To wonder why the UC savings threshold is £6,000?

Fucking hell, that poster is obsessed with me. They do this on other threads too. They even have had a go at my dead grandmother on a thread about care home fees, and tried to encourage people to AS me to cause a pile on.
I am not going to go into the very personal attacks they made under a different name, where they would just not leave me alone (they were along the lines of the NHS "wasting money" trying to treat me).
And you... don't even reply or quote me. Just leave me the fuck alone. If you want to rant about me again, sit on your hands and do it in your head.
I wish MN would allow you to block posters on the boards.

Anyway, can we stay on topic now?

I didn’t say PIP assessment. I said the social model, and that’s what you’re proving with your responses. You’re pretending not to know what I mean, as is always the case on these threads.

Followed, of course, by stating a rare disability which applies to a tiny minority and making out it’s a common scenario .

But do you understand that even if every single claimant was genuine and in desperate need, the government can’t continually increase the budget to pay for it? Once upon a time the welfare budget was about 5% of government spending, it’s now about 25% ish? What happens if it gets to 50%. At what point is it unsustainable?

you could stop pensions for most but I’m not sure any government would touch that. It is already taxed anyway so the government get a lot back for those who have private pensions. I’m not convinced the savings would be worth it.

Yes I know 3. One of them was 36 and had two kids. She was proud of the fact that she had never worked and was upset that now the youngest was secondary age she'd been told she might have to get a job by the job centre.
It is a few years ago so the rules have hopefully changed.

then it’s no problem if they go bust then is it and employ nobody and give no money to the exchequer? Most businesses would be able to pay higher wages if they don’t have to pay high rates and high NI. If the government chopped 5% off employers NI tomorrow I’d pass it straight on as pay rises

The fact is the uk is built upon a back bone of entrepreneurial small business which can no longer compete.

big corps should pay more tax but if the government could make them then they would. The fact they can’t tells you it’s impossible due to global tax rates. It is nigh on impossible to stop big corps structuring companies to minimise their tax

Oh for crying out loud.

You have turned up on every single benefit thread on here since I started posting, volunteering your own private circumstances before then playing the victim when people don’t just go ‘awww, so happy you’re being supported’ and instead take a contrary position or dare to ask you about it.

Benefits are clearly something you find very upsetting and the discussion of policy something you take personally, so I’m at a loss as to why you pop up again and again wanting to talk about them before throwing a strop that you don’t get 100% agreement and constant validation.

You shared your story about your grandparents completely without prompting. I asked a few very gentle questions, which caused another strop. Stop sharing stuff if you don’t want to talk about it!

You asked me to stop commenting to you, I respected that and moved on. You then started commenting about me in the third person, I do the same back - another strop.

I appreciate my position re benefits is upsetting and even outrageous to some, but your repeated tactic of sharing personal details and entering every discussion before then getting the violin out and painting people as monsters if they argue your point on the face of the facts is just ludicrous for a grown adult with agency.

And yes this will be my last comment to you because we’re derailing and clearly have nothing good or even interesting to discuss without it descending into tears and accusations.

Fucking hell, that poster is obsessed with me. They do this on other threads too. They even have had a go at my dead grandmother on a thread about care home fees, and tried to encourage people to AS me to cause a pile on.
I am not going to go into the very personal attacks they made under a different name, where they would just not leave me alone (they were along the lines of the NHS "wasting money" trying to treat me).
And you... don't even reply or quote me. Just leave me the fuck alone. If you want to rant about me again, sit on your hands and do it in your head.
I wish MN would allow you to block posters on the boards.

Anyway, can we stay on topic now?

I didn’t say that. I said the social model of disability now strongly relies on self reporting, in that if somebody says they can’t do something, everyone has to agree even if all evidence points to them being able to do things that suit them (just not work).

The common sense approach has been lost because ‘validating’ people’s claims about their capabilities has come at the expense of using objective assessments of what they can and can’t do.

A person who can spend all day writing online, very consistently, for years, completely lucidly and in a chatty, social manner (eg not posting to discuss their MH, or seeking support), can absolutely do an admin job. They’ve proved their mental state is stable enough to do it, because if in that time they were very mentally unwell then they wouldn’t be online chatting away about anecdotes, pet care, politics or whatever else.

The same people who want to force some disabled people into work also seem to be the same people on other threads who don't seem to think that workplaces should do much, if anything at all, to support these people they would force into work.

I can assure you that the DWP does not concern itself with validating peoples feelings, whatever the wider societal trend may be for this.
Assessments are made by considering self reported difficulties alongside medical evidence that the self report is conversent with what may be expected for a person with that condition.
And there is quite clearly a difference between an ability to post on line without leaving ones home (or even bed) as and when a person feels up to it, than travelling into an office by 9am every day, remaining there for 8 hours doing what you're told, to someone else's time frame.
How tolerant do you think an employer is going to be of an administrator who has a couple of bad days per week and calls in sick, or who needs to lie down for a couple of hours during the work day, or can only do parts of the job that require typing, leaving colleagues to cover the other duties, or can only complete tasks at a very slow pace with multiple breaks?

Yeah... so not such a good business plan if you cant actually pay your staff.
Also... no offense- but thats bollox when we're taking about large multi-national corporations not paying a decent wage.They're creaming the profit whilst the taxpayer subsidises the wages bill.

