In these times of economic turmoil, it’s usually ‘every person for them self’. Basically you have to grab what you can while you can. Unfortunately everyone is feeling the squeeze of the arbitrary, rushed, deep cuts being imposed on us by the Tories in Mestwinster (Westminster). Unfortunately, like with most things, it is people with disabilities who are lucking out worse than other people. OK you might say that I will feel that way just because I have a disability, and that I don’t know how bad it is for other people. Indeed, I was accused of offending a single mother while on a training course by saying that I should have taxis to get to job interviews. The reason she was so offended was something to do with the fact that she could say the same thing about childcare. The thing about that is I agree with her. She should have childcare costs met while attending a job interview, and if the job she were to go for were to be low paid, she should be entitled to help there with childcare.
Anyway I digress. Part of the Tory government’s welfare program is, as they would phrase it, ‘to help people get back into work’ and of course the good ole favourite ‘to make work pay’. On the surface, it doesn’t seem so bad. ”Finally!” You might think “The Government are going to help me find a job! I’ve been after one of those for long enough!”. However what the government are actually doing is forcing people back into work by cutting benefits, although they have not long since raised the National Minimum Wage, but the increase was so negligible that you would not notice. THIS is the way they make work pay, not by encouraging employers to pay more, but making it so people can claim less in benefits.
Again, you might think this is a good thing, fewer benefits being paid out means that for earners, their tax money is able to pay for other things, and what’s more is that those scroungers should get off their backsides and go and get a job ‘like the rest of us’.
However, we are in an economic low, and there are no jobs! Also, the government are, in my opinion, not really thinking about the consequences. Firstly, in an attempt to try and ‘get people back to work,’ they have taken incapacity benefit away, and replaced it with Employment and Support Allowance – whatever that means! Basically you have to go to one of the shiny new ATOS assessment centres, and the theory is that they perform an assessment to see whether you are fit for work. If you are not fit for work, you are placed on ESA which actually works out less than Incapacity. In practice, ATOS are actually given a commission by the government for every person that they take off benefits, and it shows in some of their, in my opinion, dirty-handed practices. I heard about a lad who had some sort of learning difficulties who had to attend one of these assessments, and he woke up very early to try to take the bus there. He had to stop on practically every street corner to ask someone if he was going the right way. After he finally reached his assessment, he was declared fit for work as he ‘was able to make it to the assessment centre’. You have to really have your eyes open when going for one of these assessments, as they can catch you out with seemingly innocent questions. One example I heard was that someone was asked if they could ‘watch a half-hour episode of EastEnders’. Saying ‘Yes’ to this question would be seen by ATOS as ‘yes I can sit still and concentrate for 30 minutes’ which actually makes you more likely to be ‘fit for work’ – not that employers take on people for half-hour shifts of course. It turns out that actually, no I can’t sit and watch a half hour episode of EastEnders, or indeed any soap, not because I think they are mind-numbing rubbish; indeed I used to watch Coronation Street for a wee while from 2009-2010. However, I had to stop watching as the storylines can really affect me because of my Asperger-induced tendency to focus intensely on certain things, and of course soaps have to have what my best friend in England calls a ‘high attrition rate’ – or in layman’s terms – meaty storylines, and of course deaths of characters. Having said that I could sit and concentrate for half an hour: If I couldn’t, I wouldn’t be writing this blog post! So That’s me already picked more holes in ATOS’s assessments than a slice of Leerdammer cheese. If that weren’t enough, in South London, the ATOS centre was located on an upper floor of a building, and as they are supposed to be assessing people with disabilities and/or illnesses’ ability to work, you’d think that they would do what they can to make their office accessible? So Did I! Turns out we were all wrong; what they actually did was to tell wheelchair users that they were not to use the lifts as it could be seen as a fire hazard if they did. Errrrrr ……………. okay! Finally if that weren’t enough, they appear to have the bedside manner of a surly mountain troll whose football team has just lost in the qualifying stages of the UEFA cup. They seem to show little to no regard for people’s conditions, for example I had heard about a cancer patient who had went to ATOS for their assessment and she said that if they moved her legs they would be very painful, so they endeavoured to do just that, and of course the poor person was subjected to quite a lot of pain.
