Saw a whatsapp message about me 😞

[DreadingItagain]

We have a family WA group (me, DM, DSIS (2) and DB plus SIL and one BIL. Just because it makes it easier to share things and arrange things.

For context, I don’t work (due to disability and also my DS has one of the same disabilities as me).

A message popped up on the WA group from DB at around 2 pm today saying ‘So , what do we all think DreadingItagain will come up with now as a reason to not work ! Can’t see her getting away with it anymore !’ Obviously in relation to the spring budget. I saw it and replied ‘WTF???’ . Then nothing. No reply, No apology. Can only assume that they have another group as he put ‘we’?

I’ve never thought anyone resented me but clearly they do. I called DM and all she could say was ‘everyone is allowed an opinion and he hasn’t said it to your face’??? Spoke to one of my sisters who was evasive and denied there was another group. So I messaged on the family group ‘Clearly some of you have a problem with me and have been bitching about me and my child behind my back. Just in case you were wondering I do actually get 4 points in one descriptor so I don’t have anything to worry about at the current time in relation to my finances, my family on the other hand I do seem to need to worry about.’And I left the group.

Im really hurt though. Why are people so happy about the thought of others having a difficult time ???

And? I put it in as a price and you would still only get £103pw so you would be even worse off!
so you wouldn’t get your expenses and housing costs paid like you said

an apartment rents near me for around that price which is why I chose it as I used my postcode to get the local housing benefit price

Trust me, I would love to drop my hours, if I would be better off in rented and working not full time I would have done it in a heartbeat

Until someone cracks and tells you exactly who is in the other group I would be cutting the lot of them off.
So mean.

Well you're quite right, even in the unlikely chance you'd be paying such low rent you'd still be better off on UC or other benefits than working minimum wage. This country is a joke.

They’re jealous of you for having the knack of being able to live without having to earn a living.

For someone not working at all, aged over 25 in my area the maximum support is £119.14 per week Universal Credit, £118.85 per week rent and £22.76 council tax relief - that adds up to £1129.91 a month, several hundred less than minimum wage. Rent for a studio or 1 bed at a minimum is £800, Council tax £200, before you add in utilities and food etc. It’s not doable. A single person is better off working full time, even on minimum wage that claiming benefits.

It’s not ‘having the knack of being able to live without having to earn a living’ it’s being unfortunately either so ill or disabled they physically can’t work.

None of it is fair. But would you honestly rather be physically unable to work due to disability or illness that literally stopped you living a normal life? Because that's how it is for the people you seem jealous of.

Life is unfair at the moment for many people through no fault of their own, but bleating 'it's not faaaaair' because some people are getting something they need, through circumstances I can assure you you wouldn't want, is really not a good look. The chronically ill/disabled have an extra layer of unfairness to battle through. A lot of them are looking at shortened lifespans. If you're free from illness/disability, you should think yourself lucky.

If you want someone to blame for life in the UK being so crap at present, blame the last few successive shit shows of governments. Not the most vulnerable people in society.

So now disability is a 'knack'? Fuck's sake.

For the record I'm not personally jealous of anyone, I earn relatively well and don't have to pay rent. What I'm saying is you can't expect people who are working hard to not grumble and just accept that they can't have a basic standard of living, which many people get handed to them for free, whether they're able to work or not.

Yes, far better that people with disabilities should starve, surely! If you want to be kind to them (more than they deserve, of course) we could re-open the workhouses and put the women in one big ward, the men in another, the children kept separately and farmed out to people who need free labour whenever possible. Big vat of gruel, oakum to pick, second-hand rags to wear, job's a good'un.

Bloody hell.

Talk about hyperbole, and a lack of reading ability. Maybe you can claim PIP for that?

So if you could choose to be disabled and get this bounty you seem to think disabled people have for yourself, would you?

What? Please post sensibly. What I'm saying is you can't expect people who work, and work bloody hard, to just suck up not being able to have a decent life when other people get one for free. I'm excusing them complaining, again I'm not really one of them as I'm doing alright, because I sympathise with what a shitshow it is to work hard and get nothing in return.

The worst thing to see is those who think they don’t have enough kicking down instead of up. Cowardly too.

The only reason why disability benefits are higher than unemployment benefits is because they help cover the additional costs of having a disability, which can be expensive.

Some people on this thread are behaving as though OP has won the lottery of life by having a disability that is bad enough to allow OP to claim disability benefits and be put in the group of people with limitied capacity for work. This isn't something to be envied. I'm sure that OP would much prefer not to have this disability and be able to work.

If OP was denied her benefits, it wouldn't miraculously cure her disability and her brother and sisters would be no better off.

A hundred years ago, after the First World War, when the world was in turmoil and there was social unrest, hyperinflation in Germany, booming economy followed by financial crash in the US, growing discontent about the gap between rich and poor, and so on and so forth, various demagogues manipulated the electorate by telling them that everything that was wrong in society was the fault of a minority group. In Germany Hitler and the Nazis blamed the Jews, but they also targeted people with disabilities as being of no account.

