Crippen Cartoons cartoons at the cutting edge of disability

Hi folks,

at the moment I’m creating cartoons for most areas of the fight against cuts. Most of them relate to the situations that disabled people are finding themselves in (disabled people being hit the hardest), but there’s also a few generic ones that can be used by our non-disabled brothers and sisters out there.

Here are a few of the latest one’s, which I hope you will copy and circulate around your own protest networks. Could I also ask that you copy and paste the description of the cartoon as well in order to facilitate those people who use a screen reader.

If you have the funding and wish to use any of this work, please look out for members of the various disabled people led groups who will be at the London Rally on 26th March and give them a donation. Just tell them it’s from Crippen!

Crippen's 'eat cake' cartoon

Sure to have upset some Royalists with that one! Never mind, here’s the next one …

Crippen's TUC cartoon

And there goes my TUC fan base! The next …

Crippen's Damocles cartoon

This one is currently being used by my friends at the Socialist Health Association who can be found on Face Book at – https://www.facebook.com/Socialist.Health?ref=ts

In solidarity.

🙂

Bloody Cuts

It’s becoming a full time job just keeping up to date with the number of cuts that the coalition is imposing on disabled people.

When I started this blog article a couple of weeks ago I’d had about 14 specific cuts identified. By adding more new cuts and additional changes to existing cuts we’re now about number 38 and still counting!

Many of the newer cuts that have come to light are those effecting services to disabled adults and children, as Local Authority cuts start to take hold.

It’s also been calculated that disabled people are set to lose at least £140 per month through direct cuts to disability benefits (initially devised to pay the extra costs of being disabled) alone.

Rather than provide specif details of all of the cuts that will be effecting us I’ll leave my cartoon to tell the story. If you want more specif information regarding the cuts I suggest that you visit the new Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) web site where you be signposted to all of the links of groups of disabled people who are not only fighting the cuts, but who are also providing the information about them that we need. Please go to www.dpac.uk.net

For a while now I’ve had a cartoon in the back of my head about Cameron and his taste in bedtime reading. I’ve imagined him reading books by Aldous Huxley and George Orwell, both of whom wrote of futuristic worlds where people are cloned and programmed to accept their designated place in society; upholding the status quo and not challenging the ‘news’ that originated through government approved media sources, etc.

I’ve also been trying to get a handle on Cameron’s ‘big society’ and what he really means whenever he refers to this concept.

Can you see where I’m going with this …?!

Despite being told by his own spin doctors that this blinkered belief in the concept is reducing his popularity ratings still further, he continues to bang the ‘big society’ drum, not appearing to care if no one else is marching along behind him. It’s as though only he (and this is where my earlier references to Huxley and Orwell start to weave their way into my thoughts) has a complete understanding of the concept and knows exactly where he’s going with it.

My suspicions start to grow when other government originated changes start to appear. Such as the attempts to complete reverse the direction in which disabled people have been struggling over the past several decades. Apart from the proposed cuts to benefits and other assistance packages that will mean that fewer disabled people will be able to survive within the community; other, less overt changes are being introduced.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous blog entitled ‘Wolves in more sheep’s clothing’ there is talk about the money that people give to charity (that would currently be accessible to groups ‘of’ disabled people) only being available to those charities ‘for’ that represent the various impairment groups. These same charities would also be expected to use this money to provide those services that are being cut from the existing social and health care provision for disabled people.

In effect, the control of disabled people would be returned to those very organisations that originally conspired with society to keep disabled children within ‘special’ homes and schools, and kept disabled people generally off the streets – out of sight being out of mind. It also means that the social model of disability, which identifies that it is the barriers in society that disable us, will be replaced once again by the charitable/medical models that ‘blame’ and segregate disabled people. We’re being tidied away, with Cameron and his cronies reshaping society in the process.

But Cameron is not just stopping at disabled people and those others who rely on benefits due to lack of work, low income or other social circumstances. In a recent speech he clearly supported the racist rhetoric of the far right and targeted people who have a ‘different’ ethnic background, blaming them for the alleged increase in terrorism and crime in the country. Again, none of this is based upon reality, but appears to be yet another step in his ‘big society’ plans.

So, for ‘big society’ we should perhaps read ‘big Conservative society’ where everyone is white and non-disabled, well off, looks the same, thinks the same, and who also knows their place and are content to be ruled by their masters.

Crippen's Tory Scam

Take Action Against the CONDEMs benefits scam on the 24th January 2011

Atos Origin have just been awarded a £300 million contract by the Condem government to continue carrying out ‘work capability assessments’. It is claimed that these assessments are to test what people can do rather than what they can’t do.

This testing system has already led to many disabled people, people with terminal illnesses and severe medical conditions being declared fit for work and having their benefits cut or completely removed. Intervention by GP’s are ignored in favour of ill informed decisions made by inexperienced Atos staff. Plans announced for the scrapping of Disability Living Allowance have also revealed that this intrusive testing is likely to be extended to everyone on some form of disability or health related benefit.

We all know that the real purpose of these tests are to strip benefits from as many people as possible and although almost half of the decisions made by Atos have been successfully challenged, the period between the benefits being stopped and their reinstatement due to a successful appeal means that many people recieve no income during this time. We understand that not all benefits, once reinstated are back dated to the time they were stopped so the government is then able to retain this funding in order to pay their friends Atos. Devious little money maker eh?!