After all of this, ATOS will declare a lot of people fit for work when they actually aren’t. Of course when this happens, they have to appeal, and actually they win. The trouble is that this process usually takes about three months, and yes ESA is backdated once an appeal has been won – at the moment. However by the time the whole kerfuffle is over, it is time to start again. If you are ill, and/or you have a disability that is genuinely severe enough that it stops you from being able to work, the stress caused by this vicious cycle will most likely make things worse. The good news is that the government have realised that there are way too many decisions that are being made by ATOS that are later being overturned on appeal, and they have decided to act. The bad news is that they have decided to act by not letting people have access to benefit while the appeal is taking place, so this will invariably leave a lot of people struggling financially!
So, what about those people with disabilities who can work? We are placed on Jobseekers’ Allowance, and it really is a postcode lottery as to whether you have an advisor who specifically is a disability advisor. If you do get such an advisor, like I have, you might get someone who understands that you might not be able to do certain jobs (I can’t really do retail jobs as I struggle to see on shelves where things are supposed to go). However, you may not be so lucky. I was originally referred for WorkChoice – something with a title so misleading and patronising I just want to scream out loud to a highly distorted electric guitar that is being thrashed at an un-natural rate. However if I did that I would end up wanting to go out to my favourite place in Aberdeen, the Moorings, and I would never finish this blog post. Instead I will just fill you in on what went on at my Work – haven’t got a - Choice appointment.
As you, my faithful dear readers, will know I have depression which is sometimes severe. I therefore decided that I wanted to be upfront and honest with the woman who was at my appointment which was being held in an office that actually looked more like a police interrogation room. I said to her that I needed work that would be close to me, because as I am visually impaired I would struggle to change busses on a dark night, and on a morning because of my depression I can find it difficult to wake up, so if I missed one bus, and I had to catch more than one to work, I may risk being late for one bus which may cause me to miss the other. In short I wanted work that was easy to get to. Instead of realising this, she acted like I was making excuses not to work as she said ‘That’s a lot of negatives about working. Can you think about any positives?’ I was stunned speechless (which I thought was impossible). After this I realised Work-didnyhavemuchofa-choice was not for me. I wouldn’t mind but this particular Work-Choice office was part of a mental health organisation so I would have expected at least a wee bit of support.
Another problem that I think people with disabilities, including myself have is that we just can’t get jobs! While it is not always the fault of employers, but It says something when the only interviews I get are from employers who have guaranteed job interviews for people with disabilities. Even then I only think they are doing it to tick boxes. I’ve taken all the advice about interviews, and I have tried so many different approaches. Plus I volunteer at Aberdeen Action on Disability where I am now a board member. I have also done the SHMUWorks course which teaches you about radio production while running a parallel course that teaches you skills to help you become “work ready”. Unfortunately Politicians and Job Centres alike seem to have this belief that there an abundance of jobs out there and all that we have to do is just take them. The actual reality is that there are several people applying to every one job, sometimes as low as eight applications to one job, sometimes as high as 40, and even higher for certain jobs. Companies will be weary of taking on people with disabilities as they might not think that we are ‘up to the job’.
“But Jay! Companies are not allowed to do that! The Equality Act stops that from happenning!” I hear you cry. Well, theoretically that SHOULD happen, but in practice, how can you police this? Companies can roll out all the usual excuses ‘lack of experience, overqualified, etc.’ and nobody need ever know that they’ve discriminated against you because of your disability. Sometimes you might be lucky enough to get a company who will say to you ‘look, we’re not taking you on because of your disability’ but what then? My first instinct would be to sue them under the equality act, but they are a company, and will no doubt have much better lawyers than you can afford. In any case, most employment advisors will advise against suing. Why? I think it’s because it somehow looks bad on you. Great! People discriminate and we cannot do a thing!
