We must also recognise the wider complicity many of us have in disability policies. The government would hardly be pursuing them, against a significant minority, unless it calculated it had public opinion on its side – opinion prepared to go along with the view that in hard times, disabled people should no longer expect so much and need to tighten their belts too.

There is little chance of a similar protest against disability discrimination by medal winners at the London Paralympic Games. But for many disabled people such a high-profile protest would be timely, in the face of a tidal wave of prejudice and discrimination against disabled people.