Wide bays and narrow minds (From Bournemouth Echo)
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Wide bays and narrow minds
8:00am Wednesday 17th March 2010 in
I wonder if I am the only truly disabled person who gets totally fired up while sitting in car parks waiting for a wide spaced disabled bay?
As far as I can tell there are four main categories of the wonderful blue badge: l Pensioners’ badge. Not all, but a lot of these are the people who scowl at my wife and myself because I don’t look disabled until I transfer from my car seat to my wheelchair.
At this point they scowl in a totally different direction.
More often than not they then park, proudly display their badge and then hop out and skip off without any help at all.
No need at all for a wide space there then.
l Larger persons’ badge: More or less speaks for itself – clamber out of the car, off around the shops. Again, no need for a wide parking space.
l Stick carriers’ badge. These can be any age, either sex. They often return to retrieve their forgotten sticks from the car back seat, but are best observed in wet weather, running to and from their cars, stick under arm.
Why take up a wide space for a stick?
l Genuinely disabled people. These are the unfortunate people like myself who cannot climb in and out of a 4x4 with a door six foot from the ground.
Also, we are unable to squeeze between cars in normal parking spaces to get into our wheelchairs. We don’t use the disabled places because we are too lazy or tight to use ‘normal’ places – we need a wide space to transfer into wheelchairs.
The blame for handing out blue badges to anybody who wants one starts with doctors being too lazy to argue the individual cases, but surely the almost able-bodied could spare a thought for the real disabled people for once.
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Comments(7)
a.g.o.g.
says...
10:45am Wed 17 Mar 10
Trifecta
says...
10:56am Wed 17 Mar 10
madone
says...
3:08pm Wed 17 Mar 10
You know, medical research will tell you, that 98% of people requiring knee replacement surgery are overweight. Why do you think that? Fat isn't because of an illness, it's a lifestyle choice, don't make me have to pay for it.
Busy little bee
says...
4:54pm Wed 17 Mar 10
maccio
says...
4:27pm Thu 18 Mar 10
eyesropen
says...
10:35pm Thu 18 Mar 10
madone wrote:You're missing the point. The problem isn't too few disabled parking bays, it's people parking in them with either bogus disabled badges, the disabled badges of family members who aren't with them at the time and people who have no badge at all.
Seriously do we need anymore disabled parking spaces! One only has to visit to see this so-called trendy suburb, is really the domain of the old and unabled. Seriously there must be 80 odd disable bays, since when did being fat become a disability?
You know, medical research will tell you, that 98% of people requiring knee replacement surgery are overweight. Why do you think that? Fat isn't because of an illness, it's a lifestyle choice, don't make me have to pay for it.
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cantique says...
9:33am Wed 17 Mar 10