I cannot afford a ticket anyway , I suspect what will happen like China they will fill the places with anyone to make it look a success. I’m a coach and as a coach some of my kids would have go to this except we cannot afford to send them.

“Sponsor”. Someone who helps pay for an event.

So, the once every four year jamboree for disabled sportspeople should be boycotted because the “wrong” people are helping to pay for it?

What?

There is something strange in the air. Apparently there is no boycott of Visa for the restrictive purchasing options for 2012 Olympic Games tickets. Those purchasing options denied opportunity to attend to thousands of people.

But we are supposed to boycott the Paralympics (thus dumping on the participants) because one of the sponsors is ATOS. Turn the protest around: back the games, but use it as an opportunity to talk about ATOS and the government departments who misuse skills assessments.

@1. Rob the crip:
Tell us some more about the coaching work that you do, please.

A disabled athlete gets £23,000 which is classed as Expenses, a non disabled athlete gets £130,000 wages with expenses.

Eight years ago we had an archery team which won it’s way to the Olympics, we could not go because we failed to raise the £5,000 needed for the air fare.

I think boycotting this should be more about equality

I was the disabled wheelchair hand ball team, I was the disabled football coach, but had to give up when the Labour party cut our funding from £500 a year to £30.

I then coached at the local disablity school.

I hold a full coaching badge from my days before I became disabled..

Cheers, Rob. But can you give us a link to more concrete information? Stuff that might help us to help you change things.

As we continually explain, finding someone ‘fit for work’ in the ESA sense does not mean they are fit to do any job. It is a made-up definition. It would be great if people went back to work, but that isn;t what the tests do.

People who cannot even go out alone are regularly found ‘fit for work’ because they can lift an arm in the air, or similar. This in no way guarantees them a chance of a job, for the obvious reason that employers are still free to refuse people work without any reference to their ability to lift an arm in the air.

They are then refused JSA as well because they cannot look for work. It’s a complete nonsense to conflate ‘fit for work’ with fit for work.

It was an understandable mistake the first time (by design), but this has been repeatedly explained to SMFS but he just ignores it and makes the same claims again next time a story comes up. The tests have nothing to do at all with testing people’s ability to do any job.

How about disabled organisations campaigning for an international boycott of the 2012 paralympics (al la Moscow 1980 and Los Angeles 1984) because of this governments shameful record for treatment of the disabled?

That would certainly be a publicity coup if international teams refused to show up in protest. And would be a huge embarrasment to the government!

@3 – Darn straight the competitors should boycott it. And the Olympics managed to prevent me from going for even the cheap tickets I was after because of their idiotic ordering system, so…

(I still believe they should be cancelled on cost grounds, for reference)

@7- He’s here to disrupt conversation. It works.

Tim W @ 2

The point being that sponsors are not paying for this from the goodness of their heart, are they? They are paying this out of hard headed business reasons, they want the cache of being seen helping disabled people.

Is it a bad thing to use the Paralymics to highlight a policy of driving geniunely disabled people into poverty? If LLyods, RBS, UPS et al are interested in helping disabled then surely the best way to do that is campaign to end the dispicable bullying of the weakest members of society?

Wot Jim said. The funding is great regardless of where it came from, but it’s understandable if people boycott if they feel that ATOS is exploiting the event to whitewash its brand.

4. Rob the crip

A disabled athlete gets £23,000 which is classed as Expenses, a non disabled athlete gets £130,000 wages with expenses. …. I think boycotting this should be more about equality

Sport is big business. The more viewers it attracts, the higher the wages of the athletes. You think that disabled athletes get the same viewership as able bodied ones do? If not, why should they be paid the same?

5. Rob the crip

I was the disabled wheelchair hand ball team, I was the disabled football coach, but had to give up when the Labour party cut our funding from £500 a year to £30.

You couldn’t raise 470 pounds on your own?

10. Jim

Is it a bad thing to use the Paralymics to highlight a policy of driving geniunely disabled people into poverty?

If that were actually taking place, perhaps so. Do you have any evidence of it happening in real life?