Thread by @criptacular

This is good. But I have many thoughts.
A thread.

https://twitter.com/Independent/status/1023350420419305472

(1/12) As stated by @MrsNickyClark - this might be something positive but it's more of a U-turn than anything else. The current Government were busy making the criteria for badges harder before making a full 180 degree turn and putting a fun sounding spin on it.

(2/12) Not only this, but it's a U-turn put in place because a legal action was put into place regarding discrimination of an autistic man who lost his badge after 30 years.

This was a fight we won. Not something handed to us. Stop framing it as such.

disabilitynewsservice.com/charities-help…

(3/12) Under PIP, so many individuals - including those who are autistic and have mental health difficulties - lost their blue parking badges. Will these be returned? I doubt it.

Under current "reviewing" systems I see an increase in applications but not in badges handed out.

(4/12) Every article I've read about this reinforces the idea of this being about disabled people getting into work.

Unfortunately they avoid the reality that disabled and neurodiverse people also have lives.

It reinforces the idea that work is liberating to the disabled.

(5/12) Btween PIP and attitudes around badges from our government, the spin points towards a statement that "the only good disabled person is a working one" when many of us can't.

For physically disabled, neurodiverse and mentally ill people, the workplace may be inaccessible.

(6/12) It's great being able to get to places, but it's unhelpful if those places don't put measures in place to ensure we can actually spend time in there without causing undue harm to ourselves.

(7/12) Unless we change the rhetoric, this idea will only reinforce the idea of disabled people "faking it".

Badges do nothing when invisibly disabled people are frequently confronted as to the reality of their disability.

Visibly disabled people don't get it easier.

(8/12) There's a pervasive culture that undermines all of this, and seeing more invisibly disabled people using disabled parking spaces - that they need - without changing ideas around disability openly, will only make abled/NT people think more people are faking it to park easy.

(9/12) Badges are great.

But they're not helpful when:

We can't get support anyway,
Support is so easily stripped from us,
People will still accuse us of faking it, undermining our health and validity,
People think of parking spaces as the only access arrangement we need.

(10/12) Not only that but this has to force the disabled community to come to terms with the difficulties faced between invisibly and visibly disabled people, and confront our ideas of who has it "worse".

Predominantly because there's never enough disabled parking spaces.

(11/12) We're gonna need more disabled parking spaces.

Bets on they aren't gonna make more of those and we'll try to fight each other over who's more valid, who's more "deserving" of parking there.

It's a small step forward but causes its own problems...

(12/12) ...especially when people don't often think of mental health difficulties and neurodiversity as 'disabling'/disabilities or valid of that kind of support.

Even within their own communities.

Cultures need to change to make the best effect of these.

@threadreaderapp unroll pls