Brianne @beebcow

When politicians and the press deliberately weaponise disability statistics to manufacture a cultural divide, the inevitable result is callers like Nick on @LBC demanding the return of Victorian poorhouses. Nick proudly stated he wants to strip PIP from every single disabled person so they cannot live "comfortably," before bizarrely claiming that PIP is "completely different from a disability benefit." ​This staggering ignorance does not happen in a vacuum. It is the direct consequence of MPs and the media lying, embellishing, and inflating statistics to scapegoat the vulnerable. When you relentlessly frame disabled citizens as an economic drain, you actively incite hostility. The pipeline from inflammatory political rhetoric to angry radio calls directly feeds the very real surge in disability hate crimes, transitioning rapidly from vitriolic words to physical violence. ​​Yet, @LBC is entirely complicit in this pipeline. Nick is a known "frequent flyer": a caller who treats demanding the systemic starvation of disabled people as a dedicated hobby. He has been permitted to broadcast this exact brand of performative cruelty across the station. By continually platforming repeat offenders to generate cheap outrage and social media engagement, LBC is actively emboldening ableist hate. You are trading the safety and dignity of disabled people for ratings, and the real-world ramifications for our community are devastating. ​So, let us educate the Nicks of this country: ​PIP is not an unemployment benefit. It is a non-means-tested, statutory safeguard designed to help cover the exorbitant extra costs of living with severe illnesses and profound disabilities. You are legally entitled to it whether you are working full-time or permanently unable to work. ​Furthermore, Nick's arrogant challenge that he will simply "apply for PIP" to see how quickly he gets it is laughable. It exposes a profound lack of comprehension regarding a gruelling, humiliating, and heavily scrutinised assessment process that demands extensive medical evidence of severe functional impairment. You do not just ask for it. You are subjected to rigorous interrogation to prove your daily suffering. ​We will not sit quietly while our lifelines are threatened and our existence is debated for entertainment. ​#ChangingTheNarrative #PunchDownMedia #TakingThePip

LBC @LBC

12 hours ago

‘To say that no disabled person should get any kind of benefit…’ Iain Dale thinks caller Nick is the ‘most uncaring person’ he has ever spoken to after hearing his stance on PIP.

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The sheer audacity of dictating who has "paid enough into the system" to deserve basic survival. How exactly do you quantify the unpaid, round-the-clock labour of carers raising disabled children, or those sacrificing their own incomes to nurse dying relatives? Where exactly is the line drawn? What about citizens who work for decades until a sudden health crisis temporarily floors them? What about those of us whose fluctuating conditions force a debilitating crash? Are we suddenly unworthy of the safety net we funded? You demand people "go back to work", but to what jobs? As of September 2026, UK vacancies have plummeted for the eighth consecutive quarter to 702,000 - the lowest level since early 2021. You completely broke the job market, and now you are punishing the public for your failure. You conveniently ignore the people desperately applying but who simply cannot secure a role. The graduates trapped in a shrinking economy whose degrees mean little. The neurodivergent individuals passed over because their communication styles do not fit the rigid expectations of standard interviews. Then there is the "fraud" myth weaponised to justify these degrading prepaid cards. The DWP's own 2023/24 statistics reveal that overpayments strictly due to fraud account for a mere 2.8% of total welfare expenditure. ​You are threatening financial control and sweeping 30% cuts against the 97.2% of completely legitimate claimants, across all walks of life, just to mask your own catastrophic economic mismanagement. The British public is not your scapegoat. I'm so glad the Tories aren't in power right now. #ChangingTheNarrative #PunchDownMedia #TakingThePip

Conservatives @Conservatives

23 hours ago

Those who can work, should work. That’s why the next Conservative Government will cut benefits for those who refuse to get back to work and introduce a “Back to Work” card restricting what they can spend benefits on, saving taxpayers £538 million a year.

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Ash Sarkar, "Every time we've had these squeezes on welfare recipients, what we've actually seen, rather than dealing with issues like long-term unemployment, is an increase in child poverty, and in-work poverty as well" "Half of all NEETs are not receiving welfare of any kind.. There's a crisis of opportunity and a crisis of purpose" "There are 140 applicants for the average graduate job opportunity.. That's the worse it has been since 1991" "It's up to successive governments that have failed to create opportunities for young people in this country" My view: It's been around 10% for decades Britain cannot punish its way into prosperity. If work is meant to be the route out of poverty, it must be available, secure, accessible and pay enough to live on. For too long, governments have responded to economic failure by blaming those locked out of opportunity. The real solution is investment in decent jobs, skills, healthcare, mental-health support and affordable homes, not cutting support and pretending hardship is an employment policy.

It is very clear that Naomi Fisher has some awful views. Her ableism shines through here and it is unacceptable. She paints poor parents as being thick, middle class families as being undeserving of benefits. Also she does not understand how PIP assessments work.

