God Bless us Every One!

As I frantically try to tie up as many loose ends as possible before tomorrow, I couldn't log off for Xmas (actually Dave is going to lock my computer in a drawer for 3 days!!) without a few seasonal thoughts.

The last two weeks have been mind-blowing. As soon as I launched the appeal fund for DLA research, it was as though the disabled and spoonie community went into overdrive. Were we all waiting for a focus? Did we all just decide that fighting was the only option left to us?

When my DLA rejection post went viral, it was as though the universe conspired to give our campaign a boost just when we needed it most.

We raised the first £2000 almost immediately. When I checked last, we were over £2,500 and donations are still coming in. The generosity, trust and optimism you are showing is overwhelming.

Over 200 people have volunteered to be "Constituency Reps" and send the research to their MP on the release date.

Charities, media and even politicians have rushed to help behind the scenes - the response has surprised no-one more than me.

On twitter, people are springing up with their own ideas for the New Year, ways to maximise the impact of the research or get our vital messages to peers before the House of Lords return to debate the welfare reform bill in the New Year.

Lib Dem peers have received literally hundreds of messages about Time Limiting ESA.

The change in attitudes and confidence is remarkable. Something seems to have convinced you all that we CAN do this, and the more of us that believe it, the more chance there is of it coming true.

It occurs to me that this IS the Big Society Dave. This IS a Movement for Change Labour!! Yet how ironic that none of you engage with it? Clearly this is not the kind of participation you were hoping for.
We won't go away. We won't all drift off once you use your privileges to force your incoherent bill through parliament.

We've learnt that we can DO this. We can do it on our own. We can build support and friendships, we can help each other out. We can network and every day that network grows. Every day more people learn about our fight and every day they join our campaign.

If we can do this in just over a year, can you imagine, Dave, how annoying we will be by next Christmas? Can you imagine just what a PR nightmare we will become? Is it not better to just engage with us now, before it's too late? Before you take a step you cannot turn back from? Before you introduce policies that are going to see a steady stream of cancer patients at soup kitchens and wheelchair users begging on the street? Does it really have to be this hard?

We are the Big Society. We are the Good society. We might even be Alarm Clock Britain and the Squeezed Middle - it really is time you considered that. We are a constituency of millions, we are intelligent and capable. It's time you considered that too.

So guys, pour a glass of eggnog, pull up an opiate and give yourselves the most enormous gold star!!

As The Broken of Britain so eloquently remind us - "Alone we Whisper, Together we Shout."

Have the happiest, most joyous of Christmases and every single one of us has the gift of knowing that we're not alone any more.