Disabled people to march in London...

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.....against cuts to benefits and services


Link to online protest


From the Guardian

Organisers of Hardest Hit march expect between 5,000 and 10,000 people to attend largest event of its kind for decades


Thousands of disabled people will demonstrate in Westminster on Wednesday against cuts to benefits and services, in an event that organisers hope will be the largest of its kind for decades.

The Hardest Hit march is expected to bring between 5,000-10,000 people to London to voice their anger at the combined effects of changes to welfare eligibility, cuts to disability living allowance (DLA), and local authority reductions in funding for carers and services.

Jaspal Dhani, chief executive of the United Kingdom Disabled People's Council – one of the coordinators of the protest– said cuts meant disabled people feared losing rights that they had fought for decades to acquire.

"Disabled people feel they are being attacked and marginalised by the government," he said. "We've expressed our concerns about the impact the spending review is likely to have on the lives of disabled people, but we feel the government has not taken this on board."

Marchers will be addressed by Liam Byrne, the shadow work and pensions secretary. Maria Miller, minister for disabled people, declined an invitation to attend, Dhani said, on the grounds that she needed to be at prime minister's questions.

Despite the strength of unease, organisers said the scale of the protest would be constrained by the difficulties many people with disabilities face in travelling and participating in a march of this sort, and pointed out that a parallel campaign has been organised online for those unable to attend. Online protesters will be able to message their MPs and upload messages of support or videos setting out why they depend on disability benefits.

"I will not be going on the march, because like thousands of other people in the UK I have ME. A trip to the local shop costs me two days in bed with severe pain, so a march in London is unthinkable," Amble Skuse, from Devon, wrote in an email.

For those on benefits, the cost of attending a march in London was also a strong disincentive, according to Neil Coyle, director of policy at the Disability Benefits Consortium, which is also an organiser of the demonstration.

"One third of working age disabled people live in poverty, but that figure doesn't account for the higher cost of living they face, so they have a far lower disposable income than most people in England.

"If you are on employment and support allowance, the highest level is around £12.50 a day, which means a train ticket to London (bearing in mind that buses and coaches are still not accessible for wheelchair users) is likely to be unaffordable," Coyle said. "And for people with arthritis or a heart condition, for example, a rally is not necessarily going to be the most appropriate way to campaign. There are a lot of reasons why it could be difficult for people to attend a physical rally like this, which is why the online campaign is so important."

Protesters making arrangements to attend have come up against the everyday accessibility obstacles facing people with disabilities when they travel. One group travelling from a Leonard Cheshire care home north of Cambridge has been forced to stagger the journey times, after it emerged that the train service could only accommodate two wheelchair users on each train.

After the demonstration, many protesters will meet their MPs to explain what the impact of changes to disability benefits and local authority cuts to services has been.

Richard Wickerson, chief executive of Mind in Stockport, will be travelling with a dozen protesters by minibus to register their anger at funding cuts which have forced them to reduce the services they can provide. "We have had to create a waiting list, which is a bit ridiculous when we're meant to be providing a crisis service," he said.

Shane Roberts, 23, will be travelling from Leicester to participate in a march for the first time. "I want the government to understand how important it is not to cut services and benefits for disabled people, and in particular deafblind people like me. I need specialised communications support which enables me to live independently – go shopping, reading the post, and book doctors appointments over the phone. I currently only get seven hours of this support a week, which is just enough for me to do the bare minimum.

"The government needs to understand that if they cut benefits and support for disabled people a lot of us won't be able to get by," he said.

A report published this week by the thinktank Demos, and the disability charity Scope, the Disability in Austerity study, showed that rather than being protected from the cuts, disabled families across the country faced dramatic reductions in their household incomes, as a result of changes in the way benefits are uprated in line with inflation, and reforms of the way claimants are assessed for incapacity benefit and DLA.

Disabled people were quickly identified as likely to be among those hardest hit by the coalition's reforms, the report states, because this group is at "substantially greater risk of living in poverty than non-disabled people, [and] disproportionately more reliant on welfare benefits than other low income groups".

"We estimated that disabled people would lose £9bn in welfare support overall in the next five years," the paper said. "We questioned whether the government had intended the budgetary axe to fall so heavily on this group and whether by attempting to 'incentivise work' for the majority, they had overlooked the disproportionate effect welfare cuts would have on those who were less able to join the labour market."

I would be a bit wary of some of these disabled organisations - a lot of these "representative" organisations are more about keeping well-paid admin people in state-paid jobs.

Though I don't doubt that there is a problem with the government picking on many disabled people and the nonsense written in the tabloids doesn't help either.

Such as?

The National Autistic Society's a good start.

