To be scared about how we will cope with more tax rises - council tax

[partytimed]

i really loathe this government. Usually with politics I feel like whoever is in charge I don’t notice much of a direct impact on my day to day life. Yes I’m aware of slow erosions in public services and I was no fan at all of the tories, I voted for this government im ashamed to say, and they lied and lied about their plans. I am so much worse off and if they double council tax bands virtually all of our disposable income is going to be gone. It feels like theft. I don’t trust them to spend the money I make properly it all feels corrupt and it’s just so depressing and upsetting.

Apparent need? says it all...

I have endless compassion and what happened to the young man you know is clearly awful. But writing him off as not capable of recovery and therefore reliant on the state, possibly his whole life, is not compassionate either.

Who said its forever?

Like i said, state intervention now, bearing in mind there is no NHS therapy available is imho, money well spent.

Whats the alternative? "Pull yourself together, man up"

TBH Even Richard Tice showed more compassion to people with MH disorders than i ve seen on here, quite incredible the lengths people will go to justify their opinions, even when new evidence presented, very sad.

There are many ways to be compassionate. Sometimes you genuinely do need to be cruel to be kind otherwise people can get trapped in a kind of helplessness and anxiety that will cripple them. I speak from experience in this and I think many people have experienced threshold events that have been traumatic. The instinct to hide away and avoid is strong but ultimately unhelpful. It is absolutely not easy to push against this and face your fear and you often need a high level of motivation to do this. We are doing this man no favours by funding him to continue on as he has been doing.

Treatment for PTSD would be appropriate- possibly easier said than done at the moment with the cash black hole that is the NHS.

But not staying on benefits in a low paid job for any longer than needed. That is not compassion.

Am I the only person that thinks that
A) the people who were violent thugs and caused this problem should be at the forefront of this and what has/is being done to people who behave that way? They're not paying the price for the results of their behaviour are they? And
B) the minimum wage job should pay enough to live without UC top ups? (At ft obviously).

I think A goes without saying I hope. I can't imagine many people are hoping the perpetrators got away with it. Either way it doesn't really change the man's current predicament.

B is a tricky one as the NMW is obviously national and living costs vary from region to region. Again, the question is much bigger than the example of this man as he won't simply be receiving the basic benefits that people in low paid work receive. As he is classified as disabled he will be eligible for PIP and potentially also additional UC if he is considered to have LCWRA. Basically it's hugely complicated and potentially very expensive for the taxpayer.

You really believe that that nearly one in four of the UK working age population is so disabled or ill as to be unable to work?

I know that NHS care is sometimes lacking, but surely not to this extent!

How is anyone, without financial support going to learn to drive and buy run a car, in a NMW industry? over half his income goes in rent.

Someone with only experience in hospitality is going to work from home?

It really beggars belief that you are so clueless, even more so when i told you earlier, his PIP is £120pm & is used to go towards getting him home in the early hours when there is no public transport.

Anyway, clearly you re just being idiotic now, thankfully not even Reform intend to cut PIP payments that enable people to work.

No, there is clearly some level of fraud, which is why its idiotic to remove PIP that enables someone to work, helps to read a few earlier posts.

And yet we're repeatedly told on threads that fraud is miniscule in the benefits system, barely visible. If we accept that, it's still the case that nearly one in four of the UK working age population have been categorised 'disabled' in some way.

How do you think everyone else copes with a NMW job that doesn't get PIP? You do know there are millions of them and plenty learn to drive and run a car. I honestly despair! Your insistence that the possible is impossible is so problematic.

Also of course he could retrain and get a job that involved WFH or even no late shifts so no taxis are required. Not many people work in a pub for their whole lives. Are you telling me he can only work in a pub and not a shop or office job that had more regular hours?

Reform plan on cutting PIP for those with non serious anxiety disorders. This will undoubtedly include this man. If I were him, I would anticipate this happening and make plans accordingly.

One in four can be classified as disabled and fraud be minimal if the criteria set out to qualify for the benefits is incorrect. Perhaps people are claiming correctly against a set of criteria that do not accurately reflect the impact of their disability. Some criteria could be to lenient, some too harsh.

It is not credible that the level of disability in the UK is more than double that of Germany. The criteria are clearly different in each country. Sure, there are reasons it could be higher in the UK. You have a worse health service and poorer social care for example, and a higher population density with a lower standard of living. That doesn't feel like enough differences to cause a rate of disability as high as it is though, IMO

Oh hush. You are simply looking for things to get offended about.

What I have been saying all along is that if society is now classing nearly a quarter of people as disabled in some way, rather than paying out endless ever increasing amounts of money, shouldn't we be looking rather harder AT society? What is driving this ill health? If so much of it is mental health, then we need to examine the causes of this rather than writing people off as being unfit to work. Why are people so anxious and depressed and ill?

