PHIL FRIEND

Let me start with Mark Mardell. Mark is a former BBC journalist — World Affairs Editor, North America Editor. He has Parkinson’s disease. Last October, he arrived at Istanbul airport to catch a Turkish Airlines flight home to London. He’d checked in. He was at the gate. And then he was told he couldn’t board. Turkish Airlines had a policy buried in their small print: Parkinson’s was the one condition — just Parkinson’s, not heart disease, not diabetes — requiring passengers t

I hadn’t been to NAIDEX for a long time. Years, in fact. So when I wheeled into the NEC in Birmingham last week, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. What I found was extraordinary. And not just for the reasons you might think. Standing or sitting room only I was there to speak. Three of us on a stage — me, Simon Minty, and Abbie Brown — on the subject of employment. The stage was open to the exhibition floor. There were stands all around us, people rolling by, the general hub

It's been a grim week for disability news. Access to Work is in crisis. One disability organisation found that support hours for their clients dropped by 82% in three years. Inaccessible railway stations are locking millions of people out of travel, employment, and healthcare. Benefits reform is creating real fear for hundreds of thousands of families. If you've been following the headlines, you could be forgiven for feeling like disability is under attack. But step back for

In this post, I reflect on a thought-provoking article by Rachel Botsman and explore what her ideas mean for disabled people navigating work, isolation, and connection in a post-pandemic world. During COVID, the world stayed home. Work went online, meetings went virtual, and life became more accessible for many disabled people. What had previously been dismissed as “unworkable” – remote jobs, flexible hours, online events – became normal almost overnight. In her RSA article