To think benefits need to be cut to fund increased spending on defence

[Viviennemary]

This is absolutely necessary. Keir Starmer shouldnt have backed down the last time. But now with the current situation with Russia drastic steps need to be taken. We simply can't afford to sustain the current benefits bill with the armed forces so depleted. The money is needed to increase defence.

Stop dishing out free prescriptions to those who can afford to pay

Stop the triple lock

Get the Royal family, Duke of Westminster et al to pay their fair share of tax, and not just what they want to pay

This post doesn't make sense and contradicts itself in the first sentence. No full time job- ie over 30 hours, is likely to generate earnings under the threshold.

It should read "isn't normally awarded" on the first line. i was being hounded with posts at the time and made many spelling and grammar mistakes.

I had put what i meant in other posts both previous to this and after. I agree it is very unlikely that somebody could work fulltime and manage to claim carers allowance unless they were putting quite a bit in a pension so their pay came under £204 after deductions.

Exactly.

Carers allowance is absolutely not provided to people working full time, and min wage x 30hrs is £381, so it’s impossible to stay below the threshold and work full time.

See my post above

I’ve just seen it, thanks for clarifying.

Carers allowance is an actual embarrassment tbh. The same care provided outside of the home would cost the state a hell of a lot more than £86 per week.

There are also many families (like ours) who do work over 30hrs, and still provide 35hrs+ of care. In our case it’s because our son has significant sleep deprivation, and lacks the ability to keep himself safe otherwise, he needs constant supervision. We could easily wrack up 35hrs on top of our jobs.

Myself and my ex husband managed the same for his father, before he died. I would assume it’s actually very, very common.

I’ve seen on this thread comments about avoiding carer burnout, and to be honest that’s genuinely hilarious - very few government agencies actually give a single shit about carer burnout.

I agree, carers assessments are really lacking and respite is incredibly difficult especially with the shortage of PA's and throw in to that that most people want the same PA's regularly and what LA's give for PA hourly rate is shocking too especially given the work they do and that's of it gets awarded and for disabled adults it's even worse due to having to hand over the majority of what benefit they do get to fund a care package (if not chc). Carers save the country millions of pounds, carers who do care for someone for the minimum hours or more should be better financially rewarded.

Oooooor. Just spitballing, but could we maybe be tax the very wealthy? May be get the likes of Starbucks and Amazon to pay proper tax? Tax passive income more highly? I mean, may be, it should come from those that would barely notice it, rather than those already living hand to mouth? Just a thought.

The water industry is another one, where taxpayers are lining the pockets of shareholders; but I had read articles recently about public sector pensions and the energy industry profits; I didn’t want to research the water industry late last night!

As far as I can see, all privatisation for every industry has been done to take any profits away from the Treasury, thereby depriving the government of income, to line shareholders pockets - who are not interested in investing in the infrastructure, because they know one day, the government or rather taxpayers will have to pay the bill?

As I said, I don’t see why posters pick on the disabled to suffer cuts in benefits, rather than foreign investors, getting billions for nothing?

I got 2s even though it's clear I should get 4s I'm on enhanced mobility. I'm registered partially sighted. I'm severely disabled enough to have a blue badge and be unable to drive

The whole criteria needs an overhaul. Currently you get 2 points if you need someone to help you dress your lower body or you need help choosing appropriate clothes, help with zips, buttons, etc. you get 4 points if you need help dressing yourself upper body

DS scored 0 in the communication section of his PIP assessment. He is severely autistic and communication is his greatest challenge. I can only assume they turned two pages over at once by mistake while going through his application form. I didn’t challenge it because he scored way over the threshold for higher level funding on both daily living and mobility.

Yes you are and more than a bit.

Eyeve rote, iv wrot, ive rot, ive rote, eyeve wrot and for good measure chester draws! Enjoy!

People are always trotting out this 1% DWP fraud figure. Well 1% of millions of claims is still a lot and I doubt that figure is true anyway. The whole system needs completely overhauling although goodness knows how anyone will try to do that seeing as so many people have now become dependent on it. What a mammoth task.

They tried overhauling it when they changed it from DLA to PIP. It was claimed it would save money. I don't think I knew many people who were on DLA who had to take their case to tribunal. I know a lot of people on pip who've gone to tribunal

Why does no one ever mention the amount wasted because the decision is wrong the first and second time?

People mention fraud - why does no one ever mention the fabricated reports?

Russia invaded Ukraine.
Which is the west.

👍

This is a good point and I'm one of the people who has mentioned fraud.

SENDIST is similar in that parents win the vast majority of cases. The huge costs of the SEND system is one of the main reasons for the proposed changes to it. LA's spend huge amounts of money defending tribunals but less than what it would cost to give the right support to children. Rather than ensuring that LA's do what they should be doing which would cost, it's been decided to change the system. I wonder if a similar sort of logic will be applied to PIP/ DLA?

Yes, and people don’t appreciate that a country gets ready for war so that they won’t have to actually fight a war but to keep peace.

War readiness is very much a deterrent.

Yeah lets take away money from those who need it to buy guns so we can kill innocents abroad.

Yes, communication disorders for a start!

DD2 doesn’t understand instructions, books, films, the news, official letters and forms, or any conversation with more than short answers. I or her ex always had to fill in official forms for her. Then, she only believes in functional communication - she doesn’t understand the point of small talk or social niceties. So for example,

• when she was living at home, we rang her up to ask what she wanted from the chip shop for dinner, it took her 5 minutes in a dull monotone to answer “Uhhhhhhh - cod and chips!” Then we’d ask, what if they haven’t got cod? Another 5 minutes to get “Uhhhhhh - fish cake!”
• if I explain something to her, that takes 5 minutes, she’ll say “Oh I zoned out, can you just explain that again?” There’s no guarantee, she’ll understand it any better next time!

You can’t see why this would cause problems in a telephone based job?

• Emails - she just writes to people to tell them what she wants. They come across as downright rude. Now, she gets one of us or her ex to check them, before she sends anything to officialdom.

You can’t see why this would cause problems in a job, involving communication mainly by email?

On the internet, there is no non-verbal communication, no tone of voice (sounding like she’s bored), and she can spend all day, thinking about what to write; and if she can’t understand formal language like in forms and letters; then she doesn’t have to engage with it at all! She tends to go on condition specific support groups, who are going to be accepting of her social difficulties.

If you can’t conceive that some people struggle with communication in real time, why make ignorant comments like this?

Do you think the UK should stop helping Ukraine?

Interesting that I pointed out a grammatical error with zero rudeness and it was deleted. MN just delete any comment that’s reported these days, don’t they?!

Maybe they think grammatical errors are rather low-hanging fruit. Dyslexia is a thing.

To put it in context, the tax gap between what was due in taxes and what was collected in 2023/24 was £46.8 billion. Fraud on PIP is immaterial compared to that.

You just don’t see it, day in and day out and you have no idea of the scale of it.