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

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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.

And we dont there are many people with disabillities who dont qualify for disabilliy benefits.

Levelling the playing field with able bodied kids who can access the beach/park/woods on their own two legs, who don't need a wheelchair that can cope with almost any terrain rather than just level tarmac. Levelling the playing field with people who can sit without the need for private physiotherapy because NHS therapy will NEVER get him to the point he's at now, where he can roll independently to move around his home because there isn't the money or time in the NHS to help him reach his fullest potential. Level the playing field with those who do not need suction machines, oxygen concentrators, profiling beds, feed pumps, nebulisers, specialist shoes to go over splints, specialist clothing in order to be able to access gastrostomy sites while maintaining dignity. Levelling the playing field with those who don't need to buy adapted clothing in order to maintain their dignity and comfort.

PIP doesn't cover a fraction of the costs of most people's disabilities in practice - that's just the theory. The average additional cost of disability is a little under £1000 a month and the average PIP payment is nowhere near that. My own costs are vastly more than £1000 per month at the moment but I get less than £300 a month in PIP. I do also get ESA but I need that for basic living costs. My parents therefore have to subsidise me and there have been studies showing that most disabled people these days are subsidised by their families, often quite heavily. People with a disability are far more likely to be living in poverty than the non-disabled and a very high proportion of the homeless are disabled.

I think there should be an honour system - billionaires shouldn't be claiming PIP but I doubt many are - it's a traumatic experience to go through (I have mental health issues now that I didn't have before the process although they wouldn't meet any of the bars so I won't get any extra money for them). But means testing would cost more than it saves so we have to accept that some very wealthy people do claim even if they could cover their costs easily.

You can prove someone is suicidal by pointing out documented suicide attempts and the resultant hospitalisations.

We aren't talking about PIP funding any of this though. We are talking about people being able to use PIP to fund expensive luxury cars. The things you lost aren't luxuries in the same sense at all.

Not everyone has those. Some people don't tell anyone about their suicidal intentions. That is why sometimes it seems some people do it out the blue.

Being suicidal does not get you benefits. I have a friend who had broke down and expressed suicidal thoughts during a work capability assessment. Her GP was contacted. The outcome was that she was found fit for work.

With some of my attempts it was the police that were involved. I would be taken home and told to ring crisis team which I didn't most of the time as I can tell myself to make tea and have a bath. So no medical trail of evidence there. I don't think the police supply evidence for benefits.

Fuck me, here we go again with the ignorant, uneducated ableism.

Higher rate PIP is a maximum of just over £700 a month. £400 if you use the mobility component on a vehicle.

It costs a disabled person on average of £1000 a month to just exist, so we're already not getting enough to cover the extra costs of being disabled, never mind living costs and "nice things".

My measly £400 a month PIP goes on my half of the rent. That's all I get, so I have nothing left for food, bills, toiletries etc, never mind my actual disabilities. I haven't had "nice things" for many years. I haven't been to the hairdresser since 2015, I don't get to buy clothes, or eat out. So to think you can have multiple luxury holidays, designer bags, whatever other bullshit you've made up, on £400-700 a month? You're talking absolute bollocks, and you know you are.

No but the purpose of PIP is supposed to be to help with disability related costs. Not for people to have “nice things” and all the other justifications for luxury cars.

@tweezersscissorsminimirror there are people that can afford to use PIP to part fund a luxury car. This is fact! You can talk all you want about the hardships and expense of disability (I don't disagree) but ultimately the question remains about whether the tax payer should be part funding luxury cars for anybody when it is cutting other benefits and services left, right and centre.

I agree, you need documented suicide attempts with hospital admissions to count towards getting benefits. It is not true that people can just lie and lie and get PIP. The 0.1% fraud rate almost exclusively made up of people who got PIP honestly and legally but then their condition improved and they did not tell DWP.

