I’ll be honest.
This has pissed me off.
Not slightly annoyed me.
Not made me raise an eyebrow.
Properly pissed me off.
Because when Donald Trump suggested that someone with dyslexia should not be president, he was not just having a go at one politician.
He was having a go at millions of people.
Kids in classrooms.
Adults in jobs.
Parents filling in forms late at night.
Business owners embarrassed about spelling mistakes.
Working-class lads who were told they were thick because they could not read fast enough.
People like me.
And it needs pushback.
Not polite pushback.
Not a carefully worded corporate statement.
Real pushback.
Because comments like this do not disappear into thin air.
They land.
They land in schools.
They land in workplaces.
They land in homes.
They land in the head of a child already wondering why reading feels harder than it seems to for everyone else.
And that child hears a powerful man suggest that people like them are somehow less capable.
That matters.
And this is not just about dyslexia.
It is about every brain that authority figures misunderstand, mock or reduce to a punchline.
Dyslexia gets called stupidity.
ADHD gets called laziness.
Anxiety gets called weakness.
Different gets called difficult.
That is the pattern.
And once you see the pattern, you cannot unsee it.
I have dyslexia.
I also have ADHD.
The dyslexia was obvious.
The ADHD was not.
Looking back, the signs were everywhere.
The unfinished projects.
The impulsive decisions.
The brain that would not switch off.
The school reports that said I had potential but needed to apply myself.
That line has probably damaged more working-class confidence than any insult ever could.
“Needs to apply himself.”
Translation:
“We don’t understand how his brain works, so we are going to make it a character flaw.”
For years, people like me were not diagnosed.
We were labelled.
Lazy.
Careless.
Disruptive.
Thick.
A dreamer.
A problem.
And those labels stick.
They get into your bones.
They follow you into adulthood.
They make you second-guess yourself before you even start.
That is the real cost of ignorance.
Not bad spelling.
Not messy handwriting.
Not needing longer to read something.
The real cost is confidence.
Ambition.
Identity.
The quiet death of potential.
That is why this conversation matters.
Not because I care about party politics.
Not because I support one side or the other.
This is bigger than politics.
It is about how we define intelligence.
Because one of the biggest lies modern society tells is that literacy and intelligence are the same thing.
They are not.
Reading speed is not intelligence.
Spelling is not intelligence.
Exam performance is not intelligence.
Compliance is not intelligence.
They are skills.
Useful skills.
Important skills.
But they are not the whole human being.
We have built a society that measures people through a very narrow door and then acts surprised when brilliant people cannot fit through it.
School rewards one type of brain.
Life rewards many.
Pattern recognition.
Resilience.
Salesmanship.
Creativity.
Leadership.
Persuasion.
Judgement.
The ability to connect dots that other people cannot see.
The ability to get punched by life and still get back up.
None of that fits neatly on an exam paper.
But it builds companies.
Creates jobs.
Starts movements.
Changes lives.
I left school at 15.
I struggled with reading.
I struggled with spelling.
I struggled with concentration.
Yet I have built businesses.
Created brands.
Worked in professional football.
Negotiated deals.
Raised money.
Written thousands of articles and posts.
Fought legal battles.
Kept going when plenty of people expected me to stop.
Not because I am special.
But because intelligence comes in forms that schools often struggle to measure.
Some people can read beautifully and build nothing.
Some people can spell perfectly and lead nobody.
Some people collect qualifications like football stickers and still cannot make a decision without a committee.
Meanwhile plenty of people who struggled at school go on to build businesses, raise families, create art, solve problems and keep communities moving.
So no.
Dyslexia does not make you thick.
ADHD does not make you lazy.
A different brain does not mean a lesser brain.
It means different strengths.
Different weaknesses.
Different systems needed.
That is not an excuse.
It is an explanation.
And explanations matter because they help people stop hating themselves for problems they never chose.
So here is the pushback.
When someone uses dyslexia as an insult, correct them.
When a child struggles, do not label them. Support them.
When a school report says “needs to apply himself,” ask whether the system has applied itself to understanding him.
When a politician mocks a learning difference, do not laugh along.
Say something.
Because silence is how ignorance gets promoted.
I still spell words wrong.
I still read slower than some people.
I still start too many things.
I still have days where my brain feels like someone opened 47 browser tabs and one of them is playing music, but I cannot find which one.
But I am not thick.
I am not lazy.
I am not broken.
I am built differently.
And once you understand that, you stop apologising for the way your brain works and start building around it.
The future does not belong only to the neat readers.
It does not belong only to the good spellers.
It does not belong only to the kids who sat still and copied from the board.
It belongs to the builders.
The fighters.
The problem-solvers.
The ones who had to find another way.
So let’s say it clearly.
Dyslexia is not stupidity.
ADHD is not laziness.
Neurodivergence is not weakness.
And anyone who uses it as a political insult deserves to be challenged.
Loudly.
Because the problem is not dyslexia.
The problem is that we’ve built a society that mistakes literacy for intelligence, credentials for capability and conformity for competence.
Those things are not the same.
And the sooner we push back against that lie, the more people we stop from carrying shame that was never theirs to carry.