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Brianne
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Joined February 2022
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The government is quietly engineering a lethal trap for disabled people, and they are disguising it as "welfare reform."
Abolishing the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) to make PIP the single, exclusive gateway for health-related Universal Credit by 2028/29 is not a policy tweak. It is a calculated, malicious act of state cruelty designed to eradicate the safety net entirely.
Look at the sheer scale of the cliff-edge being manufactured:
There are currently over 1.1 million people receiving LCW, LCWRA, or ESA who do not have the Daily Living component of PIP. Crucially, nearly half a million (469,920) of those exact claimants have already been dragged through a humiliating PIP assessment and failed it.
PIP and the WCA measure two entirely different realities. PIP assesses if you need financial help to wash, dress, or navigate your home etc. The WCA assesses if your health legally prevents you from holding down a job.
By aggressively insisting PIP serves as the solitary threshold for both benefits, the DWP is maliciously deciding that over a million profoundly sick, neurodivergent, and disabled citizens are suddenly "fit for work" by default.
Let us be absolutely clear about what this actually means:
1. Total Financial Blackout: People enduring severe, fluctuating chronic illnesses, neurodivergence, or disabling mental health crises who fail the notoriously rigged, adversarial PIP process will have their health-related uplifts instantly severed.
2. Punitive Harassment: Stripped of their protected status, hundreds of thousands of sick people will be violently shoved into standard Universal Credit conditionality. Imagine being in a rolling, debilitating physical crash, and being legally mandated to spend 35 hours a week job hunting and attending arbitrary Jobcentre interrogations.
3. Weaponised Starvation: When our bodies inevitably give out, and we fail to meet their impossible, ableist demands, the DWP will sanction us. They will freeze our basic subsistence allowance and starve us out.
4. State-Sanctioned Deaths: Let’s stop sugarcoating the reality of these policies. We already know the devastating, blood-stained correlation between aggressive DWP conditionality, financial starvation, and suicides. Forcing deeply vulnerable people through this punitive meat grinder will directly cause severe psychological collapse and a catastrophic, preventable loss of life.
Advocacy groups are already warning that over 900,000 people will be hit by this exact "double whammy" of losing both benefits simultaneously.
And this is those who are currently in power.
This is not about "getting Britain working." This is about wiping disabled people off the ledger by starving us into submission or into the grave.
We are not your scapegoats, and we are not expendable.
#ChangingTheNarrative #PunchDownMedia #TakingThePip
I know the Work Capability Assessment is horrendous
But what Labour plan to do is *much worse*
Their plan is to "decouple financial support from capability to work"
Their plan will mean 100,000s who would qualify now as too ill or disabled to work will be deemed "fit for work"
@WizkidCoder I'm wondering what it means for those who are on PIP but didn't pass their WCA. Does that mean that those on PIP won't need to work? And also cost the government more!
The government is quietly engineering a lethal trap for disabled people, and they are disguising it as "welfare reform."
Abolishing the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) to make PIP the single, exclusive gateway for health-related Universal Credit by 2028/29 is not a policy tweak. It is a calculated, malicious act of state cruelty designed to eradicate the safety net entirely.
Look at the sheer scale of the cliff-edge being manufactured:
There are currently over 1.1 million people receiving LCW, LCWRA, or ESA who do not have the Daily Living component of PIP. Crucially, nearly half a million (469,920) of those exact claimants have already been dragged through a humiliating PIP assessment and failed it.
PIP and the WCA measure two entirely different realities. PIP assesses if you need financial help to wash, dress, or navigate your home etc. The WCA assesses if your health legally prevents you from holding down a job.
By aggressively insisting PIP serves as the solitary threshold for both benefits, the DWP is maliciously deciding that over a million profoundly sick, neurodivergent, and disabled citizens are suddenly "fit for work" by default.
Let us be absolutely clear about what this actually means:
1. Total Financial Blackout: People enduring severe, fluctuating chronic illnesses, neurodivergence, or disabling mental health crises who fail the notoriously rigged, adversarial PIP process will have their health-related uplifts instantly severed.
2. Punitive Harassment: Stripped of their protected status, hundreds of thousands of sick people will be violently shoved into standard Universal Credit conditionality. Imagine being in a rolling, debilitating physical crash, and being legally mandated to spend 35 hours a week job hunting and attending arbitrary Jobcentre interrogations.
3. Weaponised Starvation: When our bodies inevitably give out, and we fail to meet their impossible, ableist demands, the DWP will sanction us. They will freeze our basic subsistence allowance and starve us out.