And yes I know NHS waiting lists. However other people have made the point that people in times gone by have always had stressful lives and seen awful things. How were they able to keep going and people today cannot? What has changed? That's what we need to look at. No government is brave enough though.

I suppose there was no safety net so they had to get on with it.

people were more resilient I think as they had no choice

also there was a chance for some poor women of being shut away in an institution

I would pay no heed to those posters. MN hates people on NMW (they think they are failures despite being happy for them to look after their elderly and clean their houses), and hates disabled people even more (they are all swinging the lead, and just need to be more resilient).

He is using PIP exactly what it was intended for - to give him independence. He claims just for mobility and is using it for exactly that - a taxi from work.
I am sorry about what happened to him. It sounds awful and I bet that wait for therapy wont come soon enough. Like you said, he could have just given up and not worked at all. To me, he sounds very resilient. Yet people are bitching about the actual job he does. FFS, no one can win on here can they.

People are in uproar about the wrong thing. The fact he has suffered a traumatic event that has affected his MH to the point he is eligible for PIP (which needs to have been going on for a while, and have a ton of evidence). They should be more angry at the fact he has to wait 4 years for therapy. I know people who are on PIP who have been waiting for operations for years now.
Sort out the NHS waiting lists, and you will find less people need PIP. Sort out the waiting lists for CAMHS, and you will find that less teens grow up into MH patients that end up forgotten on benefits.

I can guarantee that if the chap you know was a woman who was struggling with her MH after a brutal rape, no one would be criticising her and would be falling over backwards to say she is perfectly entitled to her PIP money.

My water bill is over £1000 per year I Northumberland!

I'm not angry at the man. I am angry at the system that has enabled this situation to continue without seemingly seeking other alternatives. If the man is too anxious to walk home at night after the attack then why isn't he being encouraged to get another job with more regular hours? It's not a very difficult thing to work around if his anxiety is seemingly rooted in that one journey back from work when it's so late that public transport is no longer running. I have worked lots of NMW jobs in my life and never had to get home at an antisocial hour. There are definitely options out there.

If he is currently using most of his money for these taxis then the PIP could stop when the late night commute ends. He wouldn't have a need for it anymore.

You do not get awarded PIP for specific spending.
Even if this lad got another job that did not need a taxi home, he would still get PIP. It sounds like he gets the mobility element due to psychological distress.

I know that but the actual reality is that the PIP is being used for that return journey from his late shift. He seems to be able to get work just fine so there can't be general mobility issues. If he no longer needed to travel late at night then there are valid questions to be raised about the exact nature of his mobility issues and why they warrant a PIP supplement.

Late shift implies night time. If his attack happened at night, then it is no surprise it is a huge trigger for him. No buses late at night. PTSD will creep up on you like that.
Or maybe it happened in that same area.

He applied, was assessed, and was awarded PIP.

Don’t trust them to spend it wisely! I was the mayoress of my town. When the council leader got re-elected we attended a party for him. I was shocked to see it was a huge marquee in a massive hall, 3 course meal paid for for all local councillors and mayors + 1’s and free bar! Honestly I was sickened! I am in the north, it must have cost at least 50k with around 150 ppl attending! This wasn’t the only dinner I attended, I saw the finest canopès and “party’s” for literally anything. All the while our town is one of the worst in the country for deprivation. I could talk all day about the money I saw tipped down the drain! I don’t want to be outing but I worked closely with the MP, I saw what they were entitled to paid for by the tax payer! Sickening!

Many many people have applied for, and been awarded PIP. Many of those over the phone.

You say it like it’s an infallible process?

No, but it's a trigger that can be easily avoided if he were to change jobs and switch to another role that didn't involve travelling late at night. Most jobs don't so it's not like I'm telling him to find a unicorn role. Surely this is more sensible than using taxpayer money to fund taxis for him to get home for the rest of his life?

Your last sentence sums up the problem. Yes he was awarded PIP but the question is, should he have been? It seems we don't have enough money as a country to fund all of this without looking to the same people who are already under financial stress to contribute more and more tax. Do the needs of these people not count? Raising taxes isn't victimless you know. We also want to grow the economy and an increasing tax burden will shrink it instead.

At the moment, 24% of the UK's population are considered disabled. This is likely to be an underestimate when you consider that 20% of the population are considered to be Neurodivergent alone and then you can add to that statistics anyone with a physical disability or condition that isn't considered ND. Add to this people like this man who basically have some trauma and we will be pushing towards half of the population as sadly traumatic events are reasonably common.

Basically there are probably an awful lot of people that would be eligible for DLA/PIP if they attempted to claim under the current criteria. As awareness grow and people realise this then costs will spiral further. DLA claims have doubled over the past decade for example. This is obviously completely unaffordable and unsustainable and people like this man are examples of people that in my view should be encouraged to work around their challenges in more creative ways that enable him to ultimately live a less restrictive life and end his dependency on PIP to fund these taxis.