Oh my dear boy you have no idea how the voluntary sector works. We do the stuff social services and the NHS doesn't want to directly fund. If charities such as the NAS (of which i'm an employee) Mencap (of which i'm a former employee) Leonard Cheshire (of which i'm a former employee) Sue Ryder (of which I'm a former employee) Marie Curie (of which I'm a former employee) were to pull up shop and simply quit you would find the whole of this country would be in some serious FUBAR with a massive bill at the end of it.

Part of the "great society" move is to try and offload as much government work as they can into the voluntary sector because they know this sector is dirty cheap. If I want to get paid more i'd go private I could earn up to 3x more then my current salary.

Charities do the stuff that wider society and government don't want to pay for or have liabilities, but the money has to come from somewhere. But guess how much it would cost a civil servant to do my job

Can't be voluntary if you're being forced to pay for it. Contradiction in terms from the start.

Ask you GP when he last did a freebie?

Ah - difference is that my GP is part of the NHS, and that's part of government. So not voluntary by definition. You have to pay taxes.

My point is that charities are passing themselves off as being voluntary associations when they're not whilst receiving state money and lobbying government. This isn't on. It perverts the very idea of charity.

There are a huge number of disabled people who are blogging and campaigning about these cuts. I was campaigning myself until my mental health couldn't deal with it any more.

While I agree with you to an extent that there are people within some organisations that make a nice living out of disability, at the same time there are many people out there who are suffering because of cuts.

People who live alone and are completely dependent on benefits for their survival are very vulnerable. I risk becoming homeless due to these cuts. I don't mind saying that I am absolutely terrified.

And yes, Cameron is complete scum for egging on the media with his 'benefits scroungers' campaign.

Your point is invalid. Charities are recieveing money that comissions a service. That money doesn't go anywhere else. At the end of the contracted service the charity has £0 of that money left. Because unlike a private company charities DONT MAKE A PROFIT and if they make a "surplus" depending on the funding arrangement it goes back to the funding body. The money for that service does not come out of a pot that the charity is able to provide from it's own cash.

You require that money in order to pay for materials and employ people with professional qualifications. Registered charities are not just about volunteering and volunteers. Voluntary organisations exist for that and they are called Volunteering centres

I'm sure hell will freeze over when a tory councillor does his job for free. The first one to do that will be locked in a zoo and studied intensly.

I worked for a private healthcare company that was comissioned £500,000 to care for an autistic girl with severe challenging behaviour. That money was to pay for specialist provision as well as the staff and other material costs that would be involved in providing that service. The private organisation basically did the minimal amount of effort to support this person and saved as much of that £500,000 as possible to contribute towards its turnover. A charity in that circumstance has no obligation to make a turnover, only that it maintains a break even balance. So it takes away the motivation to maximise savings. Therefore they are actually doing the job that the comissioner is expecting of them to recieve that money in the first place.

I actively side with the UKIP contingent who want to remove a wage for councillors, though the councillor who did this that I know has just lost his seat. I'm sure he was about as popular as a fart in the lift with his lassez-faire approach to things.

I agree with you; the newspaper coverage and Cameron's mob are disgraceful. This doesn't negate the fact that there are people on the left and in the fake charities that are misusing disability for their own ends, though.

And yes, I have received prejudice before for being on DLA. No amount of telling people what it is actually about, or for, has stopped them with their uninformed assumptions. I have actually started to revert to shock tactics to get my point across.

Such as?

The ignornace of some people on the right, namely the current minister for disabilties absolutely defies belief. He thought DLA was just used to buy wheel chairs

Would you like a list?

And yes, I think turning this into a tribal issue really doesn't help matters at all.

The National Autistic Society receives 90% of its income from the state and spends much of its time lobbying. Does this sound like a proper charitable organisation to you?

What about the people themselves?

I'm coming to the opinion that, much of the time, these organisations aren't needed. Forums like this one are far more helpful to sufferers of autism in the long run, as we feel a sense of community, identity and familiarity.

I suppose I think that this shouldn't be a tribal issue. Left wing, Right wing, and Monster Raving Loony Party people can all become disabled and need these benefits and services. A decent society should provide them, and not pick on the weakest people to focus their cuts.

And I'm not sure if this is the time to be arguing about the role of the voluntary sector. Disabled people need all the support they can get at this time. Some are able to speak up for themselves, some are not. Some can march, some can blog, some join groups that are run by people with disabilities, and some depend on charities to give them a voice.

The main point of this article is that there are thousands of people with disabilities who are marching because they are afraid they will lose vital benefits and services, and because disabled people are the hardest hit by the coalition's measures.

The other point, is that people who can't make the march can still make their voice heard by protesting online HERE

Arguing among ourselves at this time isn't going to help those who are at risk of homelessness, loss of independence, worsening of health, and suicide. The situation really is that dire.