Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Very expensive cars with disabled badges
While there is no reason why a registered disabled person shouldn't have a very nice car, I did a bit of a loose survey while walking around the Gardens and Ladder roads over the last couple of weeks.
I counted 26 different cars parked up with blue disabled badges around the area. They were almost exclusively Range Rovers, large white Audi's, 5 series BMW's and even one Porsche!
Life is either getting a bit better for disabled people in London (which would be great) or something is afoot.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Penguin on
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And I don't think passing off your wild assumptions that 'older people are wealthier and more likely to be disabled' as fact, reflects very well on you.
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Permalink Reply by Sophie Smith on
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Here's the data backing this up
Older people have a great share of wealth than the under 45s: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/pensioners-have-gre...
Here's data from Disability UK showing how the likelihood of disability increases with age: https://www.ageuk.org.uk/globalassets/age-uk/documents/reports-and-...
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Older people are wealthier, agreed.
Older people are more likely to be disabled, agreed.
But it doesn't follow that wealth and disability are therefore correlated. The wealthy older people are not necessarily the same as the disabled older people.
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Permalink Reply by Martin (Woodside) on
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When it comes to any form of benefit or service, there is a raft of 'professionals' who (for a fee) get you anything you want, and they tell you what to do and say. On Radio 4 recently there was a programme on a local Stamford Hill solicitor who arranged £400 pw housing benefit for a woman who bought a house in her brother's name, there were many others doing the same. Abuse of our generous welfare service is rife.
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Try reading the news.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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The news item which WG Martin refers to was evidenced by people interviewed in the BBC File on Four radio programme called "The Unorthodox Life of Miriam". It can be heard and downloaded.
The programme raises serious and important issues.
Nothing to do with blue badges.
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What IS to do with Blue Badges is today's report on abuse - e.g. BBC report here - with a headline figure of 60% of councils reporting no legal action over blue badge abuse.
However, Haringey/Met Police do take some action - extracted from
https://www.haringey.gov.uk/environment-and-waste/neighbourhood-act...
27 April 2018
Six fraudulent blue badges were seized and a vehicle was towed away this week. Blue badges are vital for disabled drivers and we will continue to take action against anyone who is caught misusing them.8 June 2017
• We recovered five lost or stolen blue badges and five vehicles were removed to the pound as part of Operation Bodmin with the police. Two cars were displaying stolen blue badges. Another three drivers were caught misusing a family member’s badge and were issued with a Penalty Charge Notice and had the badge confiscated.14 May 2017
• We seized 5 blue badges in N17 for misuse as part of a mission called Operation Bodmin.
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These are minimal of cases yet it is used as a baton to bash disabled people over the head and to justify cutting benefits for those that really need them.
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which part of our 'generous' system are you referring to? I'm guessing you have never had to rely on it. Perhaps you could explain how revenue lost due to tax evasion and avoidance runs at 100 times that of benefit fraud. Indeed the amount of unclaimed benefit far exceeds that of fraud which is tiny in terms of the overall budget. Oh wait, your heard someone on Radio 4, so......
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There's a lot of muddled thinking on this thread. The topic is the abuse of the Blue Badge scheme. Some posters seem to think that they need to defend even the abusers in case the rights of those who are entitled to BBs is challenged. Others seem to think that raising the issue of BB abuse is patronising to people with disabilities by suggesting that they should not be able to afford expensive cars.
These are not the issues!
The original poster's comment was that nearly all of a sample of 26 BB'd cars s/he observed were high-end. If accurate, this is not representative of the population as a whole, nor, I would guess, of the genuine BB holder population. it is not an implausible hypothesis to suggest that something is amiss that deserves investigation.
If the system is being abused, it is not just a case of some people getting privileges they don't deserve; it also deprives those who are entitled of the very resources the scheme is designed to provide - very limited and finite parking space.
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If you look at the motorbility scheme people can use their benefit to lease what can be seen as high end cars. The original was at best vague, ambiguous and designed to cause mischefe. It is not easy to get a bb. Whilst a few exploit the system at the cost of those that need the spaces. It’s interesting that most of those talking about people abusing the system are those that don’t use/need badges and I am sure they are not being vocal in defence of those that do. I go back to my first response to the oroginal post it does smack of BB or posh car envy.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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I think that’s a huge over generalisation. I don’t own a car, don’t want a car and don’t envy those who do. As I said in another post, my father had a BB (which incidentally was bloody hard to obtain) and it was the only thing that prevented him from leading a housebound life and allowed him to attend dialysis without having to wait a couple of hours to get there and a couple of hours to get back using patient transport. What I loathe are people who stick up two fingers by abusing a much needed scheme.
They exist and you see them not infrequently. Just this Thursday morning a car was parked up on Green Lanes (in the bus stop by the post office) displaying a BB while a young fella was hauling massive bags of shopping into the boot. He was the only person in the car when it drove off. I photographed the car reg but have no idea who to report in to or what evidence I would need to produce. I think the main abuse is this kind, where someone is displaying a perfectly legitimately obtained badge but the person for whom the badge is intended not using the vehicle or being driven in it.
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