Let me guess, they are going to work with the assumption that too disabled to work means too disabled for any physical activity and if they aren’t confined to a bed, they are defrauding the system?
I hate Tories so god damned fucking much. I am imagining a scenario where the Jobcentre offers this very job to an unemployed person and they turn it down because they want a real job because fuck being a snitch, and then they themselves get snitched on for not accepting work when it was offered to them because fucking hateful elitist Tory bullshit.
I could 100% see that happening, which is almost as fucking depressing as ending up being snitched on by someone who enthusiastically applies for the job of their own initiative (E: because you know there will be people who would do this job for free given the fucking opportunity)..
I love it when the DWP Aktion T4 question if I'm still autistic or not. Believe me, I wish I could stop being autistic and not have anxiety over very normal things and sudden changes. Even the initial application for PIP or DLA was a nightmare as an uncaring system was not convinced I was autistic despite all of the evidence provided by my GP. They very nearly ran me out of money when I got sanctioned without realising it, followed by a year of further paperwork battles as the DWP Aktion T4 continued to deliberately misinterpret everything.
Then there's a lot of anti-welfare crap swirling around the internet, so I sometimes feel guilty about claiming anything even though I know it's legitimate. People are salivating at the idea of the DWP having enforcement powers, checking where you go on holiday (even though a flight can cost less than a train ticket) and other intrusive measures.
Currently I'm at risk of losing my ESA since they decided to question my autism again and want to do a phone interview, which is exactly what I struggle with, so thank god there's people who can support me with that call. Honestly, if I had to fight the DWP alone, I probably would have lost all of my benefits and offed myself by now. It's tough enough even with my really good support network.
You know what the most ironic thing is? They do this under the guise of rooting out benefit cheats but if anything they just train people into being capable of benefit fraud. Because you have to think like a benefit fraud just to get what they publicly say you are due.
Honestly, just do it. Just recount your worst days. The DWP are looking for reasons to deny you, you don't want to give them one by recounting a less-than-worse day.
A benefits adviser who was supporting me a while back gave me some really good pointers to consider when answering these forms:
Can you do X safely and repeatedly?
Can you do X on bad days?
If the answer to either of those is no, the answer to the question is a no.
I know it's hard not to because I do it myself, but try not to feel the guilt they try to force on us. We are NOT the ones who are a drain on society, those who frame us as such are. We deserve to exist, and if to do that we need to claim benefits, then that's that, and it's nothing to feel guilty or ashamed of.
As long as you can do it without an undue risk of getting caught, I see no reason not to. It sounds like you’ve already been gaslit into feeling guilty for asking for what’s owed to you, so I assume you’re actually downplaying your symptoms when you think you’re reporting them accurately.
Well said, and I'm sorry you're having to go through this shit too, but I'm glad to hear you have support, I'm in the same boat - never would have managed it without that help.
It really is appalling and enraging the levels of privacy invasion and lets be honest- - humiliation we're subjected to for the crime of being disabled, while those in power get away with literally robbing the entirety of society.
I mean, that’s great, but why isn’t there a single example in this wall of text? The link to “systemic flaws” leads to a 404 and the text itself remains quite vague.
I’m of course inclined to believe the article but it strikes me as odd that it seems to avoid naming specific things that are supposedly intentionally suicide inducing.
As an ex-brit that was once on British disability benefits, navigating the system can be crazy tricky. It is the kind of thing you need specialist help with and if you don't get it, you can get absolutely screwed. People don't think you need lawyer-like help to get around it but you absolutely do.
One trick they use is that they intentionally ignore the concept of good days and bad days. There are disabilities where you are more capable than other days and less capable on some days too. They ignore this and treat everything you put on the form as stuff you'd be able to do every day of the week. They don't tell you this though, in fact they word it as though they are looking for the most that you are able to do.
Yup. Never mind that they also ignore GP and specialist evidence in favour of a 10 minute assessment by a barely-medical professional (the first doctor you'll meet via the DWP will be at the tribunal you have to get to after appealing after they've denied you your benefit by default)
I was diagnosed with ibd a couple years ago and I am regularly anemic and I need to get iron infusions as well as having regular tests and appointments. I asked about ibd and pip as it is now and the dude wouldn’t understand that I’ve days where I’m completely incapable of doing anything because I’m bloated, stuck at the toilet as well as fatigued. The specialist nurse who is in charge of my care has told me that with ibd there are periods where you would be ok but it’s an unpredictable condition as I might have severe problems for a week and be fine for 2 months
According to the welfare people, I’m clearly fine because my condition is unpredictable.
There must be some religion that would recognise the DWP as saints for all of the healing miracles that they've performed, I've read stories of amputees being told their limb might (or even has) grow back, conditions people are born with being cured, and from my own personal experience - a degenerative condition the assessor clearly didn't even know, getting better because I'm "still young".
(I am of curse being facetious, the DWP needs abolishing, along with the fascist government and monarchy they exist to provide worker cogs for)
I also thought there would be specific examples leading to concluding paragraph.
Anecdotally, I do know someone who is disabled and after he changed his address he stopped receiving payments completely, and it took about 18 months to reestablish payments and every time he talked with someone over those 18 months he had to completely re-explain the situation and how many times he had already changed his address just how they were asking him to within their system and confirmed with the last person that he had talked to that he had changed his address in their system but had not received a single payment since the first time he changed his address.
At the end of it they finally confirmed that he had been missing payments for over a year and they would start trying to reimburse him.
He lives with his brother who works so he wasn’t homeless, but if he hadn’t had family, then the system could have easily killed him.
I also thought there would be specific examples leading to concluding paragraph.
The article is about a timeline of events, which is linked at the bottom, as well as many other links in the body of the article that lead to much more info and examples, I'm not sure what more they could have done.
As for your anecdote, I can second it, since I had a similar thing happen to me (moved to a new area, had my benefits stopped while they re-assessed me in the new area). This happens due to privatisation and a breaking up of the system so that each area is managed by a different contractor, and they don't really communicate (since none are designed to give the claimant the best outcome, so why would they). I knew my benefits had been stopped and it still took a little over a year to get everything going again (with significant support).
The timeline, behind a five-click-introduction that explains and teaches you about the structure of the timeline itself, is an impersonal wiki list of bureaucratic events that led to a poorly run and maintained welfare system, it is a dry read on a cluttered page.
The article could easily include a couple testimonies or anecdotes to show people reading the article how the poorly run system is affecting real people.
As much as your comment pisses me off, it does have some value, in proving the title perfectly accurate - people need to start listening to disabled people more, because this is obviously an issue for many of you.
The article did include a couple of stories, you just didn't care enough to click through to the examples (or to read a shock horror short introduction to the literal information you are demanding).
And since you clearly don't give enough of a shit to make the effort, neither will I, have a copy pasta and go on with your life of wilful ignorance:
My comment has value because of what we know about how people read articles and engage with causes.
If you just want to write a diary, then you can structure it however you like.
If, however, your intention is to raise awareness of a situation or minority, then it behooves you to make it as engaging as it is credibly informative and comprehensive for as wide as audience as possible. If you are actually trying to raise awareness through an article, all of those elements must be satisfied.
This short article contains thirteen links, many of which lead to statistics or bureaucratic processes.
Trying to raise awareness by obligating the reader, who may be learning about this for the first time, to click literally over a dozen links that require further clickthroughs is not going to help engagement with the article or raise awareness and support as much as you apparently think it is.
Neither is being insulting or making assumptions based on your own misapprehension of my comment.
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