Too Many Cuts...come join the #Frothers and have your say

JSA - JobSeekers allowance. paid to people who are unemployed.

WTC - Paid to people IN work, of more than 16 hrs a week, on a low wage, with an additional element for childcare.

Right now, if you work for 16 hrs a week, there is no 'conditionality' on how much you earn a week, no making you look for extra hours, no making you take on a second job, you get WTC and 70% of your childcare covered up to a certain level.

On UC, if you are a lone parent, or disabled, or a carer, you need to be working for 20 hrs a week at minimum wage to not have to meet 'conditionality'. So if you are currently working 16 hrs a week and claiming WTC, there is NO conditionality, when UC comes in, you will be under the earnings threshold, and will be told to:

1. Get extra hours at work.
2. Take on a second job to make up the hours.
3. take a totally NEW job that earns enough to take you over that threshold. And if you don't - they will stop your UC for 3 months for the first time you don't meet those conditions, 6 months for the second time, and 3 years for the third time.

This is basically the total dismantlement of the Welfare system.

They will be lowering the amount of your childcare costs they cover - so if you will be unable to cover both your childcare costs and your rent, even working 20hrs a week, you will STILL have to do it, even if you can't eat - because if you DON'T - they will STOP YOUR UC.

I just want to crawl under a rock and die now, TBH.

If you have been on ESA in the WRAG for a year, you will also be subject to conditionality, because after a year, you will be passed back to UC. Even if you are still ill or suffering from your life-long disability.

And if you have a disability that is not classed as severe enough to qualify for ESA (like epilepsy, if you have less than 700+ seizures a year), they don't give you the 20 hrs a week condition - they give you the 35hrs one that fully fit people get.

A couple has a HIGHER level of conditionality - minimum of what you would earn on NMW for 35 hrs a week. And EACH person in the couple has to meet their OWN conditionality requirements, so the person designated as the 'main carer' MUST work for at least 20hrs, like a LP, and the OTHER paerson MUST work for at least 35 hrs, like a single person with no dependants.

HuntyCat, I don't fully understand your breakdown . Could you please explain the differeneces between current WTC and UC, hours, money, childcare etc. I have never claimed JSA or WTC so it is a bit of mystery to me how it works.

ARGH! I've just spent ages tinkering with a blog post only to fail at the last hurdle. All bloody gone! I'll try again later once I've stopped swearing!

I'm just trying to absorb the info you've posted. I think I need more coffee. Christ, they really hate 'poor' people, don't they?

I am terrified.

I have worked with poor people in countries with shaky welfare systems. Three-year-old girls working as street prostitutes. Seven-year-olds working as drug runners; the first scapegoat choice to be shot by either police or gang. Lepers and other folk dying of curable diseases on the pavements. Families pitching camp in shop doorways overnight; begging during the day. Families - even toddlers - working the scrap heaps, engulfed in toxic fumes and treading on infected needles.

Even the rural utopia is a myth: I've seen what 'scratching a living from the dust' really means, and it's not a living. They die.

At least it's warm there. We haven't even got that :(

This is not a welfare system.

This is a façade to stop the population demanding a welfare system and to demonise the people who will be left to die.

Dude, where's my country?

I'm actually impressed (in a sick, can't look this in they eye way): they have actually managed to think up a system worse than the workhouse - while still claiming to have a system.

Because presumably they're going to take the children into care while the parent has nothing to eat and no way to pay for a roof for 6 months? At least the workhouse provided food and shelter for the adults as well.

OMG - you can get the 3 month / 6 month / 3 YEAR UC sanction for refusing to APPLY for a job, Accept a job offer, OR refuse to attend a Mandated Work Placement (Workfare). Like FUCK ON YOUR HIGH HORSE will I do workfare ever again. I'd rather STARVE than be used as an indentured slave. I'd sell my body first - If only to feed the dc.

So if they tell you to apply for jobs you can't get childcare for and you don't apply - they take 100% of your UC away for 3 months. If they tell you to be an unpaid slave for Mr. Tesco, and you refuse - they take 100% of your UC away for 6 months. If they then make you apply for a totally unsuitable job 200 miles away from your house (CAB have seen that happen recently) - they can then take 100% of your UC away for 3 years.

Did anyone know that the sanctions that have been agreed upon were as harsh as this? And it will be for anyone whose youngest dc is over 5yo.

