Stef Benstead

Christian interested in disability, poverty, welfare, & justice.
Author: Just Worship; Second Class Citizens.
Chronically ill/ELCI: hEDS, PoTS & fibro/?SFN.

[Thomas H. 💙 @THemingford]

Cutting welfare does not reduce disability, illness, caring responsibilities, or housing costs. Those realities remain. The question is whether the costs are met early through support or later through crisis, deterioration, and emergency intervention.

[Thomas H. 💙 @THemingford]

Cut welfare to the bone and you do not create a stronger economy. You create unpaid bills, empty tills, worsening health, deeper poverty, and more pressure on councils, the NHS, charities, schools, and families. Poverty is expensive. Extreme poverty is even worse.

[Katie @Kitty_On_Wheels]

Poverty + inadequate support are already destroying disabled people's lives

It has destroyed mine

Yet we have media/politicians who do nothing but misrepresent disability benefits AND ignore mountain of evidence of inadequate support + opportunities

Anyone can become disabled

[Thomas H. 💙 @THemingford]

A country that spends too little preventing poverty ends up spending far more dealing with its consequences. Prevention is cheaper than crisis. That is true in healthcare, housing, disability support, and the wider economy.

[David__Osland @David__Osland]

I'd rather vote for a Labour MP who wants the rich to be taxed so that benefits don't get cut than a Labour MP who wants benefits to be cut so the rich don't get taxed

[Stef Benstead @StefBenstead]

@ScribblerPen @GaynorGled94272 @johnpringdns It doesn't feel like we have a SoS for DWP either, given that the current one seems to think his remit is to pull Social Security apart for the sake of rich people rather than ensure it is properly resourced for those who need it.

[Stef Benstead @StefBenstead]

@LoftusSteve @KShabby16334956 Absolutely any time I want to use cash as a mechanism for managing my money, because I can physically see how much I've got.
Any time I want to use cash to give someone a present.
Any time I want to buy a Christmas cake that contains alcohol, or chocolates that have alcohol.

[Stef Benstead @StefBenstead]

@LoftusSteve @KShabby16334956 Paying my carer, who takes cash.
Paying the people who are training my assistance dog, who are standard dog trainers and therefore potentially come under 'luxury' not 'essential' for the 'voucher' system.
Paying for medical supplements that might be deemed non-essential.

[Stef Benstead @StefBenstead]

@buc97552 Because currently it sounds like a lot of people are very upset that a tapered, targeted Social Security system means that working people on a high income for their household size don't get SocSec which they don't need, whilst those who do need help still get some help.

[Stef Benstead @StefBenstead]

@buc97552 Or perhaps we could go with the current system: Social Security doesn't keep people out of poverty, but in Scotland may at least protect some against destitution; and it's always better to be in work, especially if that work pays £50k.
That strikes me as an acceptable balance.

[Stef Benstead @StefBenstead]

@LoftusSteve @KShabby16334956 Ah, so I should still need cash to pay for the many things that can't be bought with vouchers?
That rather seems to undermine the purpose of the vouchers.

[Stef Benstead @StefBenstead]

@RDLaverty Neoliberal govts deliberately intend for unemployment to exist ('non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment').
Is it your position that having managed the economy to guarantee involuntary unemployment, govt should then refuse an (inadequate) alternative income to these ppl?

[Stef Benstead @StefBenstead]

@RDLaverty I'm sorry that you think it's profligate for a society to give income support to people who are too sick or disabled to work, are carers, or are looking for work but haven't yet found it.
What do you think should happen to these people in a modern, non-subsistence economy?

[Mason Dixon Autistic @MasonDAutistic]

Now McFadden has a point, in isolation, about asking the right questions. Questions always have presuppositions, which are generally accepted when an answer is given, but often one presupposition is included to bar an answer from challenging it, often by design.

[Stef Benstead @StefBenstead]

@NewsonTed How is a person trapped by having an alternative income source when they can't find work or can't work?
Surely the 'trap' is to make people so poor that they can't effectively look for work, they can't engage in training, or their health deteriorates because of poverty.

[Stef Benstead @StefBenstead]

@CutMyTaxUK @Jeremy_Hunt Morally, a 'cap' means that the govt actively worsens individual poverty right at the time when a person's family, friends, and community are also worst off; when jobs are scarcest and opportunities fewest. Right when SocSec could make a real difference, you want to ruin it.

[Stef Benstead @StefBenstead]

@CutMyTaxUK @Jeremy_Hunt A key economic reason that Social Security isn't capped nationally is that SocSec is an automatic stabiliser. J Hunt hopefully knows this, as a former Chancellor.
Practically, it would be a nightmare to administer, as SocSec # would vary each year with the economic circumstances