4. State-Sanctioned Deaths: Let’s stop sugarcoating the reality of these policies. We already know the devastating, blood-stained correlation between aggressive DWP conditionality, financial starvation, and suicides. Forcing deeply vulnerable people through this punitive meat grinder will directly cause severe psychological collapse and a catastrophic, preventable loss of life.
Advocacy groups are already warning that over 900,000 people will be hit by this exact "double whammy" of losing both benefits simultaneously.
And this is those who are currently in power.
This is not about "getting Britain working." This is about wiping disabled people off the ledger by starving us into submission or into the grave.
We are not your scapegoats, and we are not expendable.
#ChangingTheNarrative #PunchDownMedia #TakingThePip
I know the Work Capability Assessment is horrendous
But what Labour plan to do is *much worse*
Their plan is to "decouple financial support from capability to work"
Their plan will mean 100,000s who would qualify now as too ill or disabled to work will be deemed "fit for work"
The criteria to receive PIP isn't low. I run a group for ADHD women, which has tens of thousands of members. The amount of people on there who have multiple health issues which impact their daily lives, ADHD included, but are rejected for PIP, is insane. This is what the tribunal is for, which is independent from DWP/PIP. I mean, my assessor undiagnosed my ADHD in my assessment (I still have the paperwork as it's laughable) and completely dismissed my mobility issues, and basically almost everything else. I'm not even receiving the PIP I'm entitled to, and I'm too scared to rock the boat as I know thousands of people whose PIP claim was closed through doing this. And not to mention having to provide a lot of medical evidence. I've been through it personally, I've done two of my three children's DLA claims, and I've helped hundreds, if not thousands, of people through their PIP claims and children's DLA claims.
Look at the statistics for how many people's claims are rejected until tribunal.
The "feeling amongst most" comes from inflated statistics, and the govt and media attempting to push this to ensure that their cuts are agreed with by the majority. If anything, the fact that there are people on LCW/LCWRA whilst not receiving PIP, or being rejected even though they have cancer, chronic health conditions that severely impact them etc, shows that the criteria isn't narrow at all.
I am so sorry you are going through this. I had a very similar nightmare with UC. Before November 2023, I ran a high-earning business and attended university. Then a severe health issue nearly unalived me, and my life changed overnight.
I became housebound and a fall risk with ME/CFS and hypersomnia, yet the Jobcentre constantly hounded me to turn up. I had to fight just to get phone calls instead of video calls on days I was too sick to be on camera. The worst part was WCA cancelling my assessments twice, but still telling UC I was "fit for work," leading to repeated sanction threats. It took a year of fighting and a 6-month fit note from my GP to finally get them to listen.
Like you, I wish I could work. I wish I could walk without falling or do my hobbies like painting without my energy instantly depleting. We didn't choose this.
To make it worse, they now want to abolish disability benefits for under-22s. I have two disabled children (6 and 8). The extra costs for equipment, heating, and hospital trips are already extortionate and barely covered by DLA. Losing that support as they grow up will cripple families.
These proposals are sick, twisted, and disgusting. You are not alone in this fight.
Exactly this. You have hit the nail on the head. The financial loss is horrific, but the conditionality is what makes this policy truly dangerous.
PIP does not measure systemic fatigue, the side effects of chemotherapy (like someone said), or fluctuating illnesses. By making it the only gateway, people who are genuinely too sick to work will be thrown into the standard claimant group. When they inevitably cannot attend Jobcentre appointments or log 35 hours of job searching because they are physically wiped out, they will be sanctioned.
It is essentially a system designed to set sick people up to fail, and then financially punish them for it. They absolutely have to keep a separate assessment for work capability.
Absolutely not. According to the DWP’s own statistics, actual PIP fraud is 0.4%. It is statistically classed as 0%. Out of roughly 4 million PIP claimants, that is barely 16,000 people. It is a drop in the ocean, not a systemic crisis.
You also don't just ask for PIP and get it. People are put through deeply invasive, hostile, and degrading assessments. The idea that people who "don't need it" are somehow slipping through this brutal system is a total myth.
The government and media purposely inflate this "fraud" narrative to create a divide between taxpayers and disabled people. It’s a divide-and-conquer tactic so they can push these vile cuts through without a fight. You are blaming a statistical ghost instead of the government.
@ZephyrBluePaddy I know exactly how you're feeling, and you're not alone. Please don't give up 🖤. The system, the government, and the media rely on us feeling hopeless so we stop fighting. That's why so many of us are making noise and fighting back right now. We are doing this together 🫶🏻
I am so incredibly sorry. This policy is genuinely sick. It completely ignores the reality and exhaustion of daily chemo.
