Feel this country has become rotten - benefits

[She11y]

A studio apartment in my area is about £800 per month.
A minim wage job is around £1500 per month net.
After you've worked in a hard and demanding job - most minimum wage jobs are demanding - you've got £700 to pay for food, travel, bills, clothes.
You might end up with £100 left over each month. Working hard all your life with no hope of owning your own home or having any sort of financial stability.
No wonder people don't want to work. Make owninf a house affordable and over night 1/3 the people claiming benefits will stop.

My point is that a lot of people are on benefits because they're depressed at the hopelessness of their futures, and try to avoid working.

Yes this lady is early 60s and her MS is sadly rather progressed now.

The larger the disability net grows, the higher the benefits bill. We have reached a point were relatively minor disabilities are included.

It seems that the non claimants will be one the minority soon. Where will it stop.

I think tax payers are allowed to feel aggrieved at what is a broken benefits system, no ifs, and no buts. And they are certainly allowed an opinion.

Those taxpayers need to stay humble and remember they are a stroke/accident/breakdown away from needing benefits themselves.

Just addressing the initial replies to your post OP, I agree and it's so frustrating that people can't see it.

People are literally telling you left right and centre that yes, working so hard and still not being able to manage what has long been considered a "normal" life, house, family etc, is hugely detrimental to wellbeing and motivation.

And yet posters refuse to see that and insist that's not the problem and therefore, adding the incentive of an actually affordable life will not help.

You are just wrong.

And by all accounts, feeling anxious, worried and depressed can be added to that list of things we should all feel humble and understanding about too 🙄.

Fuck it, let’s all just throw in the can. Why fucking bother.

Nobody is immune to disability or illness. Including people who see themselves as superior because they don’t currently claim anything. I think it is now 1 in 2 people who get cancer?

The reason people feel aggrieved is because they’ve seen their own standard of living slip and they are looking for a scapegoat.

No matter how many times those of us with direct experience of disability benefits try to explain that you have to provide a lot of evidence to get these benefits, there are people determined to double down with the incorrect notion that loads of people are pretending to be disabled.

It’s wild to me that someone is actually trying to argue that a woman with MS shouldn’t be allowed to get her hair done and should be working when they know f* all about her life. MS is a very difficult condition to live with. And it also causes pain.

Which ‘relatively minor’ disabilities are you talking about?

No one said about feeling anxious and depressed.
Why do people keep banging on about anxiety and depression?
I am unable to work due to a few complex issues including anxiety and depression and they are the absolute least of my worries.

Tbh it's Government selling off all sorts of assets. Eg Gas, gold and housing

All disabilities have a sliding scale. MH, mild depression is very different to schizophrenia

Thank you. The lady with MS I mentioned does work. She has a WFH role but has to go into the office every so often for whatever reason.
She can not lift her arms above her head, so goes to the hairdressers every week to get her hair washed. Being able to wash your own hair is something many people take for granted. Wait until you can't do it. Maybe then, you might accept that my friend spends her PIP on such a basic thing.
Not aimed at you Lyannaa

Well nobody gets PIP for something minor. They just don’t. I don’t know anyone who didn’t have to go to tribunal to get PIP except my severely disabled dd who has 2:1 care 24/7 and a very detailed care plan.

Why are there so many people claiming? Are more parents carrying a disability gene. Are parents not looking after a mildly disabled child properly and providing provisions for a mildly disabled child when they reach adulthood. Personal responsibility. Yes harsh but true.

The severely disabled needing full time care should be looked after.

Why don’t you educate yourself and read about how difficult it is for parents to get EHCPs for children? Most councils will say they won’t assess a child unless they are 3 years ‘behind’

We’ve had 14 years of a government who cut, cut cut resources from schools, leaving teachers demoralised which caused many of the best to leave the profession. Class sizes have gone up and resources have gone down.

i don’t think it’s at all surprising that more young people are leaving school ill equipped for work and mentally unwell under these circumstances.

I don’t know what you mean by ‘mildly disabled’ and tbh it doesn’t sound like you do either.

Just on the PIP question. I've got bipolar and EUPD. I work part time, and have had to change roles to a lower paid, part time, position because of my diagnosis and the affects of my medication.
I use my PIP to fund therapy as the NHS lists are long and invariably only offer CBT.
Under the new proposals I won't be eligible for PIP at all, so I won't be able to fund my therapy, (I pay full rent and council tax, can't afford therapy without PIP)
My diagnosis won't change but my eligibility will. And I won't be able to go for the higher paid roles in my company because it's shift work with heavy machinery which occupational health won't sign off on while I'm on my bipolar meds.

All the kids getting diagnoses with ND issues tend to find their parents have it too.
More ND adults meeting and having kids means more kids are ND.

I admit I don't know why there are so many claimants, hence the question .

You have to admit that society is seriously dysfunctional when a non claiming person is in the minority and thereby the new disadvantaged.

Quite frankly, if she can't sit on a chair in the shower and wash her hair, she shouldn't be driving a car on the roads.

This seems to be a highly dubious situation.

When I was divorced in the late 1990s, I was working as a secretary, and could support a mortgage for a house which cost 4x my annual salary. About 7 years ago, I was again working as a secretary, at a similar level, and the house I bought when I divorced had come back on the market. That house was now 18x my annual salary. That is how out of balance wages and house prices have become.

Her car is adapted.

There is a guy in my town who is a councillor for the Labour party. I will be honest, I do not know what the PC term for someone with dwarfism is. But he is tiny. He has very short legs and his arms are short. He drives an adapted car.

I think some ND people are very talented and capable of working in their own area but the world is set up for NT people and it’s not fair and should change. In fact, quite a lot of autistic kids are gifted. I’m not saying all of course! If there was more attention to this problem, then maybe ND people wouldn’t under achieve or end up with mental health disabilities.

Two of my other children are autistic and I’ve worked hard to help them find a niche and not let them get to a situation where they burn out. I am aiming to help them maximise their potential. One of them I took out to HE and she is thriving in a particular area now where she will almost certainly have a job. The other is only 5 - she’s a very bright little girl and is well ahead of her peers academically but she would burn out and fail in an average state school. I do not see either of them as having ‘disability genes’ as someone so nicely put it.

But I’m lucky - I have access to resources and an education that some people don’t. So I don’t judge other parents !

Are some people exaggerating claims due to cost of living? If so that is fraud.

Sorry I made this point in relation to the person who said that parents are responsible to make sure their disabled child gets necessary provisions.