Fuck it - the government will look me

Have you claimed contributions based job seekers allowance? It's not means tested and is for 6m, you do have to show that you are looking for work, but you might also get a job coach which might be useful.

Oh don't you come along here with your facts and truth talk, that's not what we do here at all!!

I also have a mortgage. If I can't find work in the next couple of months (trust me I am trying very, very hard) and my assets sink below the UC threshold I will not receive enough to run my home and support my son. I could take a mortgage 'holiday' but that's kicking the debt down the road. I guess I'll lose my home and then get housed.

I am a very qualified professional.

Ah I only get £400 as have a mortgage

Yes, I've included rent and council tax. Alhough possibly UC wouldn't cover all my rent, meaning even more money on min wage compared to UC.

Funnily enough I didn’t have a line of wealthy suitors waiting 🤣 if only it were that easy, I’d be in the Bahamas with my millionaire!

I disagree, the anger is aimed at exactly the right place with Labour and their supporters.

@BionicWomansAnkle
You are looking in the wrong places then.
Nobody asks to have a disabled child.
Nobody wants to be beholden to Motability or the whims of any governing party to try to live a decent life with normal basic freedoms.
The welfare state ultimately benefits the whole country.
By this I mean from the HMRC guy who does his job, to the NHS who researches and funds and operates on anyone regardless of their tax position, the teachers in state schools, and the women who decades before you or I were born had no choice but to be beholden to their husbands and had independence of any kind before they qualified for a state pension.
There are lots of things to be concerned about but anger is a useless emotion- especially if directed at a political party.
You don’t know what will become of your children yet (I mean this to the general audience as opposed to just you). Not just medical mishaps but severely life-limiting consequences from anything to a developed allergy, their own stillborn child, their own nonverbal autistic child, drug or alcohol or gambling dependencies, work related accidents, your own early demise that means they end up in the care system.
It’s easy to think any government has it in for particular groups if they try to increase productivity or decrease spending: in reality they don’t. They want to increase their own power by appealing to their likely voters and to regulate the UK economy, though they differ on how they do that - Reform is the only exception I would make to that rule but I feel disinclined to remark further because it’s so utterly futile trying to make anyone think of understand beyond the 1990s “benefit street” assumptions.

I’m sorry. The anger in this thread isn’t aimed at your family, it’s aimed at the Government for what they’re doing to our families but I can see why it’s upsetting for you.

@BionicWomansAnkle
Then I take my hat off to you for acknowledging you didn’t know, because most people don’t do that.
I will share this with this post because you don’t know sometimes what emotions you can stir up: I am 50.
I’ve paid higher tax rates when I worked. I am educated with the best results ever from my university, at the time, from my BA, then did an MLitt and then a PhD in my chosen field.
I worked very hard all my life. My parents had nothing to bequeath me but they gave me an extremely hard work ethic.
My first daughter died.
My second was born severely physically disabled.
I would choose not to use Motability because- as per the figures I gave above - it’s a rip off for disabled people.
My husband works damned hard to help children who have been treated horrendously by their parents and are now “looked after” by the State. He is a decent hardworking person, also with a PhD. Neither of us are stupid or feckless or scroungers.
As our situation demands that we acquire a WAV - currently, as I said above - only available to lease via Motability or purchase second hand (none of the type we needed were available when we first needed it).
Count your blessings that you don’t need to know the ins and outs of Motability.
I never thought I would.
The worst part of the hatred towards disabled people is the notion that these children don’t deserve help.
I did absolutely nothing wrong in my life to end up where I am.
You and the others who are quick to judge are a car accident or a childhood cancer diagnosis away from where we are.
I want you to know that I am as tough as they come - but this thread has made me cry.
My daughter will self-fund when her wealthy grandparents die.
Tax will be taken that will more than cover her DLA. That’s if she survives them.
Not every disabled child is so lucky.

In which case I stand corrected, it did sound utterly bonkers to be fair.

No one is being bought new cars on benefits.

I really suggest you go and educate yourself on the whole PIP and Motabilty thing before you post on here with judgemental comments.

I don’t understand it, I’d never heard of it until recently and I just thought the person telling me about it was making it up as buying new cars for people on benefits does sound a bit far fetched. Is it as ridiculous as it sounds or am I missing something? I didn’t go to private school, my kids do and I’m pretty sure they don’t spend much time on how to claim free cars as there’s very much an emphasis on self reliance.

