Benefit cuts will cost the economy.

I guess these people have no concept of just how incredibly hard it is to get PIP at all, even when you have plenty of evidence. And personally I do have to worry, despite being genuine, because I don’t have 4 points on any one daily living descriptor, so I WILL lose my PIP and LCWRA. I’d imagine the majority of PIP claimants are in the same boat, getting 4 points on a descriptor is reserved for very severe disabilities. But there are so many people who are significantly disabled enough to be struggling and therefore able to claim PIP at all, who won’t meet that threshold.

Same here. I will have nothing. Life wont be worth living.
It also makes me sick to see people say that the cuts are not even going further enough. I just hope there is enough pushback and they don't happen. But in the meantime we are stuck in this limbo. It is horrible.

Yes, exactly. And all these people going oh if you're genuine you don't have to worry. I have serious diagnosed conditions and no doctor would ever say I'm fit for work. And yet I'm terrified.

Low rate PIP x 1 - £400 per month
Low rate DLA x 2 - £480 per month
Carers - £320 per month
UC of around £2,000 is absolutely not ‘far outside the maximum’ - seems a very normal amount

Even just those things - lower rate everything, everything rounded down - is over £3,000 per month, or £36,000 per year.

Same here. I will have nothing. Life wont be worth living.
It also makes me sick to see people say that the cuts are not even going further enough. I just hope there is enough pushback and they don't happen. But in the meantime we are stuck in this limbo. It is horrible.

I'm worried about exactly the same thing. I'd be literally destitute. The option of just getting a job isn't available to me. I barely have the energy to manage basic self care.

I could pay rent but not my bills. I'd have absolutely no money for food at all.

I've considered begging in the street and I've genuinely considered suicide.

And people are celebrating this? That's a massive punch in the gut.

It really is. And surprising that it seems to be the overall consensus on MN (which IME has always been more of a ‘lefty’ site), to be positively relishing the huge fucking over of people that have disabilities that is coming. Removing my income isn’t going to make me well again, it will just mean I won’t be able to survive.

I'm worried about exactly the same thing. I'd be literally destitute. The option of just getting a job isn't available to me. I barely have the energy to manage basic self care.

I could pay rent but not my bills. I'd have absolutely no money for food at all.

I've considered begging in the street and I've genuinely considered suicide.

And people are celebrating this? That's a massive punch in the gut.

Oh and to add to my post earlier, when my PIP gets removed, I will also no longer get the LCWRA element of UC. Which means I will have no protection from being expected to work 35 hours per week in order to claim any kind of UC. But there is no way that I would be capable of that now, or at any time in the last 10 years so although I have hope that one day I might be well again, it’s not looking great for me. So when I’m unable to meet my claimant commitments, I’ll be sanctioned and have even less money, and when I carry on not being able to make the commitments my UC will stop and then all I’ll have is what I earn from the few hours work I can do a week. And I won’t be able to pay my rent, or pay bills, or buy food…I’m trying not to stress as that’s something that makes CFS worse but it’s hard not to.

I heard a jacket with tuna makes limbs grow back and everything.

It is an outrage - I had a 'massive salad' yesterday and would you believe it, woke up still disabled this morning!!

Have you tried a spud with tuna though? Apparently that works.

Haha my friend bought me some lovely healthy sushi last night. I've only gone and woken up still disabled!

It's an outrage!

That was my thread. And no I didn’t disclose that at all, I said that on that particular day I had stopped for a can of coke in the morning, needing the caffeine boost to be able to drive home safely. And I’d had a pot noodle later on because I neither had the energy to cook or go shopping. Which then descended into a whole thing with posters assuming that Coke and pot noodles were all I ever consumed, which is not true. I’d have probably died a long time ago if it was.

Probably very outing but my CFS was caused by living in high amounts of stress for a number of years due to abuse, literally living in fear of my life 24/7, until my nervous system eventually collapsed. I had a book published about the abuse I suffered, trust me the whole thing was a living hell for a long time. I’ve had years of counselling, CBT etc but none of that can undo what I went through, the damage is done. I have a first class science degree, before I had CFS I was working 60 hour weeks. There is no part of me that is by nature a shirker. But now I have been ill for the last 10 years, and I am very limited. My house is a mess, I can only manage an hour or so of work before I need to sleep (eg today, I worked for an hour and now I’m back home in bed before 3.30pm when I have another hour’s work booked in, I will need to sleep to be able to do that).

If there is an employer out there who will understand that I can only manage very short stints of work before I need to rest or sleep, and some days I will be bedridden so unable to work at all, and if I catch a virus it will affect me a lot worse than your average person I will be stuck in bed for at least a month, then I’m completely up for it. But most likely I will have to carry on doing what I’m doing, self employed work as a when I’m able. Without PIP (which I will lose under these proposals) I won’t be able to afford the monthly therapy I have to manage my pain, or the supplements I take which enable me to have the small amount of a life I have now. So I will likely not even be able to manage the small amounts of work I’m doing now.

To answer the more general question by the OP - yes of course it will, the more unequal a society is the more social problems there are. There’s an excellent book out there called The Spirit Level for anyone who has trouble understanding that.

It is an outrage - I had a 'massive salad' yesterday and would you believe it, woke up still disabled this morning!!

Most of MN apparently 🤣. To put that to bed, I have eaten a number of jacket spuds over the last decade since I got ill, and sadly they didn’t cure me.

There's always some wanker who thinks they know your condition and What You Should Do better than you do.

So just to clarify, my illness was NOT caused by pot noodles, nor will it be cured by avoiding pot noodles.

Does anyone remember that thread where a poster was panicking about losing PIP for her chronic fatigue, but disclosed she ate pot noodles and coke most days?

Great post. It is hard to comprehend the complexity of living with a life-long condition - or conditions - that requires both medication and careful handling to ensure the best outcomes for the person concerned.

Unforutnately, the 'don't buy pot noodle' brigade have no understanding of that. And hopefully never will, what with all their healthy salad eating. Cos healthy people never get sick, do they?!

In theory, we'd all have a perfect, healthy, nutritious diet.

But when you're disabled, particularly with chronic conditions, it gets a bit tricky (to say the least) to prioritise all the things that have to be prioritised.

For my own diet:

• can I make it myself?
• does it conflict with my diabetes
• does it conflict with weight loss goals
• does it conflict with Gastroparesis
• does it trigger IBS
• does it meet my ARFID safe foods?
• can I afford it

And that is just diet... because I also have to prioritise:

• managing my energy levels
• getting enough sleep
• managing meds
• earning a living
• managing a home - financially
• managing a home practically (keeping it clean and tidy and not falling apart)
• medical appointments
• managing on-going wound care
• prompting ND partner to do the things he must do
• managing my own personal care

You cannot put every one of those things at the top of the list. It is not possible to have everything as number 1 priority.

For a healthy, able bodied person, managing all that might be a breeze (though from posts on MN it seems it probably isn't). Add in doing all this on insufficient sleep, with physical disabillities or mental disabilites, or both, in significant amounts of pain and with a third the energy or less of a 'normal' person...

As I say, it gets a little tricky. Some shit slips, particularly when unexpected things happen (eg. Today I was woken at 10am, now it is lovely that the DN turned up so promptly, but it means I have had 3 hours less rest as I could not go back to bed afterwards. I feel ok now, but I can guarantee that I will be running on empty at 7pm when I have 3 hours of work left! and this will impact me for the next couple of days).

Also, in amongst all of that most people try to squeeze a bit of enjoyment out of life if they can... but that also takes up energy, time, mental and physical resources that are in short supply.