in 1946(?) required all companies over a certain size to employ a fixed percentage of Registered Disabled/Blind people. Essentially to make sure people disabled in WWII were able to find work. It was also used as a gateway to various forms of support and benefits.

Unfortunately the percentage of disabled employees wasn't actively enforced.

'Registered Disabled' ceased to be an official status with the introduction of the Disability Discrimination Act in 1995, but many non-disabled people are convinced it still exists - I had a recruitment professional ask me if I was Registered Disabled c2010, at which point it hadn't been a thing for 15 years. Local councils may keep a local register of disabled people for the purposes of planning their provision of disability support and budgeting. Some do, most don't, it adds to the confusion.

The theory in doing away with the quota system was that giving all disabled people the right to reasonable adjustments would do away with limited employment opportunities. The actual result was companies had to be forced to do anything at all. OTOH the current law around this, the Equality Act 2010, has a very inclusive, and automatically applied, definition of disability.

Meanwhile Registered Blind was retained as a gateway to certain benefits, though it's changed names since - I think twice.

[zhelana]

That makes more sense, thanks

[barakta]

It is also worth noting that in the UK certification of partial or severe sight impairment (my wording may be slightly inaccurate here) is an automatic "you are legally disabled" under the Equality Act (and Northern Irish equivalent) legislation. You can only get one if a consultant ophthalmologist certifies your vision levels based on specific criteria.

This means that a blind person with their certificate of visual impairment taking a discrimination case doesn't have to "prove" their disability in court, with the other side demanding more and more intrusive medical info (which happens a lot). They just show their certificate, legally job done.

A small but very useful thing, down to effective lobbying by the org Erik works for amongst others. Similar automatic disability status exists for HIV, Multiple Sclerosis and Cancer. Everyone else has the prove your impairment is a disability game. I've even had employers who made adjustments and always treated me as disabled try to claim they didn't know I was disabled. Got nixed by a decent judge who just "O RLY" at them and they backed off, but they did try. I had to share 8 separate medical letters about different bits of impairment to get some off my back.

Prior to our 1995 Disability Discrimination Act (equivalent to the ADA in the USA and DDA in Australia) we didn't have a comprehensive piece of disability rights legislation enforceable by individuals. There were 30+ attempts to bring stuff in, which is why we have weird fragment laws from the 1970s and 1980s which cover random things like buildings kinda sorta maybe and blind or deaf people in some contexts. A horrid mishmash. Not very effective and why disabled people campaigned directly blocking transport in the 1990s.

The Disability Discrimination Act then got merged with other anti-discrim laws into the Equality Act in 2010 in England, Wales and Scotland but not in Northern Ireland which kept the DDA and then made their own amendments, cos devolution and politics.

Annoyingly as a not-blind person I get asked for registration of my deafness and other impairments a lot and most orgs/people don't realise it doesn't exist.

[zhelana]

That sounds a little like chaos soup. But then again when I was trying to get disability, I had to fill out the same forms 3 times, go to two federal judges and 5 doctors, including a gynecologist, when my disability has nothing to do with those bits, and why are they looking there for schizophrenia? So it's kind of not great here, either. And then the one time I actually asked for an accomodation, which was simply not to be put in a situation where I would regularly be assaulted, I was told "that's the job." Which... it wasn't when I agreed to do the job. I was a special ed teacher and my classroom initially had a girl whose sole job description was to be the person who stood between me and violent students. They removed her and made it my job to deal with the violent students, which is not what I signed up for. I tried to sue the district to get her back, but was basically told the school year would be over before I could get a court date and if I was actively suing the school I wouldn't be rehired for the next year anyway, It was still (just barely) within the trial work period for my disability benefits, so I walked out and reported it as a failed work attempt to social security. Point being, it's all chaos soup.

[silveradept]

It certainly shows how little matters of actual substance the Conservative had going for them if they were willing to let such a below-the-belt blow stand and not even do performative apologies for it. Yes, dogs are cute, but if that's the accusation, it's an admission that your own politics are bankrupt or nonexistent.

So, good that the candidate was sent off.

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah, exactly: not even spouting the usual lines about how this would be investigated and it's a damaging claim that would be taken seriously if it were found to be true, etc. just feels like they didn't respect the electorate enough to pretend to care.