Your Letters - July 2009

Your views

Cold weather, hot topic

I read your article on cold weather payments (Disability Now, Ruth Patrick, June 2009) and totally agree with your campaign.

I’m disabled; so is my husband. We both get DLA, our income is limited and we struggle with high fuel prices.

We have no faith in MPs: they don’t do anything for people like us. They only want to use our money to live a good life while we all suffer in poverty. I’ll never vote for them again.

I’d like all disabled people to get fuel payments so we can keep warm without the worry of big bills. I hope this helps with your campaign.

Mrs E Stebbings, Hull

Extending European democracy

In response to Andy Rickell’s piece (Disability Now, June 2009), disabled people do not derive the same degree of benefit from EU membership as less disadvantaged groups.

For example, the European Disability Forum (EDF) proposed the introduction of a disability-specific directive that was submitted during the European Year of People with Disabilities (1993) as “a proposal for a directive based on Article 13 of the treaty with a view to combating discrimination on the grounds of disability”.

The main focus of Article 13 is to fight discrimination. It’s not concerned with the introduction of specific advantages because affirmative action measures are beyond the legislative scope of Article 13.

Article 141 on gender, by contrast, includes affirmative action measures to compensate for the effects of past discrimination and address the under-representation of a protected class in today’s workplace.

A similar comparison can be made in relation to other disadvantaged groups, for example in relation to race.

The above can be partly attributed to the poor representation of disabled people at the European Disability Forum (EDF).

The unpaid UK representative to the EDF is London-based Richard Reiser (Director of Disability in Education), a paid government employee!

In August 2006, I met him and offered to assist him in enabling disabled people in the UK to benefit from our membership of the EU.

I suggested the creation of an EU disability website, to help disabled people give more attention to EU issues and exert an influence on how our representative represents us at EDF conferences. I envisaged that disabled people would eventually be able to participate in the selection of their representative to the EDF who would thereby be answerable to his or her electorate, a form of participatory democracy that I hoped would be copied elsewhere in the EU.

Mr Reiser purported to be very enthusiastic about this suggestion but, thus far, nothing else has happened.

I would be interested in launching a pan-European, online petition demanding democratic rights for disabled people.

Tony Kelsall, by email

Small change in benefit payment

I received an enquiry from one of our members regarding the letter in this month’s Disability Now magazine: “Paying the price of change?”, about possible loss of benefit (Disability Now, Letters, June 2009).

The main problem, I think, is that some people might find themselves in the position of not receiving benefits for up to three weeks during the transition stage, but they can apply for an interest-free loan to help during that period.

Readers might find the following Jobcentre Plus links useful:
•Summary of the Changes to pay periods and pay week-ending days http://www.jobcentreplus.gov.uk/JCP/stellent/groups/jcp/documents/websitecontent/dev_016121.pdf
•DWP advice to providers:
http://www.dwp.gov.uk/supplyingdwp/what_we_buy/notice_to_providers_paydays170209.asp

Mary Dyet, Information Services Assistant, Sense

A sharp reality check

In your last issue (Disability Now, Editorial, June 2009) you referred to Chris Woodhead, who had remarked in an interview in the Sunday Times that he’d rather kill himself than die in agony, and finds it humiliating that his wife has to do everything around the house.

Of course I agree with you that such remarks will do nothing to dispel the negative social image of disabled people. But we need to reflect on the way society makes those of us feel who become disabled late in life.

Where’s social inclusion? I’d consider myself socially liberated and politically aware: I was National Secretary of the World Development Movement when a car wreck head-injured me. Although I’d addressed global poverty and the racial divide, I regret that politically I was totally unaware of disability.

After I came out of hospital, it took three years before I’d be seen walking with a stick. That’s what the label does: “If I haven’t got a stick, I can’t be called disabled. The fact that I regularly fall flat on my face is irrelevant. They’ll just think I tripped.”

After years of psychotherapy I finally accepted that I was a disabled human being – and proud. I started Enabling Theatre, using Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed to address issues that disable. We’re currently setting up Enabling Radio to reach a far wider audience.

Chris Woodhead should use his experience as former Chief Inspector of Schools to explore and promote ways of creating a fully inclusive education system so that kids grow up knowing that we’re normal too. Installing wheelchair lifts isn’t enough. Until schools address the social concept of disability, we’ll continue to be a divided society.

And Chris might feel he still has something valuable to contribute to our society, in moving beyond the “you’re a useless human being” disability trap.

Susan Quick, Artistic Director, Enabling Radio

Other side of DV coin

I noticed an advert in the May issue of Disability Now sponsored by Women’s Aid about domestic violence, and highlighting the horrific fact that it occurs to disabled women.

Sadly, domestic violence is meted out on men too and, it follows, disabled men. Who’s going to stand up for them?

Spencer Arnott, Homer Green, Bucks

Disabled’s fashion-able

Regarding Peter White’s remarks on supermarkets’ making a virtue of stocking “living aids” (Disability Now, Pete’s Place, June 2009), I’ve come to a similar conclusion but from a different direction.

As accessibility adviser to the tourism industry in Wales and Scotland, I’ve noticed a few initiatives crossing the boundaries of ability. Some years ago “wet rooms” were installed mostly for wheelchair users: now everybody recognises their benefits and accommodation providers are installing them for walkers, cyclists, fishermen, families – all of us.

The same with Walkman tape-cassette audio guides to walking locations and places of interest: at first they were the domain of visually-impaired people. Now, everybody wants one as an iPod or MP3 down­load.

As someone said to me over 12 years ago, “we disabled people are at the vanguard of developments for all of us.”

Yes, Peter: attitudes are changing. I’d even go further and say that accessibility’s becoming fashionable!

Colin Antwis, by email