Reasons to vote Conservative #2: 51,000 disabled people lose their mobility cars after being forced off DLA and onto PIP

Leeds Labour councillor deselected over conviction for misusing disabled parking badge

A Labour councillor in Leeds has been deselected after being convicted of misusing a disabled parking badge.

Cllr Andrea McKenna illegally used a blue badge in Leeds which has a zero tolerance policy towards such abuses. She pleaded guilty and was fined £120 by magistrates.

Cllr McKenna was asked to resign by her local Labour Party but refused so the regional Labour Party deselected her.

Lord Freud to keep his job despite saying disabled are worth less than able-bodied people

Conservative Welfare Minister, Lord Freud, is to be allowed to keep his job after saying sorry for saying that disabled workers aren't worth as much as able-bodied workers.

Lord Freud was recorded at a Conservative Party conference fringe meeting telling a Conservative councillor:

You make a really good point about the disabled... There is a group – and I know exactly who you mean – where actually, as you say, they're not worth the full wage and actually I'm going to go and think about that particular issue, whether there is something we can do nationally, and without distorting the whole thing, which actually if someone wants to work for £2 an hour, and it's working can we actually...

UKIP has said many times in the past that the minimum wage costs jobs and takes away the individual freedom to choose what wage you are prepared to work for but there's a world of difference between giving people the choice whether or not they want to work for peanuts and targeting disabled people by abolishing the minimum wage just for them.

Disabled people can and do work just as well as able-bodied people and to suggest that they should be paid £2 an hour just because they have a disability is degrading and discriminatory. It's frankly astounding that David Cameron has allowed Lord Freud to keep his job after demonstrating a complete lack of empathy and understanding of the job that he's supposed to be doing.

The caring face of the Labour Party

The Labour Party showed its caring side this morning by evicting disabled conference delegates from the front row so they could get more camera friendly "bright young things" to shake hands with Ed Miliband as he came in for his Blairite hand shaking with the peasants.

The Morning Star reports that stewards at the venue had allocated 15 seats for disabled delegates but were overruled by "party suits" and ordered to move disabled members of the outer party out of their seats. One disabled lady who walks with a crutch fell on the stairs and was left "upset and shaken". She has been graciously granted an audience with the shadow minister for disabled people to complain after telling Morning Star that disabled people are treated "like pariahs" in the party.

Invasion of the UKIP daleks

The fantastic Star Etheridge introduces the new disability policy she's been writing at the party conference in Essex.

New EU disability tax

A new tax on disability is being introduced courtesy of the European Empire.

The EU Commission has ruled that mobility scooters are leisure vehicles and should be subject to the same 10% import duty as a racing car or camper van.

The average mobility scooter costs about £2,500 which means this new tax will add about £250 to the cost of a mobility scooter.

But why would the European Empire want to impose a tax on some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in society?

The tax, which follows a 2005 ruling by the World Customs Organisation, will raise £6million for the Government, estimates the Elizabeth Finn Care charity.

Ah yes, follow the money.  The European Empire takes 75% of import duty collected by member states and calls it "traditional own resources".  And of course import duties are one of the European Empire's most effective protectionist tools, keeping bloated and inefficient industries in the black at the expense of the consumer by adding punitive import duties to goods imported from outside the empire.

The European Empire decided last month to extend import duty on shoes imported from Asia, adding between 10% and 16.5% to the cost of importing shoes from China and Vietnam - a cost passed on to the consumer.  Tariff's on shoes were introduced to protect Italian shoe makers who were struggling to sell their expensive shoes in competition with cheap imports from countries that aren't subjected to the expensive bureaucracy of the European Empire.

Energy saving light bulbs, which the European Empire has made compulsory, are subject to punitive import duties to protect the German manufacturer, Osram, which was slow to move from manufacturing incandescent bulbs and found itself unable to compete with Chinese bulb manufacturers who were already producing energy saving bulbs on a massive scale and free from the expensive bureaucracy of the European Empire.

Most mobility scooters are made outside of the European Empire, these import duties are just a protectionist scam to protect inefficient, uncompetitive European companies at the expense of disabled people who have no choice but to pay.