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This is an older post I never put up, for one reason or another. Either way, I found it in my drafts and on the back of a report that states approximately 150 people have been caught using Blue Badges, usually friends or family, illegally, I think a revision of the subject is perhaps in order. (Cheap lazy blogging FTW, the italic part is from the original post, posted on 5/11/15. Two whole years, no ones going to notice!)    

So, I have most likely stated that I do not get any benefits as I am too fit. I am very grateful that I am fit enough to be able to work and not require state support. However, occasionally I like to play the game of "am I entitled" (spoiler alert, I never am).

Every time I drive past a bank of disabled parking, I do wonder if I could get a Blue Badge (for anyone not in the UK, a disability pass). I decided to try my luck. NONE of the criteria apply to me, as I can walk fair distances and I don't have a carer.

As an aside, a rep brought pedometers (seriously, hows that for a name?) in for the staff. The title of the post is the amount of steps I took between 12:45 and 22:00 today.


About the Blue Badges, the use of one, for me, would be a perk, if you get such a thing with disability. I walk for Ireland in work, usually try not to run and get to sit down occasionally, so a chance to park close to a shop entrance or car park stairwell is simply laziness on my part. There's a legion of wheelchair users or others who need crutches to get around (or the million of other reason easy access parking is a key to giving someone independence) who will benefit from one more free wheelchair space, especially when they are at a premium. I already feel like a fraud enough without using a badge to take the one space outside my local shops that'll cut my walk time from stopping to the chocolate aisle.

I was able to walk, albeit with a stumbling unco-ordinated gait, and the utter destruction of my shoes, before I got my lovely orthotics. They don't eliminate my toe drag entirely but they certainly correct a lot, including my leg co-ordination. My right leg, even outside of supports, doesn't swing out to help support and I don't stoop, throwing my body forward to drag my legs after me. Why am I waxing lyrical about them again now? Its because I'm unimaginative and have nothing interesting to talk about, and today is two years since I got them. Sure, they've been modded and, as you know if you have begun following again the reason I have started this blog, recently had a refrub, including brand new strapping and padding.  They have ached more recently, and marked my feet, or in the case of my left foot, cut a nice little hole, but thats because I'm an idiot and didn't realise the ALL the strapping had been renewed, which makes sense. If one snaps, then the others are at risk of being compromised and its worth the extra twenty minutes of work to give them two more years of life. And in that life, keep my legs together and prevent my leeching more money from the NHS.

I do miss being able to make physio have to lie down by watching me walk, but that's the price to pay for being able to buy decent shoes and have semi silent running (I've noted that since the refurb they no longer click so I can now sneak around like a T-rex in a toy soldiers exbit). They feel like second skin, and being out and about without them feels like nudity. There have been days when I have peeled the legs and my socks off and it genuinely feels like im down to exposed muscle, its a very weird.

So, onto my guilty addendum to this little update on my new pals. Shoes (SURPRISE you thought it would be something else, didn't you!). I buy Doc Martens for work. Doc Martens have a policy of replacing shoes that wear out too fast. The orthotics have eliminated MOST of the toe drag, true, but not all of it and shoes do wear down, within about six month.
Receipt in hand, I get new shoes. I can't feel that it's just a little cheeky: "Hey, I'm physically built in such a way that I end up with my toes poking out of the shoes, let me take advantage of your very generous policy". Even without the receipt, I've had replacements. It's a little conflicting. Free shoes but taking advantage of generous returns policy/ its a big corporation it won't hurt them, grab what you can.
Yes, I am aware that plenty of corporations (and some people) see us as walking wallets that use up valuable resources and don't give them enough money, but that the same time morals and values are shared and spread by doing to others. Ok so a little gullible to think that me having a minor moral conflict about using a company policy to my benefit while there's bigger issues out in the world but seriously, I am allowed to indulge my humanity. I'm a cold, uncaring creature anyway, so it's nice when I get a spike of guilt, because mostly I need to physically think, remind myself, that empathy is a thing and I should be using it (about ten seconds after I've missed the cue to engage empathy and be nice, so it seems I'm clawing back to the "I'm a kind, thoughtful, regular human under this mask" position). I covet those feelings, commandments be damned, and it's a very weird pleasure to feel the overwhelming guilt that I cram back down, that never reaches my face, that never shows the world its little face (there's the occasional smile, when I KNOW I'm caught, but it lets me slip from peoples grasp, melting their ire).

