I am a single father and get personal independence payments (Pip). I have mental health issues and was diagnosed with autism towards the end of the Covid pandemic. I also receive universal credit, getting the limited capability for work-related activity element, which, we now know, will be cut for new claimants and frozen for existing ones like me. As inflation continues to rise, the freeze will mean that my income falls and I’m left struggling even harder to make ends meet.
How much will someone in that position actually be getting? For of course The G doesn;t give us that number. So, how much is it?
“I have mental health issues” but, happily, not so severe that they have impeded me from getting these benefits.
Will he also get other benefits – subsidised housing or whatever? I ask because I keep getting the feeling that people are usually less than frank about how much they get from the rest of us. (And sometimes less than frank about their own roles in brining on their problems.)
I read that old people in “cognitive decline” often find that the effort required to get Pension Credit is too much for them. I can believe that. But doesn’t that phenomenon provide a natural yardstick for the mental elf “issues” of younger cohorts?
“single father” – if true, why has the dude omitted Child Benefit and the child element of UC from his declared income to the G. Being the parent with care also moves you into social housing in most cases where the rent element of UC will cover the rent in its entirety – you’d still have to pay for water, energy and 2/10ths of the Council Tax typically. Zero CTAX if you can get a Dr to say you have a severe mental impairment.
It’s not clear either why he’s paying for prescriptions.
Nor is it clear why he has to pay to get to cheaper supermarkets – PIP (mobility element) will get you free bus travel. If it’s PIP (daily living) so you have no mobility element, then blooming well take a bicycle there.
Correction: The dude probably did declare in full and the G has left out or altered details that reduce the sob factor.
I like the fact that the phrase “work-related activity” is in the government’s lexicon. I had several colleagues who made a good living out of work-related activity without actually doing any work.
Capable of knocking out sprogs but incapable of ANY meaningful employment.
“You know, you need a license to own a dog, but anyone can have kids”. K. Reeves, ‘Parenthood’ 1989.
This link gives a few details: https://www.gov.uk/universal-credit/what-youll-get
The basic payment for an adult is £393/month
As he’s on the ‘limited capacity for work’ category thats worth another £416/month. £25/week child benefit for the kid, so another £108/month.
Then there’s his PIP payments (here: https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/personal-independence-payment-pip), the absolute basic is £72/week, maximum £183/week. Lets assume the minimum, £312/month.
Then there’s the UC payments for kids(here:https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/universal-credit-payments-children-and-childcare) which are £287/month for a single child under 8 and £333/month over, plus £287/month for kids after the first.
So my best guess would be 393+416+108+312+333 (assuming one kid over 7) = £1562. More if he has more than 1 kid. Plus his rent and council tax paid, and free school meals etc etc. The basic benefits income is not much less than what he’d get after tax if he worked a full time (37.5 hour) minimum wage job. So why work?
I’ve run his story through the benefits calculator on EntitledTo.co.uk. Excluding housing costs, he’ll get £265/wk in universal credit; that includes the “ limited capability for work-related activity element”. He’ll also get £25/wk in child benefit.
Overall it’s not much, especially with a child; but it’s more than a basic pension.
My own health, both physically and mentally, has worsened over the years because I have neglected myself to make sure my daughter is as well cared-for as possible. Diet is a very important part of one of my health issues, but fresh, healthy, nourishing food is more expensive to buy, leaving me in a cycle of ill health and poverty.
Candidly, the mugs who pay for all this shit despite their own crippling mental health problems haven’t provided me with lobster dinners.
Democracy has failed.
According to Jim’s calculations, this cunt is on not far short of the minimum wage but avoids the costs of employment. He has all day to shop and cook from scratch fully nutritious meals for himself and his precious daughter using basic vegetables and yellow-label protein. Hell, you can get high-welfare protein from Waitrose and M&S for a lot less than you’d pay in Lidl if you know when to go in.
I don’t buy any of this “I cant afford nutritious food” bollocks simply because I’ve had to live on a severely constrained budget and know how it’s done. I didn’t starve and wasn’t malnourished. I just had to learn to do it and work at it.
Norman @ 11.21, “I just had to learn to do it and work at it”.
I think that’s the problem right there.
“fresh, healthy, nourishing food is more expensive to buy”: ooh, look, the return of the “food deserts” argument.
I saw a wonderful demolition of it in the BMJ a few decades ago. A bunch of medical students disproved it just by walking around and seeing what was on sale in the shops.
but fresh, healthy, nourishing food is more expensive to buy,
Them he should go to Lidl or Aldi, preferably several times a week for the exercise. Failing that a greengrocer as I refuse to believe there are no alternatives to big name supermarkets within walking distance. As he’s not working and his sprog is presumably at school he should have limitless time for some basic cooking. If he doesn’t know how to cook then he should get off his arse and attend one of numerous free courses. How about growing his own veg as he’s got plenty of time on his hands? If he hasn’t got a garden then he should apply for an allotment. What happened to the mother BTW?
So many unanswered questions.
“fresh, healthy, nourishing food is more expensive to buy”
only if it’s organic
I take issue with the word income in this context. Income is money that is earned or received from investments.
This guy has neither.
So many unanswered questions.
Yep, you can always rely on the Guardian to come up with the most vulnerable cases that soon fall apart as soon as you scratch the surface no matter what the government is trying to do.
Them he should go to Lidl or Aldi, preferably several times a week for the exercise.
From our experience you have to go a couple of times a week, at least for fruit and veg because it starts to turn very quickly, and we don’t mind cutting nasty bits out.
Anyway, that’s by the by. Anyone who claims they can’t cook from fresh is admitting to an IQ of around 80. All you need to be able to do is read simple instructions and do some basic sums. You can even find videos of how to do basic tasks.
The sums amount to no more than: You want to eat at 6pm, item A takes 10 minutes to cook and item B 20 minutes- At what time should items A and B start to be cooked? You could probably even ask Alexa or Siri to work it out.
The Graundiad tendency have learned from the benefits cap 14 years back. The BBC profiled the lazy git and and his exact spending and income and the angrr was palpable
Well according to the Scottish Sun Humza Yousaf’s brother-in-law, Ramsay El-Nakla, is on £1,400 a month universal credit and disability payments.
The poor chap broke his phone while on his holidays and had not realised that his motor insurance had been withdrawn.
It could happen to anyone, especially if you were also going to court in December on extortion and drugs charges like our Ramsay.
Why is there never a budget attached to these stories? Oh yes, silly me….
Brindisini – to be fair, not all Palestinians are vile heroin dealers.
Many of them are also rapists.
@Simon Neale – March 19, 2025 at 10:17 am
I had several colleagues who made a good living out of work-related activity without actually doing any work.
Civil Servants, mayhap?
but fresh, healthy, nourishing food is more expensive to buy,
Boulleaux, as the French say. I’ve just been to Asda and got 2kg of spuds for 90p, a 1.5kg cauliflower for £1.20, 750g cabbage 75p, runner beans £1.40, four banananananas 78p. I splashed out and got 75p mackeral instead of my usual 35p sardines.
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