Bits and bobs from a British glasses-wearing, sweary, fat, disabled, atheist ex-Catholic, anti-capitalist, pacifist feminist lesbian with eclectic tastes.
I normally blog at incurable-hippie.blogspot.com.
“Well, of course, not,” said the young man, “because you can understand why a parent would want to hit a disabled child.”
I was stunned.
He continued, “You raise normal kids, you feed disabled ones.”
Nothing about us without us!
(via “Nothing About Us Without Us!” T-Shirt Design by incurablehippie | RedBubble)
“Am I alone in groaning at frenzied lectures on ‘overcoming’ barriers and the benefits of a ‘can-do’ attitude from all sides of the disability arena?
Call me Grumpy but it’s not like I haven’t tried … and tried … and tried … to do both and I am finding the preaching of all the fervent evangelists just … irritating.”
I’ve NEVER seen a positive image of anyone with a progressive condition. The BBC only show us in charity appeals & docs on assisted suicide.
—
Twitter / @Bubblejet: I’ve NEVER seen a positive …
Sad but true. Someone please represent me in the media in a way that doesn’t end in me pleading to die.
On July 6th 2011 the BBC will shut down its popular Ouch message boards and has suggested that users instead use social networking sites. This will mean that disabled people, our family, friends, carers, those looking for information for academic reseach and just those interested in disability issues will have another resource, and a community that has been important to them, removed.
As a public body the BBC have certain obligations towards disabled people under the Disability Equality Duty (DED). We believe they will be failing to fulfil these responsibilities if this thriving and vital community is closed and we suspect they have failed to carry out an Equality Impact Assessment into how this closure will affect Britain’s disabled population.
Please sign this petition to show the BBC’s Director General Mark Thompson that you object to them closing the Ouch messageboards.
I as a disabled person and the rest of the disabled community have little or no confidence in our disability minister.Sign Here!
Why the ‘Sack Maria Miller as Disability Minister petition’ was created
The DWP and ATOS medical assessments do not work resulting in many seriously ill and disabled people being found fit for work when physically they can not, backed up by all major disability charities many GPs and the citizens advice bureau and the 8000 appeals every month.
End the discrimination of the disabled as scroungers by the media etc when they are not, most disabled people have shown unbelievable strength, spirit and struggle daily with their varied problems and pain to attain some form of a near to normal life as they can
The removal of the mobility component to people in care homes that has removed their ability to socialise and leave their homes.
Future plans to asses all DLA claimants in the with the same flawed assessment.
Cuts to essential disabled services respite care etc.
Where is the voice of our Disability Minister how can all this be unnoticed or is it being ignored.
Disabled people committing suicide because their situation is unbearable due to the above problems.
WHAT IS THE DISABILITY MINISTER DOING ABOUT THIS NOTHING SHE SHOULD HANG HER HEAD IN SHAME AS THERE IS NO UNDERSTANDING OR EMPATHY WITH THE COMUNITY SHE PROPORTS TO DEFEND!
