There are plans to reduce significantly disability benefits for new claimants of the employment and support allowance (ESA). In changes due in April, the ESA would be reduced from £102 to £73, bringing it into line with the jobseeker’s allowance.

While the work and pensions committee said that it welcomed planned reforms to the work capability assessment, the oft-condemned “fit-for-work” test, it questioned whether the government’s plans would, as stated, help remove “perverse incentives” that apparently discourage people from returning to work.

Disability charities say that far from encouraging disabled people back into work, this could seriously hamper their efforts, as the living costs of such people are already high and their search for work extremely difficult.

How convenient that this important issue is being debated at a time when public attention is distracted. What is being planned (with caveats about “safety nets” for the worst off) is putting disabled job searchers on pretty much the same footing as the able bodied, even though it’s implausible that they’d be in the same situation.

As has been endlessly pointed out, not only do disabled people need more money just to live, not only do they face obvious obstacles in the hunt for work, they also have to contend with employers being loath to hire them.

Then there’s the “perverse incentives” argument, which, attached to the able bodied, argues that it makes no sense for people to work when their expenses can be paid by the state. I’m sure people like this exist and that some souls are just preternaturally bone idle. We should also perhaps question just how perverse it is to sit down, do some calculations and realise that, considering certain factors (high rents, travel costs, childcare, take your pick), families would be better off without a certain job.

Even where able-bodied people are concerned, you’d have to wonder whether these were really textbook cases of “perverse incentives” or just people trying their best to solve dilemmas. Whether, in fact, it’s always fair or accurate to caricature the long-term unemployed as work-shy layabouts, who’d rather sit around all day eating bags of Haribos and watching Cash in the Attic than put in a hard day’s graft. This is insulting enough when able-bodied people are targeted and misrepresented. When it happens to disabled people, it goes into the outer stratosphere of offensive, bordering on inhumane.

The Department for Work & Pensions seems determined to proceed with these plans, even though it has been repeatedly warned about the possible consequences.

With Brexit also looking likely to affect disabled people’s rights and living standards, it would be instructive to see the department detail in full the “perverse incentives” a disabled person presently gets from trying to survive on the ESA of £102 a week. It would also be interesting to hear its justification for taking away over a quarter of it, putting extra pressure on new disabled claimants and increasing their anxiety.

To my mind, attaching this “perverse incentives” theory to the able bodied is problematic enough; when it’s attached to disabled people, it looks farcical and disgusting.

It can’t help but make you wonder what exactly is it about a disabled person’s existence in modern Britain that looks so darned cushy that the Tory government feels that it must rush in to stop them being so cosseted?

The wider picture may be that, for years, society as a whole has been encouraged to scapegoat and stereotype the able-bodied long-term unemployed as idle and cunning or, as the new lingo puts it, “perversely incentivised”. For a while, disabled people seemed, to some extent, to be exempted from this mass-defamation exercise. Apparently, not any more.

Praise be to the Fantabulosa priests

Polari professionals: the cast of Round the Horne. Photograph: BBC

A Church of England theological college has expressed regret after trainee priests held a service in the gay slang Polari to commemorate LGBT history month.

The congregation, also made up of trainee priests, at the chapel of Westcott House, Cambridge, was told that the service was an attempt to “queer the liturgy of evening prayer”. Instead of “Glory be to the father, and to the son, and the Holy Spirit”, it became “Fabeness be to the Auntie, and to the Homie Chavvie, and to the Fantabulosa Fairy”.

And “Rend your heart and not your garments, return to the Lord your God” morphed into “Rend your thumping chest and not your frocks – and turn unto the Duchess your Gloria: for she is bona and merciful”.

However, while the trainees had been given permission to hold an LGBT service, the wording had not been seen or approved by the college chaplain. Now, the principal of Wescott House has apologised, saying: “I will be reviewing and tightening the internal mechanism of the house to ensure this never happens again.”

Please don’t do so on my account – all this made me giggle no end.

To be serious for a moment, while I’m not a believer, I do think that the Church of England should be paid the courtesy of respect. On the other hand, this couldn’t have done much harm, maybe even a bit of good after the recent announcement that the church would not be revising its teaching on gay marriage.

There’s also the fact that to some of us the Polari service seems no more nonsensical than, say, offering a can of peas or a bunch of carrots to an invisible god at harvest festivals. It was definitely more amusing and strangely sweet.

How dare you suggest Diane wasn’t really ill!

Under the weather? Diane Abbott. Photograph: David Gadd/Allstar

I’m still extremely concerned about the health of Diane Abbott. The shadow home secretary was taken poorly, apparently with a migraine, missing the controversial article 50 vote. You know, the most important parliamentary vote of her generation. Yes, that one.

Some people mocked that it was “Brexit flu” and that, by dodging the vote, Abbott had craftily avoided the ire of the Labour leadership and her constituents. Only the night before, she’d been photographed socialising in a Westminster hostelry, though not to the extent that she would end up with a debilitating hangover. Among all the suspicion and meanness, there was even a hashtag #PrayForDiane doing the rounds. Unpleasant insinuations about parliamentary sick-note culture were bandied about.

These people should be ashamed – where is their humanity? Whatever Ms Abbott had wrong with her, I’m sure that it was very hurty. As I live in London, I had half a mind to pop around with a sachet of Lemsip and a shoulder to cry on. Hear that, Diane; next time you’re not feeling chipper, give me a call. There’s not much that a cup of tea and a Poldark box-set wouldn’t put straight.