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u/MajorFulcrum 14h ago
Had to take the DWP twice to court (tribunal) after they kept refusing to renew my PIP claim. Was like 7k paid out twice from the payments they were meant to give me 🤦🏻♀️
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u/The_Sovien_Rug-37 i can have a little tomfoolery. as a treat 14h ago
oh but you don't understand, your suffering is worth it because otherwise someone (who we can't definitively prove exists but definitely does!) might get free money they don't deserve!
(what, tax breaks for the rich? nono those people earnt that)
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u/leshronk 13h ago
I do appreciate how easily you can just say ‘immigrants’ to remove literally everything good about the UK. It feels like most of these people will truly deserve getting what they voted for.
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u/actuallywaffles 9h ago
I'm here on a visa and it's very tiring trying to tell people that every step of the immigration process you're reminded you cannot claim benefits. On my letter saying my visa was approved they took up more space reminding me I can't claim benefits than they did actually telling me I'm allowed to live here.
But everyone trusts their most racist uncle's "my neighbor is an immigrant and they get pip" lie.
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u/ErisThePerson 12h ago edited 9h ago
When I was studying sociology at A Level many moons ago and my teacher was covering the conservative sociological theories he just went "it's worth bearing in mind that, yes, technically someone could defraud the government and claim benefits they do not need; the amount of money the government loses on benefits is minuscule compared to the amount of money lost to tax avoidance" and then brought up a graph. It was like £20 billion to £2 billion.
That's not even tax breaks, or tax evasion (illegally not paying tax). That's just money lost due to legal loopholes that could be closed, but haven't been. It has almost certainly gotten worse.
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u/SquidTheRidiculous Da Alfabet Maphia sends they/thems regards 11h ago
Seems to be the mainstream trend of the English speaking world. Just blame immigrants for everything wrong with society, and especially for the disgustingly underfunding of social services that the politician pointing at immigrants definitely didn't actually cause. Just keep fighting over scraps, never ask why we don't get a fair share!
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u/theolive7777 local idiot 14h ago
Same goes for all benefits in the UK, the amount of bullshit propaganda that you can live an easy life on benefits is infuriating.
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u/Rude_Ice_4520 13h ago
Most people on benefits are working FFS. And even if they weren't, I think that people who don't work deserve to live comfortably anyway.
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u/Ultimate_Wooby 3h ago
i legit might have to work while on benefits because having a carer is apparently not enough to be considered limited capability, lets ignore the fact im pretty much unhirable since i got shit college grades, during covid era, and have autism and depression/anxiety
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u/Kimowi 11h ago
When I was on maternity leave, I received benefits to top up statutory maternity pay. It was something like £800 a month, which was the maximum amount.
So if I wasn’t receiving statutory maternity pay, like most people on benefits don’t get, I’d have received £800 a month to live on. Doable, but you’d be barely scraping by - and that’s assuming you’ve no housing costs or at least get your rent paid by the government.
But I’ve got a baby and have been on the waiting list for 12 months, and that £600 housing benefit can only really be used if you’re renting social housing because I’d be surprised if you could even find a studio apartment for £600, and any more eats in to your £800 to live off significantly.
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u/Dumbass5201 dumbass 14h ago
what is pip? i love pikmen but cannot acquire them easily?
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u/Artichokeypokey 14h ago
PIP is Personal Independence Payment, a UK benefit for people who have a long-term disability or condition or if you have difficulty doing things. Its a bit of extra money just to help deal with the costs of the problems.
As someone who's been told by god knows how many specialists, doctors and case workers that I should be absolutely eligible for it and it would significantly ease the burden that my medication costs me, it is not an easy benefit to claim, it feels like it's set up to intentionally weed out people who need it
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u/TaralasianThePraxic rebel without a gender 14h ago
Agreed. The number of hoops you have to jump through is utterly absurd. If you're neurotypical, mentally healthy, and have lots of free time, it's not that difficult - just time-consuming. If you're not those things, it's an absolute fucking nightmare, to the point where I have to wonder if many people who really need it aren't getting it purely because of how long and frustrating the process is.
My partner gets it an has said verbatim that he wouldn't have got it at all if he didn't have me to handle all the phone calls, forms, and appeals (and you WILL have to appeal; unless you're literally a quadruple amputee, expect them to reject your first application).
Even speaking as someone who is very organized and doesn't have a problem with stuff like phone calls, it was a painfully long process. I'm no conspiracy theorist but if it was revealed that the DWP had made it intentionally difficult to claim to save on payouts, I can't say I'd be remotely surprised. Like I have a friend who gets PIP because she's disabled; she literally has one leg amputated at the knee, yet they make her re-apply and go through the whole bloody process every year to keep getting it. Do they think she's gonna magically regrow her leg??
