Michael Simmons has narrated this article for you to listen to.
Britain is crippled. More of us than ever before are disabled. One in four, at the last count. But it is a statistic so obviously at odds with reality that anyone with working eyesight should question it. Instead, it has been adopted as fact by government, doctors, charities and benefits assessors.
This mass collapse in health – nearly four million more people describing themselves as disabled in the past decade – is driven, we are told, by genuinely worsening mental health and a surge in diagnoses of conditions such as ADHD and autism. So vast is the problem that a government review last week found the sickness-welfare system ‘not fit for purpose’. No wonder, when the number of working-age Britons claiming disability benefits is rising faster than the estimated disabled population itself.
I just don’t believe all these people really are disabled. The word itself has lost all meaning, and I should know.
My instinct to reject the disability label spurred me on, and it must have saved the taxpayer a few bob
