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This is just offensive on so many levels as it:
- panders shamelessly to the basest of public perception that all benefit recipients are feckless and undeserving – a perception which is entirely ignorant of the gruelling process we have to endure to be in receipt of the benefit at all!
- insults our intelligence by intimating that reducing individual income will be, somehow, in our best interests, and, it
- infers that central/social services are somehow better able to spend this money on our behalf than we are ourselves or, at the least, that our spending needs to be monitored. So, we are not only scroungers but frivolous spendthrifts too? Charming.
- ignores that these allowances were originally set up to assist in overcoming the, very real, obstacles that prevent those with disabilities participating in society on anything resembling a level playing field …is anyone supposing that these obstacles have disappeared miraculously? Man, I cannot even get out of my house on my own because the pavements are so crap and how many wheelchairs do you see on the tubes, buses and trains?
These allowances are a lifeline for many people and why should the autonomy they have in spending on disparate disabilities be taken from them. Would you want to have to justify every trip out of your home to a bureaucrat? Me neither.
It is hard to see this Green Paper proposal as anything other than an attempt to reduce public financing by making it even more difficult for those with disabilities to receive financial assistance towards their unavoidable extra costs and doesn’t that just stink?
One of the Government’s first proposals to cut public spending and it is directed at taking small, but crucial, amounts of money from the poorest, the least able to speak up and the most discriminated against in our society. This makes me FUME!
Thankfully, I seem not to be alone in this. Even if, like me, you cannot physically get out to campaign, I urge you to sign up in protest against this petty and shameful proposal while you still can. We have only until November 2009. Go to the BENEFITS & WORK petition now…
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