Monday 14 February 2011
Small cut but big impact
This is just a small some would say trivial impact of the cuts. I was speaking to an acquaintance who I see at football. often he sits next to me and he was next to me of Saturday. He was telling me about the arraignments he has to make to g...et to a game. Most people can just walk out the door and either walk, drive get a bus or train to a game. not my freind. Just getting ready is a marathon of care need (which I won't go into) but then he has to buy in help. he's so disabled that even friends would struggle to cope. So he gets help from an agency. This of course costs and he uses his Independent Living Fund payments for this, its the only way he can get out. He'll probably be safe from the DLA cuts but it doesn't matter really, well it does but you know what I mean, the important thing for him is the ILF. As we already know that has been scrapped now, he has it for another couple of years and then it stops. When that happens his days of going to games are over. He said to me "Ach well, I might be dead anyway by then" The he gave a wee laugh and said, "Thats what they want". I didn't laugh, it really was heartbreaking especially when I think what he has to go though just to get there. Fortunate we won 0-4 to lift the mood
Tuesday 8 February 2011
Single Parents:Why the Tories will always be the nasty party
Having spent the last year stigmatising sick and disabled people as feckless lazy scroungers the Tories have now decided to turn their attentions to an old target of theirs, the single parent. Ian Duncan Smith has said he wants married couples and families to get tax breaks because he claims they give children more stability and should be encouraged. I can still remember their attacks in the past and no doubt the Tory press, the Mail, Sun and Telegraph will be re running the old stories. Single parents on benefits, single parents with no morals, single parents getting pregnant just to get homes etc etc etc, you’ve heard them all and no point me regurgitating. But this is what the Tories do, they scapegoat, their policies are creating high unemployment, poverty, fear and at the same time they makes sure the millionaires carry on getting rich. So, the need diversions, they need hate figure. In the past witches would have done, now, its benefit claimants whether disabled, single parents or just the unemployed. In doing so they help ruin people lives, people who were already down on their luck.
One of the charges is that looking for hand outs runs in families. Well, I can tell you that in my family two people claim Incapacity benefit, myself and my sister in law. However, its nothing like the Tory myth. Take my sister in Law, she’s a lovely woman, she may be sister in law but I’d be proud just to call her my sister. She fits the Tory hate figure on two counts, one, she claims incapacity, two, she’s a single parent. But there the myth ends. She wasn’t always a single parent, she was in a steady relationship, she had what we all though was a really nice man. He seemed a good father, someone I got on well with and we all thought this would be for life. But, he began to stray. This is the thing about the Tory myth. Everytime they look at single parents its always the woman they demonise. Always. If it’s a man that’s a single parent then he’s to be pitied and admired, someone bringing up children against the odds but for a woman, well she has to be immoral somehow, feckless and on the scrounge. Well that’s just now true. In the majority of cases like my sister in law if anyone is feckless and immoral its been a man. In my sister in laws case it was her man who left her for another woman. She was left to bring up her two children on her own.
She wanted the best for her children and worked hard, two jobs to make ends meet and she was badly let down by government. She had to work. She was awarded money from her ex partner by the child support agency but she never saw a penny. Despite fighting, pleading, going to the agency, paying them to chase him up she never got her money and they were worse than useless. So she worked as a waitress, two jobs, she worked all the hours she could. She went from being a vivacious bubbly person who always look so alive to someone who was always tired, someone who never went out and someone who looked tired although she always managed to keep her good looks. I have so much admiration for what she did and how she lived. Despite what IDS says her children had stability, they had love, they had support not just from their mother but from all of us, they have turned out well, really lovely young women. But I’ll tell you what would have given them more stability. Not a man in their lives, I’m not saying that wouldn’t have been nice but, they managed well enough without a man. What would have made a difference would have been if their mother had had a bit more money, enough that she could have been home more, enough that she didn’t have to work in two jobs, enough that the long hours hadn’t made her tired all the time. If she’d had tax breaks, a bit of support from the state in chasing the father for money, some benefits, she didn’t get anything because she worked and of course her ex partner should have been paying. What she didn’t need was the kind of punishment IDS intends to start dishing out to single parents.
To top it all just as he children left home, just when she might have been able to enjoy the money she made in her jobs she had an accident. While leaving a shop someone pulled down the security door right on top of her. She’s never been able to work since. She had to fight for incapacity benefit but this week, this Friday she will be sent for and ATOS origin work capability test where she will in all likelihood lose what little she has. I can tell you now, she is not fit for work, some days she can barely raise her head. I know that if she could work she would be working, she a fighter. But this government need their scapegoats. She became a single parent under the Tories and the screwed her life then, now they’re going to screw it again with ESA.
They are not called the nasty party for nothing.
One of the charges is that looking for hand outs runs in families. Well, I can tell you that in my family two people claim Incapacity benefit, myself and my sister in law. However, its nothing like the Tory myth. Take my sister in Law, she’s a lovely woman, she may be sister in law but I’d be proud just to call her my sister. She fits the Tory hate figure on two counts, one, she claims incapacity, two, she’s a single parent. But there the myth ends. She wasn’t always a single parent, she was in a steady relationship, she had what we all though was a really nice man. He seemed a good father, someone I got on well with and we all thought this would be for life. But, he began to stray. This is the thing about the Tory myth. Everytime they look at single parents its always the woman they demonise. Always. If it’s a man that’s a single parent then he’s to be pitied and admired, someone bringing up children against the odds but for a woman, well she has to be immoral somehow, feckless and on the scrounge. Well that’s just now true. In the majority of cases like my sister in law if anyone is feckless and immoral its been a man. In my sister in laws case it was her man who left her for another woman. She was left to bring up her two children on her own.
She wanted the best for her children and worked hard, two jobs to make ends meet and she was badly let down by government. She had to work. She was awarded money from her ex partner by the child support agency but she never saw a penny. Despite fighting, pleading, going to the agency, paying them to chase him up she never got her money and they were worse than useless. So she worked as a waitress, two jobs, she worked all the hours she could. She went from being a vivacious bubbly person who always look so alive to someone who was always tired, someone who never went out and someone who looked tired although she always managed to keep her good looks. I have so much admiration for what she did and how she lived. Despite what IDS says her children had stability, they had love, they had support not just from their mother but from all of us, they have turned out well, really lovely young women. But I’ll tell you what would have given them more stability. Not a man in their lives, I’m not saying that wouldn’t have been nice but, they managed well enough without a man. What would have made a difference would have been if their mother had had a bit more money, enough that she could have been home more, enough that she didn’t have to work in two jobs, enough that the long hours hadn’t made her tired all the time. If she’d had tax breaks, a bit of support from the state in chasing the father for money, some benefits, she didn’t get anything because she worked and of course her ex partner should have been paying. What she didn’t need was the kind of punishment IDS intends to start dishing out to single parents.
To top it all just as he children left home, just when she might have been able to enjoy the money she made in her jobs she had an accident. While leaving a shop someone pulled down the security door right on top of her. She’s never been able to work since. She had to fight for incapacity benefit but this week, this Friday she will be sent for and ATOS origin work capability test where she will in all likelihood lose what little she has. I can tell you now, she is not fit for work, some days she can barely raise her head. I know that if she could work she would be working, she a fighter. But this government need their scapegoats. She became a single parent under the Tories and the screwed her life then, now they’re going to screw it again with ESA.
They are not called the nasty party for nothing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)