However, once Universal Credit is established we will be able to raise or lower this threshold and apply conditionality to a greater number of recipients.

This line in the first paragraph concerns me - as they have already raised the conditionality level from what it was originally (anything higher than £68 a week) to the expected 'start' level of £212 a week after tax, which equates to a 20-hr week on NMW, how high are they going to raise the conditionality level after the introduction of UC?

Will they raise conditionality right up to the level where you get NO UC? Because that would be a fairly high income in a Lone Parent family. So a NMW earning Lone Parent might be forced to work 40+ hrs, where a SAHM might only NEED to work 12 hrs. That's surely not right? Punishing the dc of Lone Parents?

This is from the UC briefing note 12 - 21. Conditionality under Universal Credit will apply up to a ?conditionality threshold?. Recipients above the threshold will be placed into the no-conditionality group. To begin with, we intend to set the threshold at broadly the same point at which people lose entitlement to the current out-of-work benefits. However, once Universal Credit is established we will be able to raise or lower this threshold
and apply conditionality to a greater number of recipients.
22. This will enable us to encourage people to increase their earnings and hours in a way that we have never been able to do before, helping people along a journey toward financial independence from the state.

This is from the UC briefing note 13 - 2.

Work search and work availability requirements

a) The total number of hours we expect a claimant to work (and therefore their personal earnings threshold) will be set in the same way for in-work claimants as for out of work claimants. This is covered in the separate Policy Briefing Note 11 ? Extending conditionality under Universal Credit to working claimants: setting a new conditionality threshold, which sets out that a claimant?s circumstances will always be taken into account in setting their ?job goal? which will be recorded in the Claimant Commitment.

b) Claimants could look to increase their earnings in three ways:
? By increasing their hours or their wage in their current job;
?By finding one or more additional jobs that they could do alongside their existing job; or
?By finding a new job that offered a higher income.

So in other words - if you are poorly qualified and can't earn more than minimum wage, and you don't take whatever additional hours the JobCentre staff tell you to - they can santion you.

Do you know what the longest sanction is? THREE FUCKING YEARS WITH NO ENTITLEMENT TO UC. Did you hear that? THREE YEARS with no benefits. It goes on a scale - If you refuse one unsuitable job, they can sanction your UC for 3 months. If you refuse two unsuitable jobs, they can sanction your UC for 6 months. If the third job they tell you to accept is unsuitable - then they will STOP ALL YOUR UC FOR THREE YEARS.

How to kill off all the UC claimants? They claim that the system will be tailored to individual circunstances, while at the same time refusing to accept that anyone who is not in receipt of ESA right now has ANY health problems...

I almost don't want to carry on living in a world like this, and am almost regretting having had my dc, because I am not going to be able to feed and clothe them properly once UC comes in, in fact I will be struggling to keep a roof over their head. I just feel so glum and despondant about it all right now.

I can understand ... because they are bastards

That's what's wrong, isn't it?

:(

The lack of refund I can understand - it is, as you say Hunty, because they are bastards.

garlic that is weird. I can't make out whether they want us to work or not.

Farking hell Garlic! I don't know what to say - except that the DWP is notoriously harsh on those who try to set up their own business - don't want the serfs getting ideas above their station or anything....

Do you know, that if you buy an annual PCC (Prescription Charge Certificate), and then become eligible for free prescriptions (as happened to me this year, when Ex-P walked out and I became eligible for free prescriptions by dint of claiming IS) - They refuse to give you a refund. I had only had the certificate for 8 weeks.

Kafka-esque

mis-type

The one that lasts a year is £104. Blimey. Wish I could learn that money out of your arse trick - it'd be bloody helpful to shit £10 notes! . Don't know how you'd clean them though...

Yesterday I got two bizarre letters from DWP about how I must choose between working (signing off benefits) and reducing my permitted work to less than £20-worth a week.

Considering that I made a £1,900 loss on my work last year - and that they based their decision on my declared earnings for 2007-2008, which were zero and I wasn't even receiving any benefits, this is getting more Kafa-esque by the week.

The JCP invited me in for a discussion about my permitted work last month. I told them about the £1900 loss and that I'd been too unwell to work at all from April to October this year. And these letters are the results of that interview.

How can I refute an assertion that is based on made-up information?

Even more crucially, HOW the hell would someone, who is as sick as I was in 2007, be supposed to deal with such accusatory bollocks??

