Imagine if government decided to pay part of the State Pension in vouchers which is their stated intention with the disability benefit called PIP.
No government would dare as they know the whole country not just the 12 million receiving £125 billion per year in State Pension would be outraged and rightly – So why are ‘the disabled’ fair game?
The consultation document, the Green Paper published last week is a radical attempt at overhauling the payment of disability benefit … for those of working-age whom government perceives as scroungers.
The Green Paper says nothing about the £8 billion per year paid out in pensioners disability benefit called Attendance Allowance or the £8 billion paid out in children’s disability benefit called DLA – which the former Prime Minister David Cameron received for his son whilst Prime Minister.
How dare you be ‘disabled’ if you are of working-age?
Bring back the “Spaz Chariot” is the Mel Stride Tory (and Labour Party) narrative!?
The working-age ‘disabled’ are frivolously spending disability benefit on other things is the government narrative of Mel Stride so instead of cash we will pay you in vouchers that can only be spent on whatever government approve … aka whatever deals government comes to with their private sector donors (and presumably through VIP channels like PPE?) who will supply the only ‘legitimate’ products – e.g. the “Spaz Chariot – all disabled persons need … aka Conservative Party donors want a guaranteed slice of the £22 billion paid out in PIP to disabled persons of working-age!
Of course once in place these private sector disability suppliers will lobby for a slice of the £8 billion per year paid out in pensioner disability benefit and the further £8 billion per year in child disability benefit as the political and economic principle is the same they will argue …
All of these private sector ‘white knights’ will want the same multi-million pound per year salary paid to the chief executive of Motability Group plc as reported here who grab all the mobility disability benefit to provide a lease car as it is an unfair monopoly that has always been sanctioned by government and was heavily and rightly criticised by the National Audit Office.
I have read and advised on dozens of government Green Papers over the last 30 years yet I have never seen one so offensive and knee-jerk deflection as the Modernising support for independent living: the health and disability green paper launched last week.
It seeks to change the non means-tested PIP into a means-test on amphetamines and goes further than even this by saying you can only spend it on whatever we choose and is paternalistic in the extreme and further assumes all disability needs are purely for grab rails and other adaptations as well as seeking to deny the ‘extra costs’ of day-to-day living that disabled households all have.
I know of a scientist who works full time in a nuclear facility – the very definition of a nuclear scientist – who gets the highest rates of Personal Independence Payment, and is one of the 16% of PIP recipients the Green Paper says who work. Cameron when Prime Minister rightly got DLA for his son!
If you are at home all day your utility bills will be higher. If you are incontinent or have night sweats your electricity costs of washing are far higher. If you are allergic or intolerant to foodstuffs your food costs are higher. These are so many other examples of the ‘extra costs’ faced by disabled households have been accepted for decades as the Scope report details here and is required reading yet the current government chooses to see disability as physical impairments only – the just give them a “spaz chariot” narrative.
Disgracefully government in the form of Mel Stride is targeting this narrative at the general public audience who are pissed off at seeing a driver emerge from a blue-badged car and being able to walk! How bloody well dare they1? And they walk far less than the ‘hard-working and ‘abled-family’ is forced to do to go into Tesco because only ‘spastics’ are allowed to park close to the entrance.
“The disabled” are scroungers. “The disabled” are taking the piss by hoodwinking medical specialists that they have a bad back and then frivolously spending what Mel Stride calls “thousands per month” on frivolous things like extra bedding and rubberized sheets and gluten-free diets when the maximum PIP is £800 per month … and also sees the same knowingly deceitful Mel Stride conflate incapacity benefits with disability benefits on TV and other media appearances when they are two very different and distinct benefits. Mel Stride further hammers home his specious narrative with all TV news outlets and DWP propagandist tweets and his conflated narratives.
Didn’t the 2012 change from DLA to PIP for working-age adults that the Conservatives introduced include constant re-assessments and disregard the opinion of a ‘mere’ GP with only a specialist consultant’s word on whether or not you have a ‘bad back’ count? Yep! The same PIP that Mel Stride is saying can be received by a claimant self-assessment? Yep!
For years the current government have been boasting about the highest numbers of people in work ever yet now we need to get all of the disabled and sick scroungers into work!? IF we have record numbers in employment as government claim and which is factual as a percentage of the eligible workforce then how can we have record numbers of scroungers who have a ‘sick note culture’ and are ‘disabled’ malingerers?
25 years ago the then Labour government decided to pay income support in vouchers to asylum seekers and caused a furore. It saw an asylum seeker give in a £5 voucher for a pint of milk and get no change! ‘The disabled’ are the new asylum seekers who by the way had a voucher entitlement equivalent to 70% of income support for their daily living tasks of food and travel etc. The Green Paper seeks the same scheme but on steroids by essentially prescribing what vouchers can be spent on!
Use your vouchers for a walking stick or a grab rail but you say you need diabetic socks or gluten free food! Stop taking the effing piss is the government dictat in the Green Paper. You have IBS and need to buy more toilet paper than the ‘normal’ person? Limit yourself to two sheets per arse wipe and cut your cloth is the government narrative shouted loud and clear!
How dare you blame the government for the more than doubling to 7 million waiting for an operation on NHS waiting lists for any part of the increase in disability claimants!?
How dare you blame the Tories radical 2012 change which replaced DLA for PIP and was overtly stated to take disability benefit off 500,000 households by making PIP much harder to claim and receive than the onerous DLA and a policy that has spectacularly failed1?
That screengrab above is from the DLA to PIP transfer which the government undertook in 2021 and comes from the impact assessment – a predetermined policy to say that half a million disability benefit recipeints are scroungers and 21% of them. We have been here before reader!!
Whatever planet Mel Stride and the government reside on isn’t plant Earth though they are treating disabled persons as aliens and equating them with asylum seekers as aliens with their voucher intentions.
All of the above is unfortunately apolitical as the very high probability of a Starmer government after the next election will likely see no change given that former shadow DWP Minister Rachel Reeves is likely to hold the purse strings as the Chancellor.
And …
Labour is the party of working people but not those out of work like the disabled ‘scrounger’ and whom Labour is going to be tougher on that the current Conservative government and its despotic known liars like Mel Stride.
Bringing back the “Spaz Chariot” or giving Attendance Allowance in vouchers for bingo cards?
If I was a betting man I’d say DLA vouchers for leg callipers is a good each way punt as polio and rickets are surely coming back and just as surely as TB and whooping cough have – so we can all return to the good old days of listening to a ventriloquist on the wireless as a pastoral cure for rickets … which politicians now adopt as the power pose. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde – “Imitation is the insincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to disabilities.”
Have they got rickets?
They are not alone …
Maybe they have all shit their pants and want to smell as badly as Donald J Trump?
It’s a tough choice as to which will be imposed first … but, hey, it’s all that THOSE disabled deserve is it not!?
Speye Joe 