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.

That

I sleep after work in order to be able to shower or skip meals to go to bed. Weekends are useless because of my medication which gives me 24-48hrs of side effects
plus trying to arrange haematology, gynae and dermatology appointments plus 8 weekly blood tests around a 40hr work week. Not to mention the constant infections and sickness

While my blindness is obviously permanent and unchanging, my rheumatoid arthritis can and does fluctuate. Some days I can be getting around okay, others I can have a flare-up, joints hot and swollen and find it hard to get out of bed. This has been the case all my life. One day I'd be running around the playground with my friends the next day unable to leave my room. Disabilities and medical conditions can vary day to day. Glad you are so conversant with your colleague's medical history that you can say with certainty that this isn't the case for her. Although, it seems a little unusual for you to have access to her medical notes.

I suspect when people hear 2.5k in benefits they think 'ooh that sounds like a lot' because they think of benefits as something people get on top of wages.

I also suspect that they don't take into account that if that family are renting, a good chunk of that money is likely to go straight to their landlord, leaving them with not a lot to cover all their bills and feed and clothe themselves and their kids. In the SE, it's not uncommon for a 3-bed place to cost close to £2k a month.

You don't need a diagnosis to get dla. My son was awarded a year ago, he only got diagnosed a few weeks ago. He only does half a day at school and even then is exclusively with his 1:1

And how would you decide if someone is ‘particularly’ disabled? It’s people like you who make people like me with a generally invisible condition (epilepsy) worried to claim because of the judgement of others.

We've done our figures recently..... and we think we need about 2.3k / month for all outgoings, 2x car and food but it excludes rent/ mortgage to live ok.
That is 2 adults, a tenager and a largeish dog.
So OP's income isn't brilliant especially if it includes rent. But then my wage is only slightly above NMW, so a considerable amount less....

Myself, no. I can get more than that working. But I am an immigrant, I grew up in a poor country. It not hard for me to imagine that they are people all over the world that would gladly swap with you.
Some people have what you have, or worse, and don't receive anything help from their government. I think you are lucky. You are lucky to live in this amazing country, with all its flaws, that can provide this benefit to you.
Before people start with "you are disgusting" response, this is my opinion that is very different from yours based on my experiences. My first response to the OP's post was not " you deserve the money" but "you are lucky". Not lucky to be sick. Lucky to be able to get financial assistance when you are sick. Plus he OP asked.

Disabled people, with all respect, please stop coming on these threads and justifying yourselves. It's a completely natural reflex but it just feeds into the narrative that you are the cause of society's problems and should therefore be those focus of the solution.

Next time take a lead from the far right and redirect attention elsewhere (the distinction being that, for this discussion , this would actually be legitimate).

Let's talk about the rich. What are they doing with their lives? Are they paying their fair share? How do their actions affect society, the housing crisis, inflation? How are they influencing our democracy? Do they disproportionately contribute to climate change? What should we do about it?

These are the big questions. Not whether you spent your PIP on a weekend in Blackpool 5 years ago.

This is very true, and something that a lot of parents of children with disabilities don't realise.

I couldn't count the number of times I've recommended that a parent applies for PIP for their child, they've told me that the child didn't qualify and it turns out that the application was made when the child was 2, and now 10 and need much more care and supervision than their peers.

Exactly! We would not be entitled to any benefits due to DH’s salary but would struggle to pay all our commitments if I did not also work. So I have no choice but to soldier on. I think this is true for a lot of families. DH also had mental health issues post covid due to the stress as he was frontline NHS staff but he never took any time off as we could not afford it. Just got help but kept working. Life is not easy for people in full time work, our health is not perfect and we might die early with all the stress and exhaustion but what choice is there?!

children don’t get PIP so that’s probably why they are telling you they don’t qualify…

That's the thing OP, it's the fake one who spoil it for everyone, same as the lazy wfh people who've made everyone else go back in the office.

I've been one of those posting on here about benefits etc, but it's not for the genuine cases.

Do you accept that not everyone might have the same circumstances as you and some people do commit benefit fraud? It seems a little disingenuous to suggest she planned her hendo (which wasn’t an off the cuff thing) and activities involved on the basis she was going to have a “good day” on that precise day in the future. Despite never having been witnessed having a “good day” in the seven years her colleagues who attended and witnessed worked with her.

Because employed people don’t also rent?

This is so bloody true.

As a disabled employee with a brilliantly supportive employer and a husband with a decent job, PIP is the only benefit we claim. It enables me to work it's that simple. It keeps me paying taxes. I am so aware that if DH becomes ill or my disability progresses I could very quickly become the OP.