The Government also plans to cut £2.5 billion from Employment Support Allowance. Plans to limit the benefit to just one year will mean that even those who are deemed unable to work will be presumed to have made a miraculous recovery after 12 months. Meanwhile the budget for Disability Living Allowance is to be cut by 20%.

With the recent changes in Housing Benefit and possible changes to Council Tax benefit, these cuts will leave hundreds of thousands of disabled people and those with severe health problems without enough money to feed themselves and heat their homes. That’s if they aren’t forced into unpaid labour, no doubt inflicted on them by poverty pimps like SERCO and Action for Employment. Whilst millions of people face homelessness, disruption, debt and ill health the gravy train is being extended for those companies which seek to profit from the misery of others.

Atos Origin do not just do health related testing. They are a global IT and Consultancy company with offices around the UK. One speciality they boast of on their website is having: “a team of Organisation and HR professionals who undertake the analysis, design and execution of headcount reduction.” In effect hatchet men! It’s time to fightback and hold the government and these companies to account.

If you’re organising an event in your area on 24th January and wish it to be added to the protest website or Face Book page then please contact Johny Void (thevoidblog@yahoo.co.uk) and say Crippen sent you!

😉

Crippen's charity cartoon

Francis Maude, Cabinet Office minister has just issued a green paper on “giving” in the hope of “building culture change” in our attitudes to charity. He wants us to change our donation habits to be more like the Americans where there is a competitiveness about charitable giving.

By making charitable giving more visible and competitive in the UK, his plan is to bring in more money to the charities who will be used to fill the holes created by public spending cuts. In a nutshell, the whole ‘Big Society’ concept is about communities, individuals and charities plugging the gaps created by the public spending cuts that are under way.

The reason that the success of the ‘Big Society’ will depend heavily upon Maude’s scheme becoming a reality is due to the fact that charities currently receive about £35m annually from the government (although perhaps another area for the chop?). This means that unless ordinary citizens put their hands deeper into their pockets and boost the income needed by charities to fulfil their new role, then the ‘Big Society’ won’t even get off the ground.

Another problen for this government is that charities don’t always have the same priorities that they have. In the UK, it’s been calculated that the most popular causes are for children, animals, cancer and lifeboats! Disability charities are amongst the causes that are least likely to arouse the public’s compassion (unsurprisingly groups and organisations OF disabled people don’t even figure in these statistics). It doesn’t help those disability charities, who will be expected to take over many of the community care duties, that the CONDEM’s have also been implying that a lot of people claiming to be disabled are most likely faking it!

There’s a ray of hope for all disabled people here though. By introducing this ‘scrounger’ element the CONDEMs have inadvertantly sabotaged a major part of their grand design by ensuring that the general public will be even more reluctant to give money to those charities that claim to support disabled people. These same charities that will be expected to fill this particular funding gap!

So, where does this leave us? If Maude’s scheme works by increasing the visibility of charitable giving and encouraging people to compete against each other to donate more, this will inevitably mean that the likes of Scope and Leonard Cheshire will be given more money to fill their coffers. They’re already aware that due to the cuts to benefits and the reduction in community services, they’ll be getting more disabled people unable to live anywhere other than in their care homes.

And more disabled people living in their care homes means yet more money pouring into their coffers and less disabled people on the streets. Less disabled people on the streets, using public transport, participating within mainstream education and doing all the things that other members of society take for granted means that we will soon fade from the public consiousness, hidden away as a distant, bad memory.

We’ve got to wake up to the fact that we’re fighting for our very lives here. We have to find a way to bring ALL disabled people together to challenge these changes and expose this monstrous government and it’s brutal, backward looking policies. Unless we do this, we have no future. We may even cease to exist as laws are changed about assisted suicide and society decides that it’s much more humane to have us all put down or killed at birth.

I’ve unashamedly taken a lot of the information needed for this blog from an excellent article by Peter Wilby in the Guardian. Please cut and paste the following link to read Peter’s article in full –

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/31/francis-maude-big-society-charity

Crippen's right wing cartoon

Yet more rumbles emerging from the CONDEMs fragile Coalition. Not only Lib Dem’s being caught on camera  rubbishing their Tory colleagues, but also some Tories now complaining that the Lib Dems are not Right Wing enough!

Tories investment opportunity

Everything that the CONDEMs are doing with regard to disabled people seems aimed at getting us all (back) into residential care. Taking away huge chunks of benefits payments, stopping the Independent Living Fund, slashing health care, housing and transport provision; all of these cuts seem designed to put a stop to our ability to live independently in the community.

There’s got to be an ulterior motive for all this, and as it involves the Tories, it’s a fair bet that it’ll be about them making a profit out of other people’s misfortune?!

Crippen is still producing work for his blog on the Disability Arts on Line (DAO) web site.

Whereas this WordPress blog is focussing on Crippen’s more political cartooning, the DAO blog will continue to explore aspects of disability art and its relevance to the Disabled People’s Movement within the UK.

Currently Crippen is looking at how disability art could become more involved with Disabled people’s protests taking place around the country.

You can find Crippen’s DAO blog at – http://www.disabilityartsonline.org.uk/?unique_name=crippen-blog&offset=0

Video footage and photographs have been released on social networking sites and U-Tube that show a policeman in full riot gear pulling a Disabled protester from his wheelchair. The protester, Jody McIntyre was one of the students who were protesting about the raise in tuition fees in central London yesterday.

The amount of mis-information that the ConDems have fed to the media regarding the alledged abuse of disability benefits is breath taking. Disabled people have become the scapegoats yet again for the state this country is in, whilst the bankers and politicians get off scot free!