'As people with disabilities, we are no longer citizens but leeches: a drain on a society we’re seen as not contributing to and is said can no longer afford us.' Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 March 2013 17.09 GMT http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/28/disability-cuts-dehumanising-rehetoric To be disabled these days is perhaps the most hated version of the "skiver". From 1 April , these "skivers" will start to see much of their support crumble – not with one welfare reduction, but several. Research released on Wednesday shows thousands of disabled people will be subject to up to six cuts simultaneously. About 3.7 million will experience a reduction in income. The very worst off could lose up to £23,300 each over four years, as multiple attacks combine to make those already struggling suffer. By 2017, as a group the disabled will have lost £28bn of benefits. The members of society who, by definition, need more support than others have been chosen to take a disproportionate share of austerity's burden. Worse, it fits within a growing, creeping rhetoric that says it should be no other way. As people with disabilities, we are no longer citizens but leeches: a drain on a society we're seen as not contributing to and is said can no longer afford us. It's a specialised, particularly nasty, version of a wider, changing attitude to welfare. One that has turned necessity into a point of shame. We are not all in this together. Strivers and skivers? Human beings are categorised and, tellingly, divided. Benefits are not entitlements now but handouts, and a claimant doesn't need to be fraudulent to be perceived as scamming the system. The terms in which welfare is being framed is changing how we view welfare itself. Our responsibility for our own condition – our poverty, our unemployment, our disability – has been increased as our responsibility to each other has been reduced. We are at a point where state support to pay for food or personal care is said to be too easy to get and being in that position is viewed as desirable. It doesn't matter that the disability that goes with it is not similarly desired because, in this warped debate, the person and reality of their life isn't seen. It's the natural byproduct of rhetoric that dehumanises. Faces become figures. Empathy erodes and ignorance prospers. We've convinced ourselves that about £100 a week employment and support allowance (ESA) is not only an amount a person can live on, but one large enough to envy. And that a benefit such as disability living allowance (DLA), which helps a disabled person leave the house, is not one of the basics of a humane society but an expendable luxury that can be removed. We've been told it – by people whose interest it's in that we believe it – and we've listened. What we are seeing is an attack on the most vulnerable, clouded and reframed as fairness, through the use of deceit and fear. The idea it's based on – "skiver v striver" – is an entirely false dichotomy: a picture of the economy and the people in it that doesn't exist. Awarding a disabled person DLA can actually reduce their need for further welfare as the money is often used for transport that helps them hold down a job. Unpaid carers save the UK an estimated £119bn every year in potential care costs and so, far from "skiving", are saving the economy billions. But to justify benefits in this way – as in how much you save the taxpayer – would be to be complicit in the very divisions that need rejecting, to go along with the myth that some people are deserving of help and others are not. Human beings are more than numbers and a welfare system should be based on more than utility. Every person has worth and is a member of society. As April brings more disability cuts that promise to deprive, isolate, and degrade, it's something to remember. -- Avinash Shahi MPhil Research Scholar Centre for the Study of Law and Governance Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi India Register at the dedicated AccessIndia list for discussing accessibility of mobile phones / Tabs on: http://mail.accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/mobile.accessindia_accessindia.org.in Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
