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.

For disabled people it’s not about a ‘certain standard of living’ it’s about having enough to cover the things that cost significantly more and present a barrier to living a ‘normal’ life comparable to someone without the disability. That is why PIP is paid. It’s a universal benefit, available to everyone who qualifies, regardless of income and so available to the higher earners for whom you have so much empathy.

Yes, I do suffer like that daily but staying still makes me feel worse. What people don't understand is that all this is in my paperwork, I can walk and that I was told to keep moving. This is why I don't get mobility despite having mobility aids in my house that were provided by the nhs as I can't get out of the bath, bed or off the toilet.

I'm autistic with fibromyalgia, bladder/kidney problems, mental health problems, joint problems, stomachs issues and I have high inflammatory markers which are being looked in to. I even passed out at a bus stop the other week and had to be assisted by an oap couple and taken home on the bus, I was so embarrassed.

I sent all the evidence for this and twice I have received the same on pip and it's been extended for long term as my condition won't improve (their words). You're telling me my doctors and pip are wrong?.

Now I'm done with this nonsense and blatant jealousy on this thread.

I doubt very much whether that poster would be in receipt of the mobility component then. Has she said she is ? With some disabilities it’s easier and less painful when you move around a lot - fibromyalgia comes to mind. I wouldn’t say it was to marathon standard though. Whether she would qualify for the daily living component would depend on the overall disability, but on the surface it doesn’t sound as though she qualifies for mobility.

And the considerations l’ve quoted for PIP activities absolutey are true. I was a disability outreach worker for many years and have handled PIP appeals which have been won simply by proving that the assessor failed to consider these things in their judgement of claimant ability.

I’ve also seen people who are physically able to walk more than 200 metres be awarded higher rate mobility component because of the manner in which they walk, the pain, breathlessness and other distress caused, and the inability to repeat the process throughout the day. The walking ability in all cases was judged to be so poor as to have no useful purpose. So it really isn’t a case of simply how far you can walk.

If you were awarded zero points for such a severe level of disability then l hope you appealed. The PIP assessment system isn’t fit for purpose in its present form. It was designed in the main to save money, rather than support disabled people.

Go away with saying 'a better paid job' with 'better prospects will you! Would you say that to your child's teaching assistant? The GP receptionist at the doctor's? The carers who work long hours?

Downsize... Where is the money going to come from? It costs thousands to move. People cannot afford to move if they're on a low income with all their money going on bills.

Thank you for this!

Congrats everyone. Yet another vitriolic benefit bashing thread which has now descended into a discussion as to whether non working disabled people should be better off than the poorest of working people. The lack of understanding of the challenges disabled people face, and poor grasp on why disability benefits are paid is shocking. I don’t think the government need to worry about public support on cutting benefits for the sick and disabled if the opinions here are anything to go by. If we’ve got to the stage where we begrudge someone the means to save a little for a holiday from their PIP (which is actually what it’s designed for by the way) then the message of divide and rule has got through loud and clear.

I disagree with the way Pip is awarded - The ways to earn points, imo, bears little relation to whether the individual can work for hours a day. However, that is the system the government came up with, in an attempt to cut out the people on lower rate DLA and it back fired on them! Court judgments qualified the criteria and now more people get PIP than did DLA.

Yes, many people have health problems and have to work, but there is a spectrum, and the government has determined a cut off point, where people are significantly impaired in their ability to function in some or all aspects of life. The label is “disabled”. Low paid workers need to accept, that some may have been wrongly turned down for PIP and should reapply and appeal next time. However, the rest are not deemed bad enough to get PIP, and it is ridiculous being jealous of the disabled.

Take someone, who will never work and has no children - they get the ESA support group plus disability premium and PIP at the highest rate for care, so they get £12,896 plus housing benefit. A one bedroom flat here is £1,000 pcm. In total, they would get £24,896 plus a motability car. Given Scope calculated the extra costs of disability are £1,000 pcm - they really get £12,896 to live on. The salary calculator says someone on the NMW get £20,600 approx take home pay. I don't know anything about the benefits for people in work, so may be some people get universal credit too?

Why are people who get £20,600 approx take home pay, jealous of disabled people getting £12,896 to live on? Why on earth should disabled people have any empathy for them?

As for higher rate payers, DH has been one for 35 years. He’s had two heart attacks and has had to cut back to part time work. He does an office job, so he can still do some work, wfh. He’s become a basic rate taxpayer again this year. There is absolutely no comparison in any respect, between him and DD1, who is regarded as disabled, because she could never do any job and cannot look after herself in any way. If she were left in a well stocked house on her own, she’d be dead in a few days. She needs care 24/7.

It is beyond me, how people, who suffer some pain in every day life (and I’m one of them with a chronic painful condition, needing painkillers all the time, and ideally to lie down from 4 pm onwards) but can work, can be jealous of her, who has nothing in her life - no friends, no long term relationship, no job, she can never go out on her own, she cannot drink alcohol, no freedom, more or less constant pain, a cocktail of unpleasant drugs, cannot have children and can die at any time?

@Fireandflames didn’t say she claimed mobility component in any of her posts and has clarified that she actually doesn’t claim it. She was awarded the daily living component, and walking ability has no bearing on any of the daily living activities assessed on PIP - it depends entirely on the restriction imposed by disability in each individual activity. So why are you hoping someone will report her for claiming a benefit she’s been awarded entirely on the evidence of disability ? Speaks to the whole tone of the thread to be honest.

I don’t think PIP should be means tested. I understand what PIP is for. I think PIP is conceptually a really sound benefit, as being disabled is expensive, and as has already been said on here, PIP can open the door to other important assistance. I have argued strongly in favour of PIP with a family member who thinks it should be means tested more times than I care to remember.

