Mr Media machine strikes again.

Ok, so someone else has hit a nerve, this time it's Ian Duncan Smith and some stuff he's said recently published in The Sun. It has made my blood boil. It is all about The Sun's campaign to basically name and shame those fraudulently claiming disability benefits.

Now don't get me wrong, there are people out there wrongly claiming those benefits available for the sick and disabled (as I have said before, on many occasions) not everybody claiming disability benefits is doing so honestly, legally and with good reason. But, that said, the situation is the same for many other types of benefit. There are people receiving pretty much every available benefit that could work, but choose not to. However, I really want to know why the media wishes to focus mainly on those with claiming disability benefits? Of all DLA claimed, only 0.5% is claimed fraudulently, so, knowing this, I fail to see how there could be a lower fraud rate on any other benefit?

So then, back to my rant. Why, oh why does the media want to paint such a horrid picture of the sick, the infirm and the disabled? Like we don't have enough to deal with, like we don't already suffer enough stigma without the media fuelling a hate campaign against us?

I wholeheartedly agree that those claiming and not deserving of it should be brought to justice. But the media repeatedly fail to explain the existence of fluctuating conditions, ones like mine. Someday's I can walk short distances and function as a relatively normal person (all be it when that normal person has the flu), other's I am in a wheelchair outside and on crutches in order to take even one or two steps and sometimes I cannot get out of bed at all, not even to go to the toilet. How is that going to look to Joe Bloggs who has been convinced that I must be cheating the system? When one day I can't get out of bed and the next I am that one that answers the door when he calls? It's going to look BAD.

But my house is adapted, I have countless pieces of equipment that I need in order to function and without which I would be even more incapable and helpless. I have lost a lot to this illness, dignity, independence, self esteem, my social life, my education, my career and the list goes on. But now the media appears to be convinced that I need to loose people's respect as well. Why thank you Mr media machine that's just what I needed! The bottom line is I only receive DLA, and I NEED that money. It makes my life that little bit better, it pays for equipment that helps me, it pays for repairs to existing equipment, it pays for me to buy certain types of food that are more expensive but directly benefit my health, it pays for vitamins and minerals that aid me but that I cannot get on prescription. It is my lifeline and it's not enough, but I am SO thankful for it. Contrary to popular opinion (in my case at least) every penny of it goes on things that aid me in living with my health condition and I would take being healthy and loosing my DLA over remaining disabled and loosing so much of my life. Any day.

I'm sorry for all the ranting recently. I have just had enough of the media picking on the disabled. I know it hits a nerve with me, but so could issues surrounding housing benefit, council tax benefit, child tax credit and working tax credits but these benefits are not being picked on. These people are not being picked on. Neither are many others, just some of the most vulnerable people in society. We don't need this, we have lost enough of our lives to these impairments, these disabilities, these illnesses without being continually abused by the media and the uneducated idiots that must believe everything they read. The government are already threatening to take away the little we have, finding us "fit to work" for employers that won't give us jobs. Won't hire us because we are too sick. Putting us through rigorous and health endangering tests and appeal after stressful, humiliating appeal, for nothing. People that (somehow) manage to claim these benefits fraudulently are WRONG, there is no doubt about that but please, stop tarring us all with the same brush.

I can't work, not in any conventional job anyway, but that doesn't stop me wanting to. I have lost not one but two entire carers to these illnesses, because I pushed MYSELF, worked too often, too hard and cared too much. I am not work shy, in fact sometimes there is nothing I would want more. I am from an east end family with an extraordinary work ethic. But I cannot work. I still have hope, hope that one day I will be well enough or lucky enough to find an employer who is willing to let me work very erratically from home. But until then, stop it and leave me alone, leave us alone. Please. We already have enough on our plates.