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The
British Council of Disabled People
25th
Anniversary Celebration and
Annual
General Meeting
on
Saturday
14th October, 2006
AT
The
Copthorne Tara Hotel,
London
This is a form for you to fill in
and return to the British Council of Disabled People.
This will tell us whether you are
coming to the Annual General Meeting and what your access (facilitation) needs
are.
My name is:
My contact address is:
The group I belong to is:
I will be coming to the 25th
Anniversary Celebrations and
Annual General Meeting
Do you require an interpreter such
as BSL? If so, what level?
A loop system has been arranged
for this meeting.
I am a wheelchair user
Yes
No
My wheelchair is: Manual
Powered
I will be bringing my Personal Assistant
Yes
No
Do you have any special dietary
requirements?
If yes, please tell me.
Does your Personal Assistant have
any dietary requirements? If yes,
please tell me.
All our information is in easy
words and pictures with 16pt Arial text. If
you would like any other way of getting your
information then please tell me.
Braille
Audiotape
So we
can meet the cost of the
Anniversary
Party we are asking groups wherever possible to pay a
donation.
We are
seeking sponsors for
bursaries
as well to enable disabled members of BCODP to attend so any help will be
really good.
The cost
for a day delegate is £55 and for the celebration
dinner
with entertainment is £34
We are
suggesting the following contributions
For each person attending
Group Income up to £50,000 £20.00
Group Income - £50,001-£100,000 £35.00
Group Income - £100,001 - £500,000 £55.00
Group
Income over
£500,000
£100.00
I will
attend the Day Conference
I would
like to attend the Celebration
Dinner
Booking forms should be back at
the BCODP offices no later than 1st August, 2006. Please send by e mail or
post to Kevin Towler his e mail address is kevint@bcodp.org.uk;
I
enclose my cheque for ……………………
|
Group
Income – Up to £50,000 |
£20.00 |
|
Group
Income - £50,001 - £100,000 |
£35.00 |
|
Group
Income - £100,001 - £500,000 |
£55.00 |
|
Group
Income – over £500,000 |
£100.00 |
Janet Seymour Kirk, deputy chair for internal affairs at the British Council of Disabled People, said: "She has some background knowledge of disability issues, which is good because a lot of her predecessors had to start from scratch.
Campaigner Simone Aspis, a spokesperson for the British Council of Disabled People, says what is really needed to achieve independence is "fully comprehensible legislation underpinning the social model of disability. which promotes disabled people's human and civil rights".
For now, she adds: "We would like to see the implementation of the Life Chances report, including the right to independent living and centres for independent living in every borough."
A lottery grant of nearly £150,000 will boost efforts by disabled people's groups to fight for their rights.
The award of £144,857 from the Big Lottery Fund will help the British Council of Disabled People (BCODP) support its 130 member groups.
Two new members of staff, supported by volunteers, will offer support and training on politics, law, generating income and running their organisations.
Anne Pridmore, acting chair of the BCODP, said she was "over the moon" with the award.
She said: "I think that this project will enable us to support groups to fight for the issues that disabled people in the UK want. Up to this time, they have been very much on their own. It's really exciting."
She added the project would give the BCODP "a certain amount of status" as no other organisation was doing similar work.
Ms Pridmore said she was "very positive" about the future of the BCODP, following its recent appointment of a campaigns officer, Simone Aspis, and its decision to set up a campaigns committee.
Colin Barnes, professor of disability studies at Leeds University [and chair of BCODP's research committee], is unconvinced [about the return of freak shows], protesting that The X Factor is inclusive and not just profiting from the disabled.
He objects to the freak shows: "If we're going to be serious about eliminating the exploitation of disabled people, then we don't want to ferment negative issues by allowing such shows. It's a retrogressive step. You wouldn't get away with it if it was exploiting race, gender or religion. Why should you get away with exploiting disability?"
Jared O'Mara, from the British Council of Disabled People, doesn't care if the freak show is now called the Original Incredibles: "The essence of it is still all about the degradation of disabled people." He says such shows are entirely different from disabled culture which allows people to be proud of their impairments and comfortable about showing them - such as the Alison Lapper statue.
"I myself am a special school survivor," says Simone Aspis of the British Council of Disabled People (BCODP). "I know that many special schools today are no different from the one I went to. I experience bullying by the head teacher and the pupils."
The BCODP, says Simone, supports the 2020 campaign by the Alliance for Inclusive Education. This aims to have achieved entirely mainstream education by the year 2020.
"We appreciate that mainstream schools do not work for some children," says Simone. "But that's because of a lack of commitment - not because they can't work.
"If someone complained that black children or Jewish children were being bullied and the answer was to put them all in their own schools, there would be an uproar.
"Why then is it all right to do this to disabled children?"
This magazine had a full-page article about BCODP, by Simone Aspis. This has not been reproduced here due to its length.
The British Council of Disabled People gave a cautious welcome. A spokesman said: "Any strategies to support disabled people into work will be undermined by coercive measures or by threats of reducing a claimant's incapacity benefits."
There was a three-page article by Simone Aspis, in reference to the Government's Green Paper on Adult Social Care. The article has not been reproduced here because of its length.
In a letter, Keith Laws from Hampshire responded to Anne Pridmore's comments as quoted above: "Anne Pridmore clearly has never visited this impressive working community. If she had she could never have made such a fatuous remark. Perhaps she would prefer my brother to spend yet more years struggling desperately to meet her utopian ideal? The quiet serenity and beauty of Botton, nestling in a dale, is a role model for society's ills. If she bothered to look she would find her ideal there too."