thegeekgirl45

[thegeekgirl45]

[thegeekgirl45]

[thegeekgirl45]

[thegeekgirl45]

[thegeekgirl45]

[thegeekgirl45]

"Because I said so" straight up isn't as good an answer as you think it is.

[thegeekgirl45]

[thegeekgirl45]

[thegeekgirl45]

[thegeekgirl45]

[thegeekgirl45]

[thegeekgirl45]

[thegeekgirl45]

[thegeekgirl45]

I grew up in a family that depended on disability benefits. I remember the sobbing panic attack my mum had when David Cameron introduced austerity measures that meant my dad would be reassessed and might be declared "fit for work". My dad was diagnosed with a brain tumor when I was 1 year old and slowly declined despite surgery and treatment for 25 years until he died 3 years ago. There was no possible world where he would have been able to work, the tumor and the process of removing it left parts of his brain while destroying others, but the reassessment standard was to be able to walk up and down a couple of steps and lift a light object overhead. The change to benefits policy was in retrospect obviously based on the idea that there are infinite mindless menial jobs for lazy people who are trying to "get away" with being on benefits.

My family being kicked off disability benefits was a constant threat that I felt present throughout my childhood, and even the looming threat of it and the stress that it put on my mother made my already difficult, sad and isolated childhood terrifying. Changes to disability benefits that systematically eject people from money they need to survive ruins countless lives. People never imagine disabled people having families, probably because society tells us to imagine the disabled as less. The reality of these policies is a font of generational and community trauma visited upon the working class by those in power.

Starmer is explicitly trying to cut disability benefits by £5 billion, there isn't a way to pitch the changes to PIP that doesn't involve ruining scores of lives.

[thegeekgirl45]

[thegeekgirl45]

[thegeekgirl45]

ok so hear me out