Dusty Wentworth

  Different governments are using different language, but the machinery underneath is becoming remarkably familiar. In Britain, we are told the disability benefits system must become more “affordable”. In America, work requirements are described as “community engagement”. In Australia, tighter control of the National Disability Insurance Scheme is presented as “securing” it for future generations. Different countries. Different slogans. Much the same machinery. Eligibility is narrowed. Assessments become more frequent. Claimants must provide more evidence. Payments are reduced, capped or frozen. Disabled people are divided between a protected minority considered sufficiently severe and everybody else, who must repeatedly prove that their limitations are real. When the same pattern appears across several countries at roughly the same time, dismissing it as coincidence is inadequate. Calling it a single secret global conspiracy would go beyond the evidence. Pretending that these poli...

I am 52 years old. Until I collapsed at home in October 2023, I was a working man — a retired infantry soldier and a bodyguard. Today, I am disabled, reliant on NHS services and adult social care, and desperately fighting to be a meaningful father to my three young children, aged ten, six, and two. My reliance is a burden my wife should not have to carry alone. Yet, I have exhausted every formal avenue available to obtain the structured care I need to participate in family life — not merely to exist alongside it. On 26 September 2025, I met with my local MP’s casework team to set out, in person, a catalogue of systemic failings I have experienced. These failures are not merely inconvenient; they reduce my independence, increase my isolation from my young family, and place an unnecessary, crushing strain on my wife, who bears the brunt of my complex needs. My detailed submission, outlining systemic failures and structural neglect, was intended to drive political action. Ten ...