Monday 24 November

Arctic winds are sweeping the country, and it really is very cold at the moment. Like most people on a low income I am getting incredibly worried about the fuel bills that will be coming in soon. Although I live in a well-insulated flat with good double-glazing, neighbours on either side and above and below me, it still gets cold! And so I am faced with that awful dilemma of whether to turn the heating on during the daytime or not, and whether I should have warmth or hide under the duvet and hope that I can keep warm! It’s the same old unfortunate story of trying to get the balance right, and the fact that the Government does not seem to realise that just like old people, disabled people are vulnerable to the cold.

All this comes amidst speculation that the Government is going to play with the tax system - reduce VAT and possibly raise the tax rate for higher earners. Bring it on is what I say! VAT always seems a rather unfair tax; it really has its roots in a desire to lower direct taxation and merely pass the costs on to consumers. At least fuel costs may come down a wee bit because of a VAT rate reduction, but probably not in time to help with the winter fuel costs. And as far as higher earners are concerned, it seems only just that those who earn a lot of money should pay a lot of tax. Or maybe I live in Cloud Cuckoo Land hoping that we may have a fairer and more equitable society.

Over the past few months, my life has been transformed thanks to the power of Vodafone. Back in the summer - after a huge amount of haggling and being sent all around the houses - I managed to get Vodafone to give me a mobile handset with “Talks” software installed on it. This reads all the commands on my mobile phone to me - in a Stephen Hawking style automated voice - and has literally transformed my communications!

At one time, I was always dialling wrong numbers and ending up speaking to the wrong friend through pressing the wrong sequence of buttons. Text messages were definitely a real pain as I simply could not read them, and I used to get exasperated when people who should have known better insisted on sending me these SMS’. Now, my phone reads them to me and also reads back to me what I have been inputting in replies. Life is a breeze! The number of texts that I send and receive has shot up from two or three a month to five or six a day! I’m really beginning to feel that I have caught up a bit with technology. All thanks to a simple piece of software that runs on high-end mobiles, such as the Nokia N series.

A chance conversation with some of the Elizabeth Finn staff about the joys of social networking sites on the Internet has also produced some transformations. I’ve yet to take the plunge with the big one – Facebook – but other smaller and more niche ones have certainly produced some interesting contacts. Friends- both new and old - seem to have appeared from nowhere and on some days I find myself struggling to keep up with different messages! Obviously, some are better designed than others, and I constantly come up against the challenge of badly designed websites where it’s impossible to get text large enough for me to read without it becoming jumbled up. When I am feeling grumpy with them I remind them of the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act, and that often has some positive effect!