Ordinary people fell for it back then and they're falling for it now. Pick a group, make them responsible for all the ills of society, constantly demonise them, and portray yourselves as on the side of ordinary decent working people, the ones who deserve what these degenerates are hoarding for themselves. We all know what that led to in Germany, the Soviet Union under Stalin, Cambodia under Pol Pot and all the other totalitarian regimes.

It's not the fault of people with disabilities that our economy and welfare system are in a mess. Why not look at the decisions taken by successive politicians that have got us into this fix (Labour as well as Tory)? They privatised essential public services with no effective competition, which has benefited the fat cats but not the general public. They took off all limits on mortgage lending, leading to a house price boom which has made buying a house out of reach of people on ordinary incomes in many areas. They got rid of rent controls so people renting don't have security of tenure. They let key industries fail, leaving some areas of the country without decent well-paid jobs. They manipulated the unemployment statistics by putting many long-term unemployed onto sickness benefits instead. They have utterly failed to make the rich, both as individuals and as the people running big companies, to pay their fair share in taxes.

And now it's the fault of those on sickness benefits and not the people who mismanaged the economy and wrote off large sections of the population as not worth helping?

It sounds like your brother is in an additional WhatsApp group with some family members and sent that nasty message to the wrong group. It's not nice to have such judgey family. I'd go no contact for a while until I got an apology from him. He sounds a jerk. If you've got 4 points in 1 category you will still be able to claim. Although I don't trust RR not to cut back more in October.

What have they said about your decision not to go? I think that’s a sensible choice.

Whatever you decide for the future, I think it’s important to send a clear message that collectively judging/bitching about you behind your back is unacceptable.

Have you thought about how you want to move forward with them all?

I’m posting perfectly sensibly and I find it interesting that you’ve chosen not to answer. I was challenging your pov in the hope you’d think a little about what you’re saying. But clearly you’re one of those posters who just want to parrot the same sentiments on repeat, so once I’ve sent this I won’t be wasting either of our time any more.

(I do, however, dispute that you have no ‘beef’ in this, otherwise why post repeatedly on it?)

Btw, plenty of people on benefits also work hard, but the appalling salaries they’re paid aren’t enough for them to live on. If the government isn’t willing to regulate away from this state of affairs, damn right they have some responsibility to make sure people don’t starve. You’re defending people who have their ire focused in the wrong direction. Just saying.

The discussion on this thread has broadened now with great posts from Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g, ruethewhirl and thepariscrimefiles

but I just wanted to say that I think it’s even worse for you op that your brother tried to justify himself when challenged. And it’s appalling that he didn’t apologise.

Your financial status and arrangements with the system are absolutely none of his business and financial help for disabilities is so difficult to attain now that very few people receive it without good reason. And anyway, you are his sister fhs. If he is going to judge, he should be giving his sibling the benefit of the doubt surely and supporting you? You’d think that, even if he is struggling, that your brother of all people would have your back and want you to receive financial help.

As you don’t meet in person very often it strikes me that this is 100 % about him and his dissatisfaction with his own life and he is using you as a focus on to which he can project his own anger. Or he is stupid enough to read the Daily Mail and believe it. And the rest of your family, instead of pointing out the error of his ways, is colluding with him.

I would still be livid op and I think it was a good decision to absent yourself from your recent family gathering. They were excluding you anyway without you realising it, so at least now you can draw a line and do it on your own terms. They have shown you zero loyalty and they don’t deserve your presence frankly. Let them stew.

Absolutely this^^

And people don’t realise that there is often already great personal shame and self-judgement attached to disabilities, which causes people to under claim or mask difficulties when it comes assessments which are very private and confidential for a reason.

No one knows from looking at someone’s life from the outside, how much some people struggle.

Add to that, every day discrimination and crime is soaring against disabled people too.

And yet more and more we are told in the press and social media that people with disabilities somehow have it easy. In many cases they are barely scraping by. Services that would make their life easier like special transport has been scraped to the bone. People with disabilities have a right to live and be treated with dignity, like anyone else.

I really don't think it's out of order to complain that you work full time and can't afford a basic life when some people get one for nothing. Ultimately, the main issue is the cost of living and in particular housing spirally completely out of control. Something has got to give some time soon, because a lot of people, especially younger people who have less stake in the current shitshow, are quite rightly refusing to work now because they can see it yields nothing.

Can you get some info on your condition and send it to them to educate them- or just link this thread....

Sorry but your is just as much a bitch as your DB! “He didn’t say it to your face” as though that makes it ok!?!

@SunnySideDeepDowna cousin and aunt who has been on benefits their whole lives with no jobs, despite having no health issues, despite what they say.

What ableist rubbish! How the bloody hell would you know what their health issues are? I have a neurological disorder which varies majorly from one day to another but 5/6 days per week I’m in agony and cannot even walk. If you looked at me you wouldn’t be able to see it!