What year are we in?

7:27pm Tuesday 15th July 2008

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UNDER normal circumstances I wouldn’t wipe my bum on this particular tabloid but I picked it up today, after a colleague alerted me to a story I felt I simply had to read.

The first time he related it to me I thought I’d misheard him.

It concerned three teenage girls with disabilities who were told to leave a London beauty salon because they were “scaring the other customers.”

Someone remind me, what year we’re in again?

I thought the days had gone when disabled people were treated as a different species, but alas and alack, intolerance is alive and well and living in London.

As you would expect, the girls were deeply upset by what they’d gone through and took their greivance to a lawyer who managed to secure them £1,500 each in compensation under the Disability Discrimination Act.

Lovely jubbly - as they say in certain parts of the capital. Hit the fascists where it hurts, in the bank balance.

After reading this appalling story my urge to look up the salon in question on the web and, if possible, to send them a snotty email was an overwhelming one, but I resisted. That would be dragging myself down to their miserable level.

Doubtless, though, there are probably many people out there who prefer to avoid any kind of contact with disabled people.

About 20 years ago, when I was a fresh-faced freelance hack, I had the pleasure of interviewing the celebrated neurologist Oliver Sacks.

A perfect gentleman, Dr Sacks has dedicated his life to working with many profoundly disabled people and I asked him if he’d ever been disturbed by the conditions he’d encountered in his work.

What he said to me has stayed with me to this day, although the passage of time forces me to paraphrase his exact words. "What I really find disturbing," said Sacks, "is the way human beings treat one another."

Something we should all, I feel, bear in mind.