This week I was visited by Robin On The Road - the awareness raising tour from the people behind The Robin Hood Tax. They've posted my blog here and posted a video here.
Cross-posted from The Robin Hood Tax blog
by Kaliya Franklin
Any of our lives can change in an instant; whether it be the sudden shock of finding a lump in your breast or uniformed policemen arriving at 3am to break the news your teenage son is fighting for his life after being hit by a drunk driver. More often it’s the gradual pain of witnessing our elderly parents becoming increasingly frail and dependant, the heartbreaking effects of disease on our spouse and the new awareness of a world which will never be the same again. A world so eloquently described by one parent of a profoundly disabled child.
“The very painful thing about disability – whether your own or your loved one’s – is the feeling that the situation is out of your control. When the system that surrounds you is very top-down, bureaucratic, inhuman, that can only increase your feelings of helplessness … but I do believe there are moments of despair, helplessness and frustration that could be directly alleviated by the work of government.”
As a disabled person I have never before felt such despair and fear for all our futures. Every day I hear of day centres closing, desperately unwell people being denied disability benefits, parents fundraising for specialist wheelchairs the NHS can’t afford to provide their children with, carers at such breaking point they feel their only option is to put their loved one into state residential care, and most chilling of all, people planning exit strategies to end their lives for when the time they most fear comes and their benefit is denied.
We have all paid our taxes and national insurance for ourselves and our loved ones in the expectation the financial support and protection they provide will be there for us in our hour of need. The savage cuts to disability benefits and services mean this will no longer be the case, but unlike that passionate parent we have no other resources we can fall upon as his government take away our safety net and hurl us off the cliff into despair.
Non-partisan UK-based Disability campaign. Advocacy for people with invisible illness and/or physical & mental health conditions. Also Carers, their Families and Friends. Our individual voices are too quiet to be heard, but collectively we can shout loud enough to drown out this tide of abuse against us. Disability Hate Crime, lack of full legal protection, people in care homes costing too much to be let out and not one political party willing to fight for us.
Showing posts with label robin hood tax. Show all posts
Showing posts with label robin hood tax. Show all posts
Friday, 15 April 2011
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