This is one of the most ableist and offensive posts l’ve ever seen on MN. To take your ‘ideas’ one by one;
Idea 1. Tying the ability to vote to the length of time you’ve paid taxes is batshit. It’s clear you’ve linked to immigration to stop people who come to this country from having a say for 30 years, which is bad enough, but you haven’t thought through how that would affect anyone else have you ?
Idea 2. Unemployed people already are sanctioned for not taking up job offers. That’s been the case for years. You are sanctioned for not taking up a job offer and if you leave work voluntarily - including getting yourself sacked - you are ineligible for certain benefits for a time.
Idea 3. Paying people in vouchers or dictating where and what they spend benefit money on is abhorrent. It’s bad enough that you think robbing unemployed people of their autotomy in this way is reasonable, but applying it to disability benefits doesn’t work - disabled people are best placed to decide how their benefit money is spent. That’s the idea behind disability benefits as a cash payment - each disability is different. It’s not a one size fits all situation and people need to be free to decide how best to support themselves.
Idea 4. Your idea that all disability cars should be ‘bog standard’ and all the same is because you’ve clearly swallowed wholesale the shite propagated by the press and the media about motability in recent months. The fact that you’ve formulated this garbage as a result, unfortunately indicates that the propaganda works. Motability cars are not provided by the tax payer. Motability is financed by private enterprise and charity, and negotiates with car manufacturers who supply the vehicles for the scheme at discounted prices. The higher rate mobility allowance used to finance the vehicle leases is paid to around 39% of claimants who have the most severe disabilities and who would most benefit from the scheme. Not all use the scheme and the allowance is paid regardless of that. So that’s where tax payer input ends apart from the usual exemptions which apply to all disabled people whether buying a car privately or leasing through the scheme. And just to be clear the claimant never owns a motability car - they are leased over three or five years and handed back at the end of the lease.
So the type of car people obtain under the scheme is irrelevant. Higher spec models require an extra upfront payment from the claimant themselves - most disabled people choose cars with low or no upfront payments and the idea that they are all riding round in sporty numbers at the tax payers’ expense is rubbish. And a ‘bog standard’ model wouldn’t work. Disability is diverse and complicated and what suits one person, wouldn’t work for someone else. Some people need wheelchair accessible vehicles - what are they supposed to do ?
And the notion that disabled drivers should be ‘marked’ so that they can be identified as ‘free’ is just nasty, and so far over the line of outright ableism l don’t know where to start with it. For a start they are not free - the claimant hands over their mobility allowance for the duration of the lease, along with any advance payment due. So perhaps you’d like those people who don’t use their allowance in this way to walk around with a sign on their backs identifying them as mobility allowance recipients - better yet, maybe we should identify all benefit claimants in this way ?
The government issue blue invalid car of fifty years ago identified drivers as disabled. They were scrapped in favour of the motability scheme, partly in recognition that singling disabled people out like this is discriminatory. The fact that you would want to reinstate something similar when it serves no purpose other than to humiliate disabled claimants and would likely increase disability hate crimes, frankly says more about you than it does the disabled.
I have some sympathy for idea five - a small charge for missing appointments notice is reasonable l think. But that should apply across the board, not just to benefit claimants, and not where there is a valid and unavoidable reason for missing the appointment.
Idea 6. Disabled doesn’t mean ill. Not all disabled people receive or require ongoing treatment of the type you describe. Many are monitored and have minimum input because their conditions are stable. That doesn’t make them any less disabled or any less in need of assistance in recognition of the impairment their disability causes. This one ‘idea’ alone proves that you know next to nothing about disability and you’re coming from a place of ignorance and bias.
idea 7 - mine. I was going to ask MN to delete your post on the grounds that it’s ableist in the extreme, and as such is offensive. But then l had idea 8 - let it stand so that everyone here can see exactly what you are.