Keir Starmer has backtracked on his proposed disability cuts, but only to the position of creating a two-tier disability system in which people who become disabled in the future face lose out.
And once there are two tiers, watch how long it takes before folk are shifted from the higher to the lower. Once we accept the lower tier we'll all be on it
I'm already on PIP but since moving from DLA I'm reassessed about once a year, despite having a chronic disability that hasn't improved. The details are pretty vague but I wouldn't be shocked if they use reassessment as a way to get people already on PIP to be moved to the new claimant tier. Not to mention any changes in condition, which people will be even less likely to inform the DWP about now incase it means they have to start a new claim.
You're not on your own sir. For the first time in my voting life, over 40 years, I spoiled my ballot. There wasn't a party, or candidate, I could in all conscience vote for. Crap the lot of them.
They seem to have decided that the Victorian workhouses were actually a good idea, but rather than rebuild them they're recreating them to operate as a "virtual" concept.
as an american who has watched the politics in the uk (and australia and new zealand) increasingly mirror the bullshit american political operatives get up to, i’d like to heartily state that kier starmer can go fuck himself.
What you are missing is that if you are currently claiming PIP, your award is made for 2, 3 or 5 years - even if you have permanent or degenerative conditions that guarantee 100% that your disabilities will never get any better.
At the end of your award, your claim is "reassessed"; if at any point your circumstances change, your claim will also be "reassessed"; and if someone at the DWP fucks up and you lose your PIP accidentally, they will require you to reapply - which counts as a new claim.
Despite the "concession" that those currently recieving PIP / UC HC would not have their benefits cut, the "government" were quietly forced to admit over the weekend (reported in the Canary, if I remember correctly) that those being reassessed/having to reclaim PIP/UC will be assessed under the new descriptors, have to meet the new point-scoring threshold, and will be awarded the new terminally inadequate amounts.
So, yes, they have "conceded" a two-tier system; but not for long.
Five years after this bill passes, everyone claiming PIP will be on the new, lethal, social-murder system.
Or, rather, won't be.
As a disabled person who is 100% a target of this lethal "reform", I pray to every God I don't believe in that they've misjudged this politically.
Because I'd bet my life that they are not doing this accidentally, simply unaware of the full impact these "reforms" will have on disabled people.
They know exactly what this will do because, while in opposition, many of the same individuals trying to railroad this through fought the Tories' while THEY did it - citing evidence proving the catastrophic harm cuts to disability benefits, and a punitive benefits system, caused the most vulnerable in our society.
So this self-styled "government" aren't going to change their minds about this: we are going to have to collectively fight them, outwit them, and FORCE them not to kill us.
This is me too. I am Pip and without it me and my wife would be in continuing debt and possibly destitution. But we give billions to Royals, big landowners, corporations, the wealthy generally and basically those who do not need any more. If that isn't the epitome of hypocrisy and injustice I really don't know what is.
Getting together might help. Networking and the like. I have been in regular touch with my local MP who absolutely opposes these cruel cuts and has and is voting against them. He has also used my personal story as part of a general email to many other people.
I do know this. They are trying to punish us for the greed and kleptocracy of the wealthy. We have no choice but to resist. What else can we do?
'unwilling to accept cruel economic sanctions on disabled people while the government continues lavishing tax breaks and handouts on the mega-rich.'
If you look at the history of wealth creation in the UK you'll find a number of recurring themes. Wealth is for the wealthy and generally not the rest of us. Social mobility is dangled like an out of focus carrot but withheld. Politics is there to manage those left behind. False morality is inverted so that the corrupt and venal are protected and the poor and disabled are punished in some kind of hypocritical morality. Dickens wrote about it eloquently and tellingly. Good becomes bad, bad becomes good. What also underpins it is a nauseating elitism which navel gazes at the great whilst despising the rest of us. It is writ large in the present Tory party, the establishment and to a lesser degree most of the political establishment as a whole.
