Speak up my DLA
OK word up all visually impaired persons out there with a voice and a wish to be more independent.
The RNIB are asking for your audio diaries to support their campaign for getting you more money as part of your DLA payments - that's Disability Living Allowance for the uninitiated.
The deal is that you are currently not entitled to the 'higher rate mobility' part of the allowance. The RNIB are lobbying parliament in December and want to hear your stories of how that extra cash would really help you towards independence.
Summarising, it is felt that blind people - though they may be physically mobile and able to move from A to B - can't easily do so due to lack of information. i.e. Johnny Blind could walk half a mile to the hospital no trouble at all if he could see roads, signposts etc, but he can't so would need to pay for a cab to drop him right outside the clinic.
Yeah, you might say, but he's blind! he doesn't have mobility issues so shouldn't be entitled to a high rate of mobility.
RNIB say that blindness brings on a substantial mobility problem. Though it is a sensory impairment, not a physical mobility impairment, it amounts to the same thing. So, a person with chronic arthritis would also find it difficult to get to the hospital unless they took a taxi ...
Crippled Monkey thinks that this is a semantic nightmare. Maybe blind people are being kept from the higher rate of mobility because of linguistics. 'Mobility' is for people whose bodies are, like, all twisted up so they can't, like, move? Whereas blindos bodies look OK to me, kinda thing? If it were renamed the 'getting there' component, perhaps upping the amount given to our sightless cousins would make more sense to the government?
Anyhoo. Go and look at for how you can join in and get political wiv a microphone. "testing testing, 1-2 1-2. I can't carry my box of groceries home and I either sit down and live here forever or spend a tenner on a cab despite being long term unemployed because no bugger will give me a job". [Link via esteemed Ouch guest blogger
Comments
Now don't get me wrong i agree with the payment of mobility to people with sight impairment.
Doesn't this raise the other question that if care component is being paid for the bodily function of seeing, that the is a double payment if mobility is also being paid.
There is a president here with Mona vrs Sectary of State, its the one they use to say if you can drive you must be able to cook - using you ability to handle one task as evidence you can preform another.
Hopefully when RNID succeed they will be able to do so in a way that doesn't cause further problems, as experience tells me one hand gives while the other takes away...
Hello
Im Katie and Im deaf. The DLA had me on middle rate until a review caused me to go down to lower rate even though I am the same - since birth. They said I could do fine, which I can but I am unable to speak on the phone and rely on my mum or someone else to do this. Which is a nightmare if I wish to call my bank up, etc. What I don't get is the fact my friend and my sister has better hearing than me but are still on middle rate. (they are both deaf)The money would help with taxis and my phone bill which i use for my txting. get in touch with me if you want to know more.