These posts are from an exchange of messages with someone we are trying to help. He has said that we can share them so that others can see the kind of system we are up against:

November 2015: I’ve just seen your post about the blue mile shared to a group I’m on. I too have just been refused either rate of mobility component of PIP because I was able to walk this corridor with a stoop and at a slightly slow pace without showing any pain; so because I have lived in pain for fifteen years and learned to deal with it without vocalising, I’m refused any benefit. I was on highest rate mobility DLA up until May of this year, and wasn’t sent any migration forms. My claim was just allowed to run out, and I left it months to make a claim for PIP because I was so anxious about it. I’m in no fit state mentally to appeal this decision, or ask them to reconsider first, as I’m on the brink of just topping myself. I’ve spent over half my life in agony and have had to deal with the incompetence of the DWP so often that I just can’t face it again; the on-hold song alone drives me insane when forced to listen to it for half an hour at a time so I put off phoning. I’ve had so much unfair treatment at the hands of these unscrupulous bastards that I have no more fight in me and nobody who wants to deal with the DWP on my behalf, therefore I’m now getting low-rate care and no mobility and haven’t the strength to fight them any longer.

I’ve been left for eight months before by them without benefit because they tricked me into work and out of benefit five years ago – sent me to mandatory work-focused interviews, where I was told I was to find a job up to sixteen hours and I’d keep my Income Support. Needless to say, my first payslip was sent to them and promptly a letter was sent back saying I had worked over the maximum amount and therefore wasn’t eligible for it anymore. I appealed three times with no avail. I’m just so sick to death of the system! I’m honestly at the brink of walking into a jobcentre and taking my own life. This system is actually causing me more problems than it’s helping; I now have social anxiety to add to the list of problems I have, but because I’ve not spoke to my GP about it, it’s not there. I don’t know what to do or where to turn.

I know I have a case and could win, it’s just the massive effort it takes me just to get out of bed in the morning never mind any of the appeal process. I’ve had to do it so many times already, I’m just struggling to find any motivation to continue to fight them. The whole system is geared to remove the 0.7% who wrongly claim benefit, and punishes the 99.3% who need and rely on it. It’s so unfair and thoughtless. Why is it then OK for MPs to fall asleep in parliament? I saw a picture the other day of about five MPs all asleep in parliament. It’s disgusting. So fed up of the way things are.

February 2016: I’m still here anyway. I still have no fight in me to try to appeal the decision. Just having to explain it all to someone gets me down because it basically rubs it in my face every time how rubbish my quality of life is. Also I have mandatory biweekly work based activity to do. Even though I’m in the ESA Support group, they’ve got me working on a CV etc. The weeks they don’t call me in I get a phone appointment which is just them asking if my circumstances have changed, basically do I still have my life long, degenerative condition? Obviously ‘yes’ being the answer, but it’s very degrading, for lack of a better word.