In our personal opinion, we believe that the worse kind of disability is the loss of sight or blindness, for the simple reason it means one less hit to our website! Having heard the recent news that there's a rapidly growing increase of babies being born in the UK with impaired vision or blindness this is quite worrying. The disability is more prone where babies have chronic neurological conditions or a low birthwewight.

Although being blind as a bat doesn't mean impaired people are useless and thanks to the National League
of Blind and Disabled (NLBD) Scottish blind people are happily working away at a factory in Edinburgh making home furniture such as beds, windows and blinds! (we don't know if they really make blinds, but how ironic would it be if they did!) . Well, to be honest the first bit of the previous sentence is complete rubbish, the workers are really pissed off and have managed to open other peoples' eyes by threatening to go on strike...

The blind panic (Sorry!) started when the local council stepped in to rescue the 200 year company from a whopping £2 million debt! Although the factory in Edinburgh's Peffer Place was saved, the current employees aren't happy with the new management as Scottish organism of the Iron and Steel Trade Confederation (who incidentally run the NLBD), Steve McCool points out...

"The message from the workforce is clear - they have no confidence in the current management of the factory and
want the council to ensure that a new management climate is created which allows an agreed strategy for the plant to be implemented."

The group of workers at the furniture factory include 70 employees who have physical and mental disabilities. Members of the NLBD at Blindcraft, the council-owned plant, have backed the foreseeable strike four-to-one. If we hear of any updates we will keep you informed.

There was a bit left over when we put this up!