John Pring's Disability News Round Up - Week Ending 15th June 2012
- A Liberal Democrat minister has defended the coalition’s controversial commitment to “remove the bias towards inclusion” in disabled children’s education.
- Local authorities have been accused of “burying their heads in the sand” over cuts to adult social care, after admitting that spending will fall by nearly £900 million this year.
- London transport bosses have finally admitted that they plan to invest nothing in projects aimed solely at improving step-free access to the capital’s tube network over the next three years.
- A leading activist has accused airline staff of ignoring the needs of disabled passengers at Heathrow, just weeks before thousands of Paralympic athletes and other disabled visitors will flood through the airport.
- Anti-cuts campaigners have paid tribute to a disabled activist who died last week after fighting for two years against the injustice of the government’s “fitness for work” assessment regime.
- A campaign to stop bars and restaurants using plastic straws could cause huge problems for disabled people who struggle to lift mugs and glasses, according to an access consultant and activist.
- A disabled peer has told a minister that her government’s failure to assess the impact of its policies on disabled people was like building a nuclear power station on a fault-line and then waiting for an earthquake.
- The minister for disabled people has been accused of delaying action to support disabled people while “Rome is burning” because of her government’s reforms.
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3 comments:
hi bendy
well - don't know what I really want to say here..
They stopped my claim.
I've raided my piggy bank for a couple of weeks,I'm down to less than 2 quid on my leccy key,nothing to eat for two days and counting,my housing benefit extension ended this week,and I'm frozen to the spot.I havent been able to open a brown envelope for years - they send me into a bottle of vodka then turn me nocturnal - not so much a coping strategy,more of a hiding strategy.I can't face them.I can't deal with them.I don't know what to do..yes I know I should go down to the benefits office and have it out..that will lead to a f*cking ATOS interview where a bean counter will prod me with a stick and declare me fit for work - they're tipping 'crips' out of wheelchairs and giving cancer patients wigs to force them back into work,so I stand no chance.
Not sure how much longer my internet connection will last - I've always had a habit of overpaying my internet bill by an extra fiver or tenner and this seems to have given me at least 2 months of pre-paid connection so far.(You people who want us to live on less money take note - I regularly go hungry towards the end of the month because I value my internet way more than I value food)
I f*cking hate my doctor with a passion - he's reaching for his perscription pad as soon as I walk through the door.Last time I saw him,I told him I was feeling suicidal,and that my old shoulder injury from a motorbike accident was playing up..his response was to go off on a ramble about his own problems as a GP,and ended with him giving me a huge box of paracetamol.I took that as his way of saying 'f*ck off and die'..I went and got the pills then bought a litre of Vodka..stared at the pills whilst drinking myself into oblivion.
So yeh - where was I..
Don't know what to do..I've been pacing up and down the hallway trying to steel myself for a confrontation with the benefits office for almost a month now..can't do it.I think I'm going to end up on the street I really do.In days rather than some distant future.
I think I just wanted to say that your campaigning is commendable,but at the same time you should'nt be doing this..its a waste of spoons and your incredible writing talent.You should be writing that giant rollercoaster of an epically sexy funny novel buried in your head.
That Northern Bloke: I was just thinking of you last week & wondering how you are! Sorry to hear things are so rough. I hope if you can you'll get in touch with a welfare rights org local to you who can support you through this, or your local MP maybe?
Take care mate, remember however alone you feel you're a valued part of our community & we'll find support for you. BG Xx
Our oldest boy, with Aspergers, is going up to secondary after the summer holidays so, after a huge amount of pressure from us, the school and council reluctantly allowed him more induction days.
On the last one, he made the mistake of sitting on the steps of the school stage while eating his lunch. The rules are that students can eat in the hall while seated at the groups of tables. He finds it difficult and uncomfortable to eat with people he doesn’t know so he went and sat on the steps.
One of senior students who supervise the hall—they sacked the auxiliaries to save money—pressed the alert bell, bringing the “flying squad” of a deputy and a guidance teacher on scene. He didn’t know either of them, they shouted at him and, as he says, “I was scared so much I couldn’t work out which face I was supposed to put on”.
Faced with what the deputy described then and since as “dumb insolence”, he was frogmarched off to the remove. Instead of calling us, his parents, the guidance teacher phoned his primary school and got into a long conversation with the head there. (She’s someone we’ve long had problems with as her belief is that “the loonies should be drugged or packed off to special school”. She actually said that in a meeting with us, ed psych, our lad’s psych and his mental health worker present.)
Anyway, the guidance teacher said, in front of our lad, that with all her years in teaching she knows acting when she sees it and has no time for made-up faux medical excuses for laziness and insolence.
So, our son is now terrified of going up to secondary school, the head teacher says “his staff have his full backing” and, from previous experience, we know the LEA won’t do anything.
What makes it even worse is that, in the one year in primary when he had a good teacher and appropriate support, he transformed into a mildly eccentric and very happy boffin. The rest of his primary schooling was muddled, chaotic, terrifying, futile and scream inducing. It looks like we have another six years of hell to go through in secondary and, living in a rural area, we’ve nowhere else to send him.
I’m fast getting to the point where I want to drag people out into the street and hang them from lamp posts. Except that would be too quick a means of repaying them for years of systematic, sanctioned, institutional abuse of vulnerable people.
Evil fuckers.
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