Why Tread The Same Path?

Merry Cross writes:

I wonder if the Parliamentary Labour Party has any idea of how many voters it has lost through its insistence on continuing the persecution of disabled people, which is so forensically documented in John Pring’s new book The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence.

The cuts to our eligibility for benefits as well as the value of them, started with a Labour Government decades ago and have been enthusiastically continued ever since. The results have been disastrous, not just for our physical and mental health, but for our families too. Add into that the reduction in our and our families’ spending power and its impact on the economy, the destruction of social care and the NHS and the absence of affordable, accessible housing and the obstacles to living, let alone living a dignified life, and these cuts have been multiplied many times. That is what being disabled means today, in one of the wealthiest countries on the planet.

Exactly how are we expected to find that holy grail of jobs, when there may be no-one available to help us get up and get ready to leave the house? How, when even if we and our families have managed that, do we get to a job when there is little or no accessible transport available? How do we hold down a job, even if it is working from home, when the medication we need may no longer be available from the NHS or we are unable to get appointments with our GPs?

Mr. Starmer, I am old enough to remember the first iteration of staff in Job Centres (which used to be the Social Security offices) who were there supposedly to help us find jobs. They knew zilch, nada, nothing at all about impairments or disability and were as useless as chocolate teapots then. Nothing has changed there and neither has the enthusiasm, or lack of it, amongst employers for offering us jobs. This has been massively exacerbated by the almost total destruction of the Access to Work scheme, which even 20 years ago wasn’t that great. Let’s face it, given that all the Government bullying to date hasn’t decreased the benefits bill, why tread the same path?

So, is it any surprise that many, many disabled people belonging to many different disability organisations are against the Assisted Dying Bill? Please don’t set too much store by Tom Shakespeare’s assertion that a “quiet majority are in favour of it” when he produces no evidence for that at all. Can you imagine how humiliating and terrifying it is to see a Government possibly preparing to spend money on ending our lives, rather than on helping us live with the dignity that those in favour of the Bill desire for the end of life?

Most disabled people are likely to have the greatest compassion for those who suffer and die perhaps in pain. But we contend that if they hadn’t witnessed, and then been subjected to the reduction in the quality, support for, and meaningfulness of our lives, perhaps they too would oppose the bill.

Our slogan is #AssistUsToLive.