Submitted 1 day ago by Armand1@lemmy.world to unitedkingdom@feddit.uk
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/liverpool-parade-crash-dan-eveson-b2979677.html
While this is a high-profile case, this is pretty emblematic of Conservative and Forced Labour policy. Labour have cut back even further on what constitutes a disability, when in reality many hundreds of thousands of people who should receive PIP do not.
If a state cannot provide comfortable lives for disabled people and, even worse, stigmatises them as scroungers, it is a failed state.
They don’t seem to be able to filter out the chancers either. I’ve known a couple of people getting pip who were definitely capable of working if they’d just stop doing drugs all the time. Seems like many of the people who are really in need are unable to navigate the system and the appeals process. It’s much less stressful for people who don’t actually have a disability!
That said, I’d much rather have a system that less a few piss takers through if it means the people genuinely in need can get support.
I can assure you it’s far from easy to get PIP, as I’m going through the process at the moment. It’s degrading and stressful (which is the thing I’ve been told to avoid) and seems entirely arbitrary. The application process is opaque and assessment is not performed by medical professionals. If someone IS getting PIP, they have jumped through MASSIVE hoops to do so. If you think they’re “cheating” then I challenge you to try to get it yourself. You really seem to have no idea.
I hate your reductive “if they’d just” rhetoric, whether directed at drug use or other “simple to solve” difficulties that are, in practice, far from simple to solve. You see an outward symptom as the root cause, and you also fallaciously assume that even if that IS the root cause, that it’s easy to solve. And before you assume that I’m one of those people “doing drugs all the time”, I’m not.
I started working in 1985, and I’ve worked right up to July last year, when I got ill. Prior to that, I seldom had time off sick - I had less than two weeks off in the past decade.
Thinking critically on your comment here, I’d like to point out that your mention of these “couple of” disability support exploiters is anecdotal and scant, yet you follow-up with implying that said exploitation is widespread and assumed rampant. This is simply not the case at all, is misleading to unaware readers, and belies a deeply-held bias toward stigmatization of this system & its recipients. ☝🏼
Yeah you’re right, it’s totally anecdotal and I have no way of knowing if this is widespread or extremely rare. Just giving my own experience.
While I get the joke, I think it’s a little insensitive.
Would have helped to have the acronym explained in the summary.
That’s fair.
I speed read the article but never did it define what PIP was.
I guess it’s similar to the NDIS in Australia - National Disability Insurance Scheme.
Joke was appealing to the nerdy nature of the Fediverse, but since it’s majority down voted, I’ll democratically delete it.
MrsDoyle@sh.itjust.works 22 hours ago
Personal Independence Payment.
I’m old enough to remember when Labour was a socialist party.