Ok who wants to swap £2500 a month in benefits for my husbands MS and my epilepsy, narcolepsy and fibromyalgia.

[bluebirdblackbird]

Well according to a lot of people on here we are on a good thing.

the 20 seizures I have in a week, chronic pain and night terrors, losing my memory after a seizure, pissing myself, hallucinations. They are all great fun. Not to mention the amount of times I have been accused of being drunk after a seizure.

or there is my husband. Diagnosed with progressive MS. Cronic Pain, shaking, cronic pins and needles, weakness in limbs plus losing mobility. Had to give up his teaching job 4 months ago after gradually reducing hours.

Not to mention the judgement when we use a blue badge because we look ok in that moment. And apparently labour are going to find us both work. Yippee cant wait to meet the employer who is going to take us both on. I am sure pissing my chair on a reg basis won’t matter to them or the losing counciouness at least a couple of times a day.

i am just fed up of yet another they are on benefits and get money and it’s not fair stamp stamp stamp. The bastards have saved up for a holiday- it’s not fair. The bastards have a mobility car but they look fine, OMG- they have got new carpets or a new sofa.

since I am guessing they none of the moaners would actually swap places with us if they could then STFU.

oh and that pip that is easy to get- my husband gets lower rate for both and that is despite providing all the evidence and appealing so we are off to tribunal. He can’t even dress himself most days and he can’t hold a pan safely or manage his medication plus many other things. If he stays on the points he is on he will lose his pip completely under these new labour proposals.

but most people know someone who’s friends, aunts, nephews, stepdaughters, cousin twice removed who lied and got it. I was taking to a lady in a wheelchair who does not get any mobility component of pip at all.

I’m unfortunate to have the pleasure of those invisible conditions….Fibro, Chronic back pain for over half my life, autism, OSA, IBS, MH issues and arthritis. I can assure you I’m not faking those lol but as I “look” ok it makes life so much harder as people don’t know how much I suffer every day 😢

OP, YANBU- I won’t comment on the terribly flawed benefits system and the pending changes. I applied for PIP years ago (didn’t get it, even after MR) but found the whole process traumatic. My health has gotten worse since then but I can’t bring myself to apply again.

Sending love to all those suffering xx

@bluebirdblackbird can you clarify please? Is this 2500 given to one or two people ? There seems to be a lot of confusion about this on the thread.

"No, but I think we know that this is the area where claims have exploded and it is also an area where no definitive tests can be run to diagnose people."

There are no definitive tests to diagnose my son's disabilities but he is still obviously severely disabled.

I didn't say there was. But the questions are designed to see which tasks you need additional support with (ie you can't do particular tasks independently). If you can't do something independently...you will need aid. It's not that hard to grasp. The aid might be a person, or an object, to ease the task for you?

Chronic fatigue you say? I've just been told on another thread that jacket potatoes can cure that. Eat a few more spuds and you'll be right as rain and back down the mines by monday morning

Actually - if you have controlled rent or limited housing costs (which isn't clear from the OP), £2.5K is an ok monthly income for two. You're not going to be living high on the hog, but who is these days?

Again though, that isn't really in dispute. A tightening of criteria would certainly still pickup on a 9 year old that can't walk. There is however a huge grey area with kids regarding eating, hygiene etc. Lots of children will undereat if they don't like the food. At my Dd's school she comes home with stories about loads of her friends scraping their meals into the bin so that they can be let out to play. At least two have become so dehydrated that they had very severe constipation that needed a hospital visit to sort out. It is very common for them to come home with full water bottles.

PIP is for adults who have these issues. While I agree that teenagers frequently need reminders to do these things, a 30 year old who needs support to do them is completely different, and it is the 30 year old who may get their benefits reduced.

Just don't be shocked though when resentment builds if people believe that their taxes are being spent on luxuries that they themselves can't afford.

They maybe need to look at why they can’t afford things though. The politics of greed and envy is doing a great job pitching people against each other, no one truly knows what’s going on in other peoples lives no matter how much they think they do.

Able bodied people have many more choices open to them and fewer barriers - it’s much easier to change their circumstances than it is for someone with a disability. Campaign for better wages, retrain, change jobs (all of which ironically they’d argue disabled people should be able to do with ease).

Oddly enough while arguing disabled people should have less, they’re not considering the cost savings of people who provide informal care, or campaigning for decent care provision for disabled children to allow their parents to pursue a career, or for decent education so that disabled young people might be able to access employment. If they were I might have some sympathy. Instead they begrudge someone a car.

It's strange how people with clearly quite severely disabled children are responding to my posts that are clearly about more marginal cases. Before anyone pipes up, of course there are marginal and less severe cases. Life is a lot less black and white than people like to pretend.