The fact that this government is designing a system that forces a stage 4 cancer patient into mandatory job-seeking is the height of cruelty. And the terrifying part is the conditionality: if you are too exhausted to complete 35 hours of job searching or attend Jobcentre appointments, or work, they will sanction your basic income.
You deserve protection and peace, not this.
But that completely ignores equity. The whole point of things like PIP is to level the playing field so we aren't financially penalised just for existing.
If you give both me and a non-disabled guy called Bob a flat £1,200 a month, Bob can spend his disposable income on his needs + wants, and feeling comfortable that he can pay his bills. I have to spend mine paying for travel costs to the hospital 12+x a month, higher heating bills, medical equipment, medication etc. I am immediately vastly worse off and probably wouldn't even have enough to pay the electric bill.
PIP isn't even an out-of-work benefit; millions work full-time while claiming it. If you make a universal income generous enough to cover the extra £1,000+ a month it costs to be disabled, you're handing Bob a massive unnecessary surplus. If you don't, you plunge disabled people straight into poverty. That's exactly why those specific costs have to be separated. Equity.
This sounds lovely in theory, but a flat tax top-up completely erases the financial penalty of being disabled. Scope's data shows it costs an extra £1,000+ a month just to survive with a disability. A basic top-up doesn't cover essential care or running medical equipment.
It also isn’t that people "won't" work. PIP fraud is just 0.4%. Statistically zero. Claimants already provide masses of medical evidence and undergo degrading assessments. LCW/LCWRA means those who literally cannot work are protected, and fraud there is also insanely low.
Latest ONS data shows 1.77m unemployed people chasing just 702k vacancies (1 job for every 2.5 people). Forcing 1.1m sick people on LCW/LCWRA into job-seeking means 2.9m people chasing 702k jobs. The maths just doesn't work.
@Darren800 @HenryRiley1 @LBC 100%. The media would rather chase clickbait than cover the actual government pushing a million disabled people off a financial cliff.
And there are also those providing 24/7 care.
There are 168 hours in a week. At £86.45, that works out to 51p an hour.
Because the system refuses to pay for more than one person regardless of caring responsibilities, my husband cares for 3 of us, two needing round-the-clock, 24/7 care, all on that exact same single £86.45 payment.
That works out to £28.82 a week per person, or a sickening 17p an hour.
Carers aren't just denied the right to rest; the state relies on our families providing relentless, 24/7 unpaid specialised labour under the guise of an "allowance" that wouldn't cover a single decent meal.
#ChangingTheNarrative #PunchDownMedia #TakingThePip
More than 1 in 3 carers in the latest survey provide over 100 hours of care a week. Carer’s Allowance: £86.45. That’s 86p an hour. A paid worker doing 100 hours at min wage would earn £1,271 & employment law actually gives workers rights to rest. Where are carers’ rights to rest?
Helen Whatley MP spends every day bashing disabled people online and calling them scroungers.
She has claimed for almost £2,000,000 on expenses since 2015.
£300,000 of this are for her own travel and accommodation etc, yet she lives 50 miles from London.
The Government's Find-a-job website currently has 110,505 jobs available across GB. Of those 12,361 are Disability confident jobs. Stephen Timms has regularly told disabled people they can work from home. Currently there are 36 remote jobs available that are disability confident. Of those only 9 are part-time. 20-25% of the working age population are disabled.
When politicians and the press deliberately weaponise disability statistics to manufacture a cultural divide, the inevitable result is callers like Nick on @LBC demanding the return of Victorian poorhouses. Nick proudly stated he wants to strip PIP from every single disabled person so they cannot live "comfortably," before bizarrely claiming that PIP is "completely different from a disability benefit."
This staggering ignorance does not happen in a vacuum. It is the direct consequence of MPs and the media lying, embellishing, and inflating statistics to scapegoat the vulnerable. When you relentlessly frame disabled citizens as an economic drain, you actively incite hostility. The pipeline from inflammatory political rhetoric to angry radio calls directly feeds the very real surge in disability hate crimes, transitioning rapidly from vitriolic words to physical violence.
Yet, @LBC is entirely complicit in this pipeline. Nick is a known "frequent flyer": a caller who treats demanding the systemic starvation of disabled people as a dedicated hobby. He has been permitted to broadcast this exact brand of performative cruelty across the station. By continually platforming repeat offenders to generate cheap outrage and social media engagement, LBC is actively emboldening ableist hate. You are trading the safety and dignity of disabled people for ratings, and the real-world ramifications for our community are devastating.
