Crippen Cartoons cartoons at the cutting edge of disability

A flash of teeth, a crafty eye,

a manner bold and jaunty.

“Got a quote that I can use?

A story line which will amuse?

Some dignity that you can loose?

No task will ever daunt me?”

“Some pluck’s the thing, I’ll write it down,

with tragedy and pity.

Not quite the ticket, wrong tack too?

But this one is exactly you!

So, here’s what I’m prepared to do –

I’ll tell them that you’re pretty!”

“And will you pose in wheelchair bound –

our camera man’s a treasure.

He’ll have your clothes off in a flash,

Just show your scars and then we’ll dash,

To catch our deadline – make a splash.

It really was my pleasure!”

Description of cartoon for those people using screen reading software

A journalist and a photographer are interviewing a young black disabled woman. She is holding a document labelled ‘thesis’ and is telling the journalist: “My thesis challenges the stereotypes of disability …”. The journalist however is writing on his pad: “despite suffering from a tragic handicap, this plucky student triumphs against all odds!”

I thought that this title would grab your attention!

So, is sex different for Disabled people? Do we ‘do it’ like everyone else? Doesn’t the wheelchair get in the way? These and a thousand similar questions are at the forefront of people’s minds whenever the question raises its head. Of course, it’s different … it’s better!

Imagine utilising some of the aids and adaptations that we use. Never mind just jumping off the top of the wardrobe. Just wait until you’ve used the Wessex hoist position or lain on top of an anti-bedsore mattress (they vibrate!), or gone for a spin round the bedroom in your electric chair, two-up and naked. Sex is never the same again!

And of course, we have those people who really get off on us Crips. They call themselves ‘devotees’ or Acrotomophiles and are only able to get aroused with someone who has an impairment. The favorite seems to be with wheelchair users. Something about power/control here methinks?!

Another popular Fetishism is all about making it with someone who has a limb or part of a limb amputated and is called … you’ve guessed it, Amputee fetishism. Then there are the people who have an intense desire for their own partner to be an amputee. This is known as Acrotomophilia (I’m assuming that they don’t act on this?!).

The last one on our list is Apotemnophilia, which is an intense desire to be an amputee. They are also known as “wannabes.” Often wannabes act out their fantasies to be disabled through limb-binding and the use of loose clothing.

Each to their own is what I say.

Description of cartoon for those people using screen reading software

A young white male and a white female are naked in bed together. She is holding an artificial leg in her hand as she passes it over him. She is saying to him: “Do you mind if I get my leg over?!”

I’m looking for a villain, a real nasty piece of work,

someone who’ll make the public want to scream.

He’s got to be so gruesome, not at all like you and me,

so bad, they’ll even see him when they dream.

Our hero gets to battle him, so he’s got to be quite small,

in fact an evil dwarf could play the role.

Or he could be in a wheelchair, or maybe use a hook,

or with mental illness blackening his soul.

And could you make him hunch-back, with maybe just one eye,

or perhaps you’ve got a black one on your books?

With our hero tall and handsome, and most definitely white,

we’d want to make the most of how he looks.

Forget about equality, it’s not what people want,

distorting how we think is still the game.

We’re really good at stereotypes and reinforcing the belief,

that you must be evil – if you’re not the same.

Description of cartoon for those people using screen reading software

A young white female is walking towards a casting director holding out her invitation to audition for the part of the wicked woman in a film. However, the director is already escorting another young woman off the set. This other woman is a white disabled woman with a pronounced spinal impairment and uses a walking stick. Both of the woman look very similar with the same hair colour and clothing, but with one of them being obviously disabled. The director is saying to the late arrival: “Too late my dear – but we’ve already found someone who makes the perfect villain!”

I’ve been commission by Disability Arts Online (DAO) to create some new political cartoons. This is to specifically look at the changes being proposed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the negative impact that this will have on disabled people within the UK.

This is the first cartoon, published on the day that we leave the European Union …

https://disabilityarts.online/blog/dave-lupton/cartoonist-crippen-marks-our-exit-from-the-european-union-with-a-chilling-comment-on-inhuman-rights/

Don’t you just love labels?!

It’s almost as if society couldn’t continue to function unless we identify people by attaching those labels that categorise, and put us in boxes of types, colours, creeds, impairments, etc. Trouble is, quite a few of us fall into several categories and therefore require quite a few labels to keep the status quo happy.

If you agree to wear these labels, you’ll find that you’ll gradually get worn down, not just by the weight of them, but by what they represent.

“Me label you? Surely not!” is often the response by those people who need you to be kept in your place and identified as being one of those needy or vulnerable individuals (who then require segregating or being marginalised).

Oh, and the catch is that they can’t be seen. Clever eh?!

Description of cartoon for those people using screen reading software

An older white woman is handing out large labels with ‘tragic’ and ‘pathetic’ printed on them. Two other labels are by the side of her with ‘less able’ and ‘failure’ printed on them. A large sign above her reads ‘Department of Dependency and Care’. A black male and a white wheelchair user have labels already hung around their necks. The label on the black male reads, ‘nutter’ whereas the labels on the wheelchair user read ‘brave’ and ‘burden’. The woman is saying to them both: “Come along now – one more label and you’re ready to face the world!”

