Benefit cuts will cost the economy.

[MistressoftheDarkSide]

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/apr/29/labours-benefit-cuts-will-cost-uk-economy-billions-charity-says

Interesting article which repeats what some of us have been saying about the likely consequences of the proposed measures, including increased pressure on services.

Have you tried a spud with tuna though? Apparently that works.

I heard a jacket with tuna makes limbs grow back and everything.

Now you would have thought the MN ‘massive salad’ would have done the trick. Again, try the spud and tuna tonight and you’ll be un-disabled in the morning*.

*allegedly

It’s clearly potent stuff.

Oh and to add to my post earlier, when my PIP gets removed, I will also no longer get the LCWRA element of UC. Which means I will have no protection from being expected to work 35 hours per week in order to claim any kind of UC. But there is no way that I would be capable of that now, or at any time in the last 10 years so although I have hope that one day I might be well again, it’s not looking great for me. So when I’m unable to meet my claimant commitments, I’ll be sanctioned and have even less money, and when I carry on not being able to make the commitments my UC will stop and then all I’ll have is what I earn from the few hours work I can do a week. And I won’t be able to pay my rent, or pay bills, or buy food…I’m trying not to stress as that’s something that makes CFS worse but it’s hard not to.

I'm worried about exactly the same thing. I'd be literally destitute. The option of just getting a job isn't available to me. I barely have the energy to manage basic self care.

I could pay rent but not my bills. I'd have absolutely no money for food at all.

I've considered begging in the street and I've genuinely considered suicide.

And people are celebrating this? That's a massive punch in the gut.

It really is. And surprising that it seems to be the overall consensus on MN (which IME has always been more of a ‘lefty’ site), to be positively relishing the huge fucking over of people that have disabilities that is coming. Removing my income isn’t going to make me well again, it will just mean I won’t be able to survive.

Yes, exactly. And all these people going oh if you're genuine you don't have to worry. I have serious diagnosed conditions and no doctor would ever say I'm fit for work. And yet I'm terrified.

Same here. I will have nothing. Life wont be worth living.
It also makes me sick to see people say that the cuts are not even going further enough. I just hope there is enough pushback and they don't happen. But in the meantime we are stuck in this limbo. It is horrible.

Yeah, I understand. The idea of slowly starving to death is very frightening. The glee people have is honestly one of the most sickening things I've ever had the misfortune of encountering.

If I could work, why on earth wouldn't I already have a job? I loved my career. I didn't want to lose it. It was heartbreaking.

Carers allowance is deducted from universal credit pound for pound, so take another 4000 or so off that, you're left with just over 30,000 a year for a family of five, nowhere near 50,000

I guess these people have no concept of just how incredibly hard it is to get PIP at all, even when you have plenty of evidence. And personally I do have to worry, despite being genuine, because I don’t have 4 points on any one daily living descriptor, so I WILL lose my PIP and LCWRA. I’d imagine the majority of PIP claimants are in the same boat, getting 4 points on a descriptor is reserved for very severe disabilities. But there are so many people who are significantly disabled enough to be struggling and therefore able to claim PIP at all, who won’t meet that threshold.

I really hope the cuts don’t happen but you only have to look at the general attitudes on here to see how well the scapegoating of disabled people has gone. I think the world is generally moving to the far right and it’s terrifying.

I know. It's magical thinking to believe that you can starve people into either curing themselves or finding a mythical employer who wants people who can't do the job.

It just means a lot of disabled people are going to die. That's all it means. People can tell me I'm fit for work until they're blue in the face. I'm getting more disabled every single day and there's nothing I can do about that.

Exactly that. No one in their right mind would employ me, and I can’t blame them, I’d be a spectacular waste of their time and money.

I won’t even be able to go on a crime spree to survive because I don’t have the energy for that. And I’m probably a bit long in the tooth to be much interest to anyone on onlyfans.

I think they are seriously going to have to re-think this idea of linking LCWRA to PIP. Having potentially millions of people losing both will be catastrophic.

You're absolutely right. Some of them are minted🤪

I really hope you’re right, I could probably just about survive with LCWRA and no PIP. It would be grim and miserable and no quality of life, but I’d survive. If I lose both then honestly, I’m fucked.

Yabu I think its unaffordable to keep paying benefits. It needs to be a basic support net only.

It's much cheaper to cull the disabled, yes.

It's also very Nazi Germany.

And what would this basic support look like?

The point is, under these proposed cuts there will be NO support net for disabled people. No PIP, no UC, nothing. I outlined this in detail above.

Including the most vulnerable in society? It'll then fall to social services which will cost the country more

There would still be standard element of UC and help with housing which single unemployed people currently receive but it is not really enough to survive on. I work for a charity and we are constantly inundated with requests form people saying they can't cope financially even when they are getting PIP and UC so with those taken away it will be really dire.

What do you think should happen to people with disabilities?