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I’m glad it’s not just me . I wouldn’t put anything passed them . I just emailed Rayner and said I can’t vote Labour under the current premiership but could if it was someone with compassion for the disabled. I asked outright how she’ll be voting. Don’t expect a reply but that doesn’t matter , she’ll know through her staff that she’s getting emails regarding the cuts . It will be interesting how she votes as she hates starmer ( apparently) and from recent press doesn’t agree with the cuts . Imagine if she votes against starmer 😂
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Another liar who can't commit after she said she would reinstate.These are the people who created the mess we're in and will use our money to sort it out.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c249v0987m8o
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Yes this is more than could if hoped for sure still scared bit so much happened so many people coming forward in sheer horror of even suggesting it just shows you what bad leadership can really do they despise starmer I can imagine he's a bully watch this space
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Oh how wonderful wouldn't that be great I hope Corbyn stands for this how many mps would need to join this group
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Well, no surprise really ,according to the Telegraph we are all scroungers and making it up ,
Some people on benefits are faking it. There, I’ve said itPaying welfare for staying at home is not a kindness. It is trapping millions in miserable dependency
2138Gift this article free
Credit: Patrick BlowerSherelle Jacobs22 May 2025 7:34pm BST
It is time to start saying the unsayable: a lot of people in this country are pretending to be sick in order to claim benefits.
The official story is that Britain is in the grip of an epidemic of ill health. Many are indeed suffering from real ailments, of course, but few politicians or commentators dare to point to the rising evidence that a proportion may be faking it. We urgently need to confront what is driving millions to choose a life on welfare: fake compassion, the medicalisation of everyday anguish, and the state crushing incentives to work.
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Unless we confront this uncomfortable reality, our economy will continue to stagnate while still remaining dependent on mass migration.
Despite Labour’s planned welfare cuts feeling ever less credible this week following the PM’s winter fuel U-turn, Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall is feigning business as usual, vowing not to “resile” from her proposed £5 billion reduction in disability benefits. Yet the party’s hard Left, emboldened after winning their first concession from the PM, is organising behind the scenes to derail Kendall.
They may get their way. The central problem is that Labour doesn’t have the appetite to openly go to war with benefits scroungers. Even Blue Labourites on the party’s Right who admit privately that there are “bits of the system that are outright dodgy” and that the country is suffering from a kind of “cultural lethargy” are hesitant to make their views public.
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Starmer allies fear that this cowardice will cost them dear. As one veteran adviser told me: “The hardest thing in politics is when you can’t explain why you’re doing something. If you believe some are not deserving, you should have the courage to defend that position.”
It is perplexing that our politicians are so reluctant to call out benefits cheats. There is evidence that the system is rotten. As other benefits have been tightened since 2010, disability claims have surged, exactly the same thing that followed previous reforms in the 1980s.
The subjectivity of many conditions should ring alarm bells. More than half of the rise in disability claims since the pandemic is attributable to mental health. The most common physical ailments of those signing on are musculoskeletal, such as back pain. The latter is notoriously difficult for clinicians to verify.
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This is not to say that we are dealing with a completely pretend problem. Britain is a sickly country, a reality exacerbated by the NHS backlog. Diagnoses for mental conditions have soared in part because people have become more willing to seek help when they are struggling – a welcome breakthrough. There is something in the idea that modern mass neuroses, not least phone addiction, are chipping away at our collective mental state.
Still, it is hard to believe that a quarter of Britons are disabled and that a fifth of adults are too ill to work at all. Can it really be plausible that the proportion of incapacitated citizens in a wealthy, medically advanced country like ours is averaging 10 per cent higher than in developing countries like Congo, racked by poverty and low childhood vaccination rates?
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We must be open to the possibility that something has gone so wrong with this country that large numbers convince themselves that they are ill – or, indeed, engage in outright deceit.
The medicalisation of mundane suffering is not healthy. Some psychiatrists worry that it has become easier than ever to be diagnosed as mentally ill, as the thresholds for diagnosis have been lowered. According to Prof Frances Allen, chairman of the psychiatry department at Duke University, there has been a “progressive shift” in the fuzzy boundary between mental illness and normality, with the range of mental conditions widening to include new disorders like generalised anxiety. In the UK, a smattering of doctors have also started to speak out.
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Our welfare state disincentivises people to get up in the morning and go to work. Scroungers are not an anomaly, but the logical product of a warped system; those who play the bureaucracy are not deviant but rational. Everything from the shape of universal credit to the earning cut-off for free school meals nudges people to stay on benefits.
High taxes are also proving destructive. I spoke to one benefits support worker who lamented the vicious cycle of people who find work and come off the dole, only to discover that the state, which once gave them free cash, is “now taking money off them” and that they are being “hit in the face” by HMRC.
It is not enough to merely scale back the state. The entire welfare system needs to be blown up and rebuilt from scratch. Any policy that constitute a possible disincentive to work should be scrapped. This can’t just be a job for the Department for Work and Pensions. Ending worklessness should be a goal of all departments.
