Gloomy Bird

07/09/2026

This is what broke up a 10 year amazing relationship for me.
My amazing person, who was my person.
She was perfect for me.
She accepted me as I was.
But if I married her, not even married but if we lived together. She would be financially responsible for me.
I wanted to marry her.
Spend my life with her but not even being able to move in with each other to see how that would go.
To feel out each other that way.
For her to become automatically my sole career.
That is what we are doing to people.
Taxpayers are going to spend the same amount regardless.
As we just wont marry, we don't do this to someone.
So all you are saving is well nothing.
All you are doing is making people who's lives are already bloody miserable to be also alone.
Nice job Australia.
This is a 120 year old rule that needs to be revised as things have changed.

07/09/2026

I was 26 when I had my accident.
I spent 4, almost 5 years looking for a cure until one of my Doctors sat me down and pointed out looking for a cure has left me completely broke and pulling at strings.
I had tried everything, even faith healing and having to be sat down with an almost intervention from my family Doctor was heartbreaking.

I saw a therapist for a few months afterwards, as I came to grips with how I had to live with this disorder.

I then spent the next 15 years trying to start my own businesses, work online, work anywhere so I could get off disability payments and have control over my own life.

I am 48 now.
6 weeks ago after failing at trying to work from home, and failing even that, I had a crash.

A major crash realizing that I have to accept I can not work.
That working causes so much stress on my mind and body that all I end up doing is working and recovering.
This is the cycle I kept finding myself in.
Not resting on the weekends.
Not going away on holidays when I take a week off.

( there will be people saying but this is what everyone does but no, no it is not. Recovering is not the same as resting)

Recovering. Trying to get myself back to a stable state where the pain was not the only thing that I could concentrate on.

This is not just my story.
This is a lot of other peoples stories.

The way the media portrays people on disability is disgusting.
Do you think we have not tried?
Do you think we love struggling to wrestle between eating a meal a day and managing the cost of our ongoing medical costs.

The thing is our lives are worth living.
What is wrong with society is we live and work in an ableist society.
No matter what companies do or say, even when they discuss or even hire disabled people we are all one sick day away from being a liability.

I don't blame employers.
You can not really employ a staff member that sneezed last night and now can not get out of bed for a few days.
That is not sustainable to their business.

I don't know what the answer is as I am ok some days.
I can still work, some days.

I can not decide what day that is, I only know on the day.
I am lucky that I have some good days with my condition.
A lot of other disabled people have no good days, they struggle but they have a life that is worth it to live.

All life is precious but what is not right.
What needs to stop.
Is people saying horrible s**t about disabled people because there are a few criminals that are taking advantage of our systems.

This has to stop.

It makes every disabled person feel attacked.
It makes us feel like we constantly have to prove we are disabled enough.
We do not want to have to live like we do.

We do because it is the only choice we have in a world not designed for us.
Stop telling people online that your tax dollars should not have to pay for our lifestyle.
The disability pensions and old age pensions are there for you to.

Life is unpredictable.
You could do everything right your entire life and still end up with nothing.
It is called social insurance for a reason.
It is there to catch you if you fall to.

Just remember that.
It is not just for us but it is also there for you.

05/09/2026

I hear this so hard. I have spent 22 years trying to fight the fact i am disabled.
I spent 7 years trying to cure and find a cure.
I spent the next 15 years trying to find a way to support myself that was not me relying on disability payments.
It is how broken the world is that people like us have to go through this ( some longer than other, i am stubborn) because we want to contribute.
We don't want to be living on handouts that don't even keep us fed, let alone be able to ( god forbid) have fun once in a blue moon.
This is what I have decided to do myself and I am so happy to see someone else has posted exactly my thoughts.
You are a amazing person. Never ever let yourself think you are not and never give up.
I am going to be spending the rest of my life fighting for those of us that are not able.

Link crediting source in comments

04/09/2026

Is the NDIS backlash political, or is the NDIS actually broken? Honest answer: both.

I've been digging into where all this "NDIS is broken" talk is coming from. Turns out it's not one simple answer.

The NDIS does have real problems. It was built on diagnosis, not on what people actually need day to day. Costs have grown way faster than anyone planned for, heading toward $70 billion instead of a sustainable level. Families have long complained about a "postcode lottery," where plans get slashed with barely any explanation. None of that is political spin. Disability advocates admit it too.

But here's where politics comes in. Governments have a long history (going back to the "dole bludger" days of the 1970s) of using public frustration to build support for cuts that go further than the actual problem calls for. Right now that looks like citing a stat that "6 in 10 Australians think the NDIS is broken" to justify cutting 160,000 people off the scheme.

So the real problems are genuine. But they're also being used as a lever to push through cuts that hit a lot harder, and land on a lot more people, than fixing those problems alone would require.

Fixing a badly run assessment process is fair. Kicking 160,000 people off and painting anyone upset about it as wanting a blank cheque is a different thing entirely.

Both things are true at once. That's the part that gets lost in the noise.

03/09/2026

"The free ride is over." "I work and pay tax, why should I support you."

I want you to sit with those sentences for a second. Because I've heard a version of them almost every week of my life as a disabled person. And I need to tell you where they actually come from.

