I read yesterday evening of the apology issued by the Australian government to aboriginal members of the stolen generation, who I mentioned on Monday as a parallel for the disabled community. There hasn’t been too much said about it here, and it isn’t without controversy. It’s true that the removal of aboriginal people from there parents was wrong. Very few people would disagree with that, save perhaps for this berk, who I link to for the sake of fairness. But it does raise certain questions, such as, why should modern Australians have to feel guilty for the actions of their forebears? Why now? Will the Americans be apologising to the native Americans? To be sure, I think it’s a great move – if it helps to reconcile the two communities, then its fantastic! It’s a great step forward.

I must say, however, that I don’t think the same applies to the disabled community. If Mr brown or Mr rudd or anyone – for discrimination against disabled people is worldwide – suddenly decided to apologise to ‘the disabled’, such a gesture would be pointless. Discrimination against us has been happening for aeons, and we are also such a nebulous group as to raise the question of who you’d apologise too. Anyway, I don’t want anyone to apologise to me, for what would they apologise for? I’m very comfortable. Its quite difficult; I guess you can only go so far in drawing parallels.