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Our unwillingness to confront the benefits crisis must be tackled. The annual cost of working-age ill health is higher than the yearly NHS budget. By 2030 we will be spending as much on disability benefits each year as we do on education.
Mass worklessness leaves the country reliant on mass immigration – a phenomenon that threatens a populist backlash that will make the Brexit revolt look like a tea party.
Nor should we gloss over the fact that it is wicked that we are crippling millions of people with kindness and indulging their fantasies that they are incapable of making their way in the world. It is not humane to indulge other human beings in self-sabotaging fantasies about their own lack of agency. It is not compassionate for the state to write off millions of people as broken goods. And it is not moral to extract labour from poor countries on an industrial scale to fill the gaps in a wealthy Western nation, depriving them of health and care workers.
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what a complete load of nonsense from a privileged ableist
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Susie Boniface tells them !
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Yes I watched that . She was amazing. The other 2 idiots didn’t know what to say and kept trying to interrupt her to shut her up.
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Had enough of them telling lies 😡
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Can't read it all wow what time was this at we need to note date time and channel and complain to offcom how dare she !!! Thiers a Great Britsh Strike today all over country seems starmer worried sending out warnings already !!
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OOh Yes I seen this what a lady
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Hi Squirrel 🐿️
It shows the extent of what we are having to go through, how deeply traumatic it is if we affected by just seeing pictures of them. They would love to know that, it just feeds into their evil agenda.
Yet another of the numerous things we have to deal with by strong and resilient. I don't know about you but I'm sure you feel just as fed up of having to be strong 💪in such terrible and undeserved circumstances, when we have to fight the misery of disability anyway. 😞
Talking to each other on here though, definitely helps 😃 and it does us good to blow off some steam too!! 😤 It helps to preserve what sanity we have left!
I think that Rayner is only acting in self interest. It's being said that she is positioning herself to make a bid to be prime minister if the Labour government get rid of Starmer eventually.
Many of the Labour MPs who are voting against or abstaining on the cuts are only doing it to save their seats.
It doesn't matter how they come to a decision to help us as long as they do. That includes Rayner. We can't be be particular about whether it's from a moral standpoint or a selfish one. I just wish that more would vote against the cuts rather than abstain though. 😡
Jul 😊
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I've got a feeling that Rayner might just do so. That would set the cat amongst the pigeons as you've just said!😉
The Labour Leadership have just got to realise that they cannot just be the Red Tories.
Their voters, who are very much more likely to vote against them by voting for the Greens or Lib Dems than for Reform at the Local and General Elections are NOT right wing voters.
I wish that Morgan McSweeny would stop whispering in Starmers ear 👂 and Blair would stop whispering in the other one.
They are trying to destroy our lives and to a lesser extent, the lives of so many other people in this country as they are so blinkered that they can only see the almost negligable effect of Reforms vote on them. According to recent figures, all 8% of it! 🤦
Deluded and as thick as mince doesn't even begin to describe it! 🤣
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Can you imagine Jul Rayner voting against. I did listen to her interview on bbc before the election regarding disability and she came across well .
I agree I don’t care that it’s for their own benefit as long as they vote for us . I emailed Rayner starmer reeves Kendall Timms , even farage and I told them there are millions of disabled votes they’re losing2 -
Maybe it's all down to Starmer the dictator and Mp's are starting to show their true beliefs ….
But as you say, as long as they VOTE for us who cares !
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Just checked the odds on Rayner being next labour leader her odds have shortened from 10/1 to 4/1 in a week
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It would be a great idea I agree 😊 but MPs would need to be elected first and there wouldn't be many to begin with. It would take time for them to become a party that could take on the other political parties too.
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They'll probably win the vote if I'm correct but the amount of MPs on the left surely will cause enough of a stink.A few senior MPs like McDonald I think and Abbott are against it all and they have clought.
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Well squirrel, all I can say is that they will be out anyway if they try to push these cuts through as 200 MPs will find out by their PIP claimants voting them out. Some of those constituencies belong to ministers as well, including Streeting.
As long as Rayner will keep her stance on being against the cuts up. She was for them not so long ago but she's seen the writing on the wall now and is acting accordingly.
As long as it benefits us, that's the main thing, above all else.🤞We may be able to vote them out eventually but we don't want them to get the opportunity to take us down before they go. 😞
We have got to keep the pressure up, even if things become really grim. I'm worried that if this vote does go through, that many disabled people may give up. 🥺
That is the worst thing that could happen because the Labour Leadership have then got us where they want us if there are not many of us opposing them. 😡
We must call their bluff as we have so much support behind us and legal action could then be taken, if this is passed into law. It could be watered down a lot, like the WFA. ✊
Even if this vote is postponed so MPs can see the OBR impact statement and we can have a proper say, that will be a substantial victory in itself and the outcome which is most likely if we are successful. I doubt very much we will get a complete U turn.
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