Published: January 17th 2012 - at 8:30 am

I need your help to take this fight for disability benefits further


by Sue Marsh    

What an amazing, incredible week. Yesterday, Lord Freud, the sponsor of the Welfare bill in the Lords, had to write a letter to peers answering our report! I never, in a million years, thought I would write that sentence.

The momentum has knocked me sideways – I’m humbled by the response from every corner of the web, from journalists, from unions, from politicians from charities, flooding in to my inbox so quickly I can’t even reply.

But my life has disappeared. I haven’t had a “normal” day for about two months.

I haven’t washed up, I haven’t cooked, I haven’t spent any time with my astonishing and supportive family and kids. My 89 year old Dad has been ill in hospital but refused to let me stop doing this. I’ve been so ill, I have barely known my own name.

It’s worth having no clean clothes, a kitchen full of takeaway boxes and absolutely no control over any minute of any day. I feel rubbish all the time anyway, I might as well feel rubbish and excited.

But there is a bit of a flaw in the plan. We planned everything to the last detail, but we never expected to get this chance to actually be heard.

Today, I might have the chance to go on a news programme – just two weeks ago I would never have thought it possible, and I’m learning fast, that these things don’t always come off – but if I do, what will I do with my kids? I’ve already used up all of my favour bank about three times.

I’m prepared to keep doing this – I want nothing more than to make a case against these reforms on a platform that will be heard – but how do we fund it?

I hate this bit, but the truth is we have no money. We’re in debt :( I started to go through my account yesterday to see what I needed to add to the expenses list and I was shocked to find I’d spent £550 from my own account!

Just on convenient food when I’m too busy to cook for the kids, on petrol, on printer ink, on phone calls. Embarrassingly, I don’t have it. It seems awkward to mention that there are practicalities, but if I don’t write this now, I’ll be spending your money – and increasingly mine – getting more in debt.

It might all fizzle out after tomorrow and the DLA votes. If so, I’ll come home, go to bed and sleep until Spring. But if not… What then?

To be utterly clear, I’m happy – honoured even – to do this. But I have to make it as easy for my family and my health as possible.

–
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About the author
Sue is a regular contributor to Liberal Conspiracy. She blogs on Diary of a Benefits Scounger and tweets from here.
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Reader comments


1. Annie Cruickshank

Hi Sue, So Sorry to hear your plite, Thank you for what you are doing I have fibro and arthritus and I am really Sorry I have no money to help you if I did I would help you. Sorry to hear also you feel so unwell so I will send you love and light as that’s all I have, take care hugs. Annie xx

2. pagar

Sunny

Would I be correct in assuming you you have deleted my previous comment on this thread?

If so, I would be grateful if you could justify your action.

Thanks.

3. Cylux

@2 Well I got chance to read it, and after reading it my first thought was “I wonder how long that’ll be allowed to stay up”.

4. Jim

Well I read it too, however, when you see the type of stuff written about the disabled that is allowed to stand, it does make you wonder.

Pagar @ 2

Sunny does not need to justify anything to anyone. Just accept that you made an arse of yourself in posting a nasty, sneering remark and that Sunny has saved you from looking like a twat.

5. Sunny Hundal

What Jim said.

6. pagar

@ Jim

Sunny does not need to justify anything to anyone.

No he doesn’t, and I accept his right to censor comments as he wishes but I think I am in order to ask him, politely, the reason for his censorship.

However if someone as dispassionate and clear minded as yourself thought my comment was over the top, I suppose the rest of the world is just going to have to take your word for it that I’m a twat (clearly that is not considered to be a term of abuse).

I do concede that I may have misjudged the situation, here, as the original post was published on Sue’s own blog.

Perhaps Sunny put it up purely to extend the reach of Sue’s attempt to raise money and not with the intention of generating a discussion regarding the legitimacy, or otherwise, of the disabled lobby’s campaign. But, if that was his intention, he should have disabled comments on the post from the start. (If I am still allowed to use that word in this context?)

If, on the other hand, you are saying, as you appear to be, that Sunny was correct because there is no possible debate to be had on this issue and that views should be censored if they express an alternative opinion to the one you support, I think you are dangerously wrong.

7. Jim

Pagar @ 6

Pagar, lets get one thing clear. I do not think that you are a twat. I think your post was in danger of making you look like a twat. If you want to look like a twat that is your lookout, but nothing give you the right to come onto another person’s blog or even another person’s post within it and piss all over it. I retain the right to shit on roses in my belief that it provides extra nourishment for them, but that not give me the right to climb into your garden to shit on your roses.

If you want to hurl abuse at the disabled, there are no end of Nazi/Tory/Daily Mail sites for you to do so. If you want to sneer at someone else’s campaign and fundraising attempts, then you can start your own blog. How about this for a wacky idea? Instead of sneering at somebody else’s appeal, why not simply ignore that particular post?

Why the need to broadcast the fact that you despise what Sue is attempting to achieve? What exactly are you getting from that nasty little post of yours? You and your ilk hate disabled people getting benefits, seriously dude, we get it. All disabled people are fraudsters, yep, we got that from you cunts write as well, why bother coming onto THIS thread and telling us how much you were not giving to Sue’s modest campaign? I made my own personal bet with myself at who would be the first to get his cock out on this thread, I didn’t have you in the top three, to be honest, so well played for keeping me on my toes.

I got a lot from it, it confirms what I always believed about you so called ‘Libertarians’. You are all for free speech right up until the dispossessed or the poor manage to get up and attempt to get their point across, WITHOUT having PR firms, professional lobbyists, endless pots of money or a Newspaper. All we have is a computer and the truth and the goodwill of normal, decent human beings all over the Country.

Well you cunts have had your propaganda machine out for the disabled for a decade and now someone asks for a paltry few bob from the rest of us, and you feel it necessary to sneer at it?

What are you afraid of, Pagar?

8. Tax Obesity, Not Enterprise

“…why not simply ignore that particular post?”

That’s a bit rich coming from you, Jim.


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