Disabled = Hate Target?

BBC Radio Kent led off the Breakfast Show today with me talking about the deteriorating situation on the street for disabled people as a result of the continual stream of press releases from DWP, which pick the most egregious examples of benefit fraud they can find, which are then described in the most outrageous way possible by the tabloids and end up giving the man in the street the impression that every disabled person is faking their disability, which they then use as justification for abusing any random disabled person they come across.

The interview on the Breakfast Show was backed up by interviews with Scope and a professor from UKC, they then did an hour long phone-in on the Julia George show, which had a couple of callers who demonstrated exactly the kind of problems we face, and I was able to email Julia George while the discussion was going on to allow her to put the lie to what was being claimed. She also interviewed Katherine Quarmby about her new book 'Scapegoat', which talks about the wider disability hate crime problem.

Next (busy day!) I was interviewed on camera by BBC South East for a piece on the same topic for South East Today, which had a brief snippet at 1:30PM and should have the full version at 6:30PM.

The Radio Kent Breakfast Show is available online at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00h6qvy/Breakfast_with_John_Warnett_and_Clare_McDonnell_13_06_2011/ (apologies for the full link, but Blogger doesn't seem to want to embed it) . The interview with me starts 9 minutes in, and a shortened version is repeated at 1:07 along with the interview with Scope, while at 2:08 they have the professor from UKC.

The Julia George show is up on iPlayer. The phone-in about disability hate crime is the first hour of the show.

Both radio shows should be available for the next 7 days if I understand iPlayer correctly.

South East Today is at 6:30 PM and can also be watched at the link http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011w6pf (blogger having problems again) . Unfortunately they don't seem to put that on iPlayer, so you'll have to catch it there and then if you want to watch it over the net.