We are publishing this letter exceptionally in conjunction with this week’s protest against the poverty pimps to show an example of the impact of benefit cuts and assessments such as those of Atos could have on disabled people and their families – the added anxiety, stress and anguish . We have been given permission to publish this anonymously. Dear Eleanor Lisney, RE: Disabled people against cuts. I am writing in support of your campaign against government cuts to disability. After reading the article in the Guardian 9th May “Job centre staff get guide on handling suicide threats” I really felt I needed to get in touch and tell you about the experiences we have had with the Job Centre. My family has a history of mental health problems, I have a sister who suffers from psychosis and bipolar and I have spent the last ten years trying to help her. Until recently no one in our family was aware that another sister had also developed this awful condition. My younger sister’s illness developed quickly and over the year she had gone from being a bright 32 year old professional to a withdrawn and paranoid, scared person. She had moved house during this time and had also lost her job. During this time we could not find out where she lived. When she did contact by email asking for help, we were shocked to find that she had no electricity in her flat, and had been surviving on Weetabix and water for 6 months because she had been refused benefits. It was very obvious from her condition that she was very ill and hadn’t eaten for many weeks. We later learnt that her self-imposed seclusion was because she had felt that everyone was conspiring to have a committed to a mental institute. We learnt that she had attended the job centre on a number of occasions asking for help and had also asked her doctor for a sick note but was refused. In her desperation she became frantic, the doctor then phoned the police and said she would commit her under the mental health act. She was held for a night in a prison cell because of an argument over a sick note. The doctor was fully aware that she was mentally ill but had refused to provide a sick note to her! But instead was using the law to section her under the mental health act, why? My sister is generally a very shy and sensitive person and because of this experience she became extremely paranoid, it was so severe she never went out after this. During all this time, no one from the family was told about her condition and when we found her she was severely paranoid and very scared to open her door to us. She phoned the police to say that she didn’t want us to visit her and the police sent us away with a caution. This was heart breaking for us since we could see she needed urgent help. Nothing can describe the feeling of being told that by law you are not allowed to help someone if they did not wish it. Even though, I am sure the police were fully aware of her record and could see that she was very vulnerable because her flat was mouldy and flooded and she had a burst pipe that she couldn’t afford to fix and she was painfully thin. I believe that the doctor in charge of her care was negligent because she did not provide her with a sick note, even though she thought her sick enough to be committed to a prison cell under the mental health act. If the doctor had looked into the family medical records they would have seen that we have a history of mental illness in the family. Additionally, the doctor did not contact anyone in her family or help her with her condition by providing her with a sick note. Her illness was being exasperated by the fact that she had no food and electricity at home and that she was being dealt with very insensitively by the job centre. It is very sad that up until her death, my sister felt hounded and traumatized by the fact that she was imprisoned. She was afraid that it would happen again, so she hid her illness very well from others and very rarely ventured outside her home. She only attended the job centre when she was over her mania, which was cyclical and without a sick note no-one at the job centre would believe she was ill enough not to work. With a little more time we managed to get her to see another doctor, she was prescribed anti psychotic drugs but she still had no income and was going to lose her home. My sister is very independent and strong willed. She was up until her illness a very successful programmer and had always earned her own way through life. The loss of her job brought on by her illness was not something she would admit too easily, and the shock of being imprisoned was something she never got over. In September 2010 we received a phone call from the foreign office in Portugal telling us that our little sister had committed suicide. She had boarded a flight the day before for Oporto with the intention of ending her life. She tried to take an overdose and then jumped from the hotel balcony. She was alone when she died and no one from the family had been able to reach her. I have always thought that the UK system of welfare was a lifeline that the neediest were able to access easily. But with our experience we found that the cold and bureaucratic way that people are now being dealt with is really too cruel especially for those suffering from mental breakdown. Knowing whether someone has a mental condition cannot be easily judged from a job centre application form or within a few days of a claim. The immediate stance taken by the job centre is that anyone applying for welfare through sickness is obviously lying. Mental illness takes months to diagnose, this is not taken into account by the job centre. After her funeral, we were left to tidy her affairs and give her belongings to charity (as per her wishes written in a suicide note). It was very heart breaking that the very same day of learning of her death; she had a letter arrive claiming that her appeal for benefits had been accepted. It is sad no see how far the UK government want to push people in order to cut costs. The compassion has left the welfare system and we are left with a very harsh ‘conservative’ system. Thank you for highlighting the case of many people who are going to be side lined because of the new government measures. I would hate for anyone else to have to go through what we have been put through over the last few months.
Deaf Not Dumb - Official Video (by deaffinity)
Hardest Hit Demo: Pros and Cons
Tomorrow will see the Hardest Hit campaign against the cuts action in London. It is an opportunity to protest the cuts which will affect disabled people so devastatingly, and join together with other disabled activists.
If you can’t make it to the march, for whatever reason, you can protest online and there is also a really good guide for writing to your MP.
