(no subject)

[webofevil]

The DWP’s hard work is paying off. Months of dripfeeding negative stories about disabled welfare recipients is translating into a healthy rebalancing of society’s attitudes towards disabilities. It’s time to condemn innocent people a little more and understand medicine a little less:

[In the past year] 37% of people with disabilities claimed they were increasingly being abused in the streets, erroneously reported to the benefits fraud hotline and accosted when trying to use parking spaces for the disabled. Nearly two- thirds thought others did not believe they were disabled and half of respondents said they felt others presumed they did not work. [Guardian]

As with almost all coalition policies, the disability benefit cut and back-to-work efforts are not even remotely designed to save money: as Scope has pointed out, this general atmosphere of hostility towards people with medical conditions means that they will face increased suspicion and outright discrimination when trying to find work, meaning that they are less likely to get it and therefore more likely to become or remain unemployed. But clearly, for the coalition, that’s a small financial price to pay if society finally gets the message about the “disabled”.