Friday 29 October 2010

The Broken of Britain

Last weekend a new campaign was set up about the proposed cuts and specifically to allow disabled people to campaign about them.  Because we are one of the groups who will be affected most severely by these cuts.  And the government have already admitted they've not looked into it fully.

The campaign is The Broken of Britain.

This afternoon I had a long chat on the phone with Kaliya who set it up.  It was really fun to get to talk to her after knowing her online for so long.  Just a shame we had such a serious topic to talk about.  I'm going to be helping with the campaign by doing stuff like keeping an eye on the blog and answering e-mails.

I also wrote a post for Scope on Monday about this project.  Spreading the word is one of the most important things people can do.  Even if you don't feel able to share your story or take part in other ways, please consider sharing the link.

Reading the stories is humbling and it can be very hard.  I thought I'd seen a lot of benefit problems as a CAB adviser and knew how they could affect people.  I was wrong.

I just posted Emma's Story - my own story - to The Broken of Britain blog.  It feels a little raw and it wasn't easy.  I've shared some very personal stuff before through my blogs but this feels like a whole different level of personal and not overly comfortable. I thought about it for a long time and did consider being anonymous as those stories are also accepted. But I knew that if I wrote what I wanted to write and I continued to promote the project plenty of people would read it and know it was me.  Plus, if ever there was a time when I feel the need to stand up for what I believe in, it's now.

Please consider supporting this project.

2 comments:

Dan Holloway said...

I found your blog as a fellow Oxfordshire Nano writer and will definitely get in touch with The Broken of Britain. My wife and I are both bipolar, and although I am ridiculously lucky to have had only two 6 month episodes in the past ten years where I've been too ill to work altogether, she has had many. I do some work in my spare time with the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Mind, Rethink and others on debt and mental health (after someone at RCPsych randomly found an old blog of mine by googling debt and mental health), and it's an area that, especially with the coming changes, is going to get worse and worse as benefit changes exacerbate debts, exacerbating mental health problems in turn and so on and so on. Thank you for telling people about this great project, and I hope I get to say hello at one of the Wednesday G&D meet-ups

Emma said...

Hi Dan,

Great to "meet" you too and hear you might get involved with The Broken of Britain. Unfortunately I can't get to any of the G&D meet ups but we've been having our own Wednesday meet ups here too. And I should get to all of the Sunday ones. So maybe I will see you there. Hope the NaNo's going OK! Emma

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