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Frances Ryan
@DrFrancesRyan
Guardian columnist and journalist. Commentator of the Year 2024. Author of Who Wants Normal? and Crippled. E: frances.ryan.freelance@guardian.co.uk
theguardian.com/profile/france…
Joined May 2011
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    Frances Ryan
    @DrFrancesRyan
    Apr 17, 2025
    Four years on an iPhone in bed later, Who Wants Normal? is finally out in the world today. Part memoir, part guide, it features 50+ of Britain’s best known disabled women. I hope it makes you laugh, possibly cry, and feel seen. Order all formats here: linktr.ee/WhoWantsNormal
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    Frances Ryan
    @DrFrancesRyan
    Mar 24, 2020
    YOU’VE BEEN EXPECTING DISABLED AND UNEMPLOYED PEOPLE TO LIVE ON THIS FOR YEARS.
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    BBC News (UK)
    @BBCNews
    Mar 24, 2020
    Coronavirus: ‘How is £94 a week going to pay anyone’s bills?’ bbc.in/2wphBff
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    Frances Ryan
    @DrFrancesRyan
    Jul 5, 2022
    They didn’t resign over Covid deaths. They didn’t resign over benefit cuts. They didn’t resign over Partygate. They didn’t resign over PPE. They didn’t resign over Brexit failure. They didn’t resign over deporting refugees. Spare us the praise for the ‘good’ Tories.
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    Frances Ryan
    @DrFrancesRyan
    Mar 28, 2024
    Fucking hell. A (mainstream, popular) photography company offered parents the chance to buy a school photo that didn’t include the disabled children. It really is a reminder just how much some of the public believe disabled people should be wiped from society.
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    BBC News (UK)
    @BBCNews
    Mar 28, 2024
    Parents offered class photo with no 'complex needs' pupils bbc.in/3xlYcdU
    1.9M
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    Frances Ryan
    @DrFrancesRyan
    Jun 25, 2023
    The Glastonbury crowd filling in for Lewis Capaldi when he needed help was such a beautiful moment. Anyone saying “it was heartbreaking” or “he shouldn’t have gone on” is seriously missing the point. Disability is not a bad thing to be hidden. It exists alongside success and joy.
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    Frances Ryan
    @DrFrancesRyan
    Aug 18, 2021
    Refugees are not the reason you can’t get a GP appointment or are languishing on the housing list. That’s the Tories.
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    Frances Ryan
    @DrFrancesRyan
    Sep 5, 2024
    The Pelicot case is the most horrific rapes I’ve ever read but I can’t stop thinking about this part. For years, she went to doctors for answers about memory loss. She must have felt like she was losing her mind. And her husband sat right next to her, knowing he was drugging her.
    He said his client, now divorced, had believed she had an illness nobody could explain and consulted several doctors, always accompanied by her husband, who blamed her symptoms on tiredness after looking after their grandchildren. Her three children and other relatives suspected she had Alzheimer’s disease.
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    Frances Ryan
    @DrFrancesRyan
    Jun 15, 2020
    Funny how it’s the Primark and TK Maxx queues that go viral on social media and not Waitrose and L.K. Bennett. Almost as if Britain’s class prejudice sees the working class as stupid and fair game to mock.
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    Frances Ryan
    @DrFrancesRyan
    Jan 12, 2022
    Say something principled in a working class accent and they’ll laugh at you. Say something deceitful in an Eton accent and they’ll make you Prime Minister.
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    Frances Ryan
    @DrFrancesRyan
    Jan 30, 2022
    The journalists who published the Rylan story will know very well he recently spoke out about feeling suicidal. And they went ahead with the story anyway. Taking a good person who has been vulnerable and exposing them to incredible stress is gutter behaviour.
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    Frances Ryan
    @DrFrancesRyan
    Apr 19, 2024
    There is no such thing as “a sick note culture.” There is a record high NHS waiting list, crippling housing costs, widespread food poverty, stagnant wages and inadequate benefit rates, a broken social care system, dire mental health services, and closed Sure Start centres.
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    Frances Ryan
    @DrFrancesRyan
    Oct 13, 2023
    I think of disabled people in conflicts. There are people in Gaza right now who need electricity to breathe or move. There are people who physically can’t make the long arduous journey to possible safety. Telling disabled people “24 hours to leave” is telling them to die.
    793K
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    Frances Ryan
    @DrFrancesRyan
    Jan 12, 2021
    We can talk about who the Tories paid for the child food boxes. We can talk about private firms profiteering off poverty. And we should. But I just keep thinking about the mum unpacking it - humiliated asking for help, and realising she still won’t be able to feed her kids.
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    Frances Ryan
    @DrFrancesRyan
    Feb 9, 2022
    There is no possible reason to end the legal requirement to isolate if you test positive for Covid. Coronavirus has not stopped being a highly contagious deadly disease. Clinically vulnerable people have not stopped existing. A politically motivated punt that will cost lives.