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.

Can you read?

Everyone with functional reading skills can see I have substantiated my comments.

We’re waiting for you to provide the evidence for yours.

Where is it?

Wow! Amen to that 👏👏👏

I am not that intelligent and I don't understand data and all that. But even I can see you are banging your head against a brick wall here. Some people just refuse to see what is presented infront of them.
No government has said they will means test PIP anyway, so it seems futile to be discussing it. Means testing it would be more problematic than than the admin cost alone.

I can read. You haven't substantiated your claims in the way you are claiming. You claimed that means testing Child Benefit was costing the government billions. It factually isn't. You don't even stand by that anymore.

I'm going to leave it here as I think you are getting a bit emotional and to be honest quite nasty. I have my suspicions on what this may be and why you are on a thread about PIP and I feel uncomfortable continuing the discussion.

THEY CAN’T!

For God’s sake, do you think nurses are a disgrace because they’re rushed off their feet and can’t provide the level of service they would like? Should they resign, endanger people even more, make their own families destitute by resigning and not being able to pay their own bills?

This is the height of selfishness of you, and absolutely deluded, sorry. Everyone out there thinks THEIR topic, be that SEN or NHS or whatever else, is THE most import ant thing and everything else should be slashed to the bone to accommodate them. Well wake up, this isn’t the only underfunded area and your crusading will make zero difference as anyone can see SEN is adequately funded and the issue is the number of kids in need which is astronomical. We cannot exist as a country where 20 or 30% of our taxes go on SEN. People won’t do that, and it doesn’t make them selfish.

I never cease to be amazed by how posters like you become incensed the moment actual figures are mentioned here, because they don’t suit your ‘underfunded’ narrative and show actually SEN has more than its fair share as do disability benefits.

Even the LABOUR PARTY agree with me, and being the party of benefits and social care, when they agree the spending is nuts you really need to sit up and take note.

You are not more worthy than many other causes, and I would never be selfish enough to expect OTHER PEOPLE to forgo their wages and livelihood because I have a bee in my bonnet about ‘not getting enough from their employer’. Yes - arrogance.

As for my ‘rage’, that post is probably the only ‘ragey’ one I’ve done - saying I’m angry doesn’t make it right, doesn’t make you right. The endless personal attacks to avoid the facts are frankly laughable.

Thank you. You are right. I have met all of that poster’s demand for data and evidence, as everyone can see.

And yes, PIP obviously can’t and shouldn’t ever be means tested - aside from the fact that this poster won’t accept that it would cost more, anyway! - because that would undermine the fundamental point of it, the whole purpose of it having been introduced.

I am done with providing that poster with evidence, she’s been provided with it all but as you say refuses to accept it. It’s almost comical, the flailing around, and completely avoidance of the repeated requests that she meets the same standards in return and provides the evidence for her assertions. I have a feeling that she’s not going to do so… 😆😆😆Much easier to keep pretending I haven’t evidenced mine when everyone can see that I have and, mysteriously, completely ignoring the multiple requests that she provides her own evidence.

Very “odd”. 🤔

But you’re right, I do have better things to do with my time so unless she wants me to start invoicing her, I think I’ll leave it there as it’s pretty clear who is the one who has made things up for which they have no evidence whatsoever. Thank you.

Yes, of course you are right. As an economist, I am incensed by “actual figures”. I absolutely hate numbers and facts. Uggggh. My most hated thing.

You can continue to be amazed.

Thanks again for your claims that I’m expecting “other people to forego their wages for me”. I’m not sure how many times I need to explain to you that I am a net taxpayer, by a large margin. Nobody’s paying for anything for me or my children. I pay for them, and for many other families as well and have no problem with this. You have a problem with me and others like me doing so, clearly, even though we’re also subsidising YOU, just to a lesser extent than the severely disabled because they are in greater need than you.

You clearly have some issues with how you interact with other people and society in general and I’m not being facetious here at all but I genuinely think you come across as quite damaged and trying to take out your issues on others and need some therapy - this comment is genuinely meant seriously and kindly, although I have mocked many of your previous comments because they were so damaging to others who are more vulnerable and I felt needed protecting from such unpleasant cruelty that you exhibited.

I genuinely hope that you can find a way to make yourself happier with your life but raging against the “unfairness” that those in greatest need are subsidised more than you won’t - in my view - bring you this. And I can tell you this as someone who actually did the cliched thing of “dragging yourself up by your own bootstraps” from a position of absolute poverty.

The views you’ve put forward, not to mention how you have done it, are not something that will ever improve society and aside from being very damaging to other people will damage you also in the long term if you continue in this way, filling your life with spite and bitterness. It is no way to live and will not improve your life in any way. Genuinely, I suggest you have a fundamental rethink of your worldview.

I am genuinely sorry to hear that.

I hope they look at the criteria again so claimants like yourself with a genuine physical need get the support they need.

But they must also find a way to stop claimants who are not genuine in their requirements and have exaggerated their needs for financial gain.

There must be a better way to do this so that those in needs do not lose out.

So you’ll be providing absolutely no evidence at all then for your own assertions?

What a shock!! 😧

I am sure all of those reading the thread are just as flabbergasted by this revelation as I am.

I’m a very happy woman. My life, on the whole, is fulfilling and happy, although not without the usual bumps and of course my health problems. But I’m not ‘apoplectic with rage’ or whatever else you’ve tried to paint me as - even the thought of it is ridiculous! I don’t have an angry bone in my body.

I like to think I’m an objective person and I usually do soul search if I feel annoyed and realise that actual feeling is jealousy, or me feeling inadequate, or something else which is ultimately a ‘me’ problem. But I really don’t think this is that.

