³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

Crap News is the place on Ouch where we feature those poor, yet excellent, news stories about disability. They usually come from local newspapers but not exclusively - and seem to be the result of a journalist who wants to fill a bit of space in his/her publication. I suppose you could get angry but it's much more fun to just laugh at the gems that spew forth.

Our favourite Crap News today is from Workington's Times and Star:

... well I should jolly well hope not!

it's a story about a guy who, um, well basically he's going on holiday. The headline 'Guy goes on holiday' wouldn't be quite so interesting though.

Local man Jim Pearson is taking the tall ship Lord Nelson sailing from Belfast to Whitehaven. It's one of those disability ships that gives you an inclusive experience. Might be good, might not be, I'm not your biggest sailing fan so don't ask me.

The headline 'Disability won't stop Jim taking on his tall ship challenge' comes from a long pedigree of stories - the subtext being that his disability should stop him but it doesn't. Always it never stops them. I have this post apocalyptic dream occasionally where aliens come down to a planet earth that humans have destroyed. They try to find out more about us by going through our newspaper archives and discover all these stories about 'the disabled' who are always out there doing things. Brave things. Extreme things. They'll come away with the impression that disabled people were the most active people on the planet. Anyway, I'm distracting myself.

My favourite line in the article is: "Jim Pearson, 55, of Beacons Close, is setting sail on a tall ship despite being 30 per cent disabled."

Beautiful! It gets the localness in there nicely but also we get an insight into just how disabled he is - and that's 30 per cent.

I've just done a quick check round the table here at Ouch to see if anyone can put a figure on how disabled they are. Vaughan reckons he's about 20 per cent disabled because he lost his leg and probably has about 80% of himself left. Gideon (new boy) puts himself at 27 per cent whereas I know for a fact I'm 80 per cent disabled because it said so on my Disability Living Allowance form.

We hope Jim has a good sailing trip.