@WunTooThree
Of course it is!
Paying for the disabled - why should MY taxes pay into the welfare state to go on THOSE people?
Imagine - a charity that funds cancer research - let’s stop that because the unemployed might use it, or those awful disabled people. Let’s keep it for those who can’t use daddy’s funds.
Or the British Heart Foundation- only for the rich.
I pity those who think - and apparently genuinely seem to think - that the state pension isn’t a welfare benefit or who can’t comprehend that if they require aids and adaptations to their home, they will benefit from tax relief, or if little Tarquin suddenly needs a liver transplant and he will do it on the NHS, or anyone using funded childcare hours or state education, anyone who works for the NHS or the civil service aren’t funded by tax, anyone who has had a baby on the NHS, anyone whose dearly beloved parent who worked all their life and ends up in an NHS hospital is using the same funding source.
@BionicWomansAnkle my husband pays taxes the same as anyone else, as did I until I had to stop work to care for my daughter, so fuck off. If you can’t understand the nature of Motability perhaps your private school education isn’t all it’s made out to be.

You may find you get fuck all in UC if you live alone with no kids.

I don't get it. Is this yet another whining thread about how people on benefits are raking it in, and someone on a high wage should just jack it in and claim UC?
Because that is getting very fucking tired now.

@Overthemhills So are you paying for your own car lease or am I paying? I’m none the wiser.

@BionicWomansAnkle @WildLimePoet
Motability cars are NOT “bought for” disabled people.
To assert so is a lie.
You should at least be informed of the facts.

Motability is a charity. An independent charity from the government. That is fact number 1.

Fact number 2 - Motability gets VAT relief. As will any other UK charity providing equipment for disabled people. I believe the government are considering changing this.

Fact number 3 - the cars and WAVs “given” to disabled people are leaded to people- the provider still OWNS the car.

Fact number 4 - depending on the car or WAV leased by a disabled person a down payment is made by the disabled person that is NON REFUNDABLE.

Fact number 5 - the mobility component of either DLA (child) or PIP is given to Motability.
The car is not given to a disabled person “on top of” DLA or PIP.

Fact number 6 - WAVs in this country are not available to purchase, as far as I can tell, and therefore can only be obtained as new except via lease from Motability. There are second hand cars that many buy once Motability take the car back and sell it. HOWEVER, adapting a car that you buy is another black hole of costs for a disabled person so, on the face of it, it makes sense to lease a car.

Fact number 7 - Motability is never out of pocket and sits on a very healthy profit. I believe Reeves is challenging the CEO who sits on 4 million unspent profit,

Fact number 8 - the figure of “1 in 4 new cars are given to disabled people” is not true. It is Motability alone that claims it owns 1 in 5 new cars on the road.

Motability purchases a vast range of cars - not disabled people.

Fact number 9 - as either leasing any car, Motability is an expensive way to use a car, but one that many have no option but to use because they don’t have substantial savings (clue: because being disabled means it is it less likely that a family will have two full time working parents if a child, or adequate savings prior to being disabled if an adult).

I currently lease a WAV - the down payment was around £4,000. Of my money. The adaptations cost a couple of thousand pounds more. Of my money.

Every month my child’s DLA mobility component goes to the charity, at source - that is £4004 every year. My lease is for 5 years. Thats £20,020 to Motability.
THEN they take the car back and sell it - for around £17,000, maybe more.
So around £37,000 all in for that one car.

If I bought that car, without adapting it, (Peugeot Rifter) it would be around £24,000.
So… who is the fool - me or Motability? Clearly it’s me - obviously as I had no choice when DC was 3 (couldn’t work as she wasn’t in school) whereas that CHARITY is making enormous profit leasing cars to desperate disabled people.

Can you at least be properly fucking informed about who the baddies are?

You could have chosen to marry someone with a house. Sorted.

I agree the system is flawed, but do you accept that for some disabled people, not having a car would have more of an impact than for an abled person?

I can't blame disabled people for being disabled. I just can't.

I agree some of this is a waste, but surely you agree that motability cars will be necessary for some?

I do agree. I’ve always made responsible choices, been careful, sensible, not done rash things or taken risks or been flippant. I went to college. I did a degree. I’ve worked constantly from being 16 years old.

A friend of mine from when we were kids is the opposite. Never really took responsibility for her life, worked for a couple of years in a base level job then started having kids at 19. Never worked again til mid 30s, married someone who owned a house and now at 40 years old I’m no better off than her yet I’ve slogged away at work for 20+ years and she’s barely done anything 🤣

Who’s the fool? Because I’m convinced that it’s me.

LOL always the same old classics. You could have also used ‘so you hate poor people’ or imply someone’s racist …..or you could actually just address the point and attempt to justify why tax payers are buying so many brand new cars.