Mum who claimed £20,000 in disability benefits is caught running marathons

25 comments

1. Why the hell do they always included “mum”? Who fucking cares?

2. Make her pay it all back. People like this piss me off.

3. My philosophy is graft what you can but don’t complain when you get caught out. 

   One of my mates has been complaining for weeks about not getting paid hours they didn’t work from a previous job after they cooked their clock out times. It’s annoying mate, you tried it on and it didn’t come through… move on.

4. Makes you wonder how many more people like this are out there.

5. She got given 8 months for apparently a first offence, it doesn’t say it was suspended either. Seems harsh.

   Of course it’s wrong but it’s a shame when ‘wrongs’ involving several hundreds of thousands to millions don’t get the same treatment by the courts. If it even goes to court.

6. >Paul Cliff, mitigating, said Morris was diagnosed with MS 19 years ago and the ‘severity of its impact ebbs and flows to a degree’.

   I mean, she was diagnosed. She has MS, it’s not like she’s outright faking it. And it’s probably true that her symptoms vary, and that’s allowed under PIP. Infact most Citizens Advice documents about applying for PIP acknowledge this and advise claimants that when the form asks for examples of how your disability affects you, you give the worst case scenario.

   Also for reference here’s a thread in r/MultipleSclerosis full of diagnosed people talking about the exercise they’re able to do, their reasons for doing it and the recovery methods they use in order to keep doing it. [https://www.reddit.com/r/MultipleSclerosis/comments/x9zgra/any_runners_with_ms/](https://www.reddit.com/r/MultipleSclerosis/comments/x9zgra/any_runners_with_ms/)

7. The department of work and pensions will be watching the upcoming Paralympics and taking notes.

8. I’m currently going through some health issues. I haven’t claimed PIP yet as I feel I can manage without it but on days when I am in severe pain I need lots of help and can’t even do basic things. As with all health issues it’s not going to be a daily thing and the level of pain or support you need varies but when it flares up it’s extremely dehabilitating. I looked into the PIP claims process and given the number of claims that are rejected on spurious grounds it’s understandable that people have to state the worse case or extreme scenarios since otherwise they will not receive what they fairly need in order to manage. Of course running marathons is a bit extreme but she has MS and it’s a life changing condition which only gets worse and there probably are times when she needs a lot of help and support so I can sympathise.

9. Great, better make sure I never take advantage of my good periods with my disability 👍 cripples dont deserve to have a life.

10. Always keen to know what their social media commentary on benefits thieves is, or who they vote for and why, or what they tell their friends to think about other people… I don’t know why..

11. She could at least have dressed up in a chicken outfit, silly woman!

12. Make her pay every penny back and charge her 20% interest. These people are scum. When she has paid it back, lock her up for a few years.

13. Why should I care about this? We have a Royal Family who claim orders of magnitude larger sums of public money.

14. I mean good for her that as someone diagnosed with MS she has managed to be very active in spite of it.

    >Between October 20 2020 to April 25 2023 she was overpaid £20,528.83 and competed in 73 races between May 2019 and December 2022.

    But it’s obvious enough she was lying on her claim forms from the get go. Being awarded PIP is hard enough, a lot of people with genuine needs still struggle to get accepted for it. She went in knowing she’s physically capable of long distance running, and still made herself sound entirely incapable of even getting around her house.

15. One minute you are all saying if we exercised more we could improve our conditions / mental health . Saying us disabled are lazy and not putting enough effort in .

    Next you are saying if we exercise it’s fraud . So do you just want us all to stay inside day?

    Autism charity near me frequently runs walks and ‘marathons ‘ for its members to take part in in order to raise money for the organisation . Many people who participate in these runs and walks are on disability welfare , and one big reason they take part is to improve their mental health since many autistics suffer with poor MH , as well as to socialise with other autistics . I guess we are all frauds too then?

16. Hmmm hang on.. if she had *relapse-remitting* MS, (the type that 9 out of 10 people with the condition have), it absolutely *can* be severe and debilitating. There are periods of temporary improvement, which can last a long time, but then it’ll be followed by worsened symptoms again..

    I am wondering if she was someone who was encouraged to fill out her forms “with her worst day in mind” like ***so*** many genuine people applying for disability benefits are. It is bad advice, and it is old-fashioned advice, but it is pervasive and something many people are encouraged to follow despite not being the right way to approach it!

    You get the sense that DWP kind of treats disability like the person must be 100% disabled in the same exact way, 100% of the time, otherwise the system won’t understand it, or they’ll treat you like “Oh, well, you can work some of the time, so no benefits for you” or something. I think that is where this “write down how your condition affects you like it’s your worst day” advice comes from.

    She was trying to live a healthy life and was punished horribly for it. I know people will say “she was punished for not being honest!” The fact remains she *has* MS and she was diagnosed 19 years ago.

    As someone with long-term illness, this is why I haven’t applied for benefits and never will. You get treated you like you have to be “professionally sick” or else you’re fraudster liar scum.

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18. I see disabled people running all the time. It doesn’t make them not disabled. I saw an 80 year old blind guy running a race the other day. Should I let him know he’s not blind now ? I’ve seen guys with two prosthetic legs who run faster than me.

19. Good, lying cunt.

    You all say good for her etc, yet these people contribute to the shitty state of this country.

    Country loses billions a year due to benefit fraud.

20. And people like this are why the people that do the. Assesments are so obtuse and strict.

21. As someone who’s mum suffered with aggressive MS i only feel happy for this woman, she has found something that can mitigate her symptoms enough to exercise a run a marathon

    My mum went from practically immobile to being able to walk (slowly) with cannabis, so this isn’t unbelievable and as a thing to note with disability to the able bodies in the chat, disabilities are not usually consistent, especially disabilities as complex as MS

22. Welcome to the UK, where an example of one person, on the surface but no so much when you dig a little deeper, cheating the benefits system is THE PURE FULCRUM OF EVIL IN THE UNIVERSE but multinational companies not paying their fair share of tax is basically fine.

23. My old neighbour had MS, she told me herself that she pretends to be worse than she is so she can get what she wants.

24. A friend’s aunt has MS and runs several miles every day, her doctor says it’s what keeps the disease at bay. I’m running a 10k with a friend this weekend who gets PIP. I won’t get into her diagnosis but her running absolutely does not negate or undermine her need for PIP. Just because you don’t see someone at their worst in public doesn’t mean they don’t have very bad times.

25. She couldn’t have been running that fast if she was caught