Published on 12, July, 2020
At the start of this year I decided to take the step to apply for PIP, my research kept telling me there's a slim chance of success first time around so I'm mentally preparing myself for rejection and appeal anyway. Regardless, I still want to give myself the best possible shot by being clear, honest and hopefully not miscommunicating myself too much as being able to do things I cannot. This is the one thing I'm having a lot of trouble preparing for both mentally and practically, the assessment. Citizens Advice have been helping me with the application and the phone call I had with them to go through the form was difficult and draining enough and that's with someone who was doing their best to try and help me and gave me helpfully leading questions to get important information out of my which I likely wouldn't have thought to (or had the confidence to) mention without those leading questions. I actually feel some guilt over being so stressed because thinking back the guy who went through the form with me was really kind and helpful. The thing is, I can easily fall into leading questions and I do worry that the assessor who, unlike CAB, is not rearly there to help or guide me and is likely trying to trip me up and try and make me say enough wrong to where I don't appear to score a single point. I guess I'm just looking to understand what exactly I'm to expect, what common traps they may lay I should be aware of, any common trick questions that I can/should refuse etc. because I feel like I'll answer anything, and I might not be willing to add additional information beyond a 'yes' to one of their trap questions.
In my experience government money is a bit like heroin.
Taking it regularly corrodes your sense of self until there is just the habit, and doing what you need to do to satisfy it, left.
I bloody KNOW I'm not really independent, and require assistance to get by, but for me P.I.P. appears to be a trap.
I Got a crib sheet for it from a Kashmiri mate, (he's been here forty years, but still "sends money home" so I guess he identfies as non-english) who's managed to game at least one house in his time, and all the bennies known to man, and basically you have to make a firm case that you are utterly helpless, and you get points for "style & inventiveness".
The thing is, you don't actually get enough money to get by if you really are useless, which makes the benefit "unsuitable for purpose" in my book, and you have to accept the label of being "useless" which frankly would not sit well with me, and most likely increase my susceptibilty to depressive episodes, or corrode my will to win outside of the game of "keeping the bennies going".
Last time I looked it was £64 a week entitlement for such as me, IF I WAS PREPARED TO BEG (play the game) FOR IT.
Stuff that, I own a petrol mower and strimmer and have the ability to use them. I get more than that £64 after a day of light gardening, and the experience builds me up psychologcially, not tears me down like any form of begging done over a long period will.
Mine is not always a popular perspective with the Audience, and probably appears useless to those more poor than me.
But most people who are visbily poorer than me, have massive "turnover of money" or "High cashflow" and need that money.
Money is not empowering, it is most often an obstacle placed artificially between you and what you need, in order to bleed off fractions of your effort, time, LIFE to feed a bunch of parasites..
You can get what you need by going after it directly and using your time, effort and LIFE directly, and often that is a better way of getting things that you want too.
Equally, "money" for most people is a very well accepted medium of exchange, and in some situations it is the right tool for the job.
But WAY less of those situations exist than most people think.
WAY less.
And you can take that to the bank...
I Sperg said:Last time I looked it was £64 a week entitlement for such as me, IF I WAS PREPARED TO BEG (play the game) FOR IT.
In terms of the hassle for it, maybe it's not actually all that 'worth it', but I think I'm set mostly on some kind of principle, this idea that I have had help doing points tests and clearly meet the conditions so I just want that which I should be entitled to (especially, honestly, when there are some folk out there who appear to have gamed the system to get it when they probably shouldn't).
I can sometimes waste quite a bit of time and effort on things like this for the principle of it. The last time I did anything similar was when my brother got me a phone sim and they changed the fees unbeknownst to us, my brother noticed months later in one of his statements (he was paying) and even though it wasn't much money and it wasn't even my money I knew that they had to make customers aware of these kind of changes and so I should be able to get a refund. I hassled the company in social media DMs back and forth until eventually they paid up the ten or twenty quid refund or whatever it was