HindleA wrote:@seeingclearly
I have been lately nostalgic about a time when a Minister for the Disabled,actually had some knowledge and passion for the brief they held,for some years they have actively been "against",most recently Harper,nonchalent in the extreme when discussing delays in PIP,even in the face of evidence that irrefutably describe the consequences of these delays.I can't do better than quote Alf Morris,the Worlds first of course:
“If we could each bequeath one precious gift to posterity, I would choose a society in which there is genuine compassion for long-term sick and disabled people; where understanding is unostentatious and sincere; where needs come before means; where if years cannot be added to their lives, at least life can be added to their years; where the mobility of disabled people is restricted only by the bounds of technical progress and discovery; where they have the fundamental right to participate in industry and society according to ability; where socially preventable distress is unknown; and where no one has cause to be ill at ease because of her or his disability.”
Thanks, Adrian. I rarely shed tears but your post had me from the moment I started to read it. This issue of transport for disabled children has really got to me. I used to work sometimes, over quite a few years, with a young group of wheelchairs users, profoundly disabled, but the sparkiest, wittiest group of young people I've known, we always laughed a lot together, and if not for the fact that my presence helped draw down funding for their cause I would have felt quite quite ill at ease 'working' with them, I always felt that they were teaching and giving me so much. They were a small branch of DAN, which I believe got absorbed into the wider disability movement, though you may know better. They were so solid as people, had such energy, that I often forgot entirely how frail they were. Shortly after I retired this was brought home to me when I learned that a young woman from this group had passed away; she was 22 and her brain stent failed her while she was sick with what for most people would have been a cold. Your quote put me in mind of her, just what a force for good she was, what a fierce little warrior for other disabled people she was, and how fragile her hold on life had been.
I regularly am grateful I don't live in the head of a person who makes these kind of decisions. Still, to my mind there are many many, things I'd forego rather than see losses of any kind to young people like this, no matter what their ability to contribute. They should have that special place in our society, their place in it is a barometer of our collective humanity.
still no reply or retweet button, wonder if they doing an update or something ...
