By: A.C.
Over the years of the present UK Government, I have always had an attitude of ‘nil carborundum illegitimi’. To see what this ‘dog Latin’ means, you can search it on the web.
Yesterday, whilst at my local supermarket, I met a very nice lady seated in a wheelchair, and obviously disabled who was collecting for a brain tumour charity, whose local Aberdeen branch member, had succumbed to an illness, and was unable to meet collection obligations.
To cover for her friend, she had driven from Paisley, so as not to miss an opportunity for fundraising for her particular charity. It became clear as we chatted, after I had dropped some cash into her proffered collecting bucket, that this clearly disabled woman would lose her independence when the DWP took away her Motability vehicle. She informed me that it was due to be taken away in Spring of 2017.
She further informed me, that another friend, an ATOS assessor, had already told her to “prepare herself” for losing her vehicle.
That remark, struck home, as it would appear that the woman had already resigned herself to accepting her fate, and that her contact in ATOS had either prescient foreknowledge; or was well acquaint with a set down policy as regards the fate of Motability users.
I informed her of Appeal, and how to go about it, and to never accept the decision.
I think it is obvious, that any person who is prepared to drive 170 miles, in order to stand –in for another charity volunteer worker, and give of their time through volunteering and not be paid for that, except for expenses, is doing more good, that having their vehicle and benefits stripped because of Tory ideology and then being grounded at home.
If you are a regular reader of our Facebook Newsfeed, then you will be well aware of the growing number of reports regarding disabled people presently on Motability who are being stripped of their vehicles. This story in the Guardian reports the nonsensical taking away of the Independence of a young disabled woman who has achieved so much.
On Thursday 7 April 2016, the man who implemented legislation far too fast and without getting the technology in place first, the former Secretary of State at the DWP Ian Duncan Smith, will be interviewed in a TV documentary by Ian Hislop, the editor of Private Eye, about how Victorian reformers of the Welfare State have repeatedly tried and failed in their objective. I would mischievously ask if Hislop is inferring or confirming that IDS was indeed a Victorian Reformer?
Apparently in this interview in December 2015, IDS manages to weep when he talks about the fate of a nineteen year old woman who had given up on life.
There are actors who do that to order. Crocodiles do it as well, and if IDS had indeed cared about the disabled, he would not have obeyed his Party’s instincts to view all the disabled as shirkers, frauds, scammers and skivers, and implement his pet projects or indeed agreed to austerity and cheese paring of the budget at the DWP. After all he had six years to protest or resign, but his enthusiasm was unbounded, as was his belief in his own reforms. He rammed through the Welfare Reform Act, just two weeks before he resigned with all its consequences for the disabled.
Pardon me then IDS, if I don’t buy it. Your attack dogs in ATOS and Maximus have done immense damage to thousands of disabled people when they presented with real, “for life” disability, and despite the assessors knowing that cutting off their mobility would bring real hardship and poleaxe their independence, they still carried out their legislated obligations.
Hislop is no ATOS assessor, but is a sympathetic documentary–maker, with no previous experience of how to assess weeping Government Ministers. So maybe we can go easier on him.
Of course, if one has Cerebral Palsy, has a “for life “ mobility award that is now being taken away, or about to lose one’s mobility and independence, then plotting the downfall of the leader of a political party, or seeking to influence a referendum, is not what one is worried about.
ATOS, Maximus or whoever already know your fate, simply because that same cynical former Minister had already mapped it out in Government Policy and legislation years ago.
‘nil carborundum illegitimi’.