I’m reflecting that in a society where a relatively small number of people pay a lot of tax, aggressive demands for more and more of that tax and casting aspersions on the moral character of those who want to discuss the situation simply isn’t helpful.

You need to read this posters posts on many many other threads

Op

I would bet my house you didn’t Declare in your benefit health forms that you walk 28000 steps a day.

Not quite so debilitating that you can’t walk the equivalent of a marathon a day

here you are clearly indicating you don’t work because you are pretty much incapacitated. Physically.

You’re still waiting for your PiP review decision

so there’s a chance at least

Nope. No-one is saying that. Someone upthread pointed out that many non-disabled people who work don’t earn as much as disabled people on benefits. There is no valid point to that statement because it oversimplifies in an effort to prove that somehow non disabled people on low wages are badly done to as a result. Which is nonsense.

There are many disabled people who work and pay tax. Traditionally they are among the lowest paid cohort because disability holds them back in the workplace. That’s why we have things like reasonable adjustment and extra funding - to try to redress the balance. And PIP addresses the often very significant extra cost of disability whether the claimant is working or not.

And yet every single time extra funding for those with disabilities is mentioned, it’s always the money that’s in the forefront, and not the disability for which it’s in payment.

The mark of a decent and civilised society is how it treats is sick, disabled and vulnerable. And it seems that according to MN they shouldn’t expect to have any enjoyment in life and should be required to sit quietly in the corner, live on bread and water and wait quietly for death, so as not to be a burden on the taxpayer. I sincerely hope that some here never find out what it’s like to live with a disability because it’s not the cushy number you think it is, and you’re in for a shock.

You poor thing. I’m sorry you’ve experienced that and people’s unkindness is just so unfair

I’m not casting aspersions on anyone’s character - you’re as entitled to your opinion as anyone else. But what you failed to mention in your post is that for the tax take in the UK, we have some of the lowest levels of benefits in Europe. And singling out higher earners for special mention doesn’t fly - everyone who works contributes via NI. The more you earn, the more you contribute. It’s based on ‘from each according to his means, to each according to their need’.

Exactly! But apparently if you can work.. everything is easy peasy!

No, as I have said said, its not easy. The most painful thing I can do is sit down and my job, involves working on a computer mainly, and occasionally using a pen and paper. Standing up on trains and buses is probably the second most painful thing I can do, and generally when the trains came into our station in London, they were already full. However, I recognize the pain I suffer is nothing compared to what people, who meet the criteria for being disabled, do!

DH can be rolling around with left arm pain, tightness in his chest and breathlessness. I want to take him to A & E, as per his care protocol; but he won’t go, because he knows we will be there all night and he has work to do the next day. DS also in our profession, fell down the stairs and broke his shoulder. He was in agony, but he wouldn’t let me take him to A & E, until he’d had a scheduled Teams meeting with a client. He was told to take a week off sick - in fact, he just got up two hours earlier every day, to work extra, to make up for his slow speed of typing with one hand.

As for higher rate taxpayers, we have worked among wealthy people in the central London most of our working lives, and most of our friends were earning 6 figures. I have never heard them, complaining about benefits for the disabled, never mind them going on holiday. They are glad the safety net is there for people, who need it.

But this poster has also quite clearly given the reasons why she can’t work. Walking ability has very little to do with the ability to work - it’s the overall effect of the condition which is considered. And clearly someone at the DWP agrees otherwise she wouldn’t be eligible for the benefits she’s claiming.

She is undergoing a review

so fingers crossed

I disagree with the way Pip is awarded - The ways to earn points, imo, bears little relation to whether the individual can work for hours a day. However, that is the system the government came up with, in an attempt to cut out the people on lower rate DLA and it back fired on them! Court judgments qualified the criteria and now more people get PIP than did DLA.

PIPis not, and has never been a benefit awarded on whether you can work or not. It does not assess the ability to work - that’s the work capability assessment. PIP is purely a cost benefit designed to address the extra cost of disability and can be paid whether you are working or not. I wholeheartedly agree with everything you say in this post, and I’m sorry for being pedantic, but it’s important to make the purpose of PIP clear, and it’s nothing to do with the ability to work.

@Fireandflames isn’t the OP. And she isn’t required by DWP to account for how many steps a day she can do - no one is, and it’s not a question that comes up on any assessment for any benefit, including PIP. Why are you still banging on about this when it’s already been explained to you that the number of steps is irrelevant - even for the mobility component ?

Losing a leg in itself doesn’t always qualify you for PIP mobility. I’ve seen people with missing lower limbs who have been denied PIP because there is no other disability and the artificial limb restores the function they have lost due to amputation. It’s mainly below knee amputations that fail to qualify in that way. Not saying it’s the same in your case, but it does happen.

Where did you get that impression ? Nowhere in any of her posts has she said she’s undergoing a review. She says she has been reviewed twice and awarded the same level of PIP, which is now a long term award. And she doesn’t claim the mobility component. So I really don’t see your problem.

I’m assuming from your username you’re a wheelchair user. It’s really not a good look for one disabled person to question the disability of another. And in such a judgemental tone. l’m speaking as a disabled person myself, and as such we, more than most, should recognise and appreciate that no disability has exactly the same effect on any two people. That poster has stated several times that she has extensive medical evidence to support her claim and DWP obviously agree otherwise she wouldn’t be claiming benefit.

That non-disabled people don’t understand that disability can be complex is understandable - most have no reason to understand as it’s not part of their everyday lives. But for someone who lives with disability on a daily basis and still doesn’t appreciate the complexity and that everyone’s experience can be different is just depressing.