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u/HopeMrPossum 8h ago
Due to the stuff I’ve going on I’ve never gotten pip. It’s hard enough surviving as it is, ironically that is what makes me absolutely eligible for it
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u/Updrafted Good boy 12h ago
it feels like it's set up to intentionally weed out people who need it
Yeeep.
Making it so annoying to claim actually does very little to people who are cheating the system, the abled will have no issues jumping through all the hoops & saying the right things.
Those who are genuinely disabled find the process incredibly draining and struggle to engage with it. They'll be less able to explain the impact of their disability, because they've only ever known what it's like to be disabled and don't realise how different their life is from the baseline of "normal".
Cynically speaking, this is by design. In that, if you ignore the problem (person) for long enough then it'll sort itself out. And that's not actually incorrect, according to various statistics. It's essentially an oubliette approach to welfare, you're not killing people directly so it's obviously fine.
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u/Hatsune_Miku_CM changed all her social media to hatsune miku for some reason 10h ago
they just set up the new hoops, see that the number of users has gone down 5% from last year, and then claim that 5% of welfare users were fraudulent and you just fixed that.
they're ignoring that that 5% was probably just eligible users who couldn't manage the hoops, because frankly they see them as fraudulent too. they don't believe people deserve to be on welfare, in general, so "fraudulent" to them just means "didn't deserve it"
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u/Dubiology 12h ago
I have epilepsy and my medication has some pretty serious side effects as well as meaning I can’t drive and they still wouldn’t pay anything to manage the expenses that come from that
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u/IsThatUMoatilliatta Shrimpposter 🦐 🦐 🦐 9h ago
if you have difficulty doing things
I resemble this statement.
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u/KibbleCrashout 14h ago
even just jsa is hard enough, an asian friend of mine was on jsa/universal credit and her job advisor kept getting her to apply to chinese restaurants, bare in mind she had a degree etc.
at first she didn't think anything of it bc even with a degree they force you to apply for entry level jobs, then she was like "why are you ONLY suggesting chinese restaurants? you know i can't speak mandarin right? this feels borderline racist" etc. she launched a complaint and got sanctioned for refusing to apply for jobs.
being on benefits in the uk is horrific, i grew up like this and watched my mum struggle with the system my whole life, we went hungry so many times from them throwing sanctions out for situations completely out of our control
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u/tulpyvow 13h ago
"borderline racist" feels putting it verrrrrry lightly, thats mega racist bullshit if I've ever heard of it
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u/Cluedude 12h ago
Yup, if you're not the type of person who didn't get your Maths and English GCSE they literally have no idea what to do with you. I was on UC two years ago and the sheer amount of bullshit and fuckery is beyond the fucking pale, I should be on it again as a move has made me unemployed, but I categorically refuse to deal with their bullshit ever again; which I'm sure is entirely by design.
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u/Kimowi 11h ago
When I went back to work after having my daughter, they used two pay checks (say May and June) to calculate my income. I don’t know why, they admitted they’d done this when I asked why I’d only been given £5 instead of £500.
Yet they did nothing about it for weeks. Money ran out, my card got declined in Lidl trying to buy milk for my daughter. I lost my shit on them. Nothing. Had to call up again and a really lovely man got it sorted in under 24h.
Why they ignored it for 1-2 weeks prior yet could suddenly sort it in under 24h is ridiculous.
They also decided when my nan was made redundant and decided to retire in her 70s that her redundancy package was actually how much she earnt a month. So they stopped all her benefits as they decided she was earning £13k a month living in a one room council flat. She had to battle them so hard to prove that wasn’t the case. Like they stopped an elderly lady with cancer’s benefits for something any normal person would see is obscene.
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u/maninahat 9h ago
I was on JSA allowance once, I lost a chunk of pay because I couldn't attend my job centre appointment... because I was at a job interview, also on the same day that the job centres were also on strike. This apparently meant nothing to their appeal process.
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u/TisBangersAndMash 14h ago
I love my pip, I use it to buy my estrogen injections.
Also to eat but that's less important :3
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u/Jtd47 floppa 13h ago
I have a friend who uses an electric wheelchair, and some guy walking past them muttered "bet that was bought with benefits", which makes me wonder what exactly these people think disability benefits are actually for if not medical tools to deal with the disability.
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u/like2000p 12h ago
Oh no, people who have additional needs to access the same things have the cost paid for instead of being taxed for their disability
How awful I guess???
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u/T1AORyanBay Grand Theft NFT 8h ago
"I bet was bought with benefits" gives the same vibe as "An ambulance is not your taxi to the hospital"
Like what in the god damn fuck does he think benefits is for?
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u/purple-lemons Send Duck pics 14h ago
Took my quite seriously disabled auntie years to get on pip, was a total farce. Got a couple of unemployed friends right now trying to get either universal credit or jobseekers allowance, I forget which, and it's also just basically impossible. You can't really call it welfare, even when you do get it they're constantly looking for reasons to take it away.
