disability
Creating a Movement: The Struggle for Inclusive Education in the UK, 1990–2006, by Stefan Sczcelkun
Tom Jennings appreciates this snapshot of a campaign against the segregation of disabled people.
Anti-Ability Apartheid. DVD review – Tom Jennings
Remploy workers to strike
Workers at 28 factories due to be closed by Remploy are being balloted for strike action.
Following a decision in November last year by the former secretary of state Peter Hain, Remploy will close 28 out of it's total network of 83 factories as part of a modernisation deal. The factory closures will result in the loss of 2,000 supported jobs for workers with disabilities. Two strike ballots have come back in favour of action, and a further six are being held with more to follow.
Protests continue at Gallaudet University
Deaf students continue to occupy Gallaudet University in Washington DC in protest against the incoming President.
Students at America's only liberal arts University for the deaf have continued their protests against the incoming President Jane Fernandes, who they say is not committed to the advancement of deaf culture.
Deaf students occupy in Washington DC
Deaf students are demonstrating across North America in solidarity with students occupying Gallaudet University, Washington DC (the world's only deaf university).
Protests began 2 weeks ago, in response to a much disliked incoming president - students shut down the school by blocking all entrances for three days and occupying a university building. Then last Friday more than 130 deaf students were arrested when police stormed the occupation. Police stated that these were the biggest mass arrests in Washington D.C. since the 1960s.
Mining communities, unemployment and incapacity benefits
As the government prepares to slash incapacity benefits, Rob Ray looks at a report brought out last year which is amongst the starkest examples of how incapacity has been used in recent years to hide much of the country's unemployment problems.
'20 Years on: Has the economy of the coalfields recovered?' examined communities where over 10% of the population had been employed in the mines before the mass closures.
The report, brought out by the Centre for regional and social economic research at Sheffield Hallam university, said:
Labour's cruellest cut - Incapacity benefits in detail
Iain Mackay explores the government's proposals to cut benefits for the disabled - claimed by nearly 3 million - and discovers damned lies in the statistics.
The latest of New Labour's attacks on working class people has been announced. The aim is to abolish Incapacity Benefit (IB). Of course, the radical sounding rhetoric has been applied. Alan Johnson, the Work and Pensions secretary, described the changes as the most radical benefit reform for sick and disabled people since the Beveridge report.
Incapacity benefit cuts
New Labour cut back on benefits to the disabled.
Apparently David Blunkett was decidedly mellow when it came to Incapacity Benefits cuts, at least he was compared to new Work & Pensions secretary John Hutton (weekly salary: £2,600). This week Hutton outlined his plans to introduce a range of penalties for claimants (weekly income: £58 a week) who show unwillingness to take part in ‘work focussed’ activities.
