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Can this be possible?
I don't live in England. My wife has relations there. She says one of her distant relations is given a free car and a bed every two years apart from a stack of benefits because he has made himself too fat to go to work. Can this be possible? (He's not an immigrant, by the way.)
4 Answers
- ?Lv 67 years ago
It is certainly possible though I doubt that "he has made himself unfit to work" He may have other problems which have caused his obesity, and I doubt that he has a "free car" every two years. There is a government sponsored scheme whereby some disabled persons are given the lease of a new car every three years. This is looked at every three years and may be suspended if the applicant's health improves or if he/she is unable to use it due to increased disability and /or hospitalisation. It's called the "Motability" scheme.
Source(s): My wife has such a car. She has recently had bilateral hip and knee replacements. I am unable to drive myself and we live in rural Scotland. - RichBLv 77 years ago
It's a mixture of truth and falsehood to be honest.
I don't think anyone deliberately "makes themselves unfit to work", that level of obesity generally goes hand in hand with a whole slew of mental and physical health issues which are not the fault of the person affected. This is just a variation of the "grr lazy poor people" canard which has been spread throughout history and has never been true.
As for the car, there is a scheme called Motability which allows a disabled person to get a new car on lease every 3 or 5 years. This scheme has been in place since the mid-1970s. The following Wikipedia page explains it quite well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motability
The lease is paid for out of the Mobility component of Disability Living Allowance (DLA), which is a government welfare benefit. Anyone eligible for the Mobility aspect of DLA is allowed to get a car on Motability, whether or not they can work (in fact, one of the justifications for the Mobility allowance is to help disabled people get to and from their place of work).
Around 2/3rds of people on the scheme drive the vehicle themselves, the remaining 1/3 have a vehicle so that family members and carers can drive them around. Specially adapted vehicles are also available through the scheme for disabled drivers who are unable to drive a standard spec vehicle.
So the truth is: this guy has a car (and possibly bed) that is wholly or partly paid for out of his welfare benefits by government schemes, and as he is unable to work there are other benefits he receives also. What is completely untrue is that he deliberately physically incapacitated himself so he could receive these benefits.
