Additional Needs

Offended

Posted by Ger Renton on 17th December 2018 Additional Needs, Advice & Support, Disabilities

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This Christmas there’s a lot of talk about offensive lyrics in Christmas songs.

“Baby it’s Cold Outside”- which I have always believed is about a courting couple who really would like to spend the night together but due to society they really can’t, as they aren’t married.

Yes, there is another way to interpret that song today, in this day and age but this song came from the 1940s when women were encouraged to marry, have children and be good housewives.

“The Fairytale of New York” - I have honestly never really heard what the heck Shane MacGowan says to Kirsty MacColl but we all know her retort back to him and yes it’s a terrible word but I think it’s meant in jest, in anger even, another way to tell him to f**k off, at a time when people used such words in that way, again it was a different era, the 1980s.

To me they are songs and they are great songs, that’s my opinion.

To you they may be offensive as all heck and that’s your opinion; which I am ok with.

What I cannot and never will understand is the lack of anger, offensiveness (is that even a word?!) towards the treatment of our little community within society.

No one seems to be offended when the disabled parking is all used up because someone needed to “get something real quick”.

No one seems to be offended that we’ve to change our kids and young adults on the floor of a dirty bathroom.

No one seems offended that in 2018, we still have to ring venues to see if they are wheelchair friendly- guess what?

An awful lot are not.

Yes they have the standard abused disabled toilet but there’s no room for a wheelchair in the venue (and often in the disabled toilet)

No one seems offended that our children are on endless waiting lists for vital therapies.

No one seems offended that the carers of our little island are on their knees with providing care 24 hours a day with no outside help.

No one seems offended that the budget cuts to services means that there are more and more people on lists and less and less getting services.

No one seems offended that our elderly are lying in hospital beds in the corridor of our overworked understaffed hospitals.

No one seems offended that there aren’t enough specialised schools in our country for kiddies who learn differently.

No one seems offended about a whole lot of important, real issues that affect people's day to day lives ...

No one seems offended until it comes to Christmas songs.

And yes, you can tell me its inline with the ‘me too movement’ if those songs were written today, I would agree with you all but those songs have nothing to do with that movement,they are songs written from a bygone era.

The issues I’ve listed are damn good reasons to get offended, so why not get behind them instead and shout from the rooftops of how offensive it is in this day and age to treat our disabled community as second class citizens.