Can any Tory voters justify cuts to disability benefits?

[malificent7]

Or are any Tory voters actually disabled and in receipt of pip?
Just interested to find out.

i have to be fair and say that even under the torys I can't see the benefit cuts affecting my dd, she is the picture of disabilty(wc user so severely disabled she will never work)
BUT the mess that is adult social care will affect her and is doing so at the moment.

Just because you have a disability doesn't mean you can't work. I work. Plenty of people work with disabilities. Plenty more who don't work could probably do some form of reduced hours employment. People need to stop seeing people with disabilities as these poor hard done by creatures to be pitied, we are normal people who want to lead normal lives.

(Disclaimer obviously some people are too severely disabled to work and obviously are exceptions to this)

"we are also the first party to have an all disability shortlist"

Quote from Tim Farron in this weeks Grazia election special.

Googling i found this from last year.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35804750

I suppose another factor is that Labour under JC would be a very different, and far further left beast than previous Labour governments.

Corbyn is a lot further to the left, but weirdly I'm not sure his manifesto is. People see nationalisation and then their eyes glaze over. He's actually not promising to reverse most of the Tory cuts to welfare - only tinker with the edges. On the one hand that seems fairly reasonable because Brexit is likely to be such a disaster, but on the other it's not exactly Keynesian, is it?

As for trusting May to sort out Brexit - the claims she made today about the Human Rights elements prove, yet again, that either she doesn't understand the most basic constitutional facts in the country she leads, or she is willing to tell bare-faced and open lies to the country days before a general election.

*The Human Rights Act didn't change anyone's rights in this country - all it did was mean people could rely on it instead of losing a case in this country and having to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights over it - we are bound by the decisions of that court, anyway. That's why the slogan for the Act was, "Bringing Rights Home".
*The European Court of Human Rights has nothing to do with the EU. It's the domain of a completely separate organisation, the Council of Europe - we were founder members, after WW2. We signed up to it, and to the European Convention of Human Rights, after the horrors of Nazism. If we want to leave the Council of Europe then we can, but it won't be quick and we certainly aren't going to avert any terrorist threats that way in the next few years.

It's just bullshit on toast. You might as well argue that we're leaving the EU, so don't need to care what the United Nations think. The two things have no relationship. And don't get me started again on her claims to be the person you can trust to negotiate Brexit - countries leaving the EU don't get to negotiate under the departure mechanisms; the EU discuss it between themselves without the leaving nation being represented in the room, and then get back to us with an offer. That's it. Doesn't she know that? If she doesn't she's incompetent and if she does then she's a liar, willing to say and do anything to retain power. Not sure which is worse.

This is the woman people cite as so competent.

I'm not a Corbyn fan either. I think he's got immense integrity, but I am not sure that's a good thing in a politician at that level because flexibility is essential to achieve much. And while Diane Abbot is apparently ill so I won't say anything more, I am really worried about the shower of fools we seem to have on both sides - Liam Fox, Boris bloody Johnson, David Davis, awful every which way you look. And as John Major pointed out, he'd think the NHS safer with a python than most of them. We used to have people like Heseltine - whatever his views, he was a person worth respecting. Now we have... them.

mets No children here so no I'm going to vote for my own interests, I'm afraid, I'm not prepared to put my own interests on the back burner so that future generations can have it bette lr

I agree sleeponeday its a pretty crap choice all round. I'd vote labour if they had their decent politicians in charge but can't bring myself to vote for Corbyn/McDonnell/Abbott running the country.

Only justifications I have ever seen from people I know are 'some people play the system' so basically, they would rather a genuinely disabled person lost out because a few manage to 'fake it'. Ignoring the fact that ANY system has fraud in it, and disability benefit fraud figures are very very low and its very hard to get them in the first place.

So many seem to think its simply a case of getting a 'sick note'.

One person I know 'justifies' cuts because one (severely) disabled person that we all know went on holiday to Florida last year. With her carer and after saving up for 4 years.

Apparently disability benefit payments should not provide any extra for saving up...should only cover the bare essentials and should be at the same level jobseekers allowance is, and even JSA is too generous

Everything will be cut not just disability, but the thought of jc in charge of security leaves me cold!

I was assessed previously under a Labour gov and it was a similar process I think, different criteria though for PIP. It's not as simple as 'cuts'.

A post from fb that was on a Universal Credit thread.

"This is nothing new. Back in 1986 my then husband had been diagnosed with terminal cancer at the age of 34. He had been self employed and we had two young children . He applied for the then Income Support but because he could walk unaided for 20 yards he was declined. Three months later I buried him. Thatcher's government was no better. Anyone who votes Tory deserves the brow beaten society they will live in"

I get so fed up with JC saying their manifesto is ' costed' when every economic think tank out there says it's cloud cuckoo land.

