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12/09/2026
My week: I’m sick of the ‘sickfluencer’ narrative – and contemplating a move to Australia
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| Frances Ryan |
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Hello! I’m Frances Ryan, a Guardian columnist and reporter. This week, I’ve been thinking about the return of the “sickfluencers” narrative and proposals for a radical shake-up of women’s prisons. Plus, why I might move to Australia. |
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What I’ve been thinking about |
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 Wandsworth prison in London. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images |
Watching the overcrowding in prisons crisis unfold, one question has kept cropping up for me: why is no one talking about women? I’ve felt at times as if I’ve fallen and bumped my head as I listened to the government debate whether rapists should be released early while women jailed for minor drug offences are left locked up. This week, ministers at last pledged to “seriously examine” converting parts of the female prison estate into cells that can safely house male prisoners to ease strain on the system.
As I’ve written before, all evidence suggests we should radically reduce the number of women in prison – the majority of whom are there for non-violent crimes, and have actually been victims of more serious offences (often domestic violence) themselves. Repurposing this space is a sensible long-term solution to the overcrowding in the male prison estate. But let’s not frame women’s rights through the lens of men. Change is needed not simply to prevent violent men from being released too soon, but to finally end the injustice of locking up non-violent women.
Back in 2024, I wrote about “sickfluencers” – a rightwing moniker for disabled people who use social media to help others apply for benefits. Recently, I’ve noticed the term has expanded to include women who commit the crime of … using a mobility aid in public. This week, the Telegraph ran a piece claiming young women are “turning chronic illness into a lifestyle trend”, including by not working. The headline? “How having a disability became cool.” It’s hard to think of a nastier narrative. You can say that the writers and editors publishing this stuff are just ignorant of disability, but I struggle to believe it. It feels like wilful ignorance: repeating tropes that fuel an agenda casting doubt on disabled people and the state’s duty to support us if we need it. Readers who use mobility aids often tell me about the impact of seeing these stories spread online; a growing sense of shame that eats at the stomach until one day, they put their cane back in the cupboard and walk to Tesco in pain. Or they don’t go out at all. Someone should be ashamed in all of this, sure, but it’s not disabled readers.
Tragic news for lovers of the super-rich. The hedge fund billionaire Chris Rokos is reportedly poised to leave the UK for Greece. This would be the latest in a string of high-profile exits among Britain’s uber-wealthy, attributed in part to the abolition of the non-dom regime. As a long-term advocate of wealth taxes, I’m sometimes asked at events how I became what’s known in economics as “a massive lefty”. I joke that it was growing up attending the same Grantham schools as Margaret Thatcher, but in a way it was. As a disabled kid sitting next to friends eating free school meals, I guess I learned early that how you’re born shouldn’t affect your ability to live well. Will Britain’s welfare state miss Rokos’s taxes? Of course. But that doesn’t seem like a good reason to offer to cut them.
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What I’ve been up to |
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The third season of Colin from Accounts. Photograph: BBC/2026 CBS Studios Inc, Easy Tiger Productions Pty Ltd, Foxtel Management Pty Ltd, Create NSW/Lisa Tomasetti |
What I’ve been watching | I don’t want to start a war with our Australian readers, but someone’s got to say it: it is an outrage that until now, the final series of Colin from Accounts had aired in its native Australia but not on the BBC. I’ve been reduced to rewatching the old series on iPlayer and avoiding spoilers online. Thank God the third season dropped this week and we can see how it all ends. I thought I’d have to move to Sydney.
What I’ve been posting | I appreciate no one needs another Substack newsletter but I just started one (sorry), giving free tips to people from marginalised groups who want to get into journalism. I’m highly aware I’m one of the only disabled people in a senior contracted position in the British press. Or from Grantham. So, I’ve launched Press Access to share information and advice I’ve learned after a decade at the Guardian. Plus any gossip I think is funny.
What I’m decorating | Readers following the debacle with my air conditioning will be relieved to hear that I’ve finally been able to move into my renovated bedroom with AC … just in time for autumn. At least I’m prepared for any apocalyptic November heatwave.
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From the rest of the team |
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The MC Escher exhibition at Somerset House, in central London. Photograph: Stephen Chung/Fever/Arthemisia |
I finally got to the MC Escher exhibition at Somerset House in central London, one day before the end of its three-month run. I was glad I did: his tessellations, inspired by two visits to the Alhambra, were astonishing – as was his reimagination of the laws of physics in the likes of Belvedere, Waterfall et al. Phil Mongredien, joint production editor |
Gordon Brown’s new opus The Future Starts With Us, which describes this era of geopolitical crisis, community atomisation and toxic populism, is a very serious book. Watching him talk about it at the Guardian Live event, which I hosted at the Royal Geographical Society in London on Thursday, could have been a very sombre affair. But the man himself is warm, engaging and has jokes and anecdotes enough to keep a streaming TV channel on air for months on end. The audience left informed but smiling. That’s some trick. Hugh Muir, executive editor |
I’ve been quietly fascinated with the path taken by Turning Point USA, the ultraconservative organisation founded by Charlie Kirk, after his assassination. This piece from the Guardian US is a great breakdown of how “a revolution always eats its children”. Jason Okundaye, assistant editor |
On Saturday, I went to Soultown festival in Beckenham. As I bellowed along to Eternal, The Commodores and Sugar Hill Gang with newfound dancefloor buddies – namely a gloriously rowdy hen party and a blissed-out octogenarian in a cowboy hat – I was reminded once again of the unifying powers of live music. Lucinda Everett, freelance editor |
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