Right, so as the Tories decide to begin the week by rounding up asylum seekers like cattle ahead of planned deportations to Rwanda, it seems that isn’t quite enough on it’s own as benefits bashing in the run up to local elections this week and of course a general election at some point this year, if Rishi Sunak can stop running away from it, is flavour of the month once more, because ensuring people who get by on the bare minimum, even despite having additional needs being told they’re going to lose even more is a sure vote winner amongst the hare-brained getting something for nothing obsessives we seem even now to have too many of. As life gets tougher for us all, some seem incapable after 14 years of the Tories doing that to us, to put two and two together and attribute the blame to them, some still think its those on benefits, even if they are disabled.
A shrinking minority of people I would hope, but certainly enough that the Tories still think they are a demographic to appeal to and to do that, DWP boss Mel Stride has told such a whopping stinker of a lie about how much people claiming Personal Independence Payment get, he either doesn’t understand his own brief, or doesn’t care to. Too thick or too ignorant, the damage is the same when this wrecks people’s lives and actually recklessly endangers them too.
Right, so that was the latest Dr Death in charge of the Department for Work and Pensions there, Mel Stride, talking about the blunt instrument that is Personal Independence Payment, or PIP. According to Stride, it is worth thousands of pounds a month. Can you imagine how people might receive that news? By virtue of a disability, these people, going by what the minister there said, are getting more money than some people do at the end of the month when their wages come in. Can you imagine how some people will react to that? I don’t have to imagine, as a carer when I’ve been out with my disabled wife or daughter, I’ve seen reactions when we pull up in the blue badge spaces and what some people feel emboldened to say to their faces, usually before I’m noticed it has to be said, to which they get the same response I’m going to give to Mel Stride, because clearly he doesn’t know what he is talking about, he is either too thick, or too ignorant to know his own brief, or he’s lying intentionally to ramp up support for more benefit cuts amongst people so dumbed down from reading right wing hate rags, the sort of people who think it is right and just to accost people in the street, by promoting more ill feeling towards them. What the hell do you think you’re doing you clueless, dangerous individual?
So let’s shred Mel Stride’s claims here, because they can’t be allowed to stand. First off, PIP is not worth thousands of pounds a month. We’re in April, so if we talk in terms of the maximum possible award here for a moment, PIP is awarded based on two components, a daily living component, the higher rate, for the maximum award, now worth £108.55 a week and a mobility component, the higher rate of which is worth £75.75 a week. PIP is paid every 4 weeks, so this amounts to a maximum possible 4 weekly, so a monthly near as damn it amount of £737.20. Here’s another nugget of info before I move on. Despite nearly being in May, not one PIP claimant in the country has received that amount yet. Why? The DWP, Mel Stride’s department, pay PIP a month in arrears, so the new values won’t kick in until next month. The maximum amount anyone got this month was based on last years rates, which is a maximum 4 weekly amount of £691.
Of those people who get that maximum award, many will have a Motability vehicle, Motability being a car leasing charity, who in exchange for the maximum mobility component of the award, will lease the disabled person in question a car. You have to have the maximum mobility component award to get the car. If you get the lower rate of mobility, you can’t lease one, but obviously it would help with public transport costs to make your life easier. So if you need a car, the maximum award you might get in cash terms every 4 weeks, is just £434.20. Not thousands of pounds Mel Stride. People might not qualify for the mobility component at all, they might only get the daily living component, which could by up to £434.20 ever 4 weeks, but if you get the lower rate, that’s £302.60. Where the higher rate of the mobility component is now £303, it could on the lower rate, be just £114.80. You might only get one component or the other, depending on your needs because that’s the biggest thing with disability, even amongst people with the same sort of disability, or life affecting illness, it affects people in different ways and to different extents.
Gone are the days when doctors decided these things, those people most familiar with our health issues and in comes PIP with it’s assessors, many of which are not medically trained, the entire idea of the benefit change to PIP and to Universal Credit from the prior system, which although it had its faults, wasn’t in itself designed to remove support, was to reduce the welfare bill, which necessitates by its very remit, the throwing off of some people from the benefits they should actually be entitled to. Getting through PIP assessments, which require a massive form to be filled out and an assessment, which on one hand decides if you’re eligible for anything and if so to what extent based on a one size fits all points system, which, given disability doesn’t work like that, you can see how the Tories have engineered their benefit bill reduction.
You have to realise what people use this money for. These are people who cannot get around as normal perhaps. A wheelchair user for example might need their mobility car to get to work and without it, they wouldn’t be able to work. Were you under the impression at this point that PIP was an out of work benefit perhaps? No it isn’t, it is totally non means tested and there to support people in work as well as out of it. People with mental health issues who have qualified might use this money to pay for counselling and therapies of varying sorts. Others might have adaptations that need to be bought and then maintained. Mel Stride spoke of rails, trying to sell his plans of replacing regular PIP payments for some people with one off adaptation grants, but say somebody needs a stairlift. It used to be that, especially if you lived in a housing association or council property, that maintenance of stairlifts and power lifts and through the floor lifts were included in the housing benefit, the landlord in these instances paid for an annual service. The Tories removed that too. So having an adaptation is one thing, but keeping it working then becomes another.
Fundamentally, removing the regular payments to people as a move to reduce the welfare bill further, will only serve to isolate people, damage their health further, increase mental health issues, which the government are especially keen to crack down on, believing standard life stresses are being diagnosed as mental health issues warranting extra financial support, never once is it occurring to these depraved thickos that their actions are directly contributing to the rise in cases.
There are 3.3m people on PIP in this country. 14 years of Tory rule has seen that number rise to that, but in a country of 67m people, it’s not a lot of people who qualify all things considered and you have to consider other drivers like the fallout from the pandemic amongst that too, Long Covid being a real ongoing issue for many people, but equally as I said before, a lot of these people will be working and stripping them of their ability to work, by cutting the additional support they need to meet their additional needs is false economy all the way. That should be obvious, but the Tories are solely focused now on trying to appeal for votes of course. Instead of handing out sweeteners, it’s now seen as a vote winner to attack minority demographics and paint them as part of a something for nothing culture. Mel Stride telling the world on BBC News that disabled people are getting thousands of pounds every month when all they need is a grab rail is reckless, it’s irresponsible, it’s a straight up lie and will anger people buying into that mantra and potentially endanger disabled people out in public as a result. We know it can and will happen, we’ve seen it before.
I eagerly await the UN report on UK disability, because it it is anything like other reports from the UN that have been done covering social security and disability support under the Tories, it will be damning and the Tories will deny it viciously, but it’ll be true. Take from someone who’s family have lived it for enough years to know.
In fact whether you’re in work or not you should be hearing alarm bells when it comes to the Tories attitude towards the sick, because they plan to effectively outlaw getting sick now. If you really think the disabled are your enemy, try getting a sick note from the doctor the next time you get ill, because all of a sudden, you’ll need an assessment for that. If this ever becomes law, you’ll find out what the long term sick and disabled have endured for years under the next government but it’ll be too late then after you gave your vote away to combat something fore nothing culture won’t it? That isn’t you so why are you getting treated like this? What did you do? Disability is nobody’s fault and it could happen to any of us, via illness and via accident, so don’t voter away something just because you don’t need it and I hope you never do, but be glad it exists if it does and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.