Disability Bitch and the big effort march

Readers, I hate to say it, but I have enjoyed the world this week. The disability fraternity has been extremely noisy, and I'm not just talking about Professor Stephen Hawking claiming there is no heaven. Again.

He also spoke of his admiration for the NHS and his support for universal healthcare, and explained theoretical physics was "one of the few areas in which disability is not a serious handicap."

Steady, Prof. Soon the British government will be hiring you as a disability employment consultant.

But, for once, Stephen Hawking has not been the most vociferous disabled person in the media this week. I don't know if you've heard, but there's been a march.

Last Wednesday, thousands of disabled people took to the streets to protest against Cuts to disability-related benefits and services. The march was called Hardest Hit because that's what the people attending claim to be. That's to say, more hard hit than any other group.

Actress and cake baker extraordinaire, Jane Asher, turned up. Minister for disabled people, Maria Miller, did not. And people wonder why I prefer baked foodstuffs to politics.

Not that anyone missed her, because police estimates suggested that between three and eight thousand people turned up. I love it when disabled people complain. A march full of disableds complaining about their lot is probably my ideal day out.

I didn't go, and not because I didn't want to. It's because, even though it was the shortest march in the history of the universe from Victoria Embankment to parliament, I didn't have the energy to get that far. Really, I didn't.

Readers, may I be frank: I believe the reaction to this march - or lack of reaction to it - is symptomatic of the way the impairment-challenged British public underestimate disabled people. How often do you hear people say that sentence, eh?

Sure, it got some column inches in the liberal newspapers, but overall the coverage was underwhelming compared to that afforded to, say, the student protests back in December. If they'd jeered at some members of the Royal Family, the story would have rolled on and on.

Eight thousand just doesn't sound very much when you compare it to the vast numbers on the streets protesting about student fees. But let's remember that when I got out of bed and stumbled into my kitchen to put the kettle on this morning, it was a minor miracle. Small in the grand scheme of things perhaps ... but rather impressive.

Getting four disabled people into the same pub to celebrate my birthday is always a bit of an effort; getting a dozen into the same bit of central London at the same time would've impressed me very greatly. Eight thousand in one place blows my cynical little mind.

It's not like everyone hopped on the tube. if only. There were accessible portable toilets delivered along the route of the march just to make this event happen. Think about that for a second. In the days when I used to attend major music festivals, I'd consider myself lucky if I saw one accessible loo on the entire site.

Whatever you feel about the political message of this march, the fact that it existed at all is a little bit cool.

On which note, I'm going for a lie down. I walked to my local park this morning and I'm now exhausted and won't be leaving the house for another week and a half. You know how it is. And if you're wondering why you haven't seen any disabled people on the streets for a while, it's because they're all indoors with the blinds drawn, recovering from Hardest Hit.

This week in social networking heaven, my followers and fans have mainly been talking about the Hardest Hit march, and Prof Hawking's atheist declarations. Oh, and the encounter I had with a random drunk who wanted to know what I had done to my toe.

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