A Day in the Life: Sarah's Journey

The UK is one of the richest countries in the world; we live in a society where we have freedom of speech, where we are “free” to travel where we like when we like. Many people in 21 st Century Britain commute on the train and nearly everyone at some point will have travelled by train. The ease, the simplicity of hopping on a train whilst it takes you to your destination when you hop off again enjoy your destination for as long as you like before deciding which train to take home. That is, of course, unless you are disabled when the situation is very different.  This blog post will focus on First Capital Connect as that is who I use most frequently but it could easily apply to any other rail company as the situation is the same across the rail network.  What they tell you about special assistance They rail companies (in this instance First Capital Connect) tell you to ring their special assistance booking line 24 hours in advance and you will be guaranteed...

Over the past year I have learnt much about myself and other people and so I need to take a moment to reflect on my experiences and in essence how lucky I am to have the life that I do. So many people have to deal with so many more injustices than myself, which I can only begin to imagine the effect that this has. I have made the effort to learn about other sick and disabled peoples lives, to allow me to appreciate what others go through on a daily basis. This learning has made me realise that things are not always clean cut as they seem, leading to me having a greater empathy for people in different situations. I have done my learning through talking to people on social networking sites like Twitter, as well as through listening and taking note of the news and the media as a whole. There have been a number of different items in the media about disabled people which I feel is another reason I have learnt to question what I am told and find out the truth, as unfortunately much of w...

Welcome to my new followers, I am looking forward to some interaction from my followers as some already have. I have had an interesting weekend and some things I have heard through twitter has made me feel the need for another blog post. Some of the main topics being discussed include how disabled people are seen as 'benefit scroungers' and that of the experiences of disabled people and transport. I have spent time in previous posts speaking about how the media shows disabled people as benefit scroungers and so am not going to try and reinvent the wheel with that one. Instead I am going to discuss my experiences of public transport. I have mentioned this topic but not at great length and so feel it is appropriate to focus a whole post to this topic. As previously mentioned I have been disabled from birth and so have experienced public transport in many different circumstances. When I was younger I was very reliant on being driven everywhere that I went. Many of the buses were...