I bet a few people have enjoyed that recently. He has come up with a truly award winningly abbhorrent idea.. the Daily Shame have a charming piece about it here and an original news item is here . but check him out on Google for the full extent of the damnation abounding. It's enough to make a non partisan community activist like myself start taking sides!
I wonder who would profit from this scheme? Who will profit from organising it? Which chosen retailers will profit? And will everyone paid by the taxpayer (including Alec) be getting one of these lovely pieces of plastic? We get tax credits because we are a large family surviving on a low income... how the heck does this out of touch bloke know what a family like mine with so many extra difficulties needs to buy, exactly?
Apologies for my late arrival, I did my best once I got there and no doubt like all participants there's so much more I could have said. I was so ill I couldn't move for a while in the morning, so I ran 45 mins late and then the first accessible transport wouldn't take my chair, but the kick ass production team persisted and got me there in the end to join in which was wonderful.
It is a shame I didn't get to explain on the show the extra costs of living faced by some families and how disability fits into the equation. Yes all families are 'poorer' but some are more able to 'manage' than others. Some of us can't access work due to the way it's organised. Some people are too ill to be at work anyway. And we are excluded almost everywhere from the job market.
The BBC were ok for their debate show, but how many other employers would tolerate my being 2 hours late due to sick and access? Many people can't get to work without accessible transport so many people who now have transport will lose their jobs when they lose their DLA.. I may be in that position soon.. and I haven't passed my driving test. Soon it may not have been worth bothering.
How many employers would cope with me not being there at all today, because I can hardly move and the pain is so terrible I am stuck in bed with both my typing fingers for company, on a borrowed laptop I only have sometimes? And that my wife was an hour late for work because my carer was sick so she had to help at home before taking one of our kids to school? And how many employers are willing to take me on in the first place, or even my wife? Where is the government drive to assist employers to stop discriminating against us and making work and workplaces more accessible? Why are disabled workers and the least affluent in society being penalised for it?
AND..... who will look after my child and home educate him if I get this imaginary job? I don't HAVE a 'granny' up the road. By the way, who would be paying HER way if I did? I only have a few hours I can work though, because I need to pick up another child at 3. My job would need to pay well too please, because we're supporting a family of 5 and I am too worn out to be a lady of the night, like other mums I know are having to do.
Send application forms now! I will wade through the queue of job invitations and offers of cash. I'm only skint because I don't try hard enough, you know!
Oh I DO get to work, but I don't get PAID, which is why government is supporting my wife to stay in work by helping a bit. This is why I have a care package so I can be capable of parenting, or that would fall to the state too. The total cost of my family being dumped on the state would be phenomenal. Who will manage my family if the main carer (me) in my family can't cope because of more care cuts? If I have to choose between food and heat for my kids, WHO IS GOING TO WALK TO THE FOOD BANK FOR ME? Not Alec Shelbrook, he's off in his thousand pound plus a month flat which US taxpayers pay for!
Meanwhile I save up for his government.
For example, I am home educating a child - due to the governments 'reversing the bias towards inclusion' and not having a local school place for one of my disabled children - at great cost to my family.. so I am 'saving' the cost of a child in education have 'saved' for the government by now being more ill, due to having less support available at home, due to care package cuts. I am 'saving' because my wife's wages are now worth 10% less. I am 'saving' because the organisations I used to do paid work for are shutting down and tightening up, due to community funding cuts. I am being asked to save again when the DLA cuts hit my group in 2 years, having spent a pointless grant learning to drive an adapted vehicle so I can give my child a decent education and get around to the doctor, to buy food, etc.
Maybe Alec Shelbrook could come and stay at my cramped social housing for a week and then tell me EVERYONE is living like us. Because I KNOW they aren't. I have had trouble clothing my kids recently because they grow so fast. I already don't spend my spouse's hard earned on booze and gambling! It looks like personally, we're 'saving' a lot! Anyway, 'a lot' of 'not very much' isn't going to restore the recession!
Why, from a familiy in that lowest 10% of earners, am I, and others worse off than me, doing more saving? Do all the other families have the same risk of ending up in care or hospital if things keep getting worse? Why isn't the saving being done by the banks who put us into national debt, and by the companies who refuse to pay their workers anything close to the value of their labour?
In terms of cuts overall, we're actually quite lucky! I am not working for benefits in TESCO like many people who need extra support.. meaning TESCO get free staff, meaning i am taking a job from the market..... thank goodness I still have a subsidy to get around the only ways I can. I still have two fingers to type. But there's no job for two fingers, is there? ATOS let that slip out already!
Well.. two fingers to them and Alec Shelbrook's NEDDs an' all! As I've said before plenty of times, people profit from our position and really the government are mostly just redirecting money from people into (their chosen) businesses. And I'm looking forward to finding more about those profiting from our dependence tonight, on BBC again with 'The great disability scam' " Reporter Sam Poling reveals the private companies who are getting rich from the new reforms"
Thank you to DPAC for asking me to represent the network, it was a pleasure. The fact that anyone will even debate whether we should support the sickest people in our society who cannot work astounds me. Severely disabled people are hit the hardest - it's a buzz phrase I won't use normally, as this is not a competition - ALL the cuts affect those cut badly and we're diverse, not one thing or the other - but the statistics are there that disabled people feel it most of all, and those stating that the lowest 10% of earners pay most tax! It's crazy!
Keep fighting back, keep defending people who need our support too -we'll be snowed in otherwise under the shredded mass of other stupid ideas coming from government.
- Current Mood:
restless
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