PIP Review Blues

· 2 min read

#Ukpol, #DisabilityBenefits #PIP

As much as I’m sure there’s likely a good reason for it, I’m miffed that trying to fill out my latest PIP review reveals that they’ve dramatically changed the wording, numbering and sub-sections of ALL the questions again in a way that makes it more difficult than it used to be to copy and adapt from my answers from my previous review.

This one’s going to take a lot more writing from scratch than I really have time for especially as I have literally lost count of how many times I’ve been reviewed since I first got PIP as one of the first 1000 or so people to be made to apply for it. At no point in the last 12 years has my health or disability improved to the levels I had when I first got PIP, absolutely no time or money has been saved for anyone by making me do this over and over. All it’s done is make me more distressed, more stressed, more ill and more cynical.

I’m trying my best to ignore the current Red Tory government’s attempts to demonise disabled people further rather than a) acknowledge in any way that letting covid19 and other viruses that are known to cause disabling post-viral illness spread unhindered through the populous has had the entirely predictable effect of making lots of people chronically ill and disabled and was never a good idea or b) tax rich people and businesses more, close up tax loopholes and generally actually try to get money from people who are hoarding it and not from people who’re barely getting by. Trying to ignore it. Kinda hard to ignore it even if I am one of those semi-mythical “the most vulnerable” and therefore should be assured that of course I’ll be “looked after”.

Also gutting to be currently looking to move home and trying to convince landlords that we can pay the rent (we can!) whilst every tv and newspaper and radio show talks about how people like me could lose thousands of pounds a year under the government’s plans.

If any Labour politicians end up reading this, let me remind you that when people voted your government in they wanted things to get better not for you to immediately pivot to Tory-ing harder than the Tories.