Share on Facebook Tweet on Twitter photo credit: Knox O (Wasi Daniju) via photopin cc Nearly 150 disabled people are to "lobby Parliament" over welfare cuts proposed in the Welfare Reform and Work Bill, which they claim could be detrimental to the health and well-being of people with disabilities.
Why is this important? A single paragraph in the Local Government Finance Settlement published before Christmas sounded the death knell for attendance allowance (AA).
Nobody would expect a person who suffers blackouts to drive a bus or bin waggon once they had thought through the potentially devastating consequences. But political, cultural, psychological and financial coercion is being used to force people sick and disabled people to work - the government continues to cut welfare, which was calculated originally to cover only the costs of meeting basic needs. Cruel sanctions and strict, inflexible, often unreasonable behavioural conditions are being imposed on lifeline benefit receipt, adversely affecting some of our poorest and most vulnerable citizens; unemployed and disabled people are stigmatised in the media - all of this is done with an utterly callous disregard of a person's capacity to work, and importantly, the availabilty of appropriate and suitable employment opportunities, and this can have tragic consequences.
To: The Government
The public body responsible for 18 of Britain's biggest rail stations is following the lead of the Olympic Delivery Authority and putting disabled people at the heart of its design process, according to its access and inclusion manager.
A committee of MPs has called on the government to stop local authorities discriminating against disabled people who need financial help following the introduction of the "bedroom tax".
