What DLA has done for me!

To counter act my last rather sad blog post I thought I'd write something positive about DLA and what it has meant to me.

I remember the DLA ads on TV very clearly, Ian Dury in his fabulously down to earth, no nonsense way, told you that if you were disabled you could get this new benefit. It didn't matter if you were in or out of work; it wasn't to do with work. This was revolutionary. This Disability Living Allowance was to meet the extra costs disabled people face in life in general. Ian Dury was cool so it must be good. Still I didn't want to apply - I would have been 17 or 18 in my final year of A-Levels when my Mum persuaded me to apply before I went to university. I reluctantly applied.

I was reluctant because although Ian Dury was cool, being disabled wasn't in my 18 year old head. I didn't even feel that disabled but the person at the DLA helpline reassured me that it was meant for people like me who are visually impaired. They pointed out that as I was leaving home for the first time I'd need the DLA for the extras I'd need to buy that in the past my parents had just provided for me.

Back then DLA was new and they even got in touch with me after a year to see if I should actually apply for more DLA now that I'd spent a year living away from home, had I encountered new difficulties or barriers in my life? Well I had so they upped my DLA. Can you imagine that now a days?

My vision is never going to get better and in fact it is slowly getting worse at the moment, so I've never been bothered by DLA for routine check ups, it would be a waste of their resources, as they know from my consultant that nothing is going to improve my sight. I can of course get in touch if things get worse. (Ofcourse the proposed reforms would change this.)

So what has DLA done for me?

Mobility - being visually impaired I can't drive so I have to rely on public transport, DLA contributes to public transport costs and in particular taxis. Where I live in Bedfordshire my nearest bus stop is half a mile a way and they only run Monday - Saturday 7AM - 5PM so taxi's are a must on dark winter nights or when I have heavy shopping. I also have to have shopping delivered. I can't manage to carry shopping the mile and a half home, not a big weekly shop anyway. So online shopping is a blessing but they charge. DLA can pay for that charge (not the shopping), or a taxi to bring the shopping home.

Care component - well DLA is never going to pay for a carer, but it does help me to pay for things which help me do day to day chores or just live normally. I have an alarm clock which lights up and has a large display. It's not dead expensive but I could buy a non accessible alarm clock much cheaper but it would be no good for me. Gadgets in the kitchen have to be accessible to me. The more accessible something is the more it will cost because it is likely to be bigger or more specialist. It even comes down to mobile phones. I could never use a blackberry or something similar so until Iphone's came out I couldn't use a smart phone.

The iPhone is just so accessible for me it has revolutionised my life. I'm not kidding. It has access features built in to it so I can see the screen, enlarge the screen, have it speak to me, I can talk to it. The most liberating thing is the googlemap with gps. I am never lost now. I was always losing my way not being able to read signs. I hated going anywhere new because I would inevitably get lost, I'd miss signs or just not be able to read them at all. Now I can enlarge the map so I can read it. I can switch to street view to see if I recognise the landmarks around me. I can follow exactly where I am on the map with the little blue flashing light. I can plan journeys in advance and feel confident. This one little device has given me so much freedom I don't feel disabled any more when it comes to finding my way around.

DLA allows me to buy these things which may be a bit more expensive than what I'd normally spend, but they make the environment more open to me, more accessible and give me so much more freedom.

I can't thank DLA enough!

Disability, government cuts and me

I've been giving some thought to why I can't bring myself to write more about the government cuts and especially how they will affect disabled people. Through my musing I have noticed a generational shift in attitudes and approaches amongst disabled people.

The first thing I need to say is that I think the governments proposals to DLA are ill thought out and will do great harm to many people. Please see my entry "Who lives in a care home like this?" However I am relieved that Michael Gove isn't in charge of DLA or no doubt we wouldn't have had a consultation at all on DLA reform! But DLA reform of some kind is probably needed but not in order to make cuts. The DLA bureaucracy has always been ridiculous; it penalises some who really need DLA and accepts others who may not need the DLA as much, or who at least need support but not necessarily via DLA. How do I know this - from years of helping people apply for DLA and seeing who gets it and who doesn't.

I also don't agree with the government's policy of harsh public sector cuts. Yes the public sector needs to be more efficient but from years working in the public sector I've noticed that sometimes the more you constrain something the less efficient it becomes. You can't run public services on empty. There is also great inequality within the public sector. I've worked for some public sector organisations where budgets were not monitored as closely as they could be and I've worked for others where miserliness with money meant I couldn't do my job properly.

So why can't I feel comfortable at the moment speaking out and campaigning? I think it is because I fall into a narrow band of age where I can remember before DLA and the DDA. I can remember Thatcher's Britain and the early 1990s but I was too young to be a campaigner then. I didn't fight for the rights disabled people won during the 1990s and 00s but I benefitted from them. I see those under 30 who really don't remember anything other than DLA and DDA fighting valiantly to hold on to those rights, I also see those over 40 who fought the first time round to gain these rights stirring up action and activism again. I don't really fit into either group.

I am not filled with the hope the younger disabled people have though I share their indignation for what is being done. I feel jaded and cynical that the government won't listen. I had this same feeling during the Iraq war protests - I just couldn't see them winning over the government. Don't get me wrong I believe in campaigning and protesting and I will support the campaigners and the protesters all the way. I just don't have a lot of hope. The government aren't scared of disabled people in the same way they are scared of the middle classes, media and celebrities complaining about the forests being sold off. It just shows how cowardly the government truly is in my opinion, to take away support from disabled people and particularly those in care homes is easy, because the government are safe in the knowledge that these disabled people's voices won't be heard, and certainly not as loudly as the middle classes or the celebrities supporting woodland. Just like the coalition government ignored the students. They ignored the students because they aren't important. If hoards of angry middle class parents had taken to the streets with the students that might have been different.

