Apologies for being slow to post this, but there is still time to help, so please read on!
It is now less than two weeks until the Government make their final decisions about “reforms” to Disability Living Allowance (DLA), which, if they proceed as planned, will have devastating effects on many disabled people throughout the UK, and on their loved ones and friends.
Being fortunate enough to have regular contact with people who are passionate about protecting the rights of the disabled (and the carers), particularly the wonderful writers and campaigners of The Broken of Britain, I’m surprised at how apathetic some disabled people are. I want to do more than I do, so I’m not painting myself as a paragon of virtue, but taking a few moments to sign a petition is the very least a person could do. Of course, those who physically cannot are exempt from that statement.
Sign the petition against cuts to DLA here
One misconception about disabled people is that we want the world handed to use on a plate, or that everyone owes us a favour. We really don’t (well, the vast majority of us don’t!), and we need to prove that. Okay, you might not have time to blog or protest, but please, do this. Make your voice heard and make a difference in less than two minutes. Think how you will feel if you find yourself without the benefit payments that enable you to live with your disability, and think of those who would dearly love to participate in this action but simply cannot.
And ask your friends and family, your carers and support workers, your medics and your colleagues to do the same, and ask them all to pass it on. Injustice does not change on its own, we have to fuel it. Don’t look back and think “I wonder if my help might have changed that decision”.
Carers, friends, families et al, you can all help too, and we would very much appreciate you doing so. These cuts could leave disabled people lying in their own defecate all night because their carer has been taken away, or bound to the four walls of their respite home room, because they can no longer fund an essential electric wheelchair. No one should have to live like that, nor should they have to risk starving or freezing to death, or feel suicidal through stress and fear, purely because of what their body and/or mind has done to them.
Thank you for reading this, and thank you in advance for helping the disabled people of the UK.
Mel xx
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