MILLIONS To Be ‘Stolen’ From Disabled Is Peak Labour Idiocy!

Right, so we’re back to benefits bashing by Keir Starmer’s Labour in what appears to be a tit for tat contest with the Tories as to who can devastate the lives of the long term sick and disabled more and Labour’s latest announcement will sadly take some beating and it isn’t just the long term sick and disabled in the firing line here, but anyone who’s wages are so low they need a top up just to get by because getting by itself may be about to become a complete contradiction in terms.
Where DWP boss Liz Kendall sets her sights firmly on those with mental health problems as not being ill enough to not look for work, work itself will increasingly not pay enough as housing benefit looks set to be frozen as rents very much do not stay still, affecting the lowest earners and younger workers who are less likely to be homeowners and where Universal Credit was once going to be abolished we were told, it will now very much stay even as a report from Disability News Service comes out detailing how the transition for disabled people from the former legacy benefit system to UC creates barrier singling them out particularly to be at risk of payment delays and mistakes, placing their health at risk even further and making them as a demographic the most at risk group of destitution. If you thought the Tories were bad, Starmer’s Labour are catastrophically worse.
Right, so Labour’s planned overhaul of the benefit system, social security as it should more correctly be called, the safety net of a civilised society that is there should we need it is was devastated under the Tories and nothing is changing under Labour either, if anything it is about to be made so much worse, the reforms being touted having nothing to do with supporting those with additional needs due to their health or disability, but instead is a blatant exercise in penny pinching from those with the least, those who need more support than most just to be able to live a dignified life. Nobody should be slammed, shamed or attacked for that, yet the ballooning benefit bill as it is constantly called in the media clearly has to be someone’s fault and kicking those painted too often as shirkers and not workers sells papers amongst the frothing right wing end of our billionaire owned mainstream media - though the new catchy moniker is sick of slack - and Starmer’s Labour are constantly crawling to them for a positive headline, even as their readers seem more and more intent on voting for Nigel Farage’s gang of Trump worshippers instead.
The narrative hasn’t changed from the Tories day either, because instead of supporting people to find work if they can, the long term sick must be made to look for work now and it’s telling that no longer do many of these news outlets refer to this demographic as the long term sick and disabled, so often the and disabled bit is dropped off, I don’t know if anyone watching has noticed this as well, because it shift to paint people who have gone on the sick for whatever reason, to staying on it unnecessarily long and it sort of lumps people in with disabilities into this propagandising tactic as I see it, but someone with lifelong disabilities isn’t long term sick, they are permanently disabled, not necessarily sick at all, but they still may not be able to work, so watch out for that narrative, it is considering the disabled still under this long term sickness heading, because they then go on to talk about sickness benefits, many of which disabled people claim themselves, but also painting disability benefits as sickness benefits too as well as fudging what those payments are actually for, for example Personal Independence Payment, is getting tightened up, but for many disabled people this is what literally lets them access work and for others, is literally the difference between being able to leave the house or not.
Liz Kendall, the DWP Minister, so the new Dr Death if she pushes ahead with any of the plans under consideration right now, is adamant the system is broken, give her a lollipop for stating the bloody obvious, but it isn’t broken because too many people are claiming, it is broken, because the obsession is to not help these people and coerce them back into work, when many would love to work and cannot for whatever reason and those reasons, those underlying issues are where the crisis is, are where the long term return to economic prosperity and growth are, but by ignoring that, looking to just save money by making cuts, you will instead just make more people ill, especially when it comes to mental health. These plans will do the precise opposite of encouraging people back into work and will instead see more people unable to whilst also finding it ever harder to get the help, both financial and health-wise to get them back on their feet.
So what is Kendall considering then? None of this is set in stone as yet, none of this has been settled on, but if this is the direction of thinking, whatever does come down the line will be no good for anyone.
I mentioned Personal Independence Payment a moment ago, well once again the eligibility criteria is planned to be tightened up, because there’s no more surefire way of throwing people off the support they need than by claiming your health issues simply don’t count anymore. With social care and mental health funding still pathetically low, it very much comes to something when the government plans to basically send out a message of pull yourself together, stop being a wimp, heck, why not go all the way with work will set you free? Health issues like anxiety and depression which can be absolutely debilitating are now going to be a lot harder to qualify for PIP, money which may pay for transport needs, may pay for a carer to come and see you, help you out, help you go out, help you access the help you need to get better, so to cut it is just stupidity incarnate, but when the alternative is to tax the rich and the lobbyists, it’s obvious there really is no change between Starmer’s Labour and the Tories who came before despite the claims they campaigned upon.
