The Broken of Britain - The Disabled Peoples’ Campaign – has invited people to take part in a Blogswarm. It’s a month before the consultation on proposed changes to the Disability Living Allowance ends on 14 February.
You may be wondering what all this has to do with you. You’re not disabled. No one in your family is disabled. You have no disabled friends or acquaintances.
But you are angry about your kids’ university fees. Furious about the changes to Housing Benefit. Depressed about rising prices. Teed off about a million and one inconveniences that make your life more stressful and less full of savour.
So why should you be at all bothered by some obscure consultation exercise on a bit of the welfare state that you never even knew existed. Try starting here in The Guardian from last week.
This piece and the growing noise around the #ombh hashtag on Twitter should wake all of us up. Here is a group of our fellow citizens telling us they believe the help they need to live will be taken from them.
By the way that’s ‘need to live’ in the sense of necessary for survival not in the sense of ‘how will I pay my cleaner without the child benefit?’
Maybe I am a relic and hopelessly old-fashioned but I was taught that any society claiming the status of being civilised needed to pass a series of tests. The chief of these being how it treated its most vulnerable members. Whatever The Big Society or The Good Society mean surely one thing each must stand for is a regard for the interests of those whose voices get hard to hear. They are drowned out by ill-informed prattle in the hunt for votes or pursuit of circulation and ratings.
Judging by some of the stories about the high-life of our disabled fellow citizens it’s a wonder there isn’t a black market in causing injuries sufficient to qualify for the munificent DLA.
I know it’s unusual in this era of principle (not evidence) based policy making but I have profound respect for and pay attention to the opinion of experts.
Here we have a community of experts – and who is more expert than those living with these challenges every day and every night – telling their fellow citizens that the proposed changes to DLA will ruin lives.
I don’t think it’s a political point to say that we should park our own concerns just for a little while and listen to what our fellow citizens are telling us.
We just might learn something important.
Originally posted here
The consultation about DLA reform ends on 14th February 2011, Valentines Day. Though traditionally a day for love, this day could adversely affect disabled people should the reforms be adjusted incorrectly. We are holding this event a month before the consultation ends to raise awareness and give anyone who wishes to the opportunity to respond.
Hello. I don't quite know who I am writing this to, but I had a comment from Oya's Daughter on this post of mine
ReplyDeletehttp://shaistatayabali.blogspot.com/2011/01/exceptionality.html
to say I should write something about the DLA (I've had Lupus for many years)... but Oya realised I might be too late in writing for this project.
Whether I am or not, I wanted to say this is such a brilliant idea.
Benefits - maybe there is something oddly wrong about that word in itself? Something about that word makes people who aren't getting 'benefits' suspicious?
It's all rather exhausting, so I never even talk about it :) but I thank goodness that such a system existed thus far, to give me some measure of freedom and independence.
Hey Shaista, that would be me and I'm glad you were able to pop in even though you're low on spoons.
ReplyDeleteHi Shaista,
ReplyDeleteJust to say that we'll be accepting posts for as long as people want to write them so please do! Pop back & leave us a commnet so we know where to find it, BG Xx