Do I continue the free shoe bonanza? Yes, as long as I buy a new pair too, some \doc \marten shoes are too pretty to wear, honestly.

Will there be ore moral preaching? Of course, I'm a judgemental cynical ass hole, of course I'm going to dig through my morals and take pleasure in picking apart my Aspy traits.

Sleep tight.

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Disability and procreation.

Disclaimer, before I start, this post is opinion based on my own experience, internal thoughts of my own scions and thoughts conjured by articles I have read today.

These articles are both from the Independent and are about disabled persons of both genders who are to be sterilised for their "own good". One is a lady with six children already who doctors feel will die if she falls pregnant again. I know it's the 21St century and we all have this magical view that dying during child birth doesn't happen anymore. According to Margaret C Hogan, et Al in the Lancet (2010 Maternal mortality for 181 countries, 1980–2008: a systematic analysis of progress towards Millennium Development Goal 5) the UK ranks No. 23 with 8.2 deaths per 100 thousand. Last time I looked, the UK is a first world country. Child birth is still a risky business. There's an argument that this is the start of the descent into eugenics. While that would hold water if there wasn't both a good medical reason and the woman did not already have six children. The second article was about a man who had an IQ so low he would forget to use condoms (although, frankly, every man is guilty of that while plastered) and, while he was having supervised visits to his girlfriend, who also has learning difficulties, he managed to impregnate her. The resulting child is reported to have had significant impact on both families, which I read as neither parent was able to cope. Babies are said to be hard work for every parent, disabled or not. I know plenty of disabled parents, who cope and are great parents.

I have butted up against learning difficulties and parenthood in university. I took ethics in my final year, and both in the literature and in group projects, there where case studies of parents with various grades of learning disabilities, including Downs syndrome, and hypothetical outcomes. Would a parent with a learning difficulty understand the needs of a child? Would they understand the implications and impact of having a baby?  How will they feel if the child's intellectual ability grows at a "normal" rate (if you've read this blog, I don't believe in normal), and out grows theirs? Are disabled parents going to become a burden much sooner than other parents might (i.e. through dementia or stroke) and with more certainty? Does it limit the child, both through possible poor parenting (although honestly most parents muddle through) and by stunting their future, inadvertently?

None of these questions have simple answers, I certainly don't have any answers. I'm asking them to get us all to think through issues surrounding disability and parenthood. They are, in my opinion, slightly negative. I haven't once considered that blind parents are perfectly capable, a mother in a wheelchair is more than able to care for everyone in her family. Disability should never be an automatic preventative of parenthood. I'm sure everyone reading this blog knows someone who is both disabled and a capable parent. For every negative example presented, I'm always sure there's ten positive examples, E.g. for every dole scrounging illegal immigrant with ten children and a criminal past that the Red Tops love to parade around as an example of Broken Britain, I suspect there's ten hard working, law abiding immigrants who want a better life and to contribute to society.
It takes ethical committees some time to discuss these issues and come up with a conclusion.

I have met people who are just below the line of what is considered disabled who are automatically banned by law (Ireland) from marriage and children. It makes me wonder if I fall into some draconian law. I've discussed before that I have thought long and hard about babies. I understand the concept that children take work and have no off switch, but some days I struggle to self care, so how can I suddenly be able to care for this vulnerable, helpless creature that is totally dependant on me for everything? Maybe these are feelings of all parents, but I think for me there are serious considerations to be made.

None of this is helped of course by my opinion that in the general population that the ability to have babies doesn't automatically entitle you to babies. If the forced sterilisation on medical grounds of intellectually disabled people has people screaming about eugenics, then a broader brush stroke really will set off the eugenics alarms. Today you can stop disabled people, tomorrow what stops you from declaring another group "undesirable" and we're free falling into 1930s Germany.

While I would hope our laws, judicial system, government and general populace (yes, when things start going pear shaped, the citizens of any society need to join the debate and stand up for each other and what's right. Remember the lesson of "when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me") have enough checks and balances to prevent wholesale and indiscriminate breaches of human rights, including that of procreation.

It's a ridiculously difficult topic, filled with pit falls and caveats, that requires nuanced and thoughtful discussion. Monotone honking about eugenics on one side or equally tone deaf "it's for their own good", is neither constructive or growth inducing.

All I know for sure is my parents are going to be enjoying years of not being grandparents, and I'm going to enjoy disposable income and holidays during term time.

