Disability hatred in action. Woman with MS finds note on windscreen calling her a scrounger after hospital appointment.

[Darkesteyes]

www.gazette-news.co.uk/news/10071102.Anonymous_letter_labels_MS_sufferer__scrounger_/

The comments are quite special.

'If you can drive a car, you can walk.'

Er, no, actually.

Some people just don't recognise how pig ignorant they are. Scary.

I don't think stupidity or cowardice are new. I suspect the angry little author of the anonymous note lives very close to the hospital and is fed up with blue-badge holders parking outside their house or something trivial. Localised spleen-venting rather than a statement of wider attitudes.

Hmm I am a bit on the fence here actually

I have no sympathy for rude anonymous letters and it was ignorant etc, as were some of the comments. But the woman in question parked on a double yellow. Without knowing the details of the parking situation where she parked, I can't comment on whether she parked in a reasonble place, or blocked a road by parking inconsiderately.

I am all for blue badge holders to be able to park close to their destination, and I am happy to walk a long way in order for a blue badge holder not to have to walk, but maybe the place was not a wise choice?

How can you sit on the fence when the note was factually incorrect - it called her a scrounger on benefits yet she works full time, apparently in the top tax bracket.

You say you have no sympathy for rude anonymous letters steppemum but clearly you do.

Blue badge holders can park on double yellow lines as long as there are no contraindications marked on the pavement.
It is legal for a blue badge holder to park there

Steppemum
How can you be on the fence over a severely disabled someone being called a scrounger for parking legally in a street?

The kind of Green Biro Brigade person that gets so wound up that they leave anonymous notes isn't worried about factual accuracies. I got one myself recently for parking with my wheels half-up on a grass verge rather than on the tarmac. The note called me all kinds of nasty names and I'm sure if I'd been displaying a blue badge they'd have used that in the diatribe.

I don't like the way the article focuses on the fact the woman is not actually on benefits.

Even if she WAS she wouldn't be a scrounger.

Also, you are entitled to park on double yellows with a blue badge, so you can be close to your destination and not have to walk.

this doesn't surprise me at all, just shows how ignorant people are.
BB holders can park on double yellow line as long as they are not causing an obstruction.

I have got a blue badge, and have had a note left on my car when I was parked at the doctors surgery. It said something like I was very selfish and I should leave the space free for the real disabled people, ie the old ones!

I park on double yellow lines, not in dangerous places, because it can make the difference to me being able to go into shops etc, or not. People who don't have a blue badge should be grateful that they don't need one, and ignorant gits should realise that having a blue badge does not automatically mean you claim benefits!

Here's to the note-writer meeting with an unfortunate accident or an unpleasant long term illness. Sometimes experience is the only way people learn.

Cog I fear it is a statement of wider attitudes. When I read Noami Wolf's end of america where she gives ten indications that peoples freedoms were being eroded, I was shocked. I was shocked when people likened the Condems to nazis in the press here, when it was reported that people with disabilities must be made to work, reassessed as healthy or placed in the wrag group to perform free labour in exchange for benefits. On closer inspection, it seems that we now live in a world where having been won over to free markets on the rhetoric of free peoples, we are now in a situation where the worst effects of this market freedom, such as poverty, cuts to government welfare and the failure of states to collect taxes, means that the only way this "freedom" can be imposed is through the erosion of personal freedoms. So when Wolf says that there are similarities between the early years of Fascist dictatorship and the states authoritarian measures at control, I believe her. It is happening here too.

This vitriol that is spilling forth onto people with disabilities, the rhetoric of these people being "useless" eaters is very much a consequence of the ideology of the right wing free marketeers. I fear it will get worse too.

Really Joyful? I was advised by a doctor I saw through an OHS Referral from work to apply for a Blue Badge. I never in a month of Sundays imagined I would be entitled but apparently I am. Maybe it depends on your Local Authority. It has not arrived yet, but I feel very, very strange about having one, and will probably use it only rarely.

I can walk, but never without pain. I just filled in a form on line and got a reply the next day that I was entitled to a badge. Mind you, it hasn't turned up yet so maybe they have changed their minds.

