{"id":1106,"date":"2010-08-02T16:06:16","date_gmt":"2010-08-02T16:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/?p=1106"},"modified":"2015-02-25T16:28:32","modified_gmt":"2015-02-25T16:28:32","slug":"unfairly-targeted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/?p=1106","title":{"rendered":"Unfairly targeted"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Monday 2<sup>nd<\/sup> August 2010<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>UNFAIRLY TARGETED<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The battle for better rights for people with disabilities has made significant progress.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Disability Discrimination Act in 1995 was a landmark piece of legislation which, amongst other<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">things, ensured adaptations were made to public buildings to allow wheelchair access.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u00a0More recently, the \u2018Barred\u2019 campaign resulted in new laws which ensured better access to pubs and clubs.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">And I was proud to play my part as a committee convener when the Disabled Parking Bill was being scrutinised and passed by the Scottish Parliament.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Under these changes, disabled parking bays went from being advisory to enforceable and meant fines for those taking up disabled spaces without a blue badge.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Taking a disabled space when you are not eligible is unacceptable and I am glad that blue badge holders are starting to get the benefit of this.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But there is still much more that has to be done and an unwelcome setback has now emerged.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The latest proposals from the Scottish Government are aimed at those who have a blue badge but\u00a0aren&#8217;t\u00a0really eligible for them.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">To weed these people out, they want to force blue badge holders to undergo independent medial assessment.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Understandably, these plans have met fierce criticism from disability rights groups, who feel they are being unfairly targeted.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I firmly believe there has to be a system of checks and balances to ensure this scheme isn\u2019t abused by people who like the idea of convenient parking.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I want to see those people caught and punished appropriately.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But asking disabled people to prove their eligibility is a step too far and I will be strongly opposing these measures.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">While it is important that we make this scheme work, we shouldn\u2019t punish those we are supposed to be helping.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Monday 2nd August 2010 UNFAIRLY TARGETED The battle for better rights for people with disabilities has made significant progress. The Disability Discrimination Act in 1995 was a landmark piece of legislation which, amongst other things, ensured adaptations were made to public buildings to allow wheelchair access. \u00a0More recently, the \u2018Barred\u2019 campaign resulted in new laws [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holyrood-message"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1106"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1111,"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106\/revisions\/1111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}