Disabled

Disability is the consequence of an impairment that may be physical, cognitive, mental, sensory, emotional, developmental, or some combination of these. A disability may be present from birth, or occur during a person's lifetime

I am pretty bloody annoyed at the moment. I had the misfortune to watch "Benefits St" today. Omfg are some of these people for real. How do they get away with it? We are constantly being warned about benefit fraud, being asked to report anyone we feel might be claiming for something they aren't entitled to. The government want to make cuts everywhere and impose rules to make it harder to claim. If they didn't dish it out so freely then maybe we wouldn't have so many people relying solely on benefits. 

The programme I mentioned featured a guy who was claiming Living Disablity Allowance for memory loss. This is a guy who openly uses marajuana and takes up to 10 Diazepam at any one time. No wonder he has memory loss. How has this been allowed to happen? Has the world gone mad? 

So this got me thinking about things a bit closer to home. I live in a street where parking is a real issue. I live in the centre of town and not too far from the train station, ideal free parking for commuters and shoppers. A bloody nightmare for residents. Anyway our street is slowly filling up with courtesy "Disabled" spaces outside people's homes. Huge spaces, sometimes big enough for two cars. Ok, so these residents all have the lovely park where you bloody like "Blue Badges" displayed but why do they have them? They ALL seem mobile, all have functioning limbs, can see well enough. Ok so they may have a terrible illness or something but surely if they can go off out and about in their cars having a fine old time then they can't be "Disabled" can they?  Who am I to judge, after all I only waste ten minutes everyday looking for a space to park, usually two streets away, after I've been at work all day.

There are two components to Disability Allowance or Personal Independence Allowance as its now called, Care Component and Mobility Component. I'm really not going into it but if you can't look after yourself or walk you can apply. You MIGHT be able to apply if you have NO LEGS OR FEET. Surely that's a definite disability! It also states you MIGHT be assessed. Not WILL BE assessed. The whole thing is ridiculous. I'm sure there's a lot more to it but on the surface it's as easy getting a gym membership.

My daughter moaned at me earlier for even thinking about applying for benefits. But we both have disabilities I said. I can't see without my glasses and she's deaf. Ok so I can see with my glasses and she can hear with her right ear, still causes us problems. Guess I'll have to wait for my sight to fail, and it will do. Won't be able to drive but I'll get a parking space and money to buy things I can't see.

I could go on and on but I'm actually bored of it now. Maybe I'll add to this later, only trouble is, the more I read about it the more pissed off I get. Judge me all you like. Maybe I'm jealous or just plain
old bitter. I just object to some people stealing the hard earned tax I've had to pay.