Woman Accused of Faking Disability by Nadine Dorries Has Painful Foot Operation

Back in October, I blogged on Nadine Dorries MP’s attack on MsHumprheycushion, a critically-minded constituent who has used a blog and Twitter to register her discontent. Ms Cushion was off work on sick leave, awaiting operations on her feet for arthritis so that she can get back to her job as a carer. Dorries – helped by party-hack blogger Paul Staines (and perhaps Tory Bear) – decided to smear Ms Cushion as a “benefits cheat” who was pretending to be disabled in order to get welfare payments she should not be entitled to receive.

Ms Cushion explained the true situation on Twitter and in a local newspaper, although Dorries was having none of it:

She has twittered that her disability is due to the Coalition Government cancelling operations she is waiting for on both of her feet.

Really? An operation on both feet for arthritis? Let’s put aside that surgeons never operate on both feet at the same time. This is a medical breakthrough. Hips and knees, yes, now feet! Amazing.  Twitter followers conned again.

……Sue Cullen is also absolutely not disabled, although she clearly gives that impression on her twitter account. Indeed, half of twitter was conned into thinking she was a poor disabled wretch, not the local Labour party organiser, under attack from a bad Tory MP. Not the case. Ms Cullen attended my local hustings. She stormed around the hall after me, shouted a great deal and even followed me outside, pacing up and down whilst I chatted to constituents.

Dorries’ post was called “She Writes Fiction”, which was ironic given that just a couple of weeks later Dorries admitted that up to 70 per cent of her own blog is “fiction”: Dorries had tried to explain away an expenses discrepancy by telling Parliamentary investigators that she liked to give the impression of being in her constituency when in fact she was elsewhere in order to “reassure” her constituents. When that failed to impress, she reverted to type and claimed “stalkers” were to blame for her need to lie to her readers.

I dealt with Dorries’ accusations in depth at the time, but I’m glad now to be able to report that Ms Cushion is on the mend following the first of her two operations. It sounds like it was a bit of an ordeal, though:

I don’t know what I had expected, as I said, I hadn’t given it much thought at all but AGHHHHHHHHHHH blimey the pain!  I think in all I had 15 injections in my ankle before it finally went numb enough for surgery.  I am good with pain though and tolerate it well so concentrated on my breathing like a good girl and imagined the tweets I would be sending had I been allowed my phone with me.  The woman in the next bed to me wasn’t nearly as brave as Humph though, screaming and flailing about like a man big sissy.

…Then I could hear bone breaking and realised it was mine. The sound of a drill vibrating on bone, mine.  The only way I could cope was by mentally picturing the faces of my loved ones and trying to remember the lyrics of a beautiful song I saw tweeted a couple of weeks ago.

Her posts on the subject also include photos, lest Dorries continue to insist that she’s making it up.

Nadine Dorries is a scoundrel and is not fit to hold office.