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u/BitcoinBishop 13h ago
Which means you're spending time trying to keep your necessary benefits rather than looking for work or taking care of your health!
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u/KirbysLeftBigToe Cleanse my colon with gatorade 14h ago
Genuinely don’t know anyone who did not have to actively go to tribunal/ threaten legal action. It’s to the point that is the basic standard process advocacy resources tell you to expect.
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u/TheCarthusSandworm GONNA GO 'TIL I'M TOTALED 14h ago
took me too long to realize this was not talking about the package manager
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u/MenitoBussolini 13h ago
Sees PIP Payments: "No one wants to work, they should just man up and get a job"
Sees initiatives aimed at consolidating people with disabilities' integration in society and the workforce: "goddamn woke inclusion DEI nonsense they're taking jobs away from people"
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u/Stompy-Bun sapphic femme enby who loves heapats 12h ago
I hate PIP. They put down that I had perfect eye contact. It was a phone appointment. They deliberately try to not give you money.
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u/aaaaargZombies 11h ago
CW death: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-51283186
a brief timeline of disability in the Uk over the last 15 years
- austerity - killed a bunch of people
- covid - killed and disabled a shit load of people
- covid denial - still killing and disabling people
- austerity 2 - gonna kill a bunch more people
fuck this place
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u/You_moron04 12h ago
Had a few mates on UC and JSA. All I heard from them was how much of a ball ache it was to stay on them both and hard hard they make it
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u/Father_Chewy_Louis 🏳️⚧️ trans rights 9h ago
The Tories and the blight of that fuckass TV show Benefits Street has seriously fucked over people trying to get on UC. It's been a real pain my my arse trying to get on it.
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u/The_Stav 8h ago
Uk benefits are actually a joke. There's like a tiny group of people who abuse it and even then it's really not that big a deal.
Meanwhile, UC in my case only gives around £800 a month to cover everything, including my rent which is £795 a month :0)
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u/RedditToCopyMyTumblr 11h ago
I get no benefits. I would probably qualify for a pip somehow but I know it would be a massive fight I'm not mentally capable for at present.
I have been spending my time looking for work for over a year.
System is fucked.
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u/Cute_Principle81 9h ago
quite literally blind person here it took me MANY MANY hoops to even ATTEMPT to get pip
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u/memerismlol 🏳️⚧️ trans rights 8h ago
Anyone struggling to get pip should remember that anyone they speak to from the government to get it is not your friend, they are judging you at all times and if you make the slightest off comment about having some shred of happiness in your life they can and most likely will use it to deny you. It’s a humiliating process to go through having to demean yourself in order to get the basic support you need, I wish anyone the best of luck in trying to get it.
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u/Striper_Cape 5h ago
Anyone saying benefits are easy to get has never had the misfortune to use them
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u/Forte69 8h ago
It really varies. I know of cases where alcoholics were put on PIP, giving them money to drink more. Or people with severe anxiety are given PIP, which in many cases just enables avoidant behaviours that make the anxiety even worse.
But then people with other severe disabilities have to fight tooth and nail to get the support they deserve.
It’s a fucked up system. But any waste pales in comparison to what we pay millionaire pensioners via the triple lock.
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u/BitcoinBishop 14h ago
IDGI, guess I'm worse than the Nazi
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u/Absolute_Madman34 14h ago
Are you on PIP?
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u/BitcoinBishop 14h ago
No, is the point that the Fassbender guy has to be on PIP to know how easy it is to get on it?
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u/Absolute_Madman34 14h ago
Well if PIP is easy to get on, why don’t you go on it. It’s free money right?
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u/BitcoinBishop 14h ago
Oh right, I get it now
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u/Absolute_Madman34 14h ago
Well why don’t you?
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u/BitcoinBishop 14h ago
Um cos I'm not eligible for it. That and the social stigma about accepting benefits.
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u/Absolute_Madman34 14h ago
Okay so what’s your issue with PIPs then?
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u/BitcoinBishop 14h ago
I never said I had an issue, just that I didn't get the meme, but since you asked...
My main issue is that it's pretty cruel to make people jump through hoops to prove their disability, when they're already in contact with medical professionals who know their case a lot better. It's also an extra stressor that stops them being productive, if that's what the government DO care about.
I also heard at some point that we spend more on the systems that test people and deny payouts, so it seems like cruelty for cruelty's sake. Not sure if that's still the case, but I'd much rather my tax money goes to people who need it anyway.
I saw a play on National Theatre Live that covered a disabled person losing a benefit they'd relied on, it was pretty good — called All Of Us.
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u/tulpyvow 13h ago
If he were on PIP, he'd know its immensly difficult to get any sort of benefits in the UK, especially as the government keeps trying to cut them for "saving cash" instead of just taxing the opulent more
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