Dusty Wentworth

  Clacton Deserves an Election, Not a Political Boycott Nigel Farage resigning as MP for Clacton and forcing a by-election looks, to many, like political theatre. It is difficult to see it any other way. He is under serious scrutiny over a reported £5 million personal gift from Christopher Harborne, with questions raised about whether it should have been declared and what the money was for. Farage denies wrongdoing and insists there is no case to answer. That matters. Allegations are not convictions, and scrutiny is not guilt. But the timing is politically obvious. A damaging story is circling, pressure is building, and suddenly the people of Clacton are being asked to act as a jury in a by-election Farage himself has engineered. So yes, criticism of Farage is fair. Calling it a stunt is fair. Calling it a hissy fit, as Kemi Badenoch reportedly has, may be politically blunt, but it is not difficult to understand the sentiment. But that is not the real issue. The real issue is this:...

  A World Not Designed For Us There is a window in my room. On the days when my body refuses everything else, when getting up is impossible and the world has shrunk to four walls and a ceiling, I sit and watch through it. If the sun is out, I see people passing. Children playing. Ordinary life unfolding at a distance. It feels close enough to touch, yet completely out of reach. This is what disability looks like from the inside. Not laziness. Not a lifestyle choice. Not a calculation about whether work pays more than support. It is a window. And sometimes, no matter how strong your will is, you simply cannot get to the other side of it. I live with PTSD from military service, fibromyalgia, Functional Neurological Disorder and acquired brain damage following a ruptured brain aneurysm. There are weeks when my body confines me completely. The world carries on without me. The isolation is not just physical. It reaches back into eleven months of hospital admissions and brings that da...