Dear Prime Minister

I wrote a relatively long blog post on Tuesday and then my Internet went down and I lost it.  I do have quite a lot to blog about but not today...

The cuts which will be made as a part of the Comprehensive Spending Review were announced on Wednesday.  They will seriously affect disabled people and they haven't been properly thought through.  The government admits that they haven't looked fully into how they will affect disabled people.  I wrote a small post about this on Disability Voices.  It includes a link to a Scope campaign about it, asking people to e-mail their MP.

Fellow blogger and Disability Voices team member Bendy Girl, has posted several excellent responses to the cuts.  Dear Prime Minister has been reposted on the Guardian website.  It's a very moving video response to the Prime Minister about what the proposed removal of Higher Rate Mobility (Part of DLA) from disabled people in care homes.

It's hard hitting but well worth taking a few minutes to watch.  I'll post more about my own reaction to the cuts soon but for now I wanted to share that video.

More Nadine Dorries Twitter Fail

Nadine Dorries made further ridiculous comments, this time suggesting that being disabled is the same as being retired and also that disabled people shouldn't go down the pub.

I wrote another rebuttal over on Disability Voices. Twitter, Disabled People, Benefit Fraud... and Pubs

And DV team member, Sarah Ismail, has set up a facebook group calling for Nadine Dorries' removal as an MP due to her disablist attitude.

Finally I must add that I personally am absolutely astounded and very touched to see the response my original piece on DV got, both on DV and also on Twitter.

When Persistence Pays Off

This is a bit of a follow on to my Advocacy Tips post and is cross posted to Disability Voices

One of the tips I gave in that post was to be persistent.  The example I gave was one of my local supermarkets.  My chair would only go through the wide aisle checkout and it was often closed when I visited.  The staff would open it when I asked but they had a bad attitude towards doing so and made me uncomfortable.  As a result I didn't go there often and had actually decided I wouldn't shop there again.

I had personally made something like six complaints to them, mostly verbally but I'd also written to head office at least twice.  My sister had also been so infuriated the last time I had problems there that they got letters of complaint from both of us about that.  And none of the responses I got were of any use.  A lot of them actually seemed like they were designed to "shut me up".

Yesterday, my sister sent me a text saying that they'd redone all the checkouts in there and they were all wide aisle ones now.  My Dad took me up there for some shopping this evening.  And I could have got my chair through any of the checkouts.  I was tempted to try that but I didn't.  It was a really great sight.  And once again, I have the same thing everyone else does in this town - a choice of where to shop (I won't go there all the time because it's further away but I will be able to go there again!).

I'd love to think that they've done this just because of my complaints but I'm not naive enough to do so - and I know I'm not the only person whose had those problems.  But it's a definite example of why complaining, campaigning and advocacy are so important.  And what happens when your persistent - because it really can pay off.