The Department for Works and Pensions (DWP) have received another humiliating defeat in the courts after they tried to defend their actions involving a huge drop in income for severely disabled people moving on to Universal Credit.

There had already been two previous high court decisions to protect claimants in receipt of severe disability premium against a drop in income under the new benefit. However, the government decided to spend more time and resources challenging these decisions rather than accepting them and paying the thousands of disabled people affected.

The cases were brought by two disabled individuals, known as TP and AR, who had sought justice after their benefit income was reduced by £180 a month when they were required to claim universal credit after moving to a new house in a different local authority area.

Responding to Wednesday’s decision, AR said: “… It is still so shocking to us that we have had to fight so long and so hard just to get the government to see that their policy is unfair.”

The DWP had proposed new regulations to prevent other severely disabled people moving on to universal credit and to compensate those who already had done so. But it decided those who had moved on to the new system before 19 January 2019 would get just £80 a month in compensation.

In May 2019 the court ruled again that this was unlawful after TP and AR launched another legal challenge to this decision.

So, what next? With Boris Johnson threatening to change the law and effectively prohibiting the courts from getting involved in government policies in the future, appeals like this could be a thing of the past. But we shouldn’t be too surprised. The Tories have a history of changing the law to suit their policies. Several years ago, Iain Duncan Smith managed to retrospectively change DWP legislation to reverse the outcome of a court of appeal decision and “protect the national economy” from a £130m pay-out to jobseekers deemed to have been unlawfully punished.

George Orwell was a few years out with his 1984 predictions, but this government seems intent on them becoming a frightening reality.

Description of cartoon for those people using screen reading software

Two disabled people are shown to be extremely pleased that they’ve taken the DWP to court again and won. One of them, a black male, is holding a document that states ‘Appeal upheld plus compensation and back-payment of benefits.’ Alongside of them stands Boris Johnson and an official from the DWP. Boris is holding a document that states ‘Page 48 proposes changes to law’. He is saying: “They won’t know what’s hit them when I take power away from the courts!” Above one of the disabled people, a young white man in a wheelchair, hangs the sword of Damocles with a label attached. The label reads ‘Page 48 of the Conservative manifesto’.

It was on a Monday morning that the builder came to call,

and took away the sign above the door.

He took away the office walls and made it open plan,

‘till we were all made equal – and what’s more …

On Tuesday came the new sign, with its lettering so smart,

A ‘Resource Centre’ now, the words proclaimed.

And we’ve all become the ‘Users’ at this new exciting place,

Oh, what a lot of progress we have gained!

On Wednesday came the cleaners with a bucket and a broom,

to sweep away the old style we were told.

They brushed out every corner, and made us shine like new,

it really was quite something to behold.

Come Thursday we ‘participate’, with members of the staff,

they tell us that equality’s the way.

We even see our care plans (which are usually locked up),

it’s really great that we can have our say

On Friday something’s different, staff are muttering in groups,

so perhaps we’re not as equal after all?!

We hear words like ungrateful and that we have rocked the boat,

now there’s a different sort of writing on the wall.

It was on a Monday morning that the builders came to call,

and put back the old sign above the door …

Description of cartoon for those people using screen reading software

An older white male is pushing a young Asian wheelchair user towards another white male who is putting up a sign. The sign reads ‘resource center’. On the floor at his feet is another sign that reads ‘day center’.

He is obviously replacing one sign with the other. The older male is saying: “Now you can tell people that you DON’T go to a day center!

I know that I go on a bit about charities, and I do realise that some have come a long way over the past decade and now involve Disabled people in their running, but I’m afraid that they still tend to get right up my nose!

By their very nature, many of them depend upon the general public feeling sorrier for us Crips than let’s say, abandoned kittens in Greece. And for society to feel this, we must be portrayed as tragic, but brave or plucky, and needing their help to overcome our awful handicaps. In this case ‘help’ is defined as giving money to those charities that claim to represent us. Having given the money, Mr and Mrs Public go away feeling that they’ve done their bit for society and that the problem of ‘the disabled’ has been sorted.

What in fact has happened is that the stereotypical beliefs that most people have about us Crips has been re-enforced yet again, making it even more difficult to get across our own messages about equality and rights. 

Job Creation

I’ve likened charities to job creation schemes for middle class non-disabled people, many who are looking to build up brownie points on their CV’s. “I spent a couple of years working for SPOOP” always goes down well at an interview for a job in the real world after their short stint with one of the bigger charities.

Changes

But things are changing, and not just because Disabled people have been successful in protesting about the corruptness of the messages that some charities give, but because of other changes within our society. The centre of these changes has been the introduction of the National Lottery. By buying a weekly Lottery ticket, the public feel that they are replacing the money that they used to put into the collecting tins. Interestingly the funding from the former National Lottery Charity Board to even mainstream organisations was dependent on their ensuring better access (physical and otherwise) for Disabled people. This was a major wakeup call for many organisations which might otherwise have not considered inclusion of Disabled people.

