Hi there. It's been a while. It's over four years since I last troubled The Post with my tales of being carer for my wife, and eight years since I did so regularly. Inevitably, however, there comes a point when you run out of words you can assemble in some sort of order on a specific subject and then read back while still thinking 'other people should see this'. But a lot has happened since then. Raven's condition has changed, our lives have changed, I got diagnosed with Autistic Spectrum Disorder. Oh, and we, in Great Britain, got ourselves a shiny new Government.

Obviously, we have an international, if not an intergalactic, readership to address. To give you as much detail as I can manage while still retaining your attention I'm going to frame this in Star Wars terms for you, although it's not a franchise I'm that familiar with so it won't be totally accurate. Essentially, the Dark Side have been in power for about a decade after a brief spell during which they formed a surprising coalition with the Ewoks. During the last ten years Darth Vader was replaced by a series of Darth Morons, each somehow stupider than the last. It is the stupidity and selfishness of new leadership that has paved the way for the rebel alliance, even though nobody really likes the rebel alliance any more. Chewbacca has been thrown out of the alliance because of some things he said and Han Solo is now being played by the regional manager of a chain of discount wardrobe outlets. Worse still, we all knew that they had basically got into power by cosying up to the right wing media run, I imagine, by Jabba the Hut. I've pretty much just seen the first film.

For some reason while running the empire under the banner of self-interest and evil, The Dark Side continued to operate a department who, among other things, provided support to people whose health meant they were unable to work. You'd think they'd have got rid of that pretty quickly but I guess they got distracted when Liam Neeson turned up, so instead they just made it harder and harder to interact with to the extent that the whole process was draining and distressing for the people most in need of support, so much so that some of them actually died while waiting for support, or died after they had been told they couldn't have any. There's no Star Wars bit here, just the brutal question of whether a British Government caused some of its most vulnerable citizens to die due to ineptitude or intentional policy.

Anyway the rebels have won for now so we'd all sort of hoped they'd start looking after people a bit better, because they are the side who aren't evil. The trouble is Luke Skywalker has started wearing black and is going around saying his dad had a point. They've decided to carry on running the helping-the-vulnerable department but they're using to be just as mean as Darth Tax Evader was and they've started implying pretty strongly that Yoda was so small because of his drug habit. And that's enough Star Wars

So this is where you join me, with a government of theoretical good guys announcing that its plan to sort out the economy is to blame sick people and shout 'get back to work, slackers' at them, knowing that his Majesty's loyal opposition (that's the formal name for the biggest losers) would do the same thing only worse. Aware that my wife felt dejected, belittled and unimportant, and presuming that these feelings were mirrored in many others in similar positions, I wondered what we could possibly do about it. Then I remembered Grainne MaGuire. Grainne is an Irish comedian and comedy writer. In 2016, when some of us were busy making terrible political decisions, the Republic of Ireland was considering legislation to legalise abortions. At this point I should just quickly point out that the end of less level boss character in Ireland is called the Taoiseach, which I think is crudely pronounced tee-shuck, and is clearly a much more fun title than Prime Minister. We have a succession of boring, grey leaders in this country and it's no wonder if we just call then Prime Minister. I imagine the Taoiseach has a special cloak and possibly a pet dragon. Anyway, the Taoiseach at the time was a guy called Enda Kenny, which sounds like a pronouncement in South Park. Grainne reasoned that, as he was head of the government and the government held sway over what she could do with her own reproductive organs, they ought to be kept up fully in the picture. So she decided to tweet Enda with updates on her periods.

I don't have the profile of a writer and performer with TV and radio credits so I don't expect to get anything like the traction Grainne got, but I thought there was something in this nonetheless. Our Prime Minister needs updating on how my wife's health really affects her. He also needs a better title, so I've tried to work in a few fun nicknames for him to try. But the main object of the exercise has been that my wife and I sit down and work out what and when to tweet Keir Starmer about how her health affects her ability to work, or even just to function, and that's what I popped by to tell you. I'll let you know how it goes.

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