Disability benefit cuts impossible to support, 42 Labour MPs tell Starmer

“Saving” £5bn at the cost of the most needy when she is making a £60bn hole in the finances thanks to her taxes that they will have to plug by either raising taxes more or cutting more by next election is insanity.

It’s really hard to understand what’s going on behind the scenes. Is this rebellion? Is this controlled opposition to the bill? Is it going to get forced through anyway?

You’re only one bad day away from having to depend on this system, and it’s not very lucrative. It’s also painfully slow. I had one of those bad days, and I am far worse off than when I was able and well. It was a good 7 months before PIP could kick in (as you must’ve been impacted for 3 months prior, and over 9 months into the foreseeable future), with the drag of the application. And now, I’ll have to contest the claim, because despite what I informed the assessors, I don’t have the four points in one category, which means I’ll inevitably lose and have to reapply for support. 

I’ve also seen the flip side to this, where people seek diagnoses, play up symptoms, and lean into it to get funding. I don’t have a clean cut answer that fixes both problems. Throwing everyone under the bus is terrifying and a hellish response though.

I don’t know whether it’s because the sort of people who end up in high office either never know desperation or adverse circumstances, or they did know them but forgot what they were like on the way there, or perhaps they’re just callous arseholes, but they just have no idea how expensive and difficult simply existing can be for millions of people.

And because of that, the focus is always, always, *always* “How can we make being unemployed/disabled on benefits as horrible or as undignified as possible so that people are forced back to work?” and never “How do we make being in work something that people actually feel is a good and rewarding use of their limited span on this planet?”

Shit wages, presenteeism-obsessed businesses fighting tooth and claw to stop any of the advances in automation over the last eighty years giving any of their workers more of the leisure time that was supposedly the whole point, extortionate rents swallowing greater and greater proportions of the monthly wage, CEOs absolutely raking it in even though the pandemic lockdowns made abundantly clear that it’s the guys on the shop floor actually making the product or providing the service who are keeping the lights on. No wonder people’s mental health is dying on its arse when every hour in the office reminds them how much they’re being screwed over. And that’s when they can even get hired, because businesses don’t like hiring people with disabilities over people without, because they don’t want the potential for increased absences or the expense of making accommodations if they don’t already have them.

And the government’s solution to this is like tossing someone out of a plane and expecting them to make themselves a parachute on the way down.

Yes, some people take the piss, but most don’t, and anyone who is in favour of cutting away a safety net for vulnerable people just because a few wrong’uns will abuse it is a psychopath.

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Think I’ve figured out a way to determine if a claim is real or not. When They Go Down To The DSS To Make A Claim, They Should Set Off A Fire Alarm, A Fake Fire Alarm. Everybody Legs It Out Of The Office, Leaving Them There. If They’re A Fake They’ll Be Up And Running With You.

/s