I'm going to spend the entirety of my next PIP payment on books, jigsaws and Tony's Chocolonely, because according to an ableist on the internet, I'm not allowed nice things with my only income ☺️

Is it?
UC weekly rate going up
State Pension going up
Child Benefit going up
Bereavement being extended to unmarried/no civil partnership couples
Maternity pay going up

Should we have a moral discussion about what parents spend their child benefit on too? what mothers spend their maternity on? What holidays pensioners can take?

How does having a luxury car help with any of that?

Its not ableist as there is a widely held belief that benefits aren't for luxuries. That's why it was previously commonplace to moan about benefit recipients having wide-screen TVs and cigarettes. There has also been all sorts of initiatives in this country and around the world to provide vouchers and stamps to control how money from the state is spent.

I’ve certainly seen discussions about child benefit etc are spent. Some people think you should save it, etc

If people want to use their PIP mobility element to help with a car they lose the whole mobility element. They also have to pay an advance payment which varies depending on the car so anything vaguely “luxury” will be a large advance payment.

Disabilities make getting around harder for many people. Motability helps with some of that issue.

DS only gets lower rate mobility so we can’t get motability. But I need to have a much bigger car than I would otherwise in order to transport his wheelchair (and to a lesser extent feeding pump etc). So it costs more to get a decent one when I need to change it. I need a reliable car because I couldn’t get him to school without it whereas if he wasn’t disabled he could walk to school and me to work.

But tell me what difference it makes? What actual difference does it make to you whether someone hires a Corsa through the scheme or an Alfa Romeo? They still cost the taxpayer the same amount of money.
Those manufacturers have chosen for their cars to be a part of the scheme, presumably to help boost their new car sales, so what difference does it make to you and your life?
If the Motability scheme folds tomorrow or the government decide to stop all benefits, do you really think your taxes will be any less? No they won’t, you won’t give it a second thought. Try standing up for the most vulnerable in society instead of kicking them when they’re down all the time.

Right but if they want a fancy car they have to pay the rest themselves HRM is £77/ week ( i think )it can cover all of the mobility element on a basic model but the more expensive a model gets the more a person covers themselves.

People using PIP to get a car are choosing cars that are available on the scheme. They can't go to a Lotus showroom and get a car there.
If a particular car is available in the Motability Scheme then someone choosing a car that meets their needs is doing nothing wrong.

Maybe direct your anger at the dealers who have their cars in the scheme and not the people choosing them,

How is it ableist to query a post claiming that pip is for luxury cars because disabled people deserve “nice things”? No one is saying they don’t but the issue here is that benefits should not be for luxuries.

Can you explain why you think a taxi driver shouldn't use a mobility car to do their job?

Pip isn't an out of work benefit, if somebody is scoring enough points to get the enhanced mobility aspect of pip, they are highly likely to need adaptations to a car.

Many councils (but not all) place very high demands on taxi drivers re the type of car they can use and the age of that car.

Would you prefer they stopped working as a taxi driver and claimed out of work benefits??

The anti benefit stories are pure propaganda, feed to us by the corrupt media, who are owned by the same people who own the politicians, i.e the mega wealthy. They want us completely divided, and hating each other, so we're too busy fighting over the scraps they give us and not thinking about how global economic systems are set up (for example how most people are paying a large percentage of our earned money in taxes, while they pay bugger all proportionally because most of their wealth isn't earned, it's inherited). The super "elite" learnt a few things after the French and Russian revolutions about how to control the masses so we don't revolt again.

There are always loads of debates on almost all of these things.

Child Benefit is already means tested. Maternity leave isn't really akin to PIP and is more similar to SSP in nature. Almost everyone is entitled to a state pension currently so it isn't similar to PIP either. I think your analogies don't work. It's also relevant that claims for these benefits aren't spiralling in the way that disability claims are.

Ignore … don’t click on shit news

(post written from inside a motability vehicle)

I have too, I don’t agree with such discussions.