Why PIck on People with Disabilities

Thank you Bill. This is an important story and as usual you have told it well.
The employees are caring people who love working with HandyDART users. As a reward for their dedication, the American for profit company that Translink gave the contract to has demanded that the workers give up their long fought for pension. This of course will never happen.
The users are suffering greatly from this dispute. Yet they are supporting the drivers and other workers because they appreciate the quality of service that they are given by these dedicated people and they understand how badly the employees are being treated.
The union understands the hardship being caused to their passengers and has offered to go back to work immediately and put the dispute to binding arbitration. The management company has refused to do this.
I hope many of your readers will write to Translink and demand that they use their position to get the management company to agree to binding arbitration. This will bring back immediate service to the users and hopefully restore pensions to the workers.

Rick Hansen We Need You

Having supported and fund raised and donated to Rick Hansen's Wheels in Motion program many times, I know Rick Hansen is a couragous man of deep principles. We need him on this file. I hope he considers contributing to this conversaton, about these lynchpin services that used to make BC a more just society.

But like governments in the past that reflect power and anger and tyranny, the Campbell regime is mimicking the same disrespect and contempt for citizens that we saw in the early 1930's.

Great article Bill!

The government stops funding

The government stops funding for housing and years later they ask the police to clean up the mess - Banana Republic North - and now this....How can you not say we are becoming more and more like Victorian England?

People With Disabilities

Good story Bill,What this province needs is a general strike. When are we going to say enough is enough with these gut robbing bastards in power. They pick on people who can't fight back,typical school bully tactics.This government is an embarassment to the people of B.C. who have worked so hard to make this province great.I have one quote here from Napoleon:In politics stupidity is not a handicap.That sure fits the Liberals under Campbell.

I use Handy Dart sometimes,

I use Handy Dart sometimes, over in the village of Victoria. They are getting nervous as their contract expires in 2010. People rely heavily on the system and are getting shafted by the present government who seems to figure that anything connected to a union is a thorn in their side. Time to remove the gang of thugs who form the present government.The present government either doesn't consider the results of some of their stupid decisions, and then are too stubborn to admit they are wrong.. Hey it only hurts the siabled and in this provicne it seems disabled folks are considered a drain on the government

this is only lately

I agree with you but you could look father into the liberals failure to act responsilbly.
Government never (in my opinion)gives enough for a disabled person to have a real life. Why can't these people have funds for a taxi?? Or enough food and a return to access to medical equipment without begging.
Mr. Tieleman why don't you look into the amount a disabled person gets each month, then try to find out how these ingenious people actually survive each month.
I believe if you look at the Sociology + Psychology of keeping people poor means you have a method to see if you are doing well. Frances Fox Piven and Herbert Gans both wrote on the subject of poverty.
+ Show full citationThis is the first page of the item you requested.
• The Positive Functions of Poverty
• Herbert J. Gans
• The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 78, No. 2 (Sep., 1972), pp. 275-289
(article consists of 15 pages)
• Published by: The University of Chicago Press
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2776496

The Positive Functions of Poverty, by Herbert J. Gans © 1972 The University of Chicago Press.
Abstract
Mertonian functional analysis is applied to explain the persistence of poverty, and fifteen functions which poverty and the poor perform for the rest of American society, particularly the affluent, are identified and described. Functional alternatives which would substitute for these functions and make poverty unnecessary are suggested, but the most important alternatives are themselves dysfunctional for the affluent, since they require some redistribution of income and power. A functional analysis of poverty thus comes to many of the same conclusions as radical sociological analysis, demonstrating anew Merton's assertion that functionalism need not be conservative in ideological outlook or implication.
Want the full article?
Login to access JSTOR, or check our access options. You may have access for free through an institution.

Hope I spelled everything properly.

Increasing profit shares off the backs of the disabled

As Ministry of House and Social Services is particularly good at ensuring clients go without as extra steps are put in the way to make it impossible for clients to access their needs.
I was just talking with government employee and told employee you are going to have to come clean and tell the Minister what you have done with information to cause clients harm? So he is not to surprised when its dropped on his lap in the next couple of weeks.

NEED VICTIMS TO PICK ON

With the economics in bad shape far more people will learn how abusive the Ministry Of Employment and Income Assistance truely is. When those who once looked down there noses at the poor and disabled get to know how much the government does to harm people things may change. IT NEEDS POLITICAL WILL to do something

gordo or in this case his name might change to premier spiteful. What caring person would do the stuff that he has. fiberals spent $5 million on having the disabled reassessed. Many didn't make it and committed suicide because they had had enough abuse. The medical profession often isn't helpful because the ministry won't pay enough.

King Gord doth decree

Of course CanWest thinks the drivers should work for free and blame the same drivers for the current mess. You'd never know MVT was American or had just taken the contract over if you listen to them.

Sly. Ugly. Perverse. ...and Cruel.

"Minister Rich Coleman stated in the legislature on Wednesday that the intent of the repeal is to “enable us to make a selection to the board of members from a wider pool of individuals,” who fit the “skill set needs,” implying that direct, lived experience is not a valued skill set and that there are not family members and community living experts
who also fit the professional criteria required by the board. For a vulnerable population that has been systematically discriminated against to lose its voice after so many years of progress is devastating."

This government is sly, ugly, perverse and cruel.

And it gets more sly, ugly, perverse and cruel by the day....

Which says something about the kind of people who are proud to represent and vote for this highly discriminatory and cruel kind of subterfuge - and one that is trying to pass itself off as "needed" legislation.

This isn't legislation, this is a tyrannical abuse of human rights, and should be looked into by both the courts and the UN Human Rights Commission.

Let's tell the truth, the BC Liberals only want people on the CLBC board of directors who don't give a damn about the disabled .

Their object is to create easy passage "to re-direct" funding away from the disabled by by-passing their human rights and the rights of their families and advocates to defend and protect those rights.

The directors will get BIG salaries and the disabled will get more and more funding cuts....all done under the sly banner of "increased funding".

We know who is benefiting from the increased funding... and it is not the disabled.

Same old sly game at work -

Just think "health authorities" for an example, or BC Rail...or BC Ferries....or.....on and on.....

Who is benefiting from our tax dollars?

Who is benefiting from this relentless "re-direction" of funding?

Follow the slimy money trail of these snakes and the "enabling" legislation that enables the funding to be "re-directed" .... in this case, to what the snakes in power consider more appropriate "usage" than helping the disabled.

Petition to Premier Campbell

The BC Association for Community Living has launched a petition calling on Gordon Campbell to reverse his decision to remove from legislation the requirement that family members and people with disabilities sit on the CLBC board.

http://www.petitiononline.com/BCACL/petition.html

POVERTY FOR LIFE!!!!!!!!!!

CLBC cares for one level of the disabled, but there are over 70,000 disabled people on welfare. Plus you must add in their children, and those spouses that don't run away and stay and supply full time care. The tax payer saves countless millions by spouses and family members becoming unpaid nurses I changed my wifes diapers for 8 years, in total poverty.
Poverty for life is the reward our society gives to those who no choice in the matter, its god's will that people become disable and its our society that choses not to share the wealth of this country.
Poverty for life, is just not fair.
While caring for my wife I became disabled, at least I'm always happy.
Most people treat us realy well but there are a good number of "A-HOLE's" out there that have no idea what being disabled is all about.