→ In 1920s Germany, before the N**i party even existed, there was a word for people like me: "unnütze Esser." Useless eaters.

→ During WWI, when food ran short, disabled and mentally ill people in institutions were the first to have their rations cut. Because they weren't "earning" their place at the table.

→ Newspapers ran actual cost comparisons. A price tag, in Reichsmarks, next to a disabled life. Next to it, the cost of a "productive" one. This was mainstream. Respectable. Printed in a country full of universities and liberal values.

→ By 1939, that idea had been repeated so many times, in so many ordinary conversations, that doctors could quietly sign a form and send a disabled person to be gassed. It was called Aktion T4. At least 70,000 people were murdered in the first two years alone. Somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 by the war's end.

→ Most of them were told they were being taken somewhere for treatment.

I am not saying a Facebook comment is a gas chamber.

I am saying this:

"Why should I support you" and "useless eater" are the same sentence. One just has better PR.

Both start in the exact same place.

Deciding that a disabled person's right to exist is conditional. Conditional on cost. Conditional on what we give back. Conditional on someone else's approval.

That idea doesn't need a war, or a party, or a decade to do damage. It just needs to be normal. It just needs enough people nodding along in comment sections, at dinner tables, in tabloid headlines, until nobody blinks anymore.

History already showed us exactly where that road ends.

I am asking you
***** please*****
to stop walking down it with us on your tongue.

We are not useless eaters. We are not a free ride. We are people. Full stop.



( image Bunker No. 17 in artillery wall, in world war II used by Germans as improvised gas chambers in Fort VII in Poznań)

02/09/2026

Link crediting source in comments

02/09/2026

It is comments like this that show how out of touch a lot of Australians seem to be about disability support.
I guess growing up on disney and hollywood films where someone finds a person with a disability and accepts all of their medical issues and a lifetime of mental issues that someone accepts all of this.
They see us as the beautiful souls we are and then, ( in this economy) decides they are 100% behind being the financial supporter of your life.
I am sure it has happened maybe a few times but I can tell you right now, I am living the exact opposite of this reality.
I found my person and when she and I realized if we lived together, ( not even got married mind you) but just lived together with the amount of income she earns I would be cut off from the pension.

This just means we never got past that hurdle as that is a fu***ng hell of a lot to ask anyone.
This is why the Human Rights commission has flagged time and time again that means testing of disabled people when they go into a relationship is wrong and causes people to suffer from domestic abuse and stay with their abusers as they have no agency.
No independence.
Coupled with the fact that it costs anywhere up to and beyond 50% more for us to live a normal life compared to people that are not disabled.

But yeah sure, this chump believes in fairy tales and thinks I don't deserve a real chance at a relationship.
Because I am disabled I am no longer human I guess.
Lance McCallum MP

29/08/2026

Imagine being disabled in the modern world.
Finally finding someone who actually likes you for you and accepts your disability.
Only if you have a relationship with that person you are cut from your disability payments and become their financial responsibility.

This leads to very vulnerable people ending up in abusive relationships.

This leads to relationships that do not last purely because the disabled person can not support themselves.

This leads to breakups and depression.

This leads to disabled people losing their self-worth and independence.

Apparently we are fine with this as a society and we say disabled people should be grateful.

We as a society throw pennies and force disabled people into relationships we would never want or choose to be in ourselves.

This is a struggle that every single disabled person has in Australia.

Yet we are told, we are lucky.
Do you think we feel lucky?

27/08/2026

Did you know it costs around 50% more for a disabled person to live a normal poor persons life than an able-bodied person?

The recent dob in a disabled person and following disabled people on social media to "catch them out" is one of the most despicable acts an able bodied person can do.

Disabled people are not the reason the cost of living is spiraling.
While you are struggling putting food on the table imagine if on top of that you had 50% less funds because your body needs were different?

We have always existed and to be clear ( and I do hope you never have to have this possibility happen to you) you have a 25% percent chance of getting a disability in your working years.
You have a 100% chance of being disabled if you live to your natural old age.
100% chance.. yes you will end up old and disabled.

So think on how you treat people with disabilities because one day, my able bodied detectives, this will be you.

23/08/2026

Ever wonder why your feed is full of "NDIS fraud" videos lately?

It's not an accident.

Platforms like TikTok are built to reward outrage.

The angrier a video makes you, the more you comment, share, and watch.

The algorithm loves that.

So it keeps feeding you more.

One dodgy, out of context story about "welfare fraud" can get millions of views.

Meanwhile, the real everyday struggles disabled people face just trying to access basic support? Barely seen.

Researchers have flagged this for years.

Hate speech targeting disabled people's right to support (even their right to exist) keeps showing up online, again and again.

And right now, Australia's hate speech laws don't even properly cover disability.

This isn't a fair fight.

It's an algorithm profiting off outrage, using disabled people's lives as bait.

Next time you see one of these videos, ask yourself: who benefits from you being angry?

Then scroll past.

Go find a disabled creator telling their own story instead.

💙 Share this if you agree disabled people deserve better than being algorithm bait.
(photo of a watercolor shaped diamond in red and link hues that the owner of this page drew as he is trying to learn how to paint and atm he sucks at it.)