Scrutiny

This has created a problem for some charities and they are now struggling to survive. In fact, the word on the street is that a couple of the bigger charities are now under scrutiny by the Charities Commission as their income is only enough to pay for the organisation itself. They don’t have sufficient income any more to provide the help that they were originally set up for!

Gone are the days when one big national charity could provide its senior staff with interest free bridging loans whenever they wanted to sell their houses and move up-market (true!).

Description of cartoon for those people using screen reading software

A wheelchair user holding a placard that reads ‘Rights not charity’ is confronting a charity fund raiser. The fund raiser is the infamous Captain Pratt, clad in pink lycra with coiled, bouncy springs on his head, flippers on his feet and pom poms attached to a springy tail. Between them is a sign that reads ‘Captain Pratt still raising funds for the handicapped’. The Captain is saying to the young disabled guy: “What IS your problem?!”

I forget when the expression first got used, I think it was at some Direct Action event or other in the 90’s when there were crowds of us being corralled by the police (probably outside of Euston Station). And I think it was someone like Roy Webb who first coined it, with tongue firmly in cheek as the hundreds of boys and girls in blue tried to screen us from the general public! It’s funny how a silly expression like that will stick in your mind isn’t it?!

The general public’s perception of Disabled people generally is quite a strange one. I’ve lost count of the times when a non-disabled person has come up to me after a talk and has worked extremely hard at not using any term that identifies me as a Disabled person. And this is after I’ve described myself as being a Crip during my talk about disability cartooning. If they accidentally do mention the ‘d’ word, they then go into the most amazing verbal gymnastics, trying to ‘unsay’ the word!

Black Equality

A Black race equality trainer once told me that she had been running a workshop for some Local Authority or another, and one white middle- management type said to her, in response to her describing a negative situation she’d experienced: “But that’s just you looking on the black side of things!” Not meant as a racist comment I’m sure, and she didn’t take it as such, but she said that the look of panic that came over his face was a picture! “Oh my god; I’ve used the ‘B’ word” he was obviously thinking and probably sat there waiting for the ground to open and swallow him or a thunderbolt to strike!

Crip

It’s the same with us Disabled folk. We’ve been berating people for a while about not using terms like handicap or cripple etc., so that when we actually reclaim one of these words, like Crip, and use it in front of non-disabled people, it’s the equivalent of swearing in front of your granny!

Description of cartoon for those people using screen reading software

A row of riot police with shields held before them are standing in an unbroken line in front of a building hosting the Tory party annual conference. In front of them are a large group of disabled protesters with placards and banners saying ‘no more deaths’, ‘ATOS kills’ and ’30 plus disabled people die each day due to cuts’. They also have one hand painted red which they are waving in the air. Red leaflets are scattered over the ground which say ‘cuts kill’. A police officer is saying: “Do you get the feeling that they’re serious about this?!”

Never mind our complaints about ATOS and Maximus (the companies that have been responsible for wrongly assessing benefits claimants), the following information has been taken from the Blog of Timothy Meredith of Liverpool’s Political Soapbox and focusses on a more immediate issue.

IDOX Plc, a private company with shareholders mostly made up of American asset and financial management companies, is apparently responsible for the oversight, distribution, and counting of 90% of this country’s postal votes.

The other interesting thing to note about this company is that Peter Lilley, a Conservative MP and Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party until his appointment to the House of Lords in 2018, was also an IDOX director from 2002 to April 2018, right before his ascension to the Lords.

Why would anyone think it is acceptable for a private company, there to make a profit for the shareholders, with such obvious ties to a political party, be allowed anywhere near counting votes?

Well, it looks even more suspicious when it seems the first election IDOX used their systems for was the 2014 Independence Referendum (when the Conservative MP was still a director) where they were used in Scotland, and in just 2014, David Cameron sent a letter out to everyone on the electoral register telling them to sign up for postal voting.

Suddenly, it makes sense how Conservative MP Dominic Raab and Conservative Chief Propagandist Laura Kuenssberg can claim to have knowledge of postal vote results even before the election, when electoral law dictates the postal votes are not to be opened or looked at until the polling stations close at 10pm on election day.

One may be forgiven for thinking that the postal vote aspect of the general election was not conducted in an appropriate manner?!

Description of cartoon for those using screen reading software

Boris Johnson is standing in front of a sign that reads ‘General Election 2019’. In his hand is a victory speech. Two sinister looking men are standing alongside of him. They look like gangsters and are wearing dark grey coats with the collars turned up and slouch hats that are pulled down over their eyes. One of them is carrying a violin case with IDOX printed on it and the other one is handing some documents to Boris which has ‘Postal vote results’ printed on it. Boris is saying: “Tell your boss to look for his name in the New Year’s Honours list!”