So, let us educate the Nicks of this country:
PIP is not an unemployment benefit. It is a non-means-tested, statutory safeguard designed to help cover the exorbitant extra costs of living with severe illnesses and profound disabilities. You are legally entitled to it whether you are working full-time or permanently unable to work.
Furthermore, Nick's arrogant challenge that he will simply "apply for PIP" to see how quickly he gets it is laughable. It exposes a profound lack of comprehension regarding a gruelling, humiliating, and heavily scrutinised assessment process that demands extensive medical evidence of severe functional impairment. You do not just ask for it. You are subjected to rigorous interrogation to prove your daily suffering.
We will not sit quietly while our lifelines are threatened and our existence is debated for entertainment.
#ChangingTheNarrative #PunchDownMedia #TakingThePip
‘To say that no disabled person should get any kind of benefit…’
Iain Dale thinks caller Nick is the ‘most uncaring person’ he has ever spoken to after hearing his stance on PIP.
The sheer audacity of dictating who has "paid enough into the system" to deserve basic survival. How exactly do you quantify the unpaid, round-the-clock labour of carers raising disabled children, or those sacrificing their own incomes to nurse dying relatives?
Where exactly is the line drawn? What about citizens who work for decades until a sudden health crisis temporarily floors them? What about those of us whose fluctuating conditions force a debilitating crash? Are we suddenly unworthy of the safety net we funded?
You demand people "go back to work", but to what jobs? As of September 2026, UK vacancies have plummeted for the eighth consecutive quarter to 702,000 - the lowest level since early 2021. You completely broke the job market, and now you are punishing the public for your failure.
You conveniently ignore the people desperately applying but who simply cannot secure a role. The graduates trapped in a shrinking economy whose degrees mean little. The neurodivergent individuals passed over because their communication styles do not fit the rigid expectations of standard interviews.
Then there is the "fraud" myth weaponised to justify these degrading prepaid cards. The DWP's own 2023/24 statistics reveal that overpayments strictly due to fraud account for a mere 2.8% of total welfare expenditure.
You are threatening financial control and sweeping 30% cuts against the 97.2% of completely legitimate claimants, across all walks of life, just to mask your own catastrophic economic mismanagement. The British public is not your scapegoat.
I'm so glad the Tories aren't in power right now.
#ChangingTheNarrative #PunchDownMedia #TakingThePip
Those who can work, should work.
That’s why the next Conservative Government will cut benefits for those who refuse to get back to work and introduce a “Back to Work” card restricting what they can spend benefits on, saving taxpayers £538 million a year.
Ash Sarkar, "Every time we've had these squeezes on welfare recipients, what we've actually seen, rather than dealing with issues like long-term unemployment, is an increase in child poverty, and in-work poverty as well"
"Half of all NEETs are not receiving welfare of any kind.. There's a crisis of opportunity and a crisis of purpose"
"There are 140 applicants for the average graduate job opportunity.. That's the worse it has been since 1991"
"It's up to successive governments that have failed to create opportunities for young people in this country"
My view: It's been around 10% for decades
Britain cannot punish its way into prosperity. If work is meant to be the route out of poverty, it must be available, secure, accessible and pay enough to live on.
For too long, governments have responded to economic failure by blaming those locked out of opportunity. The real solution is investment in decent jobs, skills, healthcare, mental-health support and affordable homes, not cutting support and pretending hardship is an employment policy.
It is very clear that Naomi Fisher has some awful views. Her ableism shines through here and it is unacceptable. She paints poor parents as being thick, middle class families as being undeserving of benefits. Also she does not understand how PIP assessments work.
You are using a single "anecdote" to pit disabled people against each other and gatekeep what constitutes a "real" disability. I have an 8 year old who is a full-time wheelchair user, with no feeling or movement in the lower half of her body due to being born with spina bifida, hydrocephalus, chiari malformation type 2, syringomyelia and she's Autistic, and a 6 year old who is autistic with ADHD. Both have the cognitive awareness of a baby.
You claim mothers of children with ADHD use Blue Badges "despite having no need to do so". Let me educate you: my 6 year old requires one just as urgently as my wheelchair-using daughter because he has zero sense of danger and will actively bolt into moving traffic.
The Department for Transport explicitly expanded Blue Badge criteria in 2019 to include hidden disabilities like autism and ADHD. The legislation specifically protects individuals who are a constant safety risk to themselves near vehicles or in car parks. The badge literally stops children like mine from being killed.
Posing as a philosopher asking "what is real disability" while publicly invalidating statutory safety measures for neurodivergent children isn't insightful. It's dangerously ignorant. Stop using your platform to police legal accommodations you clearly lack the basic competence to understand.
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