Check out these three videos on YouTube. You must watch them in the order I have given to get the story fully.
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=FZfOVNwjFU0&feature=related then
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=k3AeIFup1qY&feature=related then
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=A9a2ZqLhuAw&feature=user
As a crip these videos called "Talk" above which are one cut into three make me laugh and cheer!!
And another called "Are we taking the dis" about how it is to live in a discriminating world if you have a learning/intellectual disability
http://dl.groovygecko.net/anon.groovy/clients/readingroom/takingthedis/takingTheDis9.swf
Similar things happen to physical crips too. A few examples: I often get asked when I go into a lift and am facing the back (as there is not enough room to turn around) "Does that have reverse?" Der. A friend reckons I should say "Hell No - I am a forward moving woman!" Or ppl comment in a patronising tone "gee you can manouvre that well". Why wouldn't I be able to as it is my full time form of mobility? I usually say "yes as well as you manouvre yourself". A friend who uses a manual (push yourself) wheelchair tells me that ppl say to her "you need one of those electric wheelchairs". She came up with a good answer which is to tell the plodding walkers that they need bloody rollerskates.
Crikey we deal with a lot usually without ripping someones head off. The patience and restraint we have is amazing.
Saturday 18 October 2008
Thursday 16 October 2008
Blog Action Day on Poverty
It seems that in the USA (maybe everywhere) it was Poverty Blog Action Day yesterday, see http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/
Yesterday our Aussie Government decided to endow us pensioners with bonuses which is a good thing. As a single Disability Support Pensioner I will get the grand total of $1400 on the 8th of December. Hooray at bloody last!!!
BUT - seeing as other pensioners, Aged and Carers have received $500 and $1000 respectively per year over the past 4-5 years while DSP pensioners like me GOT NOTHING I am still hopping mad and not inclined to feel grateful at all. I reckon if you consider that as a person who looks after a crip (me) all on my own while being a crip ie I am my own Carer, I reckon I am $4000 down.
We crips have protested long and loud over the years about never getting the same bonus as others but the Government have ignored us. It took them til now to include us.
Where the fuck do they get off leaving us, arguably the most disadvantaged, right out of the picture? I know where we are - invisible, with everyone trying desperately to keep us invisible. After all we are useless, ugly, inconvenient, a burden, a nuisance and such a trial for our Carers!
They give the Aged a bonus as they have "contributed long to Australian society" and well, the Carers (unpaid except for a lousy pension) save the Gov billions of $ with their slave labour over their burdens (us). PAH!!!
When are the bloody Government and all of society going to realise that while us crips are left to live in poverty, in a discriminating society with an inaccessible built environment we will not flourish, grow, or contribute? They are such a bunch of bloody dickheads. Talk about missing a bunch of people who might be able to contribute to the economy if allowed.
Imagine (as an abloid) if you couldn't get out of bed or have a shower on your own and didn't have full support to do that. And then on the days that you did have support to get up there was no accessible transport to get you to work. Oh, work! That would be if someone "took a chance" and gave you a bloody job in the first place. Oh, but then you might not have had a full education so wouldn't be qualified to work anyway! You just get to sit in your wheelchair, if you have one, and rot!!!
That's life for a crip.
I'm damn sick to death of being treated like a nobody who should be nowhere. Even the Aged and the Carers didn't kick up a stink when we crips didn't get the bonus. So much for Carers caring about crips. Carers were just plain stupid not to protest that their "charge" didn't get a bonus as that would have helped their whole household.
Words fail me.....
Yesterday our Aussie Government decided to endow us pensioners with bonuses which is a good thing. As a single Disability Support Pensioner I will get the grand total of $1400 on the 8th of December. Hooray at bloody last!!!
BUT - seeing as other pensioners, Aged and Carers have received $500 and $1000 respectively per year over the past 4-5 years while DSP pensioners like me GOT NOTHING I am still hopping mad and not inclined to feel grateful at all. I reckon if you consider that as a person who looks after a crip (me) all on my own while being a crip ie I am my own Carer, I reckon I am $4000 down.
We crips have protested long and loud over the years about never getting the same bonus as others but the Government have ignored us. It took them til now to include us.
Where the fuck do they get off leaving us, arguably the most disadvantaged, right out of the picture? I know where we are - invisible, with everyone trying desperately to keep us invisible. After all we are useless, ugly, inconvenient, a burden, a nuisance and such a trial for our Carers!
They give the Aged a bonus as they have "contributed long to Australian society" and well, the Carers (unpaid except for a lousy pension) save the Gov billions of $ with their slave labour over their burdens (us). PAH!!!
When are the bloody Government and all of society going to realise that while us crips are left to live in poverty, in a discriminating society with an inaccessible built environment we will not flourish, grow, or contribute? They are such a bunch of bloody dickheads. Talk about missing a bunch of people who might be able to contribute to the economy if allowed.
Imagine (as an abloid) if you couldn't get out of bed or have a shower on your own and didn't have full support to do that. And then on the days that you did have support to get up there was no accessible transport to get you to work. Oh, work! That would be if someone "took a chance" and gave you a bloody job in the first place. Oh, but then you might not have had a full education so wouldn't be qualified to work anyway! You just get to sit in your wheelchair, if you have one, and rot!!!
That's life for a crip.
I'm damn sick to death of being treated like a nobody who should be nowhere. Even the Aged and the Carers didn't kick up a stink when we crips didn't get the bonus. So much for Carers caring about crips. Carers were just plain stupid not to protest that their "charge" didn't get a bonus as that would have helped their whole household.
Words fail me.....
Monday 6 October 2008
Very sad news
Cathy Nirta died suddenly on Friday morning. The sky cried on Friday most appropriately and later, as Margie said when the showers turned into sun showers “even the sun is crying”. I have known her since she was 12 and I was 14 living at Somerton CCH together. She was my oldest friend. I feel stunned. Cathy was a pioneer of deinstitutionalisation even before it had a name. Got herself out of the Home for Incurables into a share house and finally into her very own unit on her own, sadly she only had 8 months of the latter. All this in spite of being female, severely disabled, the youngest daughter of Italian parents and the System that would control her, and probably (knowing her) without shouting at anyone!!
Caterina my true hero!
Hugs for all who knew her.
Glee
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