Absolute chaos in the news this week.

After overthrowing the Tories last July, Labour have decided…. To push ahead with disability benefit reforms. 

In particular, claimants with mental health problems are the most likely to see their benefits cut. Midlands shitrag Birmingham Live are now seemingly claiming that people are getting disability benefits for mental health conditions that they themselves have diagnosed… using TikTok videos. 

No, it does not work like that. You need to be assessed and diagnosed by a qualified psychologist or suchlike, hand over your psych assessment, sit a private assessment (that will usually be ran by someone in a different medical field) and find that in their 15 minutes with you they’ve contradicted everything that was written in your assessment that took WEEKS of sessions to compile. 

So, not only is the new government still fighting against us, but a good portion of the press is too. 

The government were warned these reforms would harm. Both governments. The Tories also decided to sit on a critical PIP report, just days before publishing a brutal green paper on the subject a year ago. Their plan at the time, which thankfully wasn’t enacted, was to replace PIP with supermarket vouchers - of course, Tory donor supermarkets only. 

Instead of taxing the 166 billionaires in the country – people who have amassed £1 million a THOUSAND times over, EACH… Labour decided to punch down at the most vulnerable in society. 

Cheers. 

I’m on the verge of writing to my MP about this, although what good it will do I don’t know. You overthrow one tyrant, only to have another – seemingly worse – one take his place. It’s Animal Farm all over again. 

The Public Accounts Committee – which examines the value for money of government projects - described the Department of Work and Pensions‘ treatment of disability benefits claimants as “unacceptably poor”. They were warned these reforms would be ‘devastating,’ yet Labour are going ahead with it anyway. 

What a way to stab your voters in the back. 

I got my job through the Workstep scheme, a now defunct employment programme for people with disabilities. The job, which I secured in 2007, has always been part time admin. They’re good public sector employers, but the wage just does not cover the bills. Disability benefits are a lifeline for me. If these plans go ahead, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I sure as shit couldn’t afford to run Meetups. The site is expensive if you want to be an organiser. That’s 3 Meetup groups - entire social circles, for many people – nuked. Plus a life as a hermit for me. 

So what do you do? I’m not going to just sit here and aggregate news articles. I’m working with Social Prescribing to see what, if anything, I can do. 

Beyond that, I’ll just have to see what happens.