Stop mugging the disabled! -letter in the Leicester Mercury

Via This is Leicestershire

I would like to respond to the letters you have published recently about those of us who receive benefits.

Since my early teens, I have been managing a medical condition I ended up with as a result of a brain tumour. I worked until in my 30s. I was retired through ill health.

Since then, I am one of those scroungers, who lives on benefits.

To get those benefits was not easy. I did not just qualify for them, I had to justify needing them. I went through numerous medicals and question sessions with benefit staff, not to mention the forms I needed to complete.

It involved my general practitioner, my specialists and care workers.

I found the process humiliating and demeaning. The Benefit Agency know all about me. I mean all about me.

I have always tried to keep up my self-esteem. I have done many volunteering jobs, as well as caring for both my parents until they died.

Yes, I have been depressed, fed up, frustrated and angry.

I did not choose to live like this. I was brought up to work and to give something back, in any way possible.

In recent years, my health has got worse. My benefits have not gone up. I live on or about £120 per week. That money has to cover all eventualities. I have no-one to go to for a handout.

I am, however, grateful to the taxpayers who have contributed to the fund that I benefit from.

I feel, it is time that governments and various statutory bodies stop abusing those who are disabled and through no fault of their own cannot work at all.

If I was attacked in my own home, mugged and robbed, my neighbours, friends, councillors and MPs would be appalled.

But let the Government mug disabled people, with bureaucracy, law changes, means-testing and phone calls from the DWP, telling us your benefits have been stopped – well, that seems to be all right.

Disabled does not mean useless, but it does mean we cannot work at a full-time job – this is backed by medical evidence.

From my own experience, many employers will not take on a disabled person as they may be a liability or a hazard in the work place, despite legislation saying that they must employ someone who is disabled.

Most employers have no time, let alone compassion for someone disabled. They want to make money. That is all.

In my case, I volunteer. I give the best I have to give, to those in need, by the way I talk to them and by the help I may be able to offer them.

This gives me a sense of purpose and something to get out of bed for.

What I ask is: Please leave the easy targets, disabled people, out of your equation of cuts.

It is cruel and unfair. Please respect us.

Not everyone is a leach, a faker or trying to get something they are not entitled to.

It is high time, governments picked on those who commit the real benefit fraud. Look at other ways of saving benefit money.

Name and address supplied.