I tweeted about the thousands of people that will lose Motability cars (and wheelchairs) when their DLA is taken away.
About 100 Motability customers a week are losing their car because of PIP. Exactly what we said would happen. http://t.co/bSxpJK5F2t
— Latent Ella (@latentexistence) March 13, 2015
A clueless person replied
they get £2k when car is taken away! Lots of folk can’t afford a car at all no matter what their situation x
Lots of poor people are “trapped” without a car but they don’t get £2k to help x
Where do I start?
Most people can walk, or cycle, or get the bus without it causing pain and exhaustion, or get the train, or do a combination of all of that. And yes, if someone is a customer of Motability when their DLA is taken away, they’ll get £2K from the charity. (Part of Motability is a charity.)
It won’t go far.
I have to have a car that is
- big enough to get a wheelchair in,
- comfortable enough not to leave me in pain,
- automatic, with an electric handbrake and cruise control, otherwise, again, pain.
£2K will not buy that car. It will also not do many taxi journeys to doctors, hospitals and supermarkets while living out here in the countryside. So I’ll have to use my electric wheelchair and the bus. I’ve only got the wheelchair because I begged for donations - remember, some use Motability to get one, and it’s a choice of wheelchair or car.
Taking the wheelchair on the bus is extremely exhausting for me and ultimately, painful. If I run out of energy or get overwhelmed by pain half way, I’m screwed. So I’ll stop going out except for vital things, like the doctor. Without a car, that trip takes several hours.
Then I spend a week recovering.
If I stop going out, my already precarious mental health takes a dive. I’ll probably become suicidal again.
Problem solved for the DWP, I suppose.
Just in case you’re under the misaprehension that PIP/DLA is only being taken away from people that don’t really need it, here’s what the DWP themselves said, quoted at a Judicial Review last year:
“we were aware that the vast majority of recipients of DLA were individuals with genuine health conditions and disabilities and genuine need, and that removing or reducing that benefit may affect their daily lives.”
The government is deliberately taking help away from people who can walk more than twenty metres but still less than fifty, and they say they know that those people have “genuine need”, they just don’t care what cutting DLA will do to them.
Is it right to take DLA away from thousands of people because “Lots of folk can’t afford a car at all no matter what their situation”? Ask yourself if it has quite the same impact. Or why the hell you don’t ask why those other people aren’t paid enough to afford a car.
This is a big problem many people fail to understand the reasoning for DLA/PIP and it’s motability parts they just see it as something for nothing and are deeply jealous.
A motability car is truly the best form of A to B and Door to Door transport that causes the least pain and suffering and which gives this group of people the freedom and independence they all have a right too.
They are also NOT free as many believe but paid for like a lease from the motability component this group of people receive.
I do wonder if the public would give up there good health in return for a motability car? Because I bet you would have given up your car in return for good health before it was so unfairly taken away from you.
I am terrified of losing my car, I would lose my independence completely and just be stuck in the house.
I have just today (Saturday) had a health care assessment for my solicitor who will use it for my legal case against my health authority. The lady that came out is going to refer me for a driving assessment to see what can be done for me to make my driving more comfortable and without pain. I lost a leg, a leg for God’s sake, due to a surgeon’s error, and I need money to get some kind of home that I can actually get around in in my wheelchair, and that has a shower instead of a shower over a bath, that I have to go from a shower stool, onto a bath board and then grab rails around me. It is painful and its dangerous. What I get will be taken off by the SS anyway.
The “person”, and I use that word very lightly, who said that “Lots of people don’t have a car”, is probably as selfish as IDS, a person who has not an ounce of sympathy for the disabled and long-term sick!
Personally, I hope bad things happen to this idiot, and that he never gets a car at anytime!