And once there are two tiers, watch how long it takes before folk are shifted from the higher to the lower. Once we accept the lower tier we'll all be on it
I'm already on PIP but since moving from DLA I'm reassessed about once a year, despite having a chronic disability that hasn't improved. The details are pretty vague but I wouldn't be shocked if they use reassessment as a way to get people already on PIP to be moved to the new claimant tier. Not to mention any changes in condition, which people will be even less likely to inform the DWP about now incase it means they have to start a new claim.
I'm so annoyed.
I can't vote.
There is no party that even comes near where I stand.
Surely I can't be alone!
You're not on your own sir. For the first time in my voting life, over 40 years, I spoiled my ballot. There wasn't a party, or candidate, I could in all conscience vote for. Crap the lot of them.
They seem to have decided that the Victorian workhouses were actually a good idea, but rather than rebuild them they're recreating them to operate as a "virtual" concept.
As far as I’m concerned it should say Keir Starmer is unacceptable.
as an american who has watched the politics in the uk (and australia and new zealand) increasingly mirror the bullshit american political operatives get up to, i’d like to heartily state that kier starmer can go fuck himself.
What you are missing is that if you are currently claiming PIP, your award is made for 2, 3 or 5 years - even if you have permanent or degenerative conditions that guarantee 100% that your disabilities will never get any better.
At the end of your award, your claim is "reassessed"; if at any point your circumstances change, your claim will also be "reassessed"; and if someone at the DWP fucks up and you lose your PIP accidentally, they will require you to reapply - which counts as a new claim.
Despite the "concession" that those currently recieving PIP / UC HC would not have their benefits cut, the "government" were quietly forced to admit over the weekend (reported in the Canary, if I remember correctly) that those being reassessed/having to reclaim PIP/UC will be assessed under the new descriptors, have to meet the new point-scoring threshold, and will be awarded the new terminally inadequate amounts.
So, yes, they have "conceded" a two-tier system; but not for long.
Five years after this bill passes, everyone claiming PIP will be on the new, lethal, social-murder system.
Or, rather, won't be.
As a disabled person who is 100% a target of this lethal "reform", I pray to every God I don't believe in that they've misjudged this politically.
Because I'd bet my life that they are not doing this accidentally, simply unaware of the full impact these "reforms" will have on disabled people.
They know exactly what this will do because, while in opposition, many of the same individuals trying to railroad this through fought the Tories' while THEY did it - citing evidence proving the catastrophic harm cuts to disability benefits, and a punitive benefits system, caused the most vulnerable in our society.
So this self-styled "government" aren't going to change their minds about this: we are going to have to collectively fight them, outwit them, and FORCE them not to kill us.
This is me too. I am Pip and without it me and my wife would be in continuing debt and possibly destitution. But we give billions to Royals, big landowners, corporations, the wealthy generally and basically those who do not need any more. If that isn't the epitome of hypocrisy and injustice I really don't know what is.
Getting together might help. Networking and the like. I have been in regular touch with my local MP who absolutely opposes these cruel cuts and has and is voting against them. He has also used my personal story as part of a general email to many other people.
I do know this. They are trying to punish us for the greed and kleptocracy of the wealthy. We have no choice but to resist. What else can we do?
'unwilling to accept cruel economic sanctions on disabled people while the government continues lavishing tax breaks and handouts on the mega-rich.'
If you look at the history of wealth creation in the UK you'll find a number of recurring themes. Wealth is for the wealthy and generally not the rest of us. Social mobility is dangled like an out of focus carrot but withheld. Politics is there to manage those left behind. False morality is inverted so that the corrupt and venal are protected and the poor and disabled are punished in some kind of hypocritical morality. Dickens wrote about it eloquently and tellingly. Good becomes bad, bad becomes good. What also underpins it is a nauseating elitism which navel gazes at the great whilst despising the rest of us. It is writ large in the present Tory party, the establishment and to a lesser degree most of the political establishment as a whole.