IT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH

I have been away a long time, a lot of personal things have changed in my life again and I have fought for all my entitlements, money for care, to live, adequate housing and assistance to live also. We will be moving for the second time in two years to yet more adapted accommodation. The house we were given first time around wasn't adequate for my needs. This time however I'm having difficulty finding help to move, as the community care grant has been abolished. I have family who can help me move my things, goodness knows how those without people to help are managing. We could have been left with a choice between staying put in inadequate housing and leaving most of our worldly goods with no way to replace them. We are also now subject to bedroom tax, this won't change when we move as my needs haven't changed and we are having to pay money towards our council tax as well. This is just really a clandestine way to cut benefits without the headlines. People fall so easily for a line about how they pay x y and z so should claimants. It's the politics of envy and makes a mockery of the "this is the minimum the government says you need to live on" that is at the bottom of almost every income related benefits letter you get. Can you imagine the outcry if a 'because we fancy it' tax of 10% was placed onto the 'squeezed middle' or pensioners? I'd be among the first trying to help campaign about the unfairness, I remember the abolition of the 10p tax band. We went from subsistence to a spiral of debt and difficulty all of a sudden. This time we are managing but that money we are now paying on rent and council tax, under previous governments was allocated for care and mobility. The outcome is we go fewer places and can afford less of the things that make being disabled easier. I am awaiting my reassessment, I filled out the paper work in February this year and have yet to hear anything. We have a new member in the family and I feel ready to start blogging again. I'll be posting soon the conversation that reignited my anger at the current climate of hate against the disabled and especially those in need of financial assistance. Most of us are the survivors of casual discrimination, and I think probably all of us, carers and people with disabilities, visible, invisible, chronic and progressive have heard "Oh but I don't mean YOU" I'm here to say IT'S STILL NOT GOOD ENOUGH!

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing

So I've been away quite a while, a lot has been happening my my life, and it's not the kind of things I started this to blog about. However I'm sure things are going to get rather interesting from here on in - and I mean interesting in that my life is about to become a never ending cycle of stress, assessments, appeals and legal home work.
I'm being migrated from incapacity benefit to ESA. It might not seem like a lot to those who don't know, but just read the blog, read my journey and you will see how ill thought out government policy can have a devastating impact on the ground. The people it is effecting are essentially hidden, they are ill and they are poor and they don't have many resources available to them, or options to register their distress. They are a part of our society but are one step removed from it by barriers most people wouldn't even consider. Some are financial, some physical, some are health related and some are down to the vast majority of the general public acting like a troupe of the three monkeys.
Remember the Asylums, remember care in the community, remember the children sent to Australia stolen from their parents, now we have ESA and it's already leading to horrible personal tragedies. I won't be one of those, I'm not dying and I don't have current mental health problems, this process is unlikely to be fatal to me, or to make my death anything but peaceful. That is why I am in a position to tell you about it, to make you aware of what is hidden where you don't see, you don't hear and we can't ordinarily speak.

Here are some personal accounts of how the state is terrorising sick and dying people in Britain today.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jun/03/unfairness-of-the-capability-test

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing

I'd like to add to Tolstoy in that it also requires good people to not ignore what is happening below their usual radar, underneath them at the bottom, in the underclass.