So much for disability adaptations.
In my latest podcast episode, I talk with Mr T, who has been in a wheelchair since a serious traffic accident. Mr T lives in East Devon.
His council home had very bad leaks, mould and flooding. The floorboards were so rotten that his wheelchair went through them. Great stuff from East Devon council there.
Anyway, the council put Mr T and his wife in a non-adapted temporary flat where he can’t turn his wheelchair around.
Upshot is that Mr T has to drag himself down the hall to the loo which he sometimes misses. He also has to sleep on the floor, because getting into his wheelchair at night for a trip to the bathroom is too hard.
I can’t tell you how pleased I am that Labour has decided to blow the rest of its tenure on meaningless leadership contests, rather than on funding councils to sort out serious issues like this.
Hope the lot of them fall forever into a sinkhole, including Andy Burnham. See how they like it.
Appalling state of affairs. And the authotities have the nerve to spy on claimants bank accounts to check theyre not living it up on sickness benefits.
It’s actually ridiculous
Not that I particularly have much faith in Labour but my local council, Kirklees, is currently in a state of quite farcical chaos due to people having voted-in a completely inept Reform majority whose members lack even the most basic understanding of what their job is or how a Council functions:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clypmk3k80ko
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/cm2p1y1ymymo
They are certainly redefining “useless” which is actually quite an achievement
Hi, Kate
My mum and ex-Eighth Army paternal grandfather attempted to groom me into becoming a ‘boy soldier’ for age 16. Their intention was to ‘toughen’ me up. He died around Christmas 1969 — shortly after my 16th birthday — of a blood clot after a leg amputation linked to his insulin dependency. They failed, and I’ve been a pacifist and Quaker since about the age of 25.
And while there is talk about ‘bringing in national service’, I consider acts of kindness to be a national and international service, as I have done in previous volunteering while a disabled jobseeker, where I taught a refugee woman computing skills. From that input, that once-a-week learner was able to upload family photos from her smartphone to social media and regain contact with family diaspora in diverse continents. She rejoiced in making contact with those she thought she’d lost all contact with.
Around Hereford — “home of the SAS” — I notice that Islamophobia seems to be a by-product of militarism.
One of my political outlook icons from my early 20s was ‘topical singer-songwriter’ Phil Ochs who committed suicide at age 35 in April 1976. Wikipedia notes that his dad received discharge from military service due to mental distress from medically treating victims of the Battle of the Bulge. One of my favourite Phil Ochs songs, ‘What Are You Fighting For’, addressed to prospective Vietnam War recruits, has chorus lines, “I know you’re set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?”
An excellent tv documentary ‘There But for Fortune’ of Och’s life can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvZn9C_z6Y0. And while, as President and former WWII general Eisenhower noted, spending on the ‘military industrial complex’ depletes the resources available for resourcing humanitarian possiblities, I note that my paternal grandfather was a parish councillor in East Devon.
The council might as well take his wheelchair away altogether since he can’t use it. How much money would that save the council !!! Wheelchair Saving . Com
Equality watchdog completes draft report into ‘unlawful acts’ by DWP and its Conservative ministers
By John Pring on 21st May 2026 DNS
The equality watchdog has completed its draft report into allegations of unlawful treatment of disabled benefit claimants by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), two years after the inquiry was launched under the last government.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has told Disability News Service (DNS) that it has completed the draft report into possible “unlawful acts” by successive work and pensions secretaries.
Some of those unlawful acts are likely to have played a part in the deaths of claimants.
DWP has provided its response to the draft report, which the commission is now considering, the final stage before the report is published.
Read More: Disability News Service:
https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/equality-watchdog-completes-draft-report-into-unlawful-acts-by-dwp-and-its-conservative-ministers/
The EHRC should be going down the Disability Hate Crime route. Any defence the DWP have will be incrimination. A crime against disability says what it does on the tin.
I myself are charging the DWP with a Disability Hate Crime. At what point does a Disability Hate Crime become a legal matter?
When the disabled person chooses to make it a legal matter.
Ex De-knighted Sir Stephen Timms Minister for the Disabled.
The problem for the DWP is they do not want bad press.
“The Labour government wants to scrap GP fit notes that allow disabled and sick people to sign off work.
An initial trial launching in July will impact hundreds of thousands of people.
It will start in four areas–Birmingham and Solihull, Coventry and Warwickshire, Cornwall and the Isle of Scilly, and Lancashire and South Cumbria.
A second scheme launching in November will transfer patients from doctors to financial advisors and fitness coaches for evaluation.”
https://socialistworker.co.uk/news/scrapping-fit-notes-risks-pushing-people-into-even-more-severe-illness/
For me the key question arising from this transfer of patients from the “second scheme launching in November will transfer patients from doctors to financial advisors and fitness coaches for evaluation” is, “which Labour politicians?” and a further question, “How many more suicides are they banking on?”