There's a rather sad march on in London today: as many disabled people as possible are gathering to implore the government to think again about the massive cuts in welfare support they're planning.
The government plans to cut spending by £89bn, and £9bn is to come from disability support, which seems obscene to me. Driven by a conviction that all benefits claimants are feckless, idle cheats, the Tories and their Lib Dem sidekicks have decided to get rid of most of the people on the disability support list and institute an 'employment support allowance' instead.
This may sound reasonable - probably quite a few disabled people could be supported into work, but the kicker is that this payment is limited to a year. So if you have a chronic, lifelong condition, or one that flares up sometimes and prevents you from working - tough. After that year, you're entirely on your own.
I despair sometimes. The UK is the 5th biggest economy in the world: there's enough money to give disabled people a decent standard of living, and yet we've elected a government which vilifies them. Let's not forget too that these people aren't beggaring the rest of us: we broke because a) the banks stole all our money and b) Cameron's friends are all corporate tax evaders.
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