Another interesting week like so many others of course. You’ll be delighted to hear that I’ve finally shaken off man flu. As you know it is awful and the only treatment is complete unquestioning sympathy from everyone dealing with the sufferer!! Perhaps more important has been the initial responses to the government’s proposed spending cuts. Many disability organisations are really concerned about the impact on their stakeholders and the current media attention, which seems to focus on two main issues. First cutting benefits is about fairness! Disabled people claiming housing benefit should have it reduced because non-disabled people can’t afford £20,000 a year rent on their salaries and that’s not fair. All that is required is for non-disabled people to acquire MS, Cancer or Parkinson’s disease and they might then qualify for the reduced housing benefit!! Second everyone claiming incapacity benefit is clearly work shy or a malingerer and need to be reassessed in order to get them back...

Well another bank holiday over and I hope you enjoyed yours! It’s my wife’s birthday this week so we decided to celebrate by taking everyone off to a Point to Point race meeting on bank holiday Monday. To say we all froze is an understatement! The wind howled and hailstones stung our cheeks! To cap it all we all lost the stake money my wife had so generously given each of us!! The one ray of sunshine concerned the provision of two fully wheelchair accessible toilets right in the middle of a field! Well done I say! Have a great short week!! ELECTION 2010: Key concerns remain over welfare reform Striking differences have emerged between the Liberal Democrats and the other two main parties over how they would treat disabled people on out-of-work benefits. Important questions also remain over both Labour and Conservative plans on welfare reform. Both Labour and the Conservatives plan to reassess every person currently receiving incapacity benefit (IB). Labour plans to start doing this fro...