Disabled people are not part of the general public…

My father is a London Black Taxi driver, which means he is a member of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers. Led by the controversial Bob Crow (loved by the left and hated by the right), the RMT holds the government to account in a way. Eventhough people get frustrated with inconvenient strikes, if it weren’t for Trade Unions then employers could all but get away with murder. Anyway, a monthly newsletter comes through our door and my dad flagged up a particular article that may be of interest to me. As I was reading, I immediately could feel a blog coming on so here goes.

The headline reads ‘Disabled access? MP’s warn access to transport for disabled people is still unacceptably poor’ so the article, as you can guess, echoes many of my concerns that I have voiced in previous posts. The main one being that public transport (intended for all) is deeply inadequate in terms of accessibility. To me, this suggests that disabled people are not seen or valued as a part of society by the government and therefore do not need a public transport system.

I do criticize the coalition a lot on here but I must be impartial for once and praise the government for recognizing the problems that exist. However, they’re pretty obvious and it didn’t take a rocket scientist. Instead, it took a House of Commons transport select committee to compile evidence and investigate the current situation. With help from the RMT, they ‘warned that the government must work harder to improve accessibility for disabled people across the nation’s transport networks’. All well and good but I want to see these positive changes in action.

Right, I’ve got a Scroobius Pip concert to attend so if you’ve got Adobe Reader you can download the full article to read here: https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/publications/rmt-news-january-2014/

(Page 8).

Bye for now!