One-legged father must pay back £36k in benefits ‘because he plays cricket’

>with the help of a runner and an umpire holding his crutch.

Misread that as crotch, got quite confused.

Ah, because playing cricket makes the costs of a substantial disability cheaper, for sure. Definitely!

The DWP are spiteful scumbags and most healthy people would be astonished how badly they treat the disabled.

I’m not sure he will be able to pay it back either way, seems like they could have spent a bit more time getting it right for him going forward that trekking back over what I would assume is 5 or 6 years… Do we reckon more than £36,000 was spent in recovering this money at £10 a month lol

I haven’t looked into the case in detail, but would you rather have this chap sitting home alone with no active role in his community or getting no exercise? On top of his benefits you’d now have to cover the costs of his mental and physical health decline too. But no, of course, how dare people receiving benefits also enjoy life or experience joy once in a while

I do find this difficult in some ways because he’s clearly missing a limb. That’s obviously going to have an impact on his life. He should probably be supported.

I also think that sport is great for mental and physical health. What the DWP are saying here is if you are disabled and are getting PIP you better not do any sport or we will have the money back.

Seems pretty cut and dried tbh, the comments here are more reflective of the sub bias. Interesting that he lied to the journalist about not wanting to take it to tribunal when in fact he had gone to tribunal and lost.

His attitude pretty clearly also seems to be “I have this condition so I should receive X payment” rather than receiving money based on functional limitations, which can lead people to try and fudge their level of disability to get the payment they think they deserve. An attitude which I’ve also seen multiple times on Reddit and is probably playing a big part in fueling mistrust of benefits claimants.

There isn’t the information in the article to make an informed opinion on the matter either way. If he’s told them he can’t do basic tasks such as getting up to make a cup of tea when he is playing cricket then obviously that’s misleading.

Douglas Bader lost both legs in a flying accident and still fought in the Battle of Britain as a fighter pilot. He played golf all his life. He also never used crutches.

I’m not able to read this article to see what the context of this is at all, so who knows if this is legit or not.

I’m disabled and don’t feel like getting into it with other posters today, but I would like to ask, since when have the Telegraph ever done anything except imply all PIP claimants are scamming?

It’s nothing to do with him playing cricket, it’s just benefit fraud.
To get the higher rate mobility of PIP, which is required to be able to get a car through Motability, he has to have told them he can’t walk 50 meters.

Strange to see an article that’s seemingly in favour of benefit fraud, they can’t usually stop themselves from practically screaming “JUST LET THE CRIPS DIE”

I’m loving the ‘I’m further to the right than the Torygraph on benefits’ bum fight in here. Fuck me this country is full of mean spirited jobsworths.

Torygraph pretending to care about disabled people so they can attack the Labour government. Fuck off.

As someone who has volunteered at a charity for mentally and physically disabled people and am now (hopefully just temporarily) disabled myself now, I can say from what I’ve seen and heard, the the benefits system is often very unfair on genuine disabled people.

When filling out a PIP form, the unofficial advice is to basically lie about how you are day to day by making out that how you feel on your worst possible day is actually how you feel every day. This is because supposedly the system can be very strict in its requirements and assessors will always only note down your best case scenario. So as a random example, if you said 1/7 days, your disability made you bed bound, 5/7 days you struggled to do things around the house and can’t go outside, whilst the other 1/7 days you felt able to get in your car and drive to a supermarket to get your shopping; the assessor would take that as ‘the claimant is able to drive about independently, walk around, complete chores, complete physical tasks, engage with society and live independently.’

So if I were to guess here, the man in question maybe usually can’t do a whole lot in his life but when he can, he goes out to get some necessary exercise to play disability friendly, assisted cricket. Now because he can’t do much with his life, he may need benefits but knows in order to be illegible he has to make out that his 1 in 7 days, bad day is actually 7 in 7 days of the week. He probably knew that if he put sometimes during the week, he feels well enough to play disability friendly cricket, then that will be taken as he can play competitive sports by the DWP. Now the DWP have found out and have decided he can play sports and has thus lied and is ineligible for benefits after all.

It’s sort of a lose, lose system as claimants just want to be taken seriously and are forced to lie, whilst the DWP doesn’t want to pay but forces people to make out they are worse than they actually are. Then something like this happens and the person who does actually need benefits but has been forced by the system to lie, gets found out and has to find £36 grand to cough up.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; we’re becoming a country, or even a society, that normalises cruelty and looks down on compassion.