Enough

I'm a scrounger who relies on benefits.

Funny that, because I believe in work. I haven't had a full-time job since my daughter was born in 1998, but I have scraped a living instead with various part-time and freelance posts.

So when I say I rely on benefits, I'm not talking for big stuff like housing. Oh no, I'm not up to that level of scrounging. Mine's just small scale.

The few small benefits our family have been able to claim because of my daughter's disability go towards hospital parking, heating, and other luxuries, like food. It means that my part-time work - and my husband's less than astronomical full-time wage - have been enough to live on. And it means that I've been able to be here when my daughter needs me. Which she is going to continue to do, the selfish layabout.

So why am I mentioning this?

Yesterday, MPs rejected a series of proposed House of Lords amendments to the government’s welfare reform bill.

One of the pernicious reversals they voted through was to halve the ‘disabled child element’ of Child Tax Credits.

This is actually a good thing, David Cameron has told us. What it means is that the help can now be focused on those most in need. This, presumably, refers to the whopping £1.23 extra that children with ‘severe’ disabilities will get.

As for the thousands of children whose disabilities aren’t as ‘severe’, their families will see their £52.21 a week 'hand-out' reduced to £25.95.

Oh well, never mind. Relying on benefits, is, apparently, a 'lifestyle choice'. Our daughter shouldn’t have made the choice to be born with Prader-Willi Syndrome.

It wasn’t a bad choice, because it means she can still be a small-scale scrounger, incurring the stoked-up ire of 'hard-working families'.

But she did make one mistake. She chose to be disabled - just not disabled enough.

Video is Voice Of The Beehive - What You Have Is Enough

Angry

I’m angry tonight.

No, I'm not. I'm furious. Furious that the sick and the disabled are getting a good kicking from the privileged and powerful.

I’ve just watched Inside Job, Charles Ferguson’s Oscar-winning documentary on the 2008 global financial meltdown. The world is in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. And it is the direct result of the recklessness, duplicity, greed, dishonesty, and downright criminal behaviour of bankers. Not forgetting the contribution made by the complete failure of regulators to do their job, risible credit rating agencies who were paid by the firms they were rating, and the market itself. Last, but by no means least, are the governments around the world who failed to heed warnings, failed to act, and have since failed to tackle the causes of this whole disaster. Meanwhile the people responsible continue to earn astronomical bonuses, after shovelling taxpayers’ bale-out money into the fires that keep them cosy and warm, while the rest of us shiver.

So what happens now? Never mind the billions that were blown by the bankers. Never mind the billions that corporations divert around the world to offshore companies so they can avoid paying tax. No, the UK’s ever-more terrifyingly incompetent coalition government decides on a different priority. Forcing the sick and disabled back to work. (See this article by Zoe Williams in today’s Guardian: No alternative to cutting disabled and ill people's benefits. Really?).

Let’s face it, if only we could root out the ‘millions’ of workshy liars and cheats on the sick, then our economy will rise like a phoenix from the flames, and we will boom once more!

The fatuousness of this argument astounds me. Of course there are benefit fraudsters. Of course there are people who lie about having a disability and cost taxpayers money. And they are contemptible. But they're a drop in the ocean compared to corporate villains. 

And the government’s Welfare Reform Bill scares me silly.

I dread the day my daughter has to do a “work capability assessment”. Prader-Willi Syndrome is a rare and complex condition, and one that even many doctors, with years of medical training, are unfamiliar with. 

I’m really worried that in a few years time, someone from contractors Atos Healthcare will be deciding what my daughter is and isn’t capable of on the basis of a 20 minute meeting. I’m worried someone with eight days of training in disability will sit with my complicated, unique, daughter and decide whether she will continue to receive benefits. I’m worried that we won’t have the money ourselves to give her the support she will need. 

It feels like the safety net she’s standing on is being tugged. And if we don’t get angry enough about this and shout and scream and stop falling for the government’s diversionary tactics of getting those of us at the bottom of the wealth chain to fight with eachother, that net is going to be whipped away. And unlike the tablecloth trick, where the crockery teeters, but remains standing, unbroken, she will come crashing down. And I won’t be able to catch her.

Video is Johnny Cash - The Man Comes Around. (I'm not religious, by the way. But Johnny's righteous anger seems appropriate). 

"There's a man going around taking names 
And he decides who to free and who to blame
Everybody won't be treated all the same"