Countrygirl
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https://www.theguardian.com/comment...a-me?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other#comment-127070649
You would be forgiven if, weighed down by the row over the Islamophobia embedded in the British press, you had missed Rod Liddle’s piece in the Sunday Times about disabled people, specifically those with myalgic encephalomyelitis or ME.
The headline – “Always fatigued, yet they never tire of claiming their malady really is a virus” – gives a fair hint at the level of bile the piece contains, but to summarise: Liddle uses the resignation of a researcher into ME, Michael Sharpe, to peddle the well-worn trope that the condition is “all in the mind” – or as he puts it, “that their complaints about a virus have no basis in fact”. It has understandably distressed many people with ME, with the piece going viral on social media.
Hiring people like Liddle does nothing but add toxicity to the already rotting discourse, contributing to an ever-more poisonous climateThe background to this is complex but in brief, Sharpe led research in 2015 that controversially said many patients with ME are being held backby their own failure to “push themselves to be ready