After the government and their media puppets latest salvo on the sick and disabled of this country at the weekend, could it have a negative impact on charity fund raising?
Saturday morning and they happily trot out distorted figures which the media seem more than happy to distribute, without checking them, and name people they claim are “scroungers” . Every year in the UK millions of long term sick and disabled people do all sorts of activities to raise money for charities that mean something to them. It might be to support a charity that offers them help and advice on dealing with their condition, or they might pull on a pair of trainers after the death of a family member from a whole host of conditions.
I heard the tale of a woman who did a skydive and attended the gym touted across the papers and the BBC, and it made me wonder what impact it could have. You only have to look on twitter at the thousands of people who raise money for charity, many of them with a disability or long term condition. There are also a huge number of people who are advised to go to a gym for some low impact exercise as it may help their condition. yet activities such as this were singled out as the activities of a fraudster.
Despite what the government and certain areas of the media want you to believe the majority of people aren’t scroungers, while I have no doubts that there are a few people fiddling the system, but tarring everyone with the same brush is nothing short of a hate crime.
It’s also interesting that often the media fail to report that Disability Living Allowance (DLA) isn’t an out of work benefit. So there are millions of people getting DLA to help them with their mobility or for the additional costs of care who are working, and also paying their taxes.
With the latest round of lies, could people who like to give something back to society despite their limitations stop for fear of being branded a “scrounger” and losing the financial support they need? I feel that not only will charities start to lose out, as fund-raisers reconsider that challenge they’ve set themselves, but people’s health and well being could also deteriorate as a result.
It all flies in the face of Dave’s Big Society scam, which he’s try to sell to us 4 times now and failed. Charities often provide the support the NHS would love to give patients, but with the limited time and resources they can’t always do so. Charities provide play groups and youth activities for their local communities, yet it’s all under threat from funding cuts, and by bullying people into being too scared to fundraise we’ll probably see these services get hit hard, or disappear altogether, something that will affect us all in some way.
It’s no secret that Dave and his millionaire minister buddies hold money as the priority over everything else. It’s about time he woke up to the fact that people should come before profit because without them, you’ll have nothing.
