PPlog

This is another action pressurising this unelected, undemocratic and sociopathic ConDem coalition. The details can be found at:http://www.radar.org.uk/radarwebsite/tabid/124/default.aspx Essentially it is an encouragement for service users to talk directly to their MPs about disability issues, positive and negative, and feedback to RADAR as a central core processing the scheme. MPs attitudes and responses will be, in the least, ‘interesting!’ I’ve begun to try. These are my mails to and from RADAR so far: Hello. I'm interested in this scheme although my MP (Richard Bacon South Norfolk) is useless as far as disability is concerned - I should keep plugging away at him. He avoided meeting me at Methodist Central Hall on the Hardest Hit march.   Heddwch. Mike. Dear Mike,   Thank you for contacting us about Radar's MP Disability Dialogue. Please find attached an information pack that contains advice on how to organise and promote a meeting or...

Richard Latchman wrote at the end of his report in the Guardian of 20th May, 2011: "These are real people, not pawns in some big business game of commercial chess." HE SHOULD HAVE PUT IT AT THE BEGINNING because it is of paramount importance . Mr Latchman's report was about the residential homes company Southern Cross and the fact it is in financial difficulties of a scale that is said to threaten its continued existence in business. There is another article in today's (25/05/11) Guardian Society at http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/may/25/southern-cross-care-homes-in-balance but this is just about the financial aspects - the least of the issues. Of paramount importance are those ' real people ' caught up in a disaster waiting to happen. This human catastrophe in waiting was created by Margaret Thatcher and her government in the 1980s, perpetuated and refined by the Labour governments of Blair and Brown and sanctified by Messrs Cameron and Osborne and t...

Something different I hope. This is, if it comes off, is to show us crips can take off the dis.

Drawn up by Mark, my banner read: Miller, Minister Against Disabled People which I thought pithy and accurate. The Hardest Hit March was an exhilarating experience. So many angry but peaceful people marching on Parliament to protest at the bullying and oppression we are being subjected to by this ConDem government. For my own part I struggled to propel my wheelchair along with the march. I started pretty much at the beginning with our coachload from NCODP but energy flagging and arms dropping off I slowly and gradually fell further and further back through towards the end - the positive thing being that I saw much more of the other protesters and chatted with them than I would if I'd have been able to keep up. I did it though - with huge pride at joining with these brave people who had come from all parts of the country to register their disgust at the government policies which are blighting their lives. A unique striving for equality and social justice. However knackered I was tho...

This morning just before eight on the BBC radio 4 Today programme, there was a short feature on treatments development in Broadmoor Hospital. To the general public it would have been a set of interesting interviews at the hospital outlining experimental treatments using computer games. But I was taken aback, not by the angle of perhaps quirky treatment focussed on by the interviewer, but by a statement that the hospital told the Today programme that they would “not allow any interviews with patients.” Now I thought we had entered an age of twenty first century mental health policy and that government has, throughout the last ten years and more, developed a positive policy of service user - patient involvement - in policy developments and the delivery of services (which of course involves ‘treatment’). And I also thought the principles of service user involvement had been well embedded in the NHS and mental health services. It’s a pity the Today rep...

Thie paper published last week here http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/14675 (in the public domain) deserves to have wider exposure, not only because it is brilliantly researched, bringing together all the strands of the Uk's denegration of people with disabilities, but also because it is centrally important to disability rights and social justice. I make no apologies for copying Karen's paper here in full. Mike. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Betraying disabled people and welfare Karen McAndrew Abstract This short research paper maps out the contours of a revolution in Britain’s benefits and welfare system. But the evidence Karen McAndrew examines and evaluates indicates that, far from enabling and supporting sick and disabled people, the changes and cuts the UK government is making – disguised by a superficial rhetoric of compassion and empowerment, and eased by ungrounded prejudices stoked in sections of the media – are causing real harm a...