Naomi Fisher @naomicfisher

3 days ago

This article reflects something I’ve been talking about for a while. When a diagnosis is used as a way to decide who gets access to resources or not, then this is going to result in inequality. That’s because those who can afford to pay for a diagnosis and those who understand

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You are using a single "anecdote" to pit disabled people against each other and gatekeep what constitutes a "real" disability. I have an 8 year old who is a full-time wheelchair user, with no feeling or movement in the lower half of her body due to being born with spina bifida, hydrocephalus, chiari malformation type 2, syringomyelia and she's Autistic, and a 6 year old who is autistic with ADHD. Both have the cognitive awareness of a baby. You claim mothers of children with ADHD use Blue Badges "despite having no need to do so". Let me educate you: my 6 year old requires one just as urgently as my wheelchair-using daughter because he has zero sense of danger and will actively bolt into moving traffic. The Department for Transport explicitly expanded Blue Badge criteria in 2019 to include hidden disabilities like autism and ADHD. The legislation specifically protects individuals who are a constant safety risk to themselves near vehicles or in car parks. The badge literally stops children like mine from being killed. Posing as a philosopher asking "what is real disability" while publicly invalidating statutory safety measures for neurodivergent children isn't insightful. It's dangerously ignorant. Stop using your platform to police legal accommodations you clearly lack the basic competence to understand.

Fabricating a false binary between "hard working taxpayers" and disabled people reliant on "handouts" is as divisive as it is economically illiterate. Disabled people are taxpayers. PIP is not an unemployment handout. It's non means-tested assistance to help absorb the daily costs of chronic illness and disability so that people can live independently and stay in work. ​A medical system that finally diagnoses invisible, neurodevelopmental, and chronic conditions is not disability "losing all meaning". It's clinical advancement. Taking away the equipment, transport, and therapies that keep disabled citizens functional will not cure them. It will just push them out of employment and into total dependency. Targeting disabled people navigating chronic barriers to balance sovereign debt is not having the "backbone to make tough decisions". It's lazy scapegoating masquerading as fiscal prudence. Also, the OBR has *estimated* (the key word). It isn't set in stone. #ChangingTheNarrative #PunchDownMedia ​#TakingThePIP

Andrew Griffith MP @griffitha

5 days ago

The term ‘disability’ is in danger of losing all meaning. Spending £45 billion a year on sickness benefits is more than the entire Home Office budget, at a time when we are borrowing just to pay the interest on our debt. That is totally unsustainable. Labour is creating a

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What has "utterly and unforgivably failed" our country is the fractured NHS your party left behind. A catastrophic waiting list for a single, simple procedure destroyed my health and almost cost me my life. I went from running a thriving, highly profitable business alongside my lifelong disabilities to being permanently unable to work. ​What is unforgivable is MPs and the media deliberately distorting PIP projections to manufacture a cultural divide. You are portraying disabled taxpayers as an economic burden to justify stripping the most vulnerable of their vital lifelines. ​What has utterly and unforgivably failed is the systemic attempt to manufacture this divide. You are portraying disabled citizens as a drain, as an inconvenience, and as people "looking for handouts," whilst recklessly inciting hostility and potential hate crimes against us just to push an ideological agenda. ​What should have been allowed to happen is the protection of a system that supports all of us, whether we were born disabled, or acquired our conditions through the very systemic failures your party oversaw. Instead of preserving the healthcare and financial scaffolding that allows us to survive, you broke the infrastructure and are now weaponising statistics to scapegoat us for your own economic mismanagement. We are not an inconvenience; we are collateral damage. #ChangingTheNarrative #PunchDownMedia #TakingThePip

David Reed MP @David__Reed

5 days ago

We will have utterly and unforgivably failed our countrymen and women if we allow this to happen.

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I read the other day that something like 1.7% of PIP claimants abuse it (I might be slightly off, but it was ridiculously low). So, essentially 98% of people aren't abusing it, yet let's focus on the tiny percentage of people who are 🤦🏻‍♀️. Most people don't even get what they're entitled to, myself included! I admin a large group for women in the UK who have ADHD, and most of them have other health conditions (ehlers danlos, PoTS, MS are the ones I see the most), and the fight they have to go through to get PIP so they can work and live is insane. Yet according to what I'm repeatedly seeing on X, PIP is just handed out 🫩

PIP goes by level of need, not by dx. When I made my claim I was told by the assessor "do not tell me your dxs, I want to know how they affect you". I did not just say "oh I have ADHD, hEDS, ME/CFS [insert other dxs]" and they gave me benefits. I had to provide letters from consultants and talk and write about my days/nights and what my husband does for me. I run a group for women in the UK with ADHD and thousands give similar stories, but most of them are told they don't qualify for PIP. The ones with ADHD who do qualify usually have other medical dxs, like me. It's very rare that someone will get it for ADHD alone unless they're severely impacted. There is also no such thing as an "ADHD claim". Don't be silly. "Thou doth protest too much, methinks". Probably has ADHD and doesn't even know it, given her hyperfixation on it. #ChallengeTheNarrative #PunchDownMedia

Helen Whately MP @Helen_Whately

2 weeks ago

More ADHD benefit claims than soldiers ⬇️ We cannot go on like this. Andy Burnham says social security comes before national security. He’s wrong.

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1. ADHD is not a MH condition - it's the way the brain works and you're born with it. 2. All of my psychs have said the same thing: if you have a MH condition you cannot heal without the ADHD being under control: ie medicated 3. You aren't taken seriously without a dx (been there, done that and I know many others who are still in the same boat or were). 4. If "Hollistic" means "CBT" then it's absolutely useless for people with ADHD. Ableist BS #ChallengeTheNarrative #PunchDownMedia

Steven Swinford @Steven_Swinford

a week ago

Exclusive from @benclatworthy People with ADHD symptoms should not automatically be offered a formal diagnosis, a government review of mental health conditions will say The review will recommend that patients are “triaged” under a “needs based” system that emphasises support

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