Your Letters - October 2010

Has the Government really thought out it cuts?

I receive Disability Living Allowance, Incapacity Benefit and Winter Fuel Allowance, and I’m worried by press reports I’ve read about proposed changes to the benefits system.

I’ve had to retire early from employment because I’m in so much pain and discomfort that I find it impossible to concentrate or do the simplest of things.

My particular problem is that my health problems flare up without warning, and make it impossible for me to work. In addition, because those problems are internal, there are occasions when I seem to others to be in reasonably good health.

As a result, if an assessor were to carry out a work capability assessment of me when I wasn’t in immediate pain, he or she would probably decide that I was fit to work.

If that happened, I might be offered a job and then have a flare up on my very first day, forcing me to return home and jeopardising my future employment.

There must be other people in the same situation.

I’m worried that the Government hasn’t thought its policy through, and that many people will be worse off if it doesn’t get the benefit changes right.

The whole disability population should therefore lobby their member of parliament, especially those of us who would be disadvantaged if work capability assessors were unwilling to take into consideration what each of us goes through on a bad day, and how many bad days we may have in a week.

Also, the whole disability population needs to get in contact with local action groups in their local area or, if there aren’t any, with a national action group.

I feel strongly about this because the Government is sure to get it wrong and leave many of us worse off rather than better off.
Alan Bernstone, by email

I have spent the last hour trying to calm and reassure my wife that our benefits won’t be taken from us, because we really are too sick and disabled to work. I have cerebral palsy and I’m in my early 60s. My wife is in the terminal stages of multiple sclerosis, needs 24-hour care as she can’t do anything by or for herself, and feels extremely vulnerable.

She’d heard on the BBC news today that Chancellor George Osborne wanted to take yet another £2.5bn off the welfare budget by cutting benefits to those who are too sick and disabled to work.

I really wish this cruel and malicious government would stop its threats to sick and disabled people. Yes, there are people on welfare who are work-shy and shouldn’t be on it; and there are disabled people on welfare who want work but can’t find any. It is these groups who should be targeted, not those who need the support of the health service and welfare state because they are so sick and disabled that work is an impossibility.

Even if Osborne’s apparent desire to hurt the most vulnerable in society has been quashed by Ian Duncan Smith at the Department for Work and Pensions, the very fact that his letter [proposing further cuts] was written in the first place indicates the duplicity and depravity of this millionaires’ government. Its efforts to assure those who are sick and vulnerable that they will continue to be supported and nurtured by the state are mealy mouthed and vacuous.

Those trade unionists who are declaring industrial action to save their jobs and services must also remember to include those who rely on their services, for the fight for decent living standards doesn’t just relate to workers in public services but those who rely on public services for their standard of living.
James Elder-Woodward, Alexandria, West Dunbartonshire

With reference to the article by Anne Wollenberg (“Clegg’s hidden agenda conned voters”, Disability Now, September 2010),

I wrote to Nick Clegg in February 2010 because I was concerned about rumours suggesting that there would be massive changes to Disability Living Allowance and Attendance Allowance.

The letter I received back persuaded me that the Lib Dems were on our side in this. Armed with that assurance, I voted LibDem in the General Election.

I now feel cheated and let down. In view of what the LibDems have done in coalition, it seems to me that the letter I received from “the office of Nick Clegg” was full of untruths.
T.H. Walton, Havant, Hants

She told me she could and she can

It was good to see Shannon Murray on the cover of September’s Disability Now and read what she has been doing since we met in 1994.

Actually it was Disability Now, along with Sunrise Medical, that sponsored Model in a Million, the first national competition for disabled models. Shannon and Jason Ward were the joint winners. The judges included Heather Mills as well as the deputy editor of Options magazine, and Louise Dyson, head of a model agency, who offered the winners a year’s listing.

We had over 500 entrants, of different disabilities and ages, and we whittled them down to 16. Each had a ten-minute interview on judging day. The criteria went beyond appearance to personality and the ability to model in the disability field and in mainstream advertising. Louise Dyson said afterwards: “To say we have been spoilt for choice is an understatement.”

Shannon, who was about to take her A-levels, said she wanted to do law and make “loads of money “. She already had an eye on mainstream modelling. “I think that would be the whole point. People think about wheelchairs and stairlifts. I would want to break the convention. “

And so she has.

I wonder what Jason Ward is doing now.
Mary Wilkinson, former editor, Disability Now

The phone is important: make it work

There seems to be a lack of understanding from so-called able-bodied people when someone with a lack of hearing asks phone callers to speak slowly. What a joke that is to people with a speech impairment who can’t even use a telephone.

My daughter has a pro­found speech impairment, which means she can’t make phone calls, but finds that some firms and government departments will only communicate by telephone, not by email or letter.

Firms should employ people specifically to speak to customers by telephone, and instruct them how best to communicate with people who try to explain that they have difficulty in hearing or speaking.

I also wish that firms wouldn’t insist that you only confer with them by text message. I for one am unable to use this facility due to my incapacity, and I suppose age.
Frank Alan MBE, by email