Full details of the route, and frequently asked questions have been made available, and they have also created a flickr group, a twitter list and a facebook page, tuning in well to the influence of social media in recent protests and campaigns. Hardest Hit is also including lobbying MPs about the Welfare Reform Bill into the protest, which can also make a palpable difference to the situation of disabled people in Britain.
Hardest Hit has the potential to be a huge and important event for increasing visibility of the issues facing disabled people during these so-called ‘times of austerity’, and the involvement of several big charities may increase the likelihood of media interest. At a time when disabled people are being constantly vilified in the right-wing press, raising awareness of the issues we face could begin to change perceptions and increase support for disabled people in Britain.
The whole of the Where’s the Benefit? is dedicated to talking about why the welfare cuts are not only demeaning but downright dangerous, and it would be wrong of us not to mention Hardest Hit. However, not everyone on the team, myself included, feel we can fully get behind the demonstration.
Some of the big charities and organisations involved in organising the Hardest Hit campaign are ones which, historically at least, have been a part of the oppression of disabled people. Disabled People Against Cuts have publicly withdrawn their support of the demo, saying,
Do we ignore the fact that organisations might be viewing disabled people as ‘helpless cripples’ so long as they are prepared to come out and oppose the cuts? We believe it is precisely because we are facing severe attacks upon our rights and lives at this moment in time that there is even more reason than ever to ensure that the messages we’re sending out and the actions we take are clear and work in the long term best interest of all disabled people. I make no apology for saying that DPAC refuses to “turn a blind eye” and betray certain groups of disabled people for some mythical “greater good”. Some may accuse us of cutting off our noses to spite our face or needlessly creating barriers where none exist, however, it is our view that it would be hypocritical of DPAC to speak of defending people’s rights, including the right to independent living and self-determination, if we gave a nod and a wink to anyone who is engaged in activity undermining these rights.
Other concerns involve the motives of the charities. Miss Dennis Queen writes,
When campaign success is going to happen you can count on these charities use their plentiful resources to to sweep in and be there to help government ‘resolve’ the anger, fear and penalties disabled people face. They get to sit at the table with Government and make sure THEIR business interests get served first, not the interests of disabled people. They take control of matters for government, claiming to be the people who represent disabled people and ‘look after us’ so nobody else need get bogged down in the detail.
A post I wrote last December talked about Disability Works UK, who were bidding for contracts to carry out the Government’s compulsory back-to-work schemes. Disability Works UK is made up of 9 disability charities and organisations. 4 of these (Mind, Mencap, Scope and Leonard Cheshire Disability) are listed as supporters of Hardest Hit. I find it hard to understand how they can support a campaign against the cuts, while seeking to profit from the legislation that will result. Would we support a march organised by ATOS or A4e?
But the aspect which caused perhaps the most concern was the announcement that Maria Miller had been asked to speak. Maria Miller is the Minister for Disabled People, and she is fully behind the disability benefit cuts. She has, unsurprisingly, turned down the invitation to speak at Hardest Hit, but the fact that she was invited in the first place poses yet more questions about the motivations of the march’s organisers.
There is always a fear that it is wrong for us to show disunity in public. Will people use that to discredit the movement as a whole, or the good done by parts of it? It’s possible, but I also believe that we are doing ourselves a disservice if we do not speak up about what concerns and hurts us.
Where’s the Benefit? are not endorsing the event, nor are we opposing it. We are here to report on and discuss issues to do with disability benefit cuts, and the Hardest Hit march is without doubt a part of this. Many disabled people are supporting it, and everyone hopes that it is a great success. We all want change, and for many, Hardest Hit is one step towards this. It is well organised, well publicised and could make a real difference. The potential differences in motives and structures are less important than the message, and the impact that this campaign could have. However, for other disabled people, it is more problematic, for all the reasons I have outlined above.
So for those of you who are participating, I hope it is fantastically successful. For those not, there are many other ways to protest the cuts. Keep reading here and take a look at DPAC’s Week of Action against ATOS Origin, for a start.
cross-posted at Where’s the Benefit? and incurable hippie blog