One suggested change coming forwards that might on the face of it cheer claimants would be an end to the assessments to qualify for PIP, replaced by ongoing medical evidence being supplied. The catch here is doctors, already slammed, may struggle to keep up with constant additional admin and we also need to ask who is reading the medical evidence, are they qualified to make a medical judgement based off of that, whilst also making judgements over fitness to work as well and with the idea also being floated of scrapping work capability assessments too, so both lots of assessments essentially getting abolished, that goes double. But it gets even worse than that yet.
If you’re not deemed to be looking for work sufficiently hard whilst being long term sick, you may see your benefits reduced to make you look harder. Doesn’t matter if you can’t and are struggling to prove it, your life will be made harder, your income will reduce, all adding to health issues you might already have.
Add onto that the potential scrapping of the limited capability for work group of Employment Support Allowance or the associated element of Universal Credit, so that unless you are determined to be utterly unable to work, you’ll be expected to keep looking for it rather than focus on whatever your health issue is. Have you just had an operation? Cancer treatment? Better not hang around getting back to work.
Even those with full on disabilities who get PIP might not keep it much longer. If you work and use your PIP to help you access the workplace, the government may be about to means test it, meaning you might be worse off for actually working. They may also do away with regular payments replacing them with one off payments, and if you have a mobility car, well how will that work?
The ideas being floated are all punishments for being sick or disabled, rather than anything addressing underlying causes for that, like working several jobs just to make ends meet, extortionate rents your wages can’t keep up with, the mental health toll all of that has. And whilst on the subject of rents, in come housing benefit freezes, the preference being to make your life harder, make your wages that don’t stretch far enough stretch further, to keep up with rent that will go up, rather than taxing the rich to make up the shortfall. Labour punishing the worst off to let the rich get richer, the party of the working class folks, it can’t collapse fast enough if this is what passes for that now, a bunch of red Tories as callous and cruel as the last lot and Disability News Service have highlighted how aside from this, just moving onto the supposed to be abolished Universal Credit could damage lives of those with extra needs in an article titled ‘Universal credit barriers mean disabled women face ‘terrifying’ risk of destitution, MPs are warned.’ Here’s an excerpt:
‘The disabled women’s organisation WinVisible told the Commons work and pensions committee in an open letter of its serious concerns about the impact of the migration of employment and support allowance (ESA) claimants onto universal credit…
One ESA claimant, who is severely ill with cancer and was told she only had a year to live, was told she still had to make a claim for universal credit, and it was only after WinVisible helped her complain that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) agreed to cancel her migration notice.
A domestic abuse survivor with ME, anxiety and trauma was told she would have to make a claim for universal credit (UC) despite having told DWP she would not be able to cope with it.
A third woman, who is awaiting major surgery, told WinVisible how DWP helpline staff verbally abused and shouted at her when she requested a third extension to her UC claim deadline.
Even after the extension was agreed, she received three phone calls and messages from DWP during NHS appointments that told her to start the claim, leaving her with “anxiety, panic attacks and heart palpitations”.
A disabled mother of two children under five was left panic-stricken after she was given the wrong payment on moving to UC, and then had to rely on WinVisible to prevent DWP – which had already agreed as a reasonable adjustment that she did not need to have face-to-face meetings because of severe anxiety – from sending someone to her house to verify her claim.
A fifth disabled woman, who is unable to visit her jobcentre, was told there was a six-week wait for a home visit to verify her identity.
After she complained, DWP said the verification could take place by phone, but it then refused to extend her UC claim deadline after a family member died.’
Nothing has changed at the DWP under Labour, if anything things may get catastrophically worse for so many people. Don’t fall for the rancid justifications again, enough is enough, everyone deserves to be able to live is safety, security and dignity and this is a rich country that can afford to provide that, if the billionaires who have hoarded 40% of the nations wealth were forced to cough up their fair share for a change, instead of pumping rancidness like this in the papers they own and via the politicians who’s backsides are also bought and paid for.
Anyone would think to be honest that Starmer’s lot simply wished all the long term sick and disabled would go away, and given the other plans they’ve come out with in the last week or so which amounts to ethnic cleansing in Britain of British people, well who’d put it past them to get even worse about it? Check out the details of that story in this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch. Please do also hit like, share and subscribe before you do so though so as to not miss out on new daily content and also to help support the channel which is very much appreciated and I will hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.