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.....
I can only agree with the sentiments of your post. I am a mother and hope that one day my kids will get any payments once they are of age - until then it wil have to be me. I do not consider myself a carer, i am a mother who happens to have two kids with a disability.
ReplyDeleteBut you know, apart from this recent bonus thingy - which is all about giving poor people (literally or metaphysically poor, that is) some cash to keep the economy going, i would rather not have any of these carer bonuses. Just give us a decent disability payment (why is it called pension anyway?) or carer allowance or payment and decent services and equipment, and forget about any bonusses. I want real investments, not some cash band-aids on the edges... Still, glad to hear you got some dosh coming your way. Mabey you can now get a plumber to fix your dunny - or did you finally get that done?