I'm on the proofs again.

It's not my best skill and it's great to have some help, but inevitably I keep finding things and so do they.

When it comes to being Surplus to Requirements, some ask 'Where's your proof?' and 'How do you know it will happen like this?'

It's fiction of course, so the real answer is I don't. I'm just using my observations of history and our current society to feed a story of what I think could, all too easily, happen.

After all, it's happened before. People have been surplus to requirements in other places and situations, often without the world noticing very much until it was too late. Amongst the first people to face the Nazi gas chambers were disabled people. Those killing machines may have been switched off, but for many people with disabilities the air is just as toxic.

The debate about the cost of old age is also a live one. My father's generation has lived much longer than he expected. He is now 93 having been born in 1931 in London. He has a life long disability. In fact I first learnt about ableism from him: those attitudes that not-yet-disabled people have that exclude disabled people from mainstream life.

You'll find ableism and ageism throughout the media of all kinds. Added to those pervasive attitudes we now have proof, if you need it, that the right to die soon extends to people being surplus to requirements in those countries that have already passed similar laws. The extension of criteria meant to 'keep people safe' to embrace a wider cohort of people is already happening in countries like Canada and the Netherlands.

As I make my mollusc like pace through omitted punctuation and other small errors, I think about the big ones that a society can make that it may not be possible to row back from. All the ingredients are there. It may be fiction now but I'm not alone in thinking we might soon have proof.

Janet Lees, 7th December 2024, Longdendale.