I hate to think of myself as a defeatist, or a pessimist but I do have a "we're doomed" Private Fraser type mentality about things sometimes. So just ignore me, I'll grumble quietly in the corner here and just remind you that you have until Friday to tell the government what you think about their DLA reform proposals, just visit here

Holiday round up

It's been a week since I've been back from holiday in Dorset, but I had a few more pictures to load on to my blog so here goes. The photos above and below are of Vineyard Cottage where we stayed. You can rent it from the National Trust. From my bedroom window above and the kitchen windows below you can see Corfe castle its self and the sheep grazing on the hill it is on top of. They were rather odd sheep with grey bodies and white heads. When it got to dusk, especially when it was misty the hill looked like it was strewn with floating, white, disembodied sheep heads!

There were plenty of birds around the cottage and in the morning we would put bread out for them. There were a couple of very brave robins who would eat the bread with me standing a few feet from them. I also saw some blue tits and coal tits and collared doves. When my parents were out walking one morning they ran into some roe deer as well.
On our way down to Dorset we stopped at the New Inn in the New Forest. The pub is renowned for its rustic lunches including, ploughman's, pork pies and quiches. My Dad and I opted for the pork pie (award winning themselves) my meal is pictured below with our round of drinks. I have to say it was the nicest pork pie lunch I've ever had.

A day by the fire

Above is a picture of my Dad sitting by the fire at the Square and Compass pub, in Worth Matravers in Dorset. As yesterday was sun and sand today is dull and dark. We went to the Square and Compass for a mug of mulled cider and a look round the museum attached to the historic pub. The museum is a small room of fossils and finds from the local area.

We have one more day left in Dorset and then its back to reality on Sunday. So I'm off to carry on knitting my new pink scarf :-)

Sunny Studland Bay

Yesterday was lovely and sunny but not cold. We went on a walk along Studland bay, along the sand and then inland back to Studland Village. Its easy to see why Sandbanks and this part of Dorset is the most expensive for housing in the whole of the UK. The views out to sea, across Poole Harbour and on to Brownsea Island are stunning. The picture above is taken on the banks of Poole harbour looking on to Brownsea Island in the distance.

The picture below is looking along Studland beach. Millie the dog loves walks by the sea, you can't get her out of the water, she lollops a long through the surf. At least it keeps her clean.

Lulworth Cove and Durdle Door

Today we visited Lulworth Cove and Durdle Door. We parked at Lulworth Cove just as a party of primary school children arrived, so we went into the shop there first to give the school children the chance to go on their way! Lulworth Cove is part of the Jurassic Coast which is a world heritage site for special geological interest. I always remember an episode of Coast which used sponge cake layers to explain how the different layers of rock were crumpled by the shifting of the earths crust to create the effects of the rocks on this coast line. The layers of rock are from different periods in time but have been crumpled and some eroded to uncover fossils and different rocks all in the same place.

Any way in the shop at Lulworth Cove there were loads of fossils and crystals and rocks on sale. Since I was little I have always wanted an Ammonite, after seeing a huge one at the Natural History Museum. Not having the time to fossil hunt on the coast this time I took the easy way out and bought an ammonite from the shop. I think its fabulous, it'll make an excellent paper weight on my desk. I also got a real dinosaur tooth for my friend Lorraine's little boy Ben.

So after the shop we headed down to the cove, you can see Millie dashing to the sea in the picture above. The cove is a beautiful horse shoe shape with a fast flowing stream running into the sea. Millie loves swimming but only if you throw something out into the water for her to fetch. (years of breeding to retrieve fishing nets in the waters of Canada no doubt) Millie had a great time swimming after stones, they were the only things we could throw for her!

We then walked to Durdle Door which involved climbing a steep hill which in the past wouldn't have posed a problem for me but being such a couch potato now I found it really hard going. On the way to Durdle Door we passed stair hole pictured below.It didn't take long to get to Durdle Door - below is picture of Dad, Millie and me with Durdle Door in the background.
After our walk we went to the Smugglers Arms in Osmington Mills - there's a great picture of the pub here. The pub was lovely and cosy and with it being out of the tourist season not too busy. I had scampi and chips - not the usual thing I'd have but delicious. For pudding I had a "new forest gateau" which was like a deconstructed black forest gateau, layers of sponge disks, cream and sour cherries. It was lovely.

We are just have a quiet evening in tonight which is good because it's pretty windy outside but earlier there was thick fog over the Purbeck Hills so at least that should get blown away!

Dorset

I'm on holiday this week in Dorset with my parents and their demented dog Millie. We had a good journey down and the sun came out when we got here! So I was able to take this picture of Corfe Castle from a hill top opposite. As we don't have a great internet here - having to use a dongle - my pictures will have to be limited or uploaded in a small size.

We are staying in a lovely thatched cottage which has beautiful views and surrounded by the sounds of a babbling beck, bleating sheep and robins singing. Our walk was accompanied by slightly different noises, those of mortar and artillery fire. BOOOM! ratatatatata BOOOOM! We aren't far from MOD land in the Purbeck hills where there is obviously some kind of exercise going on.

I'll try and blog as much as I can this week to keep you all up to date. But for now - good night :-)