we have an election my friends!

We have an election folks.

the Local elections and the vote for our representatives in Europe take place next week.

This time it is important.

As a disabled woman living in Ireland i can say how it feels to be 'under' the cloud of austerity and 'under' this present regime.

To me nothing is clearer....we do not count to the government of the day, even though many have voted them in, voted them their salaries, their pensions and top ups, for LIFE and yet what do they do when in, they decimate the life style, equality and living standards of practically most at the bottom strata of society.

These being, the sick, the disabled, the vulnerable, the elderly and the children,

How do i know this?

Because i fit into many of the above categories here.  Disabled in Ireland means i am terrified as each new day passes.
How has it been then for me in the past few years - what have they cut that was vital and what have the cut that was inconsequential.
Of the latter, nothing.
of the former just about everything.

Medication now is almost beyond what i can afford and as i pay, its a huge cut out of a fixed income, an income never likely to rise even if the cost of living everywhere is rising ahead of it.
ceoliac foods have been sliced from the prescription list

mobility, this is the van, this van takes two very sick and weary individuals who use mobility scooters/wheelchairs/rollators or sticks depending how depleted we are on the day.

I used to get the tax back on my petrol.  this is no longer so.  this was a huge perk because it also made me save this as it came back to me in lump sum, and went towards Insurance of the van or servicing of the van.

Now i hear that the Primary cert for those most effected by ill health will no longer be a qualification to get that TAX and VRT exemption on a van or transport vehicle, this too was enormous and helped get the next when your own clapped out.
presently mine has and the worry has shot through the roof.

Lets stay on mobilisation for the while.
my twin and i have tried in vain to work with the so called Department of Health, namely the HSE.

Health service, operative.

the faceless and nameless admin who have been bullied by central government, aided and abetted by Europe and Angela Merkle to cut their cost and budgets have turned their angst and distress directly back to the customer, the disabled in the community.
we, my twin and i have a very rare condition.
do you think we can have a normalised conversation about mobilising with the HSE?
No we certainly can not.
They have been told to cut their budget, it doesn't then matter a feck if that saving is at the cost of two older women who need powered wheelchairs, for a multi systemic condition and muscle wasting.
it is almost two and a half years or more since i was given a clapped out powered chair which only months later went into a wall opposite the hospital i was trying to get to to see my neurologist.
then after that battle royal with the HSE and bullying to hand back a mobility scooter, because i cannot have both at the same time.
well the clapped out wheelchair had such a dire report of it by technicians just before Christmas i am now left with a lethal machine of 11yrs old which loses body parts regularly and the hse couldn't care a jot if i go into more walls, under cars or tip out of it.

Yet despite a so called moving towards a universal health charge and demanding everyone has an insurance policy i already do!
it isn't fancy and its the last year i will have it, again central government in their brilliant ways have stopped a subvention to the insurance company and almost doubling my insurance payments. so i wont be able to afford it.

yet i do have it presently, i tell the hse this insurance can get me about three quarters of a wheelchair, they would only have to pay  a quarter.
this is called effective cost cutting measure especially as its replicated by another saying she will do the same.
in over six months or more we cannot get the hse to discuss this although they say they could but then 'who would own it?' i guess to them they say they do, just like the scooter for which i had paid over 450e to maintain it yet forced to hand back to hse without any reimbursement.

we need the wheelchairs.
no assistance have they offered to date on this.
nothing.  zero.
impossible to do business with them.

that my friends is due to austerity, the cuts, what the gov of the day in cahoots with Merkle has done to us here on the ground, very much on the ground.

We will stay on health for a minute.
just in case American people may not understand how the health system works here.
we have a public health system for those who cannot afford health insurance.
but some have both.
for fear mostly because there isn't anything left of a public health system!

as a person who has had significant amount of trauma in past three years i cannot get psychological support, the help of a social worker, physiotherapy nor shoes.
i still have no proper supportive shoes, almost six years, and i have deformed feet.

its not for the faint hearted to beg and battle for all of this.
they begin then to hate you with a passion and withdraw more just for spite.
if you say professionals would never do that, come live in Ireland and see how it works.

a society very much based on 'you scratch my back and i will scratch yours'

i think i have strayed a bit.
ELECTIONS

i cannot keep up with the onslaught of charges, extra taxes and stuff.
water charges for a person with crohns, dystonia and severe pain.
house insurance.
prescription charges
all the help with transport gone.
ditto for the elderly they cannot get to hospital appointments without going on bus, dart and then walking, even if 90yrs old, one gentleman has to do this regularly around these part.s

i cannot keep my body safe or in tone or tune with its decline.
i have no professional physiotherapy,
no shoes and no support.
i am in pain, a lot of it.

Minister for health with his delightful set of measures which Ireland cannot sustain at all is firing on all cylinders to basically bring down the health service.
hospital waiting list rocket.
casualty closes with 90 people one night and no where to treat or put them.
a single relative cannot sit now with a sick person in the A'E room, how ghastly to face terror there alone without one family member by your side. this is obscene.

we have homelessness like never before.
food banks which never existed before.
repossession without almost any way round this other than turf people out of their homes.

children have lost assistance in the classrooms, speech and language therapies, special needs kids go without and its never ending.

we have this German company now asking 'has your child still got Downes Syndrome' or 'has your wife still got Muscular Dystophy;  i kid you not.

the country has bottomed out under this government.
nothing left here for anyone and the best are going in droves.
we have done this entirely to ourselves without a squeak from the populace.
Merkle and wrangled her ways into Ireland affairs.
Kenny likes being liked by Merkle.
we cannot stand the sly little divil at all!
nor do i think our minister for health is a beacon shining in the dark, he is positively dangerous for health.

People are feeling the need to slash throats on the Facebook pages saying they are sick of the moaning about disability because we do this, we don't moan, its fact what is happening.
but they are sick of it!
they voted this, they didn't protest and the country as a result is on its knees.
everything that was precious has now been sold to the highest bidder.
china are here, America are here, so too German.

We are everywhere but not here.
Irish people excel everywhere but here!
we are famed the world over for intelligence, innovation, invention and much more and everything goes twinkle green for a day from  Dubai to hong Kong.

but Ireland is still in crisis, never got out of crisis since it became independent.

so we have elections.
the MEPs are well, they don't actually work for the people that well.
We STILL have not ratified the convention on human rights for people with disabilities.  about the only one not to.
they say they will help you so write to them.
three years on a certain wheelchair user as an MEP hasn't even so much as responded to my correspondence when i beg for help on wheelchairs.
Nessa Childers has asked me recently what is the prob but i told her many months ago but election time now do we get help, i very much doubt it but i am awaiting the surprise that i do.
we have a young lad going up too for the job of MEP, he does seem to be aware of disabled persons plight and is in government but never once voted against the cuts to people with disability, he is riding on the disability ticket.

i am not an idiot and neither is the rest of Ireland.
no amount of sweet talking gets my vote.
they have crucified me, my friends and more besides.
they have ruined a wonderful ethos of care that once was treasured in Ireland by acting way beyond this in a clinical, hatchet fashion of not an ounce of consideration for the least able in society.

you wont be getting my vote.
i want the lot of you OUT.