So what does this mean for us? It means we don’t get jobs! This leads to us not being able to access more expensive lifestyles - because despite what the Daily Mail likes to have people believe – we aren’t rolling in benefit money. Not only that, but for the poor folk who are on Job Seeker’s Allowance, depending on your advisor, you could be BLAMED for not having found a job. Again I am very lucky in that my advisor seems to actually understand things and knows I work hard to find work. What if you fall foul of the new Mandatory Work Activity? For those of you who don’t know the Mandatory Work Activity is Work Experience that the Job Centre plus can make JSA claimants take part in. Basically you will work with an organisation like Poundland or Tesco for a certain amount of time. If you have been put forward for one of these courses, you have a week cooling off period, but after that you MUST attend and if you decide to drop you, you will forfeit your benefit. This program is controversial as job centres have not told claimants that they have a week in which they can drop out without losing their benefit. Also, it has been said that companies are using the ‘free labour’ provided by this program in the run-up to Christmas. If that weren’t enough, you are not even entitled Access to Work as it’s an unpaid post. Access to Work for those of you who don’t know is a scheme by the JobCentre that will pay for any needed adaptations that a person with disabilities might need to do a job. While this sounds fine and dandy, just like with most everything, this silver lining has a cloud.
However it’s not just in the employment sector that disability discrimination appears to be unchallenged. The thing that motivated me to write this blog-post is that Ofcom have appeared to authorised disablism.
“Wee bit extreme is that not, Jay?” I hear you cry. I would not have believed it myself but there it is. Ricky Gervais had said that he thought “He thought Suzan Boyle looked like a mong the first time he saw her. We all did”. For those of you who don’t know ‘mong’ or ‘mongoloid’ is a very offensive term for someone with Down’s Syndrome. People used to term people with Down’s Syndrome as ‘mongs’ because they thought that people with Down’s Syndrome resembled people from Mongolia. Unfortunately Ofcom do not share my view, and the view of any disability activism group or charity that the use of the term ‘mong’ is unacceptable. While they agree that it is offensive they do feel that as it was said in the context of comedy after the watershed it is okay. I would hope that Ofcom will change their ruling soon or I will lose all respect for them. This, however is a sign of how it is for people with disabilities. Disablism is not as unacceptable as discrimination against other groups of people. I would like to see disablist hate crime carry more severe sentences, and for education to be given about why disablism is wrong. Disablism is particularly bad because the people who it is targeted towards can already be suffering from the effects their disability may have on them, and then they have to endure discrimination. Something has went terribly wrong here!
Have I finished yet? Not really as the Mestwinster budget cuts have posed another problem. Big Society has now happenned, and for some reason this now means councils have LESS money than before. Unfortunately this means they too have had to make cuts. For a lot of councils this may mean disability charities. As if people with disabilities didn’t already find it hard enough??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Now we may have to plod on without any support. That’s just fantastic.
So what should be done about this? I believe we all need to contact our MPs and make them protect services for people with disabilities. The council elections are coming up in May, and it is time councillors made sure to protect US. I don’t quite know WHAT the Mestwinster government are trying to do, but in my opinion they will not be happy until Britain is poor and people with disabilities are lucked up in institutions. Personally I EAT my Packard Bell Legend 406CD before I let that happen. What am I going to do? I am currently trying to get my business Jay Wakefield Computers off the ground. I am working on my business plan and hope to receive help from Business Gateway – an organisation in Scotland that helps people start business.
What do I want YOU all to do? If you have a disability, I need YOU to go out in to the world and keep trying to succeed. That is all we can do because, well, WE ARE WORTH AS MUCH AS ANYONE ELSE!!!! You do NOT need to feel inferior just because you may have a disability. There are lots of things we can offer to the world! If you are reading this but don’t have a disability, I want you to think how hard things can become, and just ensure you don’t make things harder by discriminating, denying access and/or opportunities, and believing us to be a lesser species.
Well – I think that’s all I have to write for tonight. I’ve written enough on here to fill a University Essay, so at this point I believe I will stop.
