Tuesday 3 May 2011

#badd2011 Round-up post

Here's a collection of this year's Blogging Against Disablism Day posts that are about benefits or care funding in the UK.

Lets start with the 3 posts we hosted here on WtB. Firstly Goldfish - who organises and hosts BADD every year - posted a vlog about "people like me" (and with excellent outtakes including a fascination with ears). Then David wrote about integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality. The final WtB post for the day was mine on the subject of vulnerability and how the government keeps talking about how they want to protect the "most vulnerable" while actually creating vulnerability.

WtB writers also wrote about WtB-relevant issues on our own blogs. Kaliya used the characters and plotlines from the Harry Potter books as a metaphor for the political position in Britain today. David wrote about how politicians and newspapers picking on disabled benefits claimants has become socially acceptable. My personal post was mostly a self-indulgent whinge about how I can't get a girlfriend, but I do address how the benefits system, especially the plans for ESA, makes being with me an even less attractive prospect.

Crimson Crip looked at a similar issue to David, how disablism is starting at the top with politicians and media and filtering down through our society. Kethry used recent headlines about benefit claimants to assess the media's demonisation of disabled people.

Gaina looked at how non-disabled people are the ones making decisions about us, for example non-disabled people devised the WCA, and suggests we should be excluding non-disableds from the decision-making process.

Finally psychosis & soyabeans looked at the problems with ESA and their own fears about being reassessed.

There are hundreds of BADD posts this year, which is an excellent thing. But it does mean that I can't get around to reading all of them. If you have read, or if you wrote, a BADD post about benefits and care funding in the UK (or maybe even in another country, it might be interesting to compare systems) please do post the link in the comments section.

2 comments:

  1. Everyone's done a great job! Thanks for the links to more I hadn't seen.

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  2. Mine was more of a rant than a post, but I do try to give brief advice on handling the dreaded ESA interview: The Meanderings of a Politically Incorrect Crip, at
    charlesdawson.blogspot.com

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