As we slide inexorably
towards a general election, there is a lot of talk about our processes and
systems, representation and choice.
What we will also see
in abundance is the ubiquitous PR enhancing photo-op and no one is more in
demand for a political photo-op, than people with a disability.
It yells compassion,
understanding, inclusion and democracy at it’s finest, yet where are disabled
people when it comes to policy? Well HG Wells said it best. He was writing not
about our heart of democracy and those who purport to do it’s bidding.
He was talking about Martians
who swooped and then fed on us unsuspecting humans, but it will fit here “
slowly and surely they drew their plans against us”
You only have to pick
up a tabloid these days, or any or the previous hundreds of days since the welfare
reform bill was mooted then framed, proposed and legislated (resulting in
disabled people getting booted) to know that disabled people and carers are the
scapegoats de jour.
Welfare reform sounds
so sensible, so necessary and so plausible, yet a quick scan of any number of
disability rights campaigning blogs or numerous pieces in Society Guardian and
others, will tell you the real, staggering and “inconvenient” truth.
Disabled people and
carers are being stripped of crucial benefits. Many are committing suicide, more die as they wait for their assessments telling them that they are fit and able to return to work.
Many more are left in abject poverty as they fail the tests
for the benefits which their conditions (and a decent society) make theirs by
right and makes our collective responsibility.
These benefits are often in work benefits, enabling disabled people to do just what we all want to do- work and live.
Not even Margaret
Thatcher in her tub-thumping, union clumping and fat cat plumping zenith, would
have dreamed of this.
So there we have it, canon fodder for these days of austerity presents itself as the most vulnerable
people in society. As determined by those paid to protect their rights..
I have a proposal for
any disabled people and carers out there who see the cracks in the ground
appear and find a shiny faced and slavering, earnestly emoting candidate, darkening their door.
Tell them this, either
you won’t oblige or if you feel less hard hearted tell them you might, if they
first autograph a small pledge which you feel may be important to your future
and the futures of approximately 11,000,000 of your fellow citizens:
“I the undersigned
pledge to endeavour not just to forget disabled people and carers once the
election is over but instead, agree to add my name to a list of MPs who are in
agreement that no policy which directly affects disabled people and carers
should henceforth be drawn up, without disabled people and carers being involved.
I call for a committee
of independent disability rights campaigners and groups (with no financial input from
government) to be a working group who will oversee all policy decisions
directly addressing disabled people and carers, in the future.
I also agree to be
held accountable if the aforementioned group is not assembled within 3 months
of my election.
Because I actually do
care and this is just the sort of thing that made me want to be an MP in the
first place”
So there it is a small
pledge in exchange for free PR seems like a good bargain to me.
If they have forgotten
or intend to forget, then I feel there is no harm in reminding all candidates
that really they work for us, all of us, every single day. Nor does it hurt to remind them all that their minds, so full of ameliorating promises, are not immeasurably superior to anyone.