OP ignore these twats now seriously. I actually AGREE PIP needs reformed for low level mental illness, especially in young people, but for conditions like mid-life MS after years of tax contributions it is an absolute joke.

A few of you on this thread have no fucking idea how fast your lives could change - and some of them will. When you become us, remember what a prick you were to disabled people. Your day will come. You'll deserve it. Enjoy your extra cash when you're blind / incontinent/ unable to walk. May it buy you a soul.

I so agree with this.

I've been to a couple of PIP tribunals where the tribunal have made a decision just on the paperwork, and the clerk has come out to the waiting room to ask if (eg) the client will accept a certain level of award or whether they want to have the hearing in the hope of getting the enhanced rate of one or both components.

If the DWP decision is so flawed that the tribunal are willing to overturn it without even seeing the client, then the DWP really need to sort themselves out. It's a huge waste of time and money, and puts the claimant through no end of stress for no reason. And it means they've had to wait over a year to get the money they were entitled to all along (they get paid the arrears, but I'm sure they would rather not have had the money every month).

And I'm sure the DWP know they will lose, because they never send anyone to argue their case. The only time I've seen the DWP send someone to a tribunal was on an overpayment appeal, and the dispute wasn't about the fact of the overpayment but the amount. The DWP bod asked for an adjournment, went away and did his sums, and conceded.

Why don’t you focus your attention on the black or shadow economy? As @taxguru posted on another thread, if cash were abolished, the government could see how much income everyone is getting, which could lead to eliminating the black economy.

The ACCA estimated in 2017 that the black economy was worth £223 billion; and its probably more now:

https://www.accountancydaily.co/acca-estimates-shadow-economy-value-ps223bn

If income tax, NI and VAT were paid properly on £223 billion, as they should be, my guess is that it would come to way more than the cut of £5 billion Labour are talking about for the disabled?

Why isn’t there thread after thread about the disgrace it is, that people evade taxes, when people mainly on PAYE have to pay their due?

I couldn't afford to support my brother financially.

Thankfully, he gets PIP and ESA, and when he reaches retirement age, which is only a few years off, he'll get pension credit.

Because that wasn’t the topic raised by OP on this thread.

Sorry, meant DLA. I so rarely do work for clients with kids these days that I forget that it's DLA for children. Although I always ask any clients with children if their children have any significant health conditions/disabilities!

It made me feel very old a few months ago when I did a PIP application for a friend's son, because he'd reached 16 and needed to switch to PIP. I did his DLA application when he was 9, and it seemed like yesterday...

ETA: His case is a good example of how failure to fund mental health care adequately leads to long-term problems. He was referred to CAMHS when he was around 9, and it was 7 years before he got assessed. He has PTSD, among other things, and is autistic. He's spending a big chunk of his PIP on private counselling/therapy, and is doing amazingly well. It saddens me to think how different his life might be if he'd got that diagnosis and therapy when he was first referred.

If you are able to claim, why let others put you off? You don't have to broadcast it to people. People will only know if you tell them!

I’m with you, I have M.S and often told I don’t look like I have it, how am I supposed to look. I get PIP higher component on both but needed a mandatory reconsideration. I use some of my benefit to buy medicinal cannabis from Curaleaf, to make my life bearable. My neurologist is a wanker and after years of asking to try Sativex I’ve given up hoping.

If anyone out there would like my degenerative, debilitating fucking disease they’re welcome to it. I’m a shadow of my old self, everything in my life has changed, it’s awful.

I also emailed my local labour M.P about how disgraceful it is. He came back with some cock and bull, sounded just like Starmer, then said I’d be Ok as I’m getting the higher rates and on an indefinite award, gently contacted once every 10 years. That really pissed me off, I wasn’t writing to him just for myself but for all the REAL people out there that are so disabled they can no longer work, complete arseholes.

Just another woe is me strawman. Nobody is complaining about truly disabled people getting benefits so stop pretending it's about the likes of you.

You want to see scroungers? Just watch the ride access line in Thorpe Park. A not-insignificant percentage are absolutely gaming the system, yet they clearly have paperwork showing they're disabled.

The 'straw man' here is the idea that only the scroungers and shirkers will be affected, that benefit cuts won't affect genuine claimants.

They absolutely will.

It is sad you felt the need to start this thread. MN has been awful about people on benefits since it was announced about the financial black hole the country is in. It is all our fault apparently.

I am not sure what sort of dead inside person would begrudge you money to live on whilst both you and your husband are also contending daily with your disabilities.