Recently in Disabilities Category

Think tank Demos has devised an index to evaluate how local authorities in England and Wales are managing the public spending cuts.

Called Coping with the Cuts, website visitors can use a pull-down menu to see how their local authority's disability services score on personalisation, eligibility and budget changes. 

Although there is an explanation as to how Demos arrived at its rankings, I was surprised to find the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham coping "well", even though the cuts level was assessed as "very high".

This is a council seemingly on a mission to make life difficult for its service users, including disabled people.

Although the Demos research is a useful pointer on the impact of the cuts, the Hammersmith summary has left me feeling a need for a definition of "coping well". 

Um, "cutting well"? Hope not.

Can councils disregard the provisions of the Disability Discrimination Act purely on the grounds of economics?

A case involving Lancashire Council and two disabled women in their sixties and seventies suggests they can. 

Mr Justice Parker, sitting in the High Court (right), ruled that the council's budget cuts, which would have affected the two women, must be seen in the context of the government's spending review.

The women, backed by the National Autistic Society, Sense and Disability Equality North West, had sought a judicial review against Lancashire's adult care cuts.

But the judge's comments about the "economic reality" and the "imperative" needs to reduce expenditure are concerning.

Not only do they set down a marker for future cases, but they appear to ride roughshod over what the rest of us call the "reality" of disability.

Or have people with disabilities been reduced to an economic/uneconomic unit to be used/dispensed with according to whether the government of the day is managing the nation's finances efficiently?

Perhaps someone somewhere had been missing the charm of that champion of disability rights, Jeremy Clarkson, because that someone somewhere transferred on to a T-shirt the sort of ribcage-snapping wit that is the copyright of Chipping Norton's finest alpha-male.

"Britain's Got Retards" shouts the front of the top, plainly appealing to those with the sensitivity of a pit bull that has just spotted human flesh. 

You can still buy/avoid the T-shirt from a website, which must have a low opinion of its patrons because the complex minds behind it feel the need to explain the "joke". Hilarious.

But punters do seem to appreciate this "offensive" (the website's description) apparel, judging by the number of Facebook thumbs-up it has attracted.

However, Mark Brown, editor of the mental health magazine One in Four, tweeted his disapproval and received a response from those responsible that the context was intended to be "Britain's Got Dumb-asses" and that the T-shirt would be withdrawn.

Oh, I see now. Satire is not dead after all. Wry smile.

You would think that, as a former United Nations soldier, Mike Kunz had seen it all - if not it all, then more than most of us ever will. He hadn't reckoned on Hartlepool United FC (pictured in white shirts) and its health and safety cocktail. 

Kunz is a wheelchair user, having lost one leg in a skiing accident in 1990 and the other in 2000, and follows Yeovil Town around the country taking pictures of their games as a photo-journalist.

But he was told that, as a wheelchair user, he could not take pictures from the side of the pitch at Hartlepool because he was a health and safety threat to the players.

His attempt to compromise by sitting on the floor away from his wheelchair was also rejected on the grounds that he would be unable to take evasive action should a player be propelled on to a collision course with him.

As Kunz points out, there were other photographers attending the match, sitting on metal stools which nobody objected to.

Kunz describes his treatment as "blatant discrimination".

However, the club says it has had to tighten its health and safety restrictions on match days.

Whatever the reason, this case highlights an incompatibility between the health and safety regulations and the Disability Discrimination Act.

Any suggestions out there?

Picture: Offside/Rex Features

How many times have we heard government ministers state coldly: "A life on benefits is no longer an option."

Employment minister Chris Grayling joined that club this week. "Say goodbye to a life on benefits," he enthused, as if he were plugging a remedy for embarrassing itching. 

He followed this with a more predictable comment that those in "genuine need" would continue to be supported.

Grayling was flagging up the government's rethink on disability living allowance, which will be replaced by the personal independence payment.

At the same time, letters were being sent to recipients of incapacity benefit asking them to be reassessed to see whether they could work.

As my colleague, Mithran Samuel, pointed out yesterday, the government is pressing ahead with this without having fully evaluated a pilot reassessment process in Burnley and Aberdeen.

Worryingly, the government is allowing the dissemination of misleading - even malicious - propaganda insinuating that many DLA recipients are on benefits for life.

That may be the case - but with good reason, and one conveniently ignored. A glance at the government's own DLA website suggests that, in order to claim the allowance, the condition of a claimant has to be so serious that there is little chance of them working again.

Even those on the lowest threshold have conditions that are, at best, life-limiting.

Like any system, the DLA is open to abuse, but to imply that two million claimants are coasting along on a state-funded magic carpet, their lives unquestioned, is flawed.

Perhaps we ought not be surprised. Energy minister Greg Barker was reported at the weekend as telling an audience at the University of South Carolina: "We are making cuts that Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s could only have dreamt of."

There's something to be proud of.

Picture: Rex Features

Anyone who has read the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly or has seen the eponymous film (pictured) will doubtless have been horrified by the effects of locked-in syndrome. 

The story concerns the then editor of Paris Match, Jean-Dominique Bauby, who developed the condition that left him only with the ability to communicate by blinking one eye. His mind was intact, the rest of his body immobilised.

Despite being treated to Bauby's black humour, it is almost impossible for the reader or viewer to comprehend, let alone appreciate, the change in the author's life.

Which is why it is important that a piece of research from France has been published to challenge assumptions. The study shows that 72% of patients with locked-in syndrome are happy, with only 7% wanting help to take their own lives.

Some people do recover from the condition, and the BBC website carries an interview with a woman who did.

Whichever way we view this - thankfully rare - condition, it is a warning for any of us who might be tempted to make assumptions about a person's mental state. But it also has implications for the assisted suicide debate.

New Scientist has more on the study's findings and implications.

Picture: c.Focus/Everett/Rex Features

The Observer has published an interesting debate on whether the comedian Frankie Boyle is actually funny. If you have a disability, you are likely to say no; if you don't have one, you will feel the same. But that's just my view.

The "no" camp listed Boyle's indiscretions, such as his comments about Aids, Down's syndrome and, more recently, Katie Price's son, Harvey. But I was more interested in what the "yes" lobby had to say. 

When Channel 4 was launched in 1982, part of its remit was to offer challenging television. There was no mention of including a huge dollop of voyeurism. A generation on, this seems to have changed if the replacement for Big Brother - a reality show about physical disfigurement - lives down to expectations.