zotn🏳️‍🌈🇪🇺 🌻👨‍🦽🇵🇸 🇺🇦💚

We don't need this fascist groove thang! PWME, Disability activism/suicide prevention, Woke AF

[zotn🏳️‍🌈🇪🇺 🌻👨‍🦽🇵🇸 🇺🇦💚 @Zoootnew]

@MarcusW73076681 @BethDobbin @BBCSport @KatieFalkingham @andyburnham @YvetteCooperMP @tessamunt @Ed_Miliband @BBCNews @ThereForME_UK @wecrunchme There’s always one!☝️

[zotn🏳️‍🌈🇪🇺 🌻👨‍🦽🇵🇸 🇺🇦💚 @Zoootnew]

@areyoflight @RITB_ In 2018 when my ME became ‘very severe’ I said thank goodness I wasn’t around in the 30’s, I wouldnt have stood a chance at life. Thankful then…but no more, the narrative has changed. I’m scared for the future of people w disabilities now.

[zotn🏳️‍🌈🇪🇺 🌻👨‍🦽🇵🇸 🇺🇦💚 @Zoootnew]

@fletcher_biceps @DawnGlen2 @timelycryoshill The defining feature of ME is that 'pushing through' causes 'post-exertional malaise' (PEM) which reduces capacity further to a greater level of illness-disability. If you can push through fatigue as one SYMPTOM of illness, it's not chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS)

[Beth Dobbin @BethDobbin]

We’ve been blown away by the response to my interview with @BBCSport & @KatieFalkingham , thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to read and engage with it ❤️ millions of views across multiple platforms really is immense.

We have since written to @andyburnham , calling on the @UKLabour government to fund research into this horrific illness. I know there’s so much more we could say, but with limited capacity, we’ve tried to focus on the lack of funding, resources in the NHS and how much it’s actually costing the government.

As you can see on the slides, it has been drastically underfunded compared to other illnesses and it is currently costing the UK Government far more than it would cost to fund research. ME is most often a post-viral illness. Therefore, since the start of the Covid pandemic, we’ve seen cases increase drastically and they will continue to increase. We need funding into research urgently. With estimates of people with ME being around 1.35 million, this is a lot of lives destroyed.

I’ve had thousands of messages on multiple platforms since sharing my story so please bear with me ❤️

Thanks to @ThereForME_UK and @wecrunchme for the stats.

[zotn🏳️‍🌈🇪🇺 🌻👨‍🦽🇵🇸 🇺🇦💚 @Zoootnew]

@BethDobbin You can be bloomin proud of your advocacy around ME now too! In the 30 years of having this illness severely myself, your words have rung truer than anyone elses. "Days away from death" says it as it is, no drama. PLEASE rest and pace carefully now to minimise further harm

[Meidas_Charise Lee @charise_lee]

America take note! It’s not left vs right. It’s the rich vs the poor.

[Jon Wiltshire @JonWiltshire_]

A reminder to @Helen_Whately and other politicians hell bent on cutting critical services and support, that treating welfare reform as nothing more than a cost-saving exercise has very real human consequences.

In 2010, Scottish poet Paul Reekie took his own life, aged 48.

He left no suicide note.

Instead, on his desk were two letters. One informing him that his incapacity benefit had been stopped. The other informing him that his housing benefit had been stopped.

His GP subsequently raised his death as a warning about the consequences of welfare reforms.

This is what gets lost when politicians reduce disability, illness and poverty to numbers on a spreadsheet.

We're talking about people who depend on this support to survive. People already facing enormous challenges, who are then pushed further into poverty, insecurity and desperation by decisions made in Westminster.

Of course we should all want a welfare system that works better. But reform should be about improving people's lives, providing meaningful support and addressing the reasons people need help in the first place.

That means creating genuine opportunities for those who can work, removing the barriers that prevent them from doing so, and ensuring that those who can't work have the security, dignity and support they need to live fulfilling lives.

The measure of success can't simply be how much money the Treasury saves. It must be how many lives we improve, how many opportunities we create, and what happens to the people whose support is taken away.

The human cost of getting that wrong is irreversible.

[🕸️Dr.T, PhD @chydorina]

Ok....sure....but would anyone? I didnt wake up one day and decide to stop being a Biology professor at a major university, give up any chance of marriage and children, take on an 'identity' associated with derision and gaslighting and that would make others view me as weak, lazy, and crazy, stop doing pretty much everything that gave me pleasure (from travelling, to reading, to hiking) and turn my life into a world of pain, sickness, and loneliness.