Be safe and thoughtful of others.

Nearly a whole month.

Time flies apparently. It's that dad joke where a man throws his watch out the window to see time fly.

I wanted to wait to post anything until I got my interview results. I got them two weeks ago, and since then I've been saying "I'll do it a little later." And then a little later becomes two weeks.  I can't seem to decide on a topic. Some bloggers have stuff happen to them regularly and some create content through baking or something on a regular basis, but even though my disabilities are with me all the time, I genuinely don't have things to deal with. My work accepts me, my partner accepts me, my dad forgets that I have multiple disabilities, I forget I have multiple disabilities (case in point when I went to the practice nurse for an Asthma check up, she refered me to nuero physio, as the practices new goal is to promote nuero care. First she saw my name on the list and wondered why, then when she spoke to nuero disability on the phone in my presence and listed the various interesting abilities, I genuinely wondered who she was referring to. That reminds me, need to book in to see the gp). 

There are many things I want to blog about, primarily the precieved war on the disabled by the current government. Because I do not need a second bedroom for a carer, and do not recieve any government assistance in the form of benefits, I have not been directly affected by cuts that could be seen as a war. This means that while I could write a blog about unchecked personal opinions and what flashes up on my news feed (not that I'm a paranoid conspiracy theorist but some times I like more than one opinion and view point to inform my life), I think a fact checked, if a little biased, post would do more justice to the blog and maybe actually raise some valid points. Don't get me wrong, I would love to be the first, which I won't be because I am late to the party, to raise a shield to defend those who need it, but it needs to be evidence based. 

In my opinion, something that's apparently dangerous on the internet, there has been a subtle attack on those on benefits, through shows like "Benefits Street" and perhaps even "Jeremy Kyle". Any such reality TV through the key hole type show is bound to pick things that score ratings, either by making us feel superior or by simply trying to raise our choler at where our money might be potentially going. It's the same with shows about benefits frauds and migrants. Yes fair, there will always be cheats and frauds and people coming to steal the things we work hard for but on the whole people are not monsters. But we can be convinced they are. During times of war, governments try to convince us the people in the village over the hill eat their children and sacrifice goats to some abhorrent god. Then as soon as war is over, each side has to convince the other that they are just like each other. 

The easiest example is that militant fighters in Iraq where told US marines had to kill a baby to become a Marine. This shows that life is precious to everyone, if an US citizen was told Muslims have to kill a baby to become a militant, they would be outraged. This is simply the reverse. Watch the dash cams from Russia. They help push cars out of ditches and little old ladies to cross the road, just like anyone in the UK would, but thanks to aggressive policy, we need to see them as the "enemy". 

On a more local level, as Nigel Farage put it, "would you want Romanians to move next door to you?". That is the most awful scare mongering, and my honest answer is "i don't really care". That's an awful lot of people to sweep up in one statement. I know loads of Romanians in work and I would say they are decent nice people. It's a bit like asking the Germans would they like Brits living next door? Well maybe or maybe not. Are they the well educated types who are frightfully polite or are they the louts we get on holidays who steal sun beds (it's a recent poll that Germans believe English to hog sun beds). 

And this brings me back to benefits. Sure theres people on TV who get benefits and smoke six packs a day and don't want to do volunteer work for benefits but are they the majority? If you watch the "cat calling" video from NYC there's no white men in it, and this is explained as bad editing, what the white men said wasn't clear, or off camera, so they didn't make the cut. Equally I bet for any sort of benefits Britain trype reality show, they cut twenty people who are  honest down on their luck people who have just been dealt a bad hand and need a bit of support for the one person who has five different baby daddies and smokes like a cigarette factory on fire which will make people upset (rightly or wrongly). It bumps up TV ratings and like it or not promotes the government line of we need to cut benefits because that's where it goes. 

  

 Mean while, in my own life, things are certainly looking up. I got the job, something I have yet to annouce on anything resembling a "public" forum due to there not being ink on paper yet. This is certainly another step forward, even if it's all gone a bit Game of Thornes with the "you win or you die" type concept about the three month probation.

Living on my own is still a struggle to some degree, and my partner came to help me clean again over the weekend. I should have a clean as you go policy but then I come in late from work or something and I make food and it all goes from there. At the moment however, I appear to have carpet.......

So, my lovely viewers, I shall leave you here while I go and try to research interesting and evidence based post about benefits cuts. Thank you for reading.