How the disabled were dehumanised

[the_gabih]

It's official: disabled people aren't allowed to be independent. This week, amid rows about how this country treats people with disabilities, it was announced that the government will be phasing out the Independent Living Fund (ILF), a vital stipend that allows more than 21,000 "severely disabled people to pay for help so they can live

Comments

[m_h_p]

I loved this article - I read it on the New Statesman website a few weeks back, and it's persuaded me to subscribe to the magazine next year.

Anyway, the UK government's financial suppression of the poorest and most needy in society is jaw-droppingly heartless. Sadly, I don't think that the 'Big Society' will be able to plug the hole left by government funding.

[the_gabih]

Laurie Penny's just generally awesome, I've found.

And it's so true- how on earth do they expect charities to fill in the gaps they're leaving when they're cutting the support the government gives to charity initiatives and cutting the amount of money ordinary people can give? It's ridiculous and really rather terrifying, since it shows just how disconnected our leaders are from the actual people they're meant to represent.

[m_h_p]

I would like to marry Laurie Penny. I told her this on Twitter. I probably shouldn't have, but the sentiment is still valid.

[trialia]

All painfully true. Disabled people are being vilified in this country and have been for the past few years, and there's little we can do about it - a lot of us are too scared of having the support we need removed if we speak up, as the article says.

There has been a lot in the media lately about how because the numbers of young people claiming ESA and/or DLA have been climbing, it means we are all scroungers and lazy bastards who don't want to do a scrap of work. They don't consider that maybe diagnostic tools and facilities have been getting better with time, nor that plenty of people in receipt of DLA do work: the allowance was designed to support people with disabilities so that we're not unduly penalised for adaptive equipment, extra heating and other things we might need because of any disability, and that includes for people in work. What makes me most furious about that part, though, is that certain members of the government have been deliberately misleading the media into thinking that "DLA is an out-of-work benefit". They'

[ravewalker]

This makes me so angry.

[fenris_lorsrai]

This could probably use the "Fuck the police" tags and UK tags.

This doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense economically either. So you cut the aid for independent living, so these people end up institutionalized and totally dependent on state? so people who WERE working and using this to work, drop out of work force, and now are getting much more expensive institutional care?
Obviously not everyone was in fact working, but you had SOME who were working. switch this and you'll shortly have NONE who were working. So you have no offset to the cost from economic activity. Plus likely an increased cost for mental health care for people that are now housebound.

WTF.

[the_gabih]

I don't know about 'fuck the police'- Jody McIntyre's not the central issue here, and it's measuring public/press reactions to disabled protesters rather than the police's treatment of them- but the UK one's on.

And Tory economic policy has never made sense. They don't seem to get that helping people to work is better than making them totally dependent, and the media's not helping matters (this is maybe the first decent article I've found on the issue).

[incarnated_joy]

...how...how could it start to go so wrong so quickly? I mean HOW?!

For years I was the soul carer to a disabled sibling who has been wheelchair bound since birth. Recently he was asked to prove his disability in order to keep his benefits. The benefits, which if he doesn't get, he has nothing.

Fuck this country man, just fuck it. It's a sinking ship. I've always voted SNP anyway but this has me resolved, I don't want my country being pulled back down in to the fascist dark ages so the rich and the few can bring back the poor houses for lower classes. I mean shit, why not just build gas chambers, it'd probably be cheaper! /scathing-sarcasm-towering-inferno-RAGE