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
No comments:
Post a Comment