Course fees, asylum seekers, and the disabled on benefits
I was astonished this week when I discovered that, as a disabled person not in receipt of Disability Living Allowance—I’m still in the process of appealing the decision not to award that to me—I am not entitled to any discount on evening and weekend part-time course fees at my local college. But imagine my surprise to discover that if I were an asylum seeker—note, not a person who has successfully won the right to stay here, but someone who is waiting to find out—I could do the courses for free. How is that fair? But take note: this is not a blog entry attacking asylum seekers. No way. Read on…
tags: asylum seekers, bigotry, course fees, education, gay, incapacity benefit, inequality, lesbian, parapsychology, prejudice, unemployment benefitThe most vulnerable can expect no help from government now, or in the future
Fewer than a third of the 2.7 million or so people claiming incapacity benefit are legitimate claimants, a government welfare adviser has said. The question as always is, what counts as legitimate and what doesn’t? The answer, of course, depends on who you speak to—compare, for example, what the views of a government minister looking to make easy cuts might be, and the perspective of a person suffering from a mental illness who looks perfectly stable on the outside and has all the usual number of working limbs, but is falling apart on the inside due to extreme depression or suffers from a cognitive, that is unseen, disability.
tags: disability, incapacity benefit, mental health, sickness, stress, unemployment
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