Hunty there is currently a prescription season ticket you can buy that lasts a year - don't know the cost. Although you would have to start saving for it now I suppose - unless you learn that money out your arse trick

Oh - I tried that - they wouldn't accept the payment - I had no banking details for them, as I had paid in cash when he attended as I only had a post office account then, and they would not accept the cash payment unless it was the full amount...

All I can find about 'passported benefits' is that even the Government hasn't decided yet what will happen with them. . Yeah, Riiiiiiight.

It seems LIKELY that they will be included under the UC banner, which will mean that some people who think that they will be OK, and under the cap - WON'T BE. I know that free school meals alone are worth £31.50 a week to me right now. And if I was paying prescription charges, which you have to pay per item, I would be paying for 4/6 prescription charges every month - because they don't give me a full month's worth of epilepsy meds at once. . So that is, erm, at £7.40 an item, between £29.60 a month and 44.40 a month. if they include both of those in the cap - I'll be screwed!

Idiots. They should have agreed to a payment plan and I bet the majority of it would be paid by now. Give it another two years without court action and they won't be able to pursue it. Actually, if the letters are from the nursery rather than a collection agency, I'd be inclined to ignore them as it looks like they're not going to take further action. If you really do want to pay them back, YOU decide on how much to pay and when, write and tell them and if they accept the payment, consider that they're accepted the arrangement.

Are they going to include passported benefits? Free school meals and prescriptions could be a huge miscalculation. I'm really out of the loop with being off work. Epilepsy meds should be free though.

Every 12 weeks, for 4 years, I have received a letter asking for full payment. I telephone them, explain my circumstances, and ask to set up an affordable payment agreement. They refuse, and insist that I pay the £2000 balance in 7 days. When I tell them that I cannot pull money out of my arse do that, they threaten to take me to court. I apologise, tell then that they will have to take me to court then, and we end the telephone call.

Then 12 weeks later, I get another letter. Yet not ONCE in 4 years have they been able to accept that I can't shit miracles produce £2K from thin air...

Well, they've ALREADY lowered the percentage from 80% to 70% - but I am thinking that they are going to HAVE to lower that even further, as they are going to give childcare help to people working 1-15 hours too, without putting any extra cash in the kitty, so to speak.

And NONE of the UC calculations have allowed for this - every bit of paperwork published states that Lone Parents will be better off (Propaganda or what?!) despite the fact that none of the calculations have figured in the lower amount of help with childcare, OR the fact that none of the calculations are including what are currently 'passported benefits' such as free school dinners, free eye tests, free prescriptions.

So, all I can conclude, by adding up the figures in my case - is that if they include the cost of 'passported benefits' in the UC cap - I will be over the cap, and will have to find a cheaper house (I'm already in a HA 2.5-bed with 4 dc - the only way to get a cheaper house is to get a 1-bed flat. With 5 people). . I have a LOT of medication, so it would be the inclusion of the free prescriptions in the cap that would screw ME over - 2 different epilepsy meds each month, steroids for my (possible) fibro, asthma pumps, and often anti-B's for chest infections, as I get a lot since I had pneumonia as a SE of Swine flu 18 months ago.

I reckon it is class ethnic cleansing by stealth.

But the wonga.com guy said reducing employment rights would create a gazillion jobs.... < rolls eyes >

Do they still chase you Hunty?

I STILL owe £2000 to my DS2's old nursery from when I was made redundant with only 24 hrs notice, and no redundancy pay. They expected me to pay for an EXTRA month AFTER DS2 left. Even though I was no longer getting ANY help from WTC towards the fees, and even though I was unemployed. It has been 4 years - and I still don't have the money to pay them.

I paid every penny up to the day DS2 left the nursery, but there is no way, when I am unemployed, that I can cover a whole months fees. I tried to make a payment arrangement with them - but they refused to take my money unless I paid the WHOLE THING at once.

. I hate OWING them this money - but that's another thing - dodgy practices by private nurseries. People in low-paid jobs don't often GET a full month's notice of no longer having a job, or not getting as many hours at work etc - they just have to deal with it. Which is made IMPOSSIBLE by extortionate nurseries expecting you to pay at the PREVIOUS price for another month AFTER you stop using their service. The Childcare help from WTC stops as soon as your hours drop or you are made redundant - but the charges from the nursery don't.

Lowering the percentage they pay sounds familiar. Worth looking at the cap too. Have you got the DWP uprating SI?