Open letter from quadriplegic to Osborne: how is taking £120 a month from me going to get me back to work?

This open letter to George Osborne was posted on Facebook. Please feel free to share:

I don’t usually do this sort of thing, but I am so downright disgusted I feel the need to say something. Please feel free to share this post, in the vain hope that somebody who can make a difference might get to see it.

Dear Mr Osborne,
I am intrigued by your methods and incentives to get disabled people back to work.
I have been a quadriplegic for a last 13 years of my life. Let me give you a brief description of what this entails. I have to employ a team of four carers as there is practically nothing I can do for myself. A few of these things I can’t do include going to the toilet as I need someone to stimulate my bowels digitally, holding and having any kind of sexual relationship with my wife, playing with or indulging in any physical activity with my two sons, getting out of bed or going to bed without the aid of carers, dressing myself, picking up anything as my hands do not work, feeding myself, drinking by myself, scratching any itches on my face which is the only part of my body that I have any sensation.

I am writing this using a speech recognition program as I cannot use a computer keyboard properly. If you have any sense at all you will realise that I am wheelchair-bound and to be quite honest the list of what I can’t do is so endless that there’s not much point in me continuing to expand any further. Suffice to say that all I am really capable of is seeing (through glasses that have to be put on and removed for me) hearing (using hearing aids that have to be inserted and removed for me) swallowing food (which has to be fed to me by someone else) and that’s about it. Can you explain to me and the myriad others that find themselves in my position, sometimes worse, how decreasing my disability benefit by £120 a month is an incentive for me to get back to work. Perhaps you could outline for me what sort of work people in my condition would be capable of?

Yours truly,
Someone speaking on behalf of the severely disabled.

As I said please feel free to share this.