Maybe it is somewhat easier for people to 'get' that it makes less sense for professional athletes than other people but the reality is that it make no sense for anyone to do this.

That people have been convinced that this is the norm and the reality amongst those with ME - is incredibly sad - incredibly harmful. Its hard for me to fathom how anyone can actually believe this.

[#MEAction Network UK @MEActNetUK]

Our thanks go out to @BethDobbin for speaking about her illness to raise awareness, even at the cost of her own health and for describing the impact of ME so vividly. Beth is bed bound for 22 hours a day.

[Jon Wiltshire @JonWiltshire_]

This is an extraordinarily disingenuous post from @Helen_Whately.

Let's be absolutely clear about what she's comparing here.

This isn't someone simply signed off sick.

To reach that £27,400 figure, the claimant would need to qualify for substantial disability support, including enhanced PIP for both daily living and mobility, alongside Universal Credit health support and thousands in housing assistance.

We're talking about someone with significant disability-related needs, not your average person off work with a sick note.

And PIP isn't even an unemployment benefit. You can receive it while working!

But here's where we should flip the argument...

If SIX MILLION full-time workers are earning less than this carefully constructed example, why isn't Whately asking why millions of people are being paid so little?

Why aren't we talking about employers paying poverty wages, the soaring cost of housing, or an economy in which working full-time increasingly fails to deliver financial security?

And why aren't we scrutinising the extraordinary concentration of wealth at the top, rather than attacking some of the most vulnerable people in society?

It's far easier to turn struggling workers against disabled people than to confront the economic system that's failing them both.

That's the real scandal here.

[Zack Polanski @ZackPolanski]

Here's something the media is hardly talking about.

This Government is set to oversee the steepest fall in living standards in modern times - unless they change course fast.

In less than two weeks Labour faces a stark choice - will they tax wealth and back the majority?

[Adam @ABrokenBattery]

“I can’t even get dressed by myself anymore or press buttons or things like that.”

9 year old Annabelle describes the impact of #MECFS which she developed following Covid, and how exertion can make her symptoms worse. #LongCovid

[Clive Lewis MP @labourlewis]

Democracy only works when people have access to the facts. That's why I'm supporting @ChrisGPackham's petition calling for a UK-wide public briefing on climate and nature risks.

Help us reach 100,000 signatures:
https://t.co/aRWsZ9TC1S

[Clive Lewis MP @labourlewis]

In his conference speech, Andy Burnham said that crude cuts to welfare are not the Labour way. That we need to invest in people and their success.

He’s right.

This should mark a reset in our approach to welfare, including to benefits for disabled people.

I recently signed @NeilForPoole’s letter calling for Labour to protect the living standards of disabled people by rejecting poverty-inducing cuts.

This is an opportunity to show disabled people who’s side we’re on. A return to the Labour way.

[Barry Malone @malonebarry]

Some things the British media and political class have reacted hysterically to during Israel's genocide:

- The Maccabi Tel Aviv fan ban
- Bob Vylan
- Gary Lineker
- The Green Party motion

Something they have not reacted hysterically to:

- The genocide

[Adam @ABrokenBattery]

My #MECFS Scandal explainer has just hit half a million views on YouTube.

I remember worrying that 27 minutes was too long and nobody would watch it. I never expected it to get so many.

Thank you to everyone who shared it!

Here’s the trailer👇

[zotn🏳️‍🌈🇪🇺 🌻👨‍🦽🇵🇸 🇺🇦💚 @Zoootnew]

@SamaHoole Thanks for this heroine story. I was brought up on white bread and margerine, 1/5 of a fray bentos pie with 1/5 tin of processed peas and chip pan chips. Looking back I think the milk at break was the little good nutrition I got. Im 5 foot nothing!

[Adam @ABrokenBattery]

“ME/CFS patients are deeply inconvenient.”

George Monbiot on how people with #MECFS need long term support, but governments and insurers have an incentive to “brush it away” and dismiss patients leaving them “massively mistreated, maligned” and “blamed for their illness”.

[Jane McMullen @jane_mcmullen]

Me 3 weeks ago, vs today. Now I can’t even sit up, let alone walk into a TV studio.

After getting sick 4 years ago, I was so lucky to regain enough functionality to be able to work. This crash is a reminder of just how violently even “moderate” Long Covid & ME can fluctuate.