Has 38 Degrees Abandoned The Hardest Hit?

The campaigning group 38 Degrees has been one of the features of the ConDem regime, challenging government policies on things as varied as the plans to sell off the forests and the NHS.

Yet there has been one glaring and continuing absence in their policies, any attempt to fight for the rights of the Hardest Hit of this recession.

Disabled people have asked them for support, we've posted on their fora, we've even received substantial voting support there from other followers, but somehow we never seem to be amongst the campaigns they propose they adopt.

38 Degrees just sent me an opportunity to vote on their latest proposed campaigning priorities:

1. Continue the campaign to stop Lansley's NHS plans
2. Run research and local campaigns to expose cuts to the NHS
3. Continue to campaign for planning laws which protect the countryside and local communities
4. Stop rip-off increases to gas and electricity bills
5. Support proposals to make gay marriage legal
6. Continue speaking up for our forests and challenge future attempts to sell them off
7. Make sure that every child from a poor family receives a free school meal
8. Continue to push for a Robin Hood Bankers Tax, a tax on banks that would give billions to tackle poverty and climate change
9. Stopping the building of new coal power stations
10. Step up the campaign to ban secret lobbying
11. Push the government to do more to tackle climate change
12. Continue to demand a real clamp down on tax dodging
13. Campaign for British pensioners living abroad to get increases to their pensions
14. Speak up in support of the British government continuing to give aid to poorer countries
15. Show support for the "Occupy London" protests outside St Paul's Cathedral
16. Campaign against government plans to scrap some employment laws
17. Reform media laws to stop media moguls, like Rupert Murdoch, ever getting so much power again

I support the vast majority of these (the powerstation issue is presented too simplistically for me to take a position on), but the Welfare Reform Bill is almost law, 700,000 disabled people who even the government acknowledges are not fit for work face losing potentially all of their benefit, 20% of DLA recipients face losing their benefit by fiat, unknown numbers of families with disabled members face being forced out their homes because of the housing benefit changes, and the horrors of WCA continue unchecked, while support cuts mean disabled people are being told by the courts that it is perfectly acceptable for a council to let them lie in their own waste. Yet not one of these is addressed in the proposed campaigns, disability is simply not mentioned at all.

I'm forced to the conclusion that 38 Degrees have abandoned us, that the horrendous assault on disabled people and the benefits and support we depend on is beneath their notice. And if that's the case, why should I support an organisation that believes what happens to disabled people isn't important?

So come on, 38 Degrees, convince me that you value disabled people and recognise that what is happening to us needs to be fought against by the entire country.

Or are disabled people simply not trendy enough?

And that's why my response to their poll reads simply: "I'm sorry, I can't continue to support an organisation that refuses to recognise the assault on disabled people and the benefits and support they depend on."

Addendum:

In the short time since writing this, I've been reliably informed that supporting disabled people actually won the last 38 Degrees poll, only for it to be shelved and a second poll taken which opted for supporting the NHS. I'd really like to see an explanation of that.