It's clearly daft for a bunch of people to cite Hawking and Chomsky in rebuttal, as though their views on economics are worth anything much, but the actual economists supporting Corbyn's manifesto are quite impressive. Awful lot of them are from universities such as Oxford, Cambridge and London School of Economics, and many are at Professor level. And unlike most think-tanks, they don't have funding predicated on fixed axes to grind. They're simply academic economists.

Agreed others think it won't work at all, but saying what you want to be true isn't helpful. (I don't like it when people throw that 350 mil to the NHS claim at May, either - she was for Remain at the time, so how is that her responsibility?)

I just think everyone needs to stop inventing/avoiding data as suits. It's not great when a culture starts to accept that - just look what's happened over the Pond. Both sides have arguments worth making.

My qs to Labour voters is how do you think that Labour can possibly fund half the ideas on their wish list when the OFS says they don't add up?

In response to Labours Manifesto. The Tories said there's no magic money tree. Imagine my suprise when hearing today that TM has promised to invest BILLIONS into housing and the railways. Where's THEIR magic money tree and how are they going to cost this?

Because a lot of people claiming aren't genuine. And we can't afford it. The vetting process is completely wrong but 'depression' doesn't physically stop you working in the vast majority of cases, yet people claim for it.

Lovely!

I also feel reassured that the Appeals will still be there...that is reassuring.

PlayOnWurtz I'm glad you were successful. It appears to depend on the assessors and the areas as to whether you get a good assessor or not.

The assessor for me hadn't heard of half my health conditions, what was even more worrying was the fact she was meant to be a Nurse!

I also feel reassured that the Appeals will still be there...that is reassuring.

For ESA or PIP LovelyBath?

How many on here realise if you're declared fit for work you get nothing until an appeal has been lodged with HMCTS? You can't do that until you've done a Mandatory reconsideration, and you get zero money until the appeal has been lodged, not even at the lower assessment rate like you used to under the coalition. You can apply for Jobseekers in the meantime, but most of the time you're turned down for that too or told you're not eligible for that as you're clearly not fit enough to actively seek work.

Both- as far as I've seen they seem to be impartial and fair. (appeals)

They often aren't. Did you read my post about what happened to me? I would have complained but the irony of it is the stress of the whole thing made me really ill.

Everything will be cut not just disability, but the thought of jc in charge of security leaves me cold!

His track record is actually pretty good on that front. He's supportive of the police (contrary to smears, he reported someone he suspected of being an IRA member to the police back in 1987 - we know this because the Times tried that smear, and had to publish an apology and a retraction). He met with loyalists and republicans because he was convinced dialogue was the only way forward, and that was the approach Major adopted, which ended in the Peace Process and the Good Friday Agreement. His manifesto was clear that police cuts are dangerous and promised to reverse that, before the terror attacks, while May was telling the police she was sick of their crying wolf and scaremongering over terrorism - rather unfortunately she was filmed telling a community policeman from Manchester that, when he tried to tell her the collapse in funding meant that they had no clue what was going on on the ground anymore, had no relationships with people who would tell them, and that national security was threatened. He warned that in any emergency we'd have so few armed officers left that we'd need troops on the street - the militarisation of policing - and that is literally happening, right now, despite her sneering at the mere suggestion. And all this happened under her watch - she was Home Secretary from May 2010.

Corbyn is also saying that the report May is refusing to publish, setting out who is funding terrorism and its propagation, means that we need to have tough conversations with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States, because that report apparently points the finger very squarely. Saudi is a key supporter for extremist Wahhabi Islam - they attack other Muslims, espousing Sunni etc Islam, every bit as much as they do the West; ISIS have killed many many more fellow Muslims than they have anyone else. But May seems more worried by losing our contracts for arms sales to these countries than by challenging their formenting terrorism via radical Islam in this country. May is just going on about telling Facebook and Twitter to take accounts down faster, as though that is within her powers, and as though they couldn't just put new ones up anyway.

I'm troubled by various things where Corbyn is concerned, but he's fairly strong on national security. May is not. It's really, really weird, the media misrepresentation of that one. The BBC Trust even reprimanded the news report over that shoot to kill nonsense, because they put the answer to one question as though responding to another. He didn't say he was opposed to shoot to kill in all circumstances, he just said he thought it was the wrong answer and the key was to prevent anyone reaching the streets and engaged in terrorism in the first place, because that was a failure in itself if an attack was underway. Not sure how that is controversial - shoot to kill once that failure exists is simple defence of the law-abiding, but it's still a failure in security terms.