Also not true. The whole assessment is designed to assess what the extra cost of disability will be. If you can manage with simple aids and appliances you will inevitably get a lower award than someone who actually needs help from another person, or who has a comprehensive care package. And now, if you don’t score four points or more in at least one daily living category you won’t qualify at all. Four points indicates a higher level of need, so higher extra cost. So yes, claimants absolutely are being required to demonstrate extra costs, but it’s done indirectly.

It's strange how people with clearly quite severely disabled children are responding to my posts that are clearly about more marginal cases. Before anyone pipes up, of course there are marginal and less severe cases. Life is a lot less black and white than people like to pretend regarding lots of conditions.

I’m unfortunate to have the pleasure of those invisible conditions….Fibro, Chronic back pain for over half my life, autism, OSA, IBS, MH issues and arthritis. I can assure you I’m not faking those ...

Nobody suggests you are, @WhoGonnaCheckMeBoo, any more than they'd suggest you'd practice any other types of deceit just because they're possible

It doesn't change the fact that too many will leap on the opportunity though

There is a difference between undereating maybe once a day because you want to play with your friends but eating fine the rest of the time and having something like ARFID where it is every meal.

Or you are constantly at the hospital with your child because they forget they need to drink. Not just something that happened once.

It's about how extreme it can be compared to their peers.

I agree that we ought to be looking at the government and big business etc who are having huge profits all while wages are stagnating but it’s definitely not easy to just change jobs and find much better pay.

The industry standards in pay mean often employers are looking to what others are paying and making sure they don’t pay much more. My friend works for a U.S. company and was shocked when she came to the Uk branch and found her coworkers were on half her salary. They pay less as they can get away with it. These companies take the piss basically and public sector are often under paying people too.

Many people ARE campaigning via unions who just don’t have the power they used to and frankly haven’t had much success.

And just because someone isn’t disabled it doesn’t mean they don’t have other restrictions eg. Being single parents or caring for elderly parents.

So no I don’t think it’s as easy for non-disabled people to change circumstances as you suggest.

People with chronic illnesses (me included) are screwed in this country.
Taking away peoples PIP, ramping up hatred towards people who need to claim through the media and also wanting to push through the assisted dying bill. I can see where all this is headed ….

Which will make the people who don’t have chronic illnesses and are able to work overjoyed ….. Until they themselves develop a chronic illness.

Because we can't pretend that attempting to tighten up DLA isn't going to potentially affect children who are severely disabled. It can already be a very bumpy road to claim DLA even if you do have an obviously disabled child.

It's hard enough already and I don't want it to be even harder.

Increasingly I think the only way forward is a citizen's income type set up. Especially as AI means that jobs become more scarce. Imagine the savings in all the means testing and the freeing up of people's time and head space.

This. Couldn’t have said it better myself. There’s a thread here at the moment where it’s being argued that things like PIP and motability, as well as other disabled concessions such as a blue badge and queue jumping concessions at various events are ‘perks’ of being disabled. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such offensive viewpoints but when you try to point out that the concessions and adjustments available to disabled people are actually designed to level the playing field and mitigate the disadvantage of simply being disabled, people prefer to see them as something that’s somehow ‘extra’. I suppose it’s whatever suits their narrative. I don’t think l’ve seen many threads on disability that haven’t descended into just another benefit bashing exercise by the end.

Living costs in the US in the cities where these big companies based are typically much higher than the Uk. It is like arguing that workers in China get paid a lot less than in the UK and should be paid more.

So no I don’t think it’s as easy for non-disabled people to change circumstances as you suggest.

It may not be easy, but it’s always going to be easier for someone not impacted disability than for someone who is.

If you’re able bodied and arguing that someone with a disability gets too much, you need to check yourself.

You poor people.

This is not a country I am proud of anymore. Completely amoral, selfish, degenerate society obsessed with money and image and devoid of compassion and decency

Ironically for someone that claims that others can't see the wider picture, you have massively over simplified the situation. Disabled people are not some homogeneous group that are unable to access well paid work. The reality is that some people with disabilities can actually access well paid work in ways that some able bodied people can't. There are so many factors that come into this including poverty, family support, intelligence, educational opportunities and government support. So disabilitycan of course be a barrier to high paid work but there are many more barriers in our society that nobody seems to care about and certainly government won't give you state money to equalise.

in this context you can see why the underprivileged and working aren't in a position to change jobs or retrain easily. They slog away in jobs that nobody else wants to do, probably with imperfect health themselves and then see someone they know make a dubious claim for more disability benefits than they can ever earn. This is the reality. So forgive them for not finding the energy or fight to campaign for better benefits and support for the disabled funded by themselves.

Of course there is that risk but I don't think we really have any other option. We need to handle this situation like adults and make some difficult decisions. Some people will lose out. The emphasis has to be on protecting those most in need and part of this is managing the public money in a sustainable and sensible way.

I think we need a conversation about how we get employers to employ disabled people, and get that sorted first, before we remove any benefits.