Thank you very much!

Thank you very much Cas! Only asthmatic squint responses banned

thank you liam!

god this really means an awful lot. thank you very much.

Thank you so so much Ian - and for your other lovely post. It’s so nice I can’t really take it

Ach Frances. Thank you.

Ah thank you v much Tim!

After it got to the Mail, by the way, Wes Streeting got asked about it on GB News. He said the story showed why the welfare system needs reform. Max Tempers calls this the “posting to papers pipeline”, and he’s absolutely right.
x.com/maxtempers/s...

From him it went to feeds like Politics UK and various predictable extremely online shock jocks. You can see why it’s an appealing story for those people. But you might hope some of those laundering it into the mainstream would be curious enough to check.
x.com/PolitlcsUK/s...

Motability is a hardy perennial for scrounger outrage. But it’s worth noting the provenance of the latest round. Long before it hit the Mail, Max Tempers, the same anonymous guy who helped inspire Elon Musk’s grooming gangs obsession, was banging the drum.
x.com/maxtempers/s...

Myth 4: ‘Sickfluencers’ boasting about gaming the system are inspiring others. But these videos are often unreliable. Eg this one, a prominent source of outrage: the truth is that the applicant was rejected. Nobody seems to have checked this stuff.
x.com/maxtempers/s...

Those figures are for Pip at *any* rate, not the higher mobility rate to qualify for Motability. And that 35% was 41 people; the 54% was 6 people. There will be some with mental health conditions on Motability, but the truth is that the higher mobility award is a very high bar.

Myth 3: The scheme is overrun with unjustified claims. This is based on noting that, eg, 35% with bedwetting/enuresis or 54% with Munchausen syndrome got Pip in October and therefore saying they’re among the BMW recipients. This is a ludicrous leap.

Myth 2: You get a swish car. In fact, 94% of the fleet are economy brands. The few premium cars cost taxpayer exactly the same and need an upfront payment from customer. Clear implication is that disabled people should just be grateful and piss off in their wonky three-wheeler.

Myth 1: you get a free car. In fact, if Motability didn’t exist, customers would get the same Pip money to spend as they like. By this logic, people using pensions for groceries are getting ‘free vegetables’. Scrapping Motability would save zero pounds from the benefits bill.

I don’t agree that it proves overdiagnosis is out of control, but that’s also a cogent objection. But the claims now circulating haven’t just made that case: they’ve suggested the scheme has been fatally corrupted and is now infested with chancers faking their way to a free car.

Motability is a way for people with serious disabilities facing a deeply inaccessible public transport system to use benefits, usually Pip, to pay for the lease of a car. It’s grown a lot recently, and there are fair questions about the size of its reserves and executive pay.

Here’s a piece I wrote about the whole thing, and here are the key points.
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...