I feel very uncomfortable about it.

"So when Wolf says that there are similarities between the early years of Fascist dictatorship and the states authoritarian measures at control, I believe her."

And I think that's a pile of crap.... There was a steady trend over the last 10 to 20 years to determine more people to be unable to work than ever before. This despite a free healthcare system employing all the latest technologies which should, in theory, mean that we are healthier as a nation rather than less so. It wasn't just the sensationalist 'allegedly disabled man videoed carrying a wardrobe!' stories that meant someone had to look into this. It was also the RL experiences of too many others - myself included - that meant the system had lost integrity. And whilst I'm sorry if anyone feels they have been unfairly judged by the new assessment procedures and that some ignoramuses have chosen to jump on the bandwagon, we are a long, long way from a Fascist dictatorship....

I genuinely didn't know that about double yellows and blue badges, I suspect not many people do (that's not a defence of the note-writer by the way).

here we go.....
must tell dd to stop pretending she is disabled.

Cog I agree, that at first glance Wolfs assertion looks barmy, as did that piece written in the mail a few months ago where the women journo likened the Conservatives of Nazis.

But where do these stories of disabled people carrying wardrobes come from? The media hype these things up, they purposefully skew reality to fit with an agenda.

It is not an overstatement to say that conservative ideology (read Edmund Burke in his own words) feeds into right wing economic and political theories of the deserving and undeserving welfare claimant.

If you consider the multi-national nature of some media empires it can be proposed that media, not only share these right wing ideologies but actively promote them because it fits with their agenda over wealth and power protection. Look at Murdoch as one example.

There is a very hostile attitude now towards people with disabilities, maybe because some claim to be more disabled or their children have minor afflictions that can be "assessed up" so that they can make claims, I am not completely ignorant of the rising tide of "disability" but the fact remains, the neo-liberal state confers freedom on some, enslavement of most and actually created this headache in the first place. Added to which "experts" are always very keen to find all sorts of new conditions and the big pharma companies are keen to flog drugs (how many MPs have shares in health and pharma)

If you sell people the idea that freedom is money, don't be surprised to find that people equate more freedom with more money and claim accordingly! especially against a backdrop of falling wages and rising costs. All too easy then to equate rising claims with rising taxes, lower welfare payments and cuts must follow on the back of selling people the idea that the poor, sick and disabled are "useless eaters" the whole thing is sick beyond words, Hitler was very clever, he didn't just round the Jews up, he convinced the German people that the Jews were scum eating their food, impoverishing the state, causing inflation etc..& bankrupting Germany.

sorry, been off line for a while
No, I have no sympathy for the writer who was a lying and rude. I do not agree with anything he/she says, and the letter should not have been written. There is never any excuse for the things in the letter, and it is none of anyone else's business whether she claims benefits or not (and it isn't relevant to how she parks)

And I know that blue badge holders can park on double yellows which is also fine, and totally appropriate, and I think it is in principle a good system.

What I was trying to say was that there are times when the choice of where to park is better than others. I can think of one or two places which do severely hinder traffic. As we have no idea where she parked or if she had chosen well, or if she had a choice. The point is that we don't know.
I will back out now as this has gone onto a whole other level

Interesting.
I've been asked to do some press about the 'scrounger' perception.
Watch this space....

Oh and for info, anyone who thinks that a blue badge means you can park ANYWHERE think again. You can still be ticketed for causing an obstruction. Yes you can park on some double yellows (as long as there's no loading restrictions denoted by a vertical stripe) but if you cause an obstruction or a danger to other road users or pedestrians you can be prosecuted.

Agree with Toughasoldboots.

You forgot the "cowardly", though. And the "loathsome".

Makes me laugh ..."because she can walk"!!?? DP can walk but because he is blind he dosen't know WHERE he is walking!!

Though I suppose he dosen't drive ....but then again we get the looks as a couple with a young family in our 40's having a blue badge ... a majority of the lookers and tutters are over 60 until DP reveals his cane. As for parking as long as I park without causing obstruction I will get as close as I bloody well can so it is less stressful for DP AND me.