YesWheely

The idea of this blog is mainly to get the things inside my head outside my head. I'd like to talk about my disability, my ambitions, my ideas, and my married life. I have a full time job, it's not menial, it's software design and project management. I like how creative software design is. I like developing user interfaces, I like designing print outs, I like adding things the end user wants. Users often don't give it a second thought. However, even the most laborious software is engineered. Excluding software produced by large faceless corporations (except Google they seem to care about the design process).

Ideally I'd be working on video games I have an idea for an android game I'd like to be working on but it'll have to wait till I have the time. Anyway let's get off this digression and talk about my physical retardation. That term is much less offensive than disabled, to me, because disabled is what I'd be if I didn't have a chair with wheels on. Even without a chair I could still squirm about on the floor like a retarded worm. So I have a disability but I'm able and a functioning, working (benefit scroungers - shape up), part of society.

Two years later and not even a training or apprentice position or anything had found it's way to me. So eventually I found myself some work. It's OK for now. It's full time, and most  importantly I'm off benefits. There are plans to head into self employment, once the project I'm working on is completed, self employment is less secure but far more rewarding.

So the people who run the Job Centre and the people who legislated such a useless disability discrimination act are why so many wheelchair users are out of work when they have the skill, desire, etc. to work.

Somewhere I was once

I hate the waste that benefit scroungers truly are, it's a waste of money that could be spent on better trains with automatic  ramps (I hate getting 'forgot' about and needing assistance), better buses so all local councils could have automatic ramps (like the ones in London). Better infrastructure, things for useful members of society, better OAP care, and not so a 'chavy' idiot can buy alcohol! Housing benefit and council tax benefit and job seekers should be limited in duration and based on health. And changed so you get food stamps and rent rather than matching a hard workers salary. Being on benefits shouldn't be a lifestyle choice it shouldn't be in someone's long term plans.

It's one of the few things that bother me and largely because everyone I meet day to day makes the assumption that because I can't walk I must be one of these scroungers and it's not true. Even when I couldn't find employment it wasn't by choice. It's very difficult for a wheelchair user to be given an opportunity.

Trekinetic Power Chair (trekinetic.com)

So one of the joys of wheelchair use is that your arms are not designed to propel you about. Winter is now my least favourite time because it gets cold, wet, windy, snowy these are huge obstacles when using a wheelchair. I hate the wet; the push rims are slippy, the spray messes up your sleeve, the rain soaks your lap. So my mom is trying to raise money for electric chairs for me and my wife.

Now even though it's a Sunday night there is science to be done.
For the people who are still alive.