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Kaliya Franklin’s Benefit Scrounging Scum is up for a political blogging award.
It’s as if some of our politicians want us to believe there are two disabled populations: one competitive, the other dependent This year looks set to highlight the contradictions facing disabled people in our society. On the one hand, they are facing increasing marginalisation and discrimination under “welfare reform” policy and public expenditure cuts. On the other, the official rhetoric presents them as the heroes of the forthcoming London Paralympics.
BPA unveils strategic plan that aims to use profile of London 2012 to help ‘inspire a better world for disabled people’ The British Paralympic Association has vowed to use the momentum of this summer’s London Games to help improve the grassroots provision of disabled sport and “inspire a better world for disabled people”. Against a backdrop of renewed concern from Paralympic luminaries including Tanni Grey-Thompson that wider changes to the welfare system could harm sporting chances, the BPA has unveiled a new “five-year vision”. It will seek to use the profile of London 2012 to help improve grassroots sport provision, change attitudes towards disabled people in society and improve accessibility.
Wheelchair users David Slater and Anna Alston travel from Trafalgar Square in central London to the Olympic Park in Stratford using only public transport Laurence Topham Mustafa Khalili
Wheelchair basketball medallist Ade Adepitan praises transport aid that is threatened by cuts There’s a sense of fizzing excitement around this summer’s Paralympics. The games are “coming home” – the first forerunner to the Paralympics took place in Stoke Mandeville in 1948 – and for Team GB supporters there are expectations of an avalanche of golden moments to match the second place in the medal table achieved in Beijing. But it’s not just about sporting spectacle, human drama and podium glory in what are predicted to be the biggest Paralympics, with 165 countries set to compete, compared to 146 in Beijing
Disabled people have been characterised as fraudsters by the press, yet our submissions to the inquiry are being ignored When the select committee on culture, media and sport wrote in its recent report : “In failing to investigate properly, and by ignoring evidence of widespread wrongdoing, News International and its parent News Corporation exhibited wilful blindness, for which the companies’ directors – including Rupert Murdoch and James Murdoch – should ultimately be prepared to take responsibility”, I couldn’t help but smile. We all look to Lord Justice Leveson to clean out our stables in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal – after all, he is investigating “the culture, practices and ethics of the press” – arising from it. Yet he, like Rupert Murdoch, also appears to be “wilfully blind”; he too is failing to investigate properly; he too is ignoring evidence – in this case that some journalists, fed by unscrupulous politicians, are whipping up a perfect storm for disabled people.
Games artistic directors reveal details about the event, including the title and the number of performers London’s Paralympics opening ceremony will be called Enlightenment and will feature disabled performers, including soldiers, who are learning circus skills to help them perform aerial work on a 35 metre-high rig. A few details of the ceremony, due to take place on 29 August, were disclosed at a briefing on Wednesday.
Geoff Holt was prevented from boarding a train by a guard who told him that his electric wheelchair would damage the floor The first quadriplegic sailor to cross the Atlantic solo has described his anger at being prevented from boarding a train by a guard who told him that his electric wheelchair would damage the floor. Geoff Holt, 45, told how he was left with “a sense of genuine rage” following the incident on the platform beside an Isle of Wight train, where he said that the guard suggested that he was a liar and cut his leg when he eventually threw down a ramp for him to board. The unnamed guard has now been suspended pending an investigation into the incident involving the Island Line’s three-minute Ryde Pier to Ryde Esplanade service, according to its operators Stagecoach Group .
In a nation that does self-worthlessness so effectively, a successful Olympics would be utterly disconcerting By now it should be perfectly clear that the worst possible outcome for the London Olympics is their passing off as the great success they increasingly threaten to be. For if the Olympics work then how will we explain the rest of British national life – which doesn’t – let alone begin to cope with it after a taste of honey
Police officer shot and blinded by fugitive gunman Raoul Moat in July 2010 is believed to have killed himself The police officer shot and blinded by the fugitive gunman Raoul Moat had assured police he was “OK” days before being found dead at his home in a suspected suicide. Concerns about the wellbeing of PC David Rathband were raised by Twitter users who contacted police following comments he apparently made on the social networking site. He was reported to have tweeted “RIP PC Rathband” and that he had “lost my sight, my job, my wife and my marriage” and would “say goodbye to my children”.
