Theres much anger and misinformation towards disabled people

Hello David and J,

I listen to Radio 4 a lot and have found some of the recent reporting and opinions very misleading and upsetting. The BBC, and the media generally, often try too hard to portray disability in a positive way, but we cannot all live up to the standards set by paralympic athletes or disabled people shown carrying out high-powered jobs in TV dramas (which, after all, are not real anyway). This leads people without much experience of living with a disability to believe that any disabled person can do these things, given the right support. What they don’t seem to understand is that the right support is rarely available and would be very expensive, which is why successive governments have chosen to pay people benefits instead. Now the people receiving these benefits are being portrayed as the villains, rather than the victims, of this system by the same politicians who, not so long ago, were touting for their votes.

Sorry to sound so negative – I live in hope of happier times. (And Radio 4 is not all bad – they have, after all, employed Peter White as a presenter for many years, and his voice is always the sound equivalent of sunshine on a cloudy day!)

Best wishes,

Wendy