Article by – By Dominique Jackson - The Daily Mail
Do you remember Tina Attanasio? The name may not ring a bell but if you watched a clip of her whizzing down a water slide into a shimmering swimming pool in the South of France, you might well recall exactly why she hit the headlines last year.
Attanasio was jailed when a court saw footage of her walking normally despite her contention she was dependent on crutches. The 51-year old from Cardiff had successfully managed to claim the highest level of benefits, intended for the most severely incapacitated people, for more than five years, skimming off more than £25,000.
What a sorry contrast Attanasio presents to the genuinely disabled athletes we are about to see accomplishing super-human feats at the upcoming London Paralympic Games. I have already been blubbing watching the able-bodied athletes push the boundaries of effort and achievement. I will be a gibbering wreck once the Paralympics start
Sadly, it is flagrant cases of abuse such as Attanasio’s which always hit the headlines and which, quite rightly, inflame the tax-payers whose hard-earned contributions go to make up the £13 billion chunk of welfare which is gobbled up by disability benefits.
According to disability charity Scope, the genuinely disabled are increasingly frustrated at this media coverage of benefit cheats which they feel unfairly lumps them all together into some general category of bludgers, liggers and indolent parasites.
With disability set to be centre-stage at the Paralympics and a brace of documentaries on the subject, from both the BBC’s Panorama and Channel 4’s Dispatches aired this week, the incapacity benefit system is very much in the spotlight. Is there any surprise that Scope also found most disabled people reporting a significant rise in negative attitudes towards them?
In the mode of successive governments, the coalition has pledged to tackle the spiralling disability benefits bill. The prime minister himself has been particularly outspoken on the need for tough love to end the sick note culture which burgeoned under Labour, allowing thousands to take up a relatively straightforward option to slide into benefit dependency.
Sadly, there was no simultaneous drive to invest in pro-active schemes, to help those who sincerely want to contribute to return to the workforce in any kind of capacity. The current focus is still on reassessing two million existing claimants over the next few years, with the aim of bringing down numbers by around 500,000.
The Work Capability Assessment system, which was introduced to sort out the scroungers from the genuinely sick, has also come in for significant criticism; it has been called a simplistic, box ticking enterprise, unfair, flawed, inappropriate and driven wholly by financial targets.
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If there was genuine help to help people who can and want to go back to work, then things may be a bit different, but forcing people to try and find jobs that just aren’t there for able bodied people, is hardly what anyone would call help is it.
The four letter word is missing and condemnation of it, it brings the Paralympics into disrepute and shame, and detracts fron the courage of the Paralympians. I use the hashtag #GamesofShames, it will be the victims of the four letter word that will be paramount in my heart & mind . The Propaganda & Global Credibility this four letter word will get from the GamesofShames makes my stomach churn , its a tragic shame.
It looks to me as if the DM has possibly been spoken to and told to moderate their adverse reports on the disabled. This report seems to want to make a clear distinction between us and those who milk the system, and to show that the DM wants to now honour that distinction.
It would have done better to make the distinction BEFORE the rate of assaults upon disabled and seriously ill people was caused, by their earlier reporting, to increase by 50%!
ha thats it glory to our Paralympics but after the games those who get dla ,by atos and dwp standerds will get to go throuth their doors and have they got a eye opener,atos will find them fit for work and if you dont think this will not happen think again as they shown they can bend a arm or leg and this is going to make some cry ,as no notice of whot was said bfore the games and this will be the awfull truth of this goverment who do them in no time ,olimpic committee was sent emails on this but still took the poisend money off atos and now we see whot they have to say after the games and it wont be much jeff3
As anyone with a disability knows, the paralypmics is showing that being disabled does not mean we are crap at everything.
However theres a difference between chronic illness, severity of degenerative disease etc…..
The paralympics will be used against us all and i cannot in any way find it in me to appreciate any paralympian.
The anti disabled is rife already, how the hell do you think it will be after many have proven they are dynamic?
We know the difference, but joe bloggs doesnt, the media will spread so much negativity concerning claimants, compare them to us etc…..
I doubt I will be to bothered any more about sport disabled or non disabled it’s all about money