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- Member
Wed Jul 23, 2008 4:02 pm
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/commen ... 379939.ece
Hurray! The welcome was almost universal. The disabled would be helped into work, the benefits bill slashed, a James Purnell Jerusalem would spread throughout the crippled land.
Business leaders welcomed it - if the prospective employees are employable. The Conservatives welcomed it; even the Liberal Democrats sort of did. With the predictable exception of the unions, everyone accepts the basic principle that the disabled - whether they have a bad back, depression or epilepsy - should be encouraged to get off incapacity benefit and go to work if they possibly can. Across the media there is agreement: more stick, less carrot, the Daily Mail demanded; higher benefits too, The Guardian said. But the fundamental premise was unquestioned: they should be in work.
Er, where? There is a yawning gap beneath this paper-thin consensus - and it is where all the jobs should be. I read the leading articles yesterday and I thought: I have worked in journalism for almost 20 years and I have never knowingly had a colleague who was registered as disabled. The Guardian stands out in employing a deaf journalist and one or two wheelchair-users. But plenty of jobs on newspapers could be done by somebody unable to hear well, depressed (all those death announcements...) or physically hampered. I checked with colleagues on The Times, The Independent, the Daily Telegraph, the papers most positive about the Purnell proposals: any disabled colleagues out there? Nope. None that anyone could recall. We all cheer the principle, but who is going to put it into practice?
When people demand that the disabled - and I'm talking about the genuinely incapacitated here, not the malingerers - should work, they generally mean that they should do rubbish jobs for rubbish money. Fill the call centres with cripples. Dogsbody jobs for the deaf; boring ones for the blind, they can't see anyway. But where are the decent job offers?
Background
Welfare reform has been a long time coming
Back to Beveridge
Giving the jobless capacity for change
Incapacity benefit and income support to be axed
Who wants to take on somebody like Tracey, who posted this on the BBC Ouch website for the disabled on Monday: “I don't mind going to work if the company can supply a darkened room I can use when I get a migraine. An ambulance on standby, just in case my epilepsy lasts longer than 20 minutes (sometimes unconscious and stop breathing because of muscle spasms), three seizures per week. Arthritis in elbow, hip and knee, so can't stand for more than one hour. And brain AVM, which causes tinnitus, and hard of hearing (two hearing aids). Can't wait to see what job I end up with.â€Â
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/commen ... 379939.ece
Hurray! The welcome was almost universal. The disabled would be helped into work, the benefits bill slashed, a James Purnell Jerusalem would spread throughout the crippled land.
Business leaders welcomed it - if the prospective employees are employable. The Conservatives welcomed it; even the Liberal Democrats sort of did. With the predictable exception of the unions, everyone accepts the basic principle that the disabled - whether they have a bad back, depression or epilepsy - should be encouraged to get off incapacity benefit and go to work if they possibly can. Across the media there is agreement: more stick, less carrot, the Daily Mail demanded; higher benefits too, The Guardian said. But the fundamental premise was unquestioned: they should be in work.
Er, where? There is a yawning gap beneath this paper-thin consensus - and it is where all the jobs should be. I read the leading articles yesterday and I thought: I have worked in journalism for almost 20 years and I have never knowingly had a colleague who was registered as disabled. The Guardian stands out in employing a deaf journalist and one or two wheelchair-users. But plenty of jobs on newspapers could be done by somebody unable to hear well, depressed (all those death announcements...) or physically hampered. I checked with colleagues on The Times, The Independent, the Daily Telegraph, the papers most positive about the Purnell proposals: any disabled colleagues out there? Nope. None that anyone could recall. We all cheer the principle, but who is going to put it into practice?
When people demand that the disabled - and I'm talking about the genuinely incapacitated here, not the malingerers - should work, they generally mean that they should do rubbish jobs for rubbish money. Fill the call centres with cripples. Dogsbody jobs for the deaf; boring ones for the blind, they can't see anyway. But where are the decent job offers?
Background
Welfare reform has been a long time coming
Back to Beveridge
Giving the jobless capacity for change
Incapacity benefit and income support to be axed
Who wants to take on somebody like Tracey, who posted this on the BBC Ouch website for the disabled on Monday: “I don't mind going to work if the company can supply a darkened room I can use when I get a migraine. An ambulance on standby, just in case my epilepsy lasts longer than 20 minutes (sometimes unconscious and stop breathing because of muscle spasms), three seizures per week. Arthritis in elbow, hip and knee, so can't stand for more than one hour. And brain AVM, which causes tinnitus, and hard of hearing (two hearing aids). Can't wait to see what job I end up with.â€Â
I tried to tell it from the carer's point of view but fell foul of a number of the posters, so I won't bother posting on that forum again!