I’m not right wing, I don’t read the Daily Mail, I like to think I can see through propaganda and bullshit.

What has actually cemented my views on this topic is first hand experience gained at work. I can’t go into too much detail, and certainly not about individuals even if vague, but I went into the job thinking this was an underfunded system and came out absolutely staggered at the amounts that are spent on 1 child. 1 child who is ‘SEMH’, not a child that needs 24 hour a day nursing care and sophisticate equipment to stay alive. The numbers are literally mind blowing, and in single incidences can run into the tens of thousands per week.

Even when these expensive places are arranged, the kids often don’t turn up. It’s all a huge waste of money and the results are absolutely minimal - very few of the children, even with staggering amounts spent on them, make anything other than very minor progress.

At the same time, council taxes go up. Bins go uncollected. Our local library is closing. Our streets are covered in rubbish. Yet more and more goes on social care because the legal obligations are massively over promised, and the number of parents fighting for EHCPs is huge and rising every day.

I don’t for a single moment feel anything other than empathy toward SEN children. Every child should be loved, cherished and helped to thrive. But I’m not even convinced than in at least a third of cases, expensive school places and therapies can even do
much as I firmly believe in many cases the damage is being done outside of school, like we discussed earlier. Just because your children don’t fit that profile, it doesn’t mean MANY don’t. Honestly - it has to be seen to be believed and I GET that it looks like a nasty myth. I would’ve thought that too.

So what’s the answer? Our country is skint, margins are wafer thin, higher taxation isn’t an option. I would say exactly the same about anyone else saying this or that service should get a dramatic increase, it literally can’t happen. But we need to now be completely honest with ourselves about why kids are struggling here compared to virtually every other country in the world bar the USA (shudder). We need to hold a mirror up to our parenting, how we raise kids, what they need to grow and thrive. The fact so many kids are STARTING school with these needs show it isn’t in many cases school ‘hurting them and making it so they can’t cope’.

My kid’s primary school has been begging for cutlery and basic items and the head told me all the money goes on 121s. It’s so disheartening to hear ‘it’s underfunded..’ over and over again.

So - that’s my position. That education is not the big player here, the home is. And avoiding the elephant in the room by expecting ever-more-expensive remedies at school is not the answer.

I will now bow out but I hope you can try to see what I’ve written objectively.

Erm, in terms of the costs of support / care etc, can you not see that the ouy of hand economy is at the root of this? The cost of it is dictated by the market, and the issues around privately outsourced contracts being passed around like sweeties among those with a vested interest in rank profiteering. It's part of the wealth transfer from public funds to the private sector.

I really agree with this. It's unnecessarily stressful for the claimants and their families and a waste of public resources.

I'm very sorry for those who fear the change to the system will impact their much needed benefits.

I don't know that the changes will be successful in tackling the problem claimants either.

I don't know what the solution is, I just can' see the system is failing those who need it and open to abuse by those who don't.

Please, I beg you, stop with the Jeremy Corbyn-esque conspiracy that ‘everything is a clever plan to make the rich richer’. It really, really isn’t, and definitely not under the Labour government.

The reason we don’t just open masses of state run SEMH schools is because they’re hideously expensive and ultimately unaffordable. The goal really is to keep these children in mainstream, there should be no reason why 20% of kids need a special school place. Long term it just isn’t sustainable, not on top of everything else people want - DLA, carers, direct payments etc

I know you’ll say ‘oh but we should just raise taxes’, but please remember what the chartered tax advisor said on this thread - this cannot be done, at least not without very undesirable ramifications.

I feel like due to our Imperialist past, so many British people have major problems accepting we’re not a rich country anymore that can simply do as it likes and continue on an upwards trajectory

None of that addresses the point I was making.

But the lazy dismissive "conspiracy theorist" accusations are just what I would expect from someone nearly half my age with half the knowledge and probably less than half the experience.

So, in a nutshell, ODFOD.

Surely it's past your bedtime now.

As I was saying!

Oh look, you've found another friend.

Threads nearly full, thank fuck.

Just us saddos competing for the last word eh?

Were you their PIP assessor? If they were awarded PIP, then surely they were actually entitled. Your own uneducated and uninformed opinion does not come into it. They were assessed by the DWP and told they were eligible.
Why do lay people think they know better?

I’ll let you have it.

Before the thread is full, I just want to say to all the people suffering who have been reading this and been hurt by some of the appalling comments here that it really isn’t an accurate representation of how most people think. Most people do care. Most people don’t think you’re worthless if you’re sick or disabled. There are some appallingly callous and spiteful people around but they aren’t the majority, most people really aren’t that nasty and the ones actually paying the bills in my experience don’t generally resent it. Bizarrely it is those who don’t even cover their own costs who try to go undercover and pretend that “as a taxpayer” they are enraged about this despite them nowhere near paying their own way: it’s just spite that someone is getting something I’m not, like a toddler. Shameful.

I am so sorry for the people who’ve been upset by the disgraceful comments on this thread and I want you to know that there are people who care about you and you do have value and please do not listen to the nasty, spiteful (and frankly, as we’ve seen, not very intelligent) posters who have refused to accept any data or facts or rationality or show the slightest shred of compassion.

This is not representative of society in general so please don’t think that everyone thinks this way. We don’t. It’s just the bitter and very vocal cohort of Daily Mail half a mouse brain allegedly-human people who apparently endorse illegal behaviour when it’s more convenient for them that do so, and they will need to be watching their backs every single day for when the law catches up with them.

I find it hilarious that people slogging on NMW ‘aren’t paying their own way’ according to @GivenUpOnSleep who presumably likes having her bins collected.