Crippen muses on the attacks on Disabled people by the CONDEMs
I have been musing on the attacks on Disabled people's day to day lives that this CONDEM coalition have already started making and watching with interest ways in which crips are grouping to try to resist.
High on the worry-list is the apparent complete lack of understanding by the government of the nature of Disability Living Allowance (DLA). As we Disabled people and our allies all know only too well, the basis of this financial support is actually to go some small way towards helping with the extra costs of being a Disabled person in a disabling society.
Yes, I know, it does only go a small way and there have always been plenty of hoops to struggle through to get DLA at all (like some 50 pages form of application just to start ... ). However, DLA is at least about acknowledging that many crips - whatever their circumstances - have extra support costs and find it more expensive to travel and get around.
Why is it then that the Budget statement and the Programme for Government, which spearhead the attack on DLA, entirely miss the point? The government talks about reducing dependency and promoting work in relation to DLA. Come on! DLA (as we all know) is a benefit which is available (at least in theory) to Disabled people whether they are in work or not.
For one thing, taking it away from people (by more stringent assessments) and reducing it will make it LESS likely that working disabled people will be able to carry on in employment. That's one of the (many) things that worries me about the CONDEM axe-people - they don't even seem to pause to grasp these basics in their ideological rush to slash anything to do with 'welfare'.
Lots of groups and organisations are already campaigning hard against the whole range of attacks on Disabled people, including on DLA. I found some good info on the Inclusion London website on the Programme for Government and how the Budget will damage Disabled people's lives. Depressing reading of course - but it is a damn sight more honest than any of the government's own stuff and more readable than a lot of the other analysis on the effects of the Budget.
Click here to visit the Inclusion London site. They have both a full version and an easy read version to download about the budget and the proposed cuts.
Crippen ridicules the proposal for a tv show in which celebrities pretend to be disabled
Rumours have been circulating about a TV programme that would enable celebrities to aquire an impairment for a week in order to see what it's like to be disabled (I kid you not!).
It now turns out that the former Mrs McCartney, Heather Mills is working on such a programme although she has refused to say which broadcast company it is with or when it will be aired.
She has said however that she wants to get people like tv presenter Eamonn Holmes to spend a week in a wheelchair to see what it's like to live with a disability: "You would have to be looked after and pushed around by your wife,” she told him on his early morning show.
She added: "We would also get a chef like Gordon Ramsay, blindfold him, and put him in the kitchen for a week."
I thought we'd progressed beyond this type of disability 'awareness' theme and that if anything, the tv companies would realise the importance of portraying real Disabled people encountering real barriers within society.
As we've said many times before, this equates to a white person putting on black grease paint and being expected to suddenly develope an insight into the oppression faced by black people within our community. It just doesn't work that way!
Perhaps Ms Mills would benefit from attending a disability equality training session, run by Disabled trainers and learn something about the social model understanding of disability. Only then will she understand that this type of programme only re-enforces the negative stereotypes of disability and adds to the ignorance that results in the discrimination that we face every day.