I didn’t say that. I said the social model of disability now strongly relies on self reporting, in that if somebody says they can’t do something, everyone has to agree even if all evidence points to them being able to do things that suit them (just not work).

The common sense approach has been lost because ‘validating’ people’s claims about their capabilities has come at the expense of using objective assessments of what they can and can’t do.

A person who can spend all day writing online, very consistently, for years, completely lucidly and in a chatty, social manner (eg not posting to discuss their MH, or seeking support), can absolutely do an admin job. They’ve proved their mental state is stable enough to do it, because if in that time they were very mentally unwell then they wouldn’t be online chatting away about anecdotes, pet care, politics or whatever else.

I didn’t say PIP assessment. I said the social model, and that’s what you’re proving with your responses. You’re pretending not to know what I mean, as is always the case on these threads.

Followed, of course, by stating a rare disability which applies to a tiny minority and making out it’s a common scenario .

Second homes are counted as capital for UC and would render claimants ineligible. Monetary gifts from friends or relatives all have to be declared on the UC journal and the DWP decide what counts and what doesn’t, not the claimant. Anything not declared and paid via bank will show up when the claimant is asked to supply several months worth of bank statements, with the potential for benefit to be stopped while they investigate. I’d be interested for your opinion as to how to monitor gifts given in cash.

And the £6k buffer was set in the 1990’s when it was a year’s wages, which was deemed appropriate for dealing with any emergencies or life events without recourse to the state. If things had kept pace, in today’s terms it would be £26k, so no, 6k is not all that generous if the intent is to allow a cushion so that the claimant isn’t reliant on the state for everything life throws at them.

You’re talking nonsense again. PIP isn’t based on the social model of disability. That was disability living allowance and attendance allowance. PIP is based on the medical model and looks at what the claimant can’t do instead of what they could do if they had an award of benefit.

I’ve been holding off going into detail about aspects of disability in relation to your ludicrous statements regarding the ability to work if you can string a lucid sentence together. How do you support someone with no control over bowels and bladder in a work setting ? If that person is in a wheelchair and requires help with toileting and cleaning themselves afterwards who is going to do it ? Would you, as a work colleague ? No, of course you wouldn’t. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

I think £5,000 or so is about right because I agree you can’t only start claiming benefits once you have NOTHING especially given the delay in it being awarded - I think a 6 week buffer is appropriate.

But there should be no second houses, no regular financial ‘gifts’ from other people. Nothing squirrelled away in ‘children’s savings’.

I didn’t say that. I said the social model of disability now strongly relies on self reporting, in that if somebody says they can’t do something, everyone has to agree even if all evidence points to them being able to do things that suit them (just not work).

The common sense approach has been lost because ‘validating’ people’s claims about their capabilities has come at the expense of using objective assessments of what they can and can’t do.

A person who can spend all day writing online, very consistently, for years, completely lucidly and in a chatty, social manner (eg not posting to discuss their MH, or seeking support), can absolutely do an admin job. They’ve proved their mental state is stable enough to do it, because if in that time they were very mentally unwell then they wouldn’t be online chatting away about anecdotes, pet care, politics or whatever else.

Yep. If the allowance was set to zero people would have to rely on the crisis fund to pay for emergencies. Not to mention that those working and claiming UC would render themselves ineligible every time they were paid. No critical thinking on this at all from some.

What I've never been able to establish (and I have a rummage through the internet) is whether people who were allowed to buy council homes back in the 80's, and possibly also on benefits, had a larger savings limit that allowed them to save for a deposit. Although 6k was probably a decent deposit back in those days .

There is no such thing as a ‘you’re as ill as you say you are’ system. You have to back up everything you say with evidence. A few pages back you demonstrated very clearly that you haven’t a clue about the basis on which disability benefits are paid. And no, just because you post lucidly on line does not mean you can work. Having the ability to be lucid and literate doesn’t negate the other effects of disability which are enough to stop you working, despite being lucid and literate.

Its to strike a balance between allowing people enough to deal with emergencies and not having so much it generates income. Apparently £6k is the upper limit before the interest would generate enough to be considered extra income and be another thing to have to factor into the calculation.

This - everyone here cheering for tax rises which means businesses are closing, while simultaneously wondering why people aren’t being paid more generous wages. Don’t even get me started on a wealth tax which would solve the problem for 18 months then what - another wealth tax? It’s not self sufficient, it’s just robbing Peter to pay Paul and then back to square 1 a couple of years later.

There is no way of fixing the economy so the current model of benefits can keep going. Frankly we urgently need to stop all but the most disabled (1% at most) of under 25s from claiming, as it’s setting them up for a loss of work ethic, long unemployment gaps and an expectation that other people will always cough up for them.

Life is hard, nobody is special and different in that regard. The majority of people do not enjoy their job and find it exhausting or demoralising in some way. Moving for work, or taking a job you really don’t fancy, has been part of life since forever. There’s a reason countries like Poland are prospering while we are sinking into irrelevance - their work ethic is incredible, nobody feels exempt from society while expecting to be financed.

And I stand by my remark that a person that can post consistently, lucidly, and thoughtfully about fairly complex topics all day, for years and years, is absolutely capable of getting an admin job. This subjective ‘you’re as ill as you say you are’ model of disability has to end. If you can date, have children, look after pets, go on strenuous exercise outings and so on, you’re well enough for work, no ifs or buts.