autonomy". She also wanted to demonstrate that difficulties faced by disabled people were the results of political choices, and not inevitable. The book was published by Verso in June 2019. Due to a chronic illness, Ryan was unable to travel for a book tour, so she spoke at online events. For a television interview about her book, she declined a producer's suggestion that she be filmed performing tasks around her house, as she did not think this would have been asked were she not disabled. Synopsis In 2010, the UK Cameron–Clegg coalition government began an austerity programme that reduced public spending. In the introduction, Ryan comments on its disproportionate effect on disabled people, and the tabloid media's focus on "benefits scroungers" that demonised them. Though Theresa May claimed in 2018 that "austerity is over", her government continued implementing cuts. Ryan gives an example of Jimbob, who is confined to his bedroom for almost all of the day as he can only afford to heat one room of his house. The first chapter—"Poverty"—describes Susan's life in austerity. By 2013, new bedroom tax, council tax and social care bills saw her enter debt for energy bills, so she stopped using heating or her oven. By 2017, she could not afford to leave the house or buy the puréed specialist meals she required with her digestive condition. She was continuing to pay back a payday loan to replace a freezer for medication. In 2018, 4million adults in the UK lived in poverty and in 2017, a fifth of disabled adults regularly skipped meals or limited their diet—these figures increased in the 2010s. While money from disability benefits was reduced, Bessie had her benefits removed through means testing, despite being unable to work due to agoraphobia. Around half of disabled people subject to means testing had benefits stopped or removed. A combination of welfare cuts by 2018 saw disabled people losing an average of £4,400 per year, with 200,000 people losing at least £15,000 per year. However, the welfare state has not always been in decline since its inception from the 1940s to the 1960s: for instance, disabled activists secured the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 and the establishment of the Disability Living Allowance. In "Work", Ryan describes two similar cases of diabetic people who died from the removal of Jobseeker's Allowance after they missed in-person appointments. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) issued