The willingness to talk to all sides is a necessary part of any kind of dialling down on radicalisation. Removing the money pipeline is even more important. May seems opposed to the first and actively refusing to even admit the second. And she's castrated the security services and the police. Arguably, that is her biggest failing - the economy wasn't her responsibility and she was a Remain campaigner before the referendum. National security, though, was her patch.

I tend to vote based on society as a whole.

I am not old, so the social care aspect isn't something I'm thinking of yet. So I will use my vote for the elderly, as I feel it is unfair.

I am not a pensioner, so not in receipt of winter fuel allowance, but I will use my vote for those that are.

My DS doesn't get free school meals in secondary, and my DD is home schooled. So free lunches don't affect me. So I will use my vote for the children who will have their lunch taken away and replaced with a cornflake.

I do not know anyone friends or family who are disabled, but
I am disgusted with the cuts to the disabled, and I will use my vote for them.

My vote is for every nurse, teacher and police officer dealing with cuts.

My vote isn't just for me, but for society as a whole. Labour won't be perfect, but they offer hope. Tories are not offering any hope.

Labour's plan to raise £50bn in taxes "doesn't add up" according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies

here

I would have complained but the irony of it is the stress of the whole thing made me really ill.

Yeah, that's what bothers me most, when people cite the appeals process as a safeguard. I know that with disabled kids, the initial application is horrific. The questions inevitably must dwell on all the worst parts of life - all the stuff you don't consciously tot up or think about, and don't really want to. So after hours of careful form-filling and diary keeping and thought, a rejection can mean that parents are so shattered by the thought of even more, so they don't appeal - yet most appeals succeed (which gives some clue on how inaccurate the process is - my child's paed says most people get rejected out of hand first time for autism, and she then has to work with them on how to get what their child is clearly, and obviously, entitled to at appeal). So that means that people who are already coping with more than most have to do, must also jump through insane hoops to get the money their kids need... and while that's challenging, parents aren't even the people dealing with the disability. The energy levels required for an appeal will automatically mean that a lot of disabled people won't feel they have the energy or emotional strength, so they won't get what they are entitled to. And the most insane part is that the new system of assessment has apparently cost more than just giving the benefits would have done. Handy for the private contractor, but at what emotional cost to the subjects, as well as economic cost to the taxpayer?

I'm sure some people do fake it. I just don't believe it's very many. It's not like the authorities take your word for it; you need reams of evidence.

And its been frozen for years, too, which is effectively a cut. It's not just about benefits either. Services of all kinds for disabled kids have been cut to the bone and lots have closed. The NHS turns so many away from services that were standard and are now either not there, or triaged to the point it's just ridiculous. We pay for some treatments now ourselves, out of his DLA, but a lot of families need that money just to survive, as do many disabled adults. Children have parents to advocate for them, and while I don't want to get all Does He (or she) Take Sugar about this, because loads of disabled adults are more than capable of advocating for themselves... what about those who aren't, for whatever reason?

Babs, sure, but they blast the Conservatives just as much for providing no data of any kind. And that's just one body. It's not the Oracle, you know?

I'm not even voting Labour. (Some days, I feel like spoiling my ballot, but I am voting Lib Dem on Brexit grounds which probably amounts to the same thing!) I just really loathe the extent of the misinformation. I think there are real questions on whether Corbyn can lead his party and whether he has the necessary moral flexibility (I assume it's necessary - never known a premier of any nation without it) to lead the country. But those aren't the things he's getting challenged about. It's weird.

I'm voting Tory and I claim pip. Btw, agreeing with a previous post, not all disabled people are poor defenceless people, I work, own a house, have a working partner, I just happen to also be disabled. I know I'm going to be shot down in flames for this but so be it, because of my disability, I know many other disabled people and many off them have a Motability car and can walk far further than the 20m needed, yes I know, conditions vary and I don't know what goes on behind closed doors but it seems rather generous a benefit if I am honest. You only read about the bad cases in the paper, anyone with a good outcome is unlikely to be in the papers.

My ex would vote Tory as he worked on 'what's in it for me' and didn't care about benefit recipients/poor people, and told me off for bringing it up

I worked in adult social care. I left because my job had become impossible due to cuts- you can't provide a service with no funds! My mates have nearly all left too- only those hanging on for retirement are still there.

Re the disabled working- I supported someone with a disability to work under the Acess to Work Scheme. Guess what- it's been cut to shreds. The Tories aren't about being positive for disabled people, they don't care about dignity, they just want to shrink the state as that is their ideology.