To be sick of all the newspaper articles saying lies about DLA and PIP

[elliejjtiny]

To get any DLA or PIP you have to be significantly disabled. To get the higher rate of either part you have to be severely disabled.

A motability car is not free, it's rented. To get one you need to either be unable to walk 50 metres or have a severe learning disability, which is very difficult to get.

It's always happened but since the stuff in the news about changes to PIP it's got worse.

Articles in the newspapers claiming you can get a free car for bed wetting, which just doesn't happen. There will be children like my ds who get DLA because they have a number of problems including bedwetting but nobody gets high rate mobility for bed wetting on its own.

There are other articles about people claiming PIP and DLA for various minor sounding conditions and I am so fed up with it. I know from experience that the newspapers will have talked to people claiming PIP/DLA and twist everything they say to make them sound like a scrounger.

All these articles are giving off the message that anyone with any minor disability can claim loads of benefits.

But you’ve access that world. You’re in it, now. Just because it isn’t perfect it doesn’t mean you don’t now have every tool at your disposal to avoid all the things you don’t like. You have absolutely no need to leave your home ever again with wfh and food delivery. Nobody really chats to anyone they don’t know now, so you can be selective about who you speak to. Forums like this aren’t mandatory, you can click off at any time.

I feel like there will always be some complex reason grasped at as to why some people who identify as autistic and are physically/mentally able can’t work.

As for capitalism, I mean Elon Musk many people believe is clearly autistic. There are also some people who believe Trump is autistic (the black/white thinking, eating the same meal every day, inability to see POV of others etc). Ditto Zuckerberg. You can’t claim NT billionaires are oppressing the ND masses because it seems very much the other way round.

I imagine it’s probably to some extent a lottery depending on the assessor. On what basis do they determine some can do something when they say they can’t?

Or maybe in the past autistic people were wrongly diagnosed with other conditions

Elon Musk has clearly found his happy spot and has been able to thrive in a way of his choosing - money helps, and he’s not quite so happy now perhaps.

Facilitated men with billions don’t represent the majority of the ND population who usually dont have the luxury of carving out lives that suit them.

I don’t want to spend my life on my phone. I want to work, I want to interact with people, I like the lively interactions. What isn’t gray though, and what causes the majority of the issues is people who like the status quo and defend it inflexibly to the death, despite it destroying other people in doing so.

What specific changes do you want to see?

How could we possibly know? They’ll likely say the same in future about everyone being diagnosed ASD/ADHD now. I don’t really believe mental health fits into the neat boxes everyone makes out, I don’t think a common diagnosis is really the way forwards. Instead I think we should be assessing people with a matrix that identifies their weak spots or sharp bits and addresses them specifically.

I think it’s also worth remembering that in the not to distant past a lot of people were institutionalised and so it was very much a case of “out of sight out of mind”

my Dad worked in one of the last asylums to close in the 1970s and when you look at the reasons people were admitted a lot of people who actually were neurodivergent (even if they didn’t have a name for it) would have found themselves in one.

So a 40 odd year gap between that and the increase in diagnoses?

Thankfully for most people attitudes have changed and people are a lot more aware of neurodiversity and the importance of early diagnosis in order to help someone be supported correctly to achieve their potential.

Sadly some people are still stuck in the past and would rather deny it exists!

PP just said people’s attitudes are what holds her back now, versus the past when apparently autistic people found it easier to cope?

Sure. Not at all insulting to tell lots of people that their medical conditions don’t exist.

Or to tell posters who are too disabled to work that they are “not essential to society”.

You’ve been nothing but polite and courteous.

They do check, though. You have to have reports from your psychiatrist, psychologist and occupational therapist etc.

The list of things you are in desperate need of reading is growing longer every time you post. A good start would be:

1. Politics for Dummies
2. Economics for Dummies
3. Neuroscience for Dummies

ASD and ADHD are not mental health conditions.

Whereas anyone can say they feel suicidal, or too anxious to go to the shops, or too tired to get up every day - nobody is going to actually check that.

As well as reports from psychiatrist, psychologist, and therapists they also check

• social media to see if you’re posting updates of you going out a lot or on holidays
• your passport usage (entry/exit) to see if you’re globe trotting but not posting on social media
• your internet record of all sites visited and everything you have bought, said, done for the last year. If you’re too anxious to leave the house, you would hardly be booking a sky dive and spa day.

Yeah, this makes perfect sense. Respite centres for children who you have spent several pages of the thread arguing are being misdiagnosed with a neurological condition which you stated you don’t believe in because it can’t yet be proved with a definitive biological test. 😆Despite it showing up on brain scans and advanced genetic research having identified some of the genes that cause it.

You really are tying yourself in knots here.

You really don't. Firstly PIP doesn't pay you to sit at home. Secondly you imply you had a severe mental illness and that nevertheless getting back to work was the best thing for it. This ignores those of us with extremely severe mental illness that can't go back to work a few weeks later as we're sectioned on a psych ward!

Don’t worry, Dr Wildflowers isn’t a net contributor so she isn’t paying anything towards your support. She’s just angry that other people are subsidising you more than they’re subsidising her.

There’s 2 aspects to work.

1. Paying taxes, which I do - albeit I assume I’m not a net contributor as I earn 30k.
2. Providing a service. The job I do is useful/essential to the public. Most nurses are not net contributors especially if they have a couple of kids - should they have any opinion on how their taxes are spent, or not because they’re not net contributors? Is their role more essential to you than some CEO on 100k?

It does make sense. Nobody can deny these children are very disabled, although whether they have the same condition as Bella Ramsey seems unlikely. Their parents urgently need that support. Bella’s don’t.

Oh please stop, I’m running out of ribs. Borderline Communism my arse. 😂😂

I’ve no wish to be ageist but life experience has taught me that what people view as hard left is often closely tied to their age. Not always, but often. I’m not going to be intrusive and ask your age, but I am wondering whether you were around in the 80s to see some of the antics of the Labour left then, because I can’t help feeling your view on what constitutes hard left is bound to be different depending on your age and perspective.

As for the expectations you talk about. We live in a society that’s set up around the principle of paying in so that if you come to be in need you can take out. That is a person’s absolute right in British society. Obviously I realise that the model is not working at present, due in part to the number of people who haven’t paid in yet and are in need, and those few (because yes, it is relatively few) who are managing to game the system are compounding the problem. But there is an issue here of what sort of society do we want to be. Do we really want to be like America, for example, and have even more of the genuinely vulnerable begging on the streets than we already do now?

You’ve shared that you think you’re probably eligible for benefits but choose to work. That’s great for those of us with conditions who can manage it. At present, touch wood, I am managing it too. But if in the future my mobility and pain issues mean I can no longer work full time/work at all, you’d better damn well believe I will be claiming whatever I am legally and morally entitled to. I get doing one’s bit for society if at all possible (which, ironically, is an ethic Communism had a lot of time for), but I don’t think there’s any particular honour in martyring oneself for the sake of ideology.

I can’t work anymore and I still pay taxes. So paying taxes isn’t only an aspect of work…

Can you please enlighten me on how they can access your social media if your privacy settings are locked down?

It’s written into law that every ISP has to provide this info to the government in real time and we all have a file that goes back 1yr, rolling. Privacy settings and laws only protect you from other private entities, not public ones like government departments.

How do they check your internet history?