“Are you disabled?” “Yes.” “Prove it!” 
9
I’ve got several ideas for some mildly interesting entries here but until I get round to actually writing them I thought I’d add this one.
My CEA (or Cinema Exhibitors’ Association) card was finally delivered the other day after nearly four weeks of waiting. The short story is this: my regular cinema has always provided people who accompany a disabled person with a free ticket, but apparently this has been abused recently with presumably able-bodied people borrowing wheelchairs and getting their mate in for free, so cinemas have understandably started asking for proof of a persons disability. Of course they’re not simply going to ask at the box office so an ID card of sorts is needed — I had to send off proof of my receipt of Disability Living Allowance along with a passport photo and £5.50 admin fee. Four weeks later and I get a nice laminated card featuring my beautiful face:
I’m glad I’ve got it now as there are more than a few films I’m looking forward to seeing, including Hancock, The Dark Knight, Wanted, Prince Caspian, The Forbidden Kingdom and Wall-E.
Unrelated: the other day I happened to click on my AirPort menu item to see which of my neighbours wireless networks I could pick up and it seems that I’m getting a signal from a galaxy far, far away:
And talk about targeted advertising:
#1 Jimiminar said:
That’s pretty crazy, although hearing on the news today about all the benefit fraud that goes on, to sound cliched, it is what the world has come to.
On a side ntoe, does that mean in their eyes you’re no longer disabled after the expiry date?!?
on 8 July 
#2 Timmargh said:
I guess so, but if that’s the case then shouldn’t it read "Invalid Until" … ?
:^D
on 8 July
#3 Tina said:
Hi Tim,
I really L-O-V-E your way of writing! I’ve only just come across your blog/webpage so there’s quite a lot I have yet to read. Thank you! :)
Tina
on 8 July
#4 Timmargh said:
Hi Tina,
Thanks for commenting and I hope you enjoy your stay.
on 8 July
#5 Darren said:
Don’t do it Tina! Don’t get sucked in by his charm you’ll never leave
It’s a shame you have to use headshots for ID cards, it’d been fun to maybe photoshop a picture of you doing a cartwheel and put that on it, just for the cinema staff to double take the photo every time
But that might get tired quickly
on 10 July
#6 MHC said:
Yeah over here too they take the wildest decisions to make sure there’s no fraud. And yet you still see outrageous personal spending with people in government.
Like this guy we have, claims he needs to go in his home riding on weekends to keep in touch with his electors. So every friggin’ Friday, he rents a helicopter (with pilot) to take him to the airport…. He says it’s because of the heavy traffic and he’s afraid of missing his plane…
The airport is a 20 minute drive in a taxi… in heavy traffic.
>_<
on 15 July
#7 Timmargh said:
@Darren - :^D
@MHC - that’s outrageous!
on 15 July
#9 MHC said:
I have no idea, juniper. People got angry, then the media picked up another “controversy of the week/month” thing and moved on. Nothing, as far as I can tell, came of it.
We do have a corrupt government in power at the moment, both on the federal and provincial level. Majority won, maybe people will remember this kind of thing for the next elections.
on 2 August
Something to say?
Feel free to express any opinion you like. Some HTML is allowed and paragraphs are formatted automatically -- if you don't understand any of that then just write your comment and let me worry about it.
The conversation so far