Is this really what people want?

If you have a learning disability you will lose your benefits

Yes.

That has and will continue to happen, the support for people with learning difficulties is laughable.

Have you ever had to sign on EdithWeston?

The threat of sanctions have been there for some time, but this is a huge change.

Re scaremongering; Edith I remember you saying that on another thread about the changes to welfare some time ago, you poo poohed posters concerns there too, surely now you can see it wasn't scaremongering?

As to Dyslexic customers getting help, excuse me while I die laughing.

mcm
If you are motivated and full of self-esteem, it may work, but I have yet to find a long-term unemployed person who actually is motivated and with self-esteem, as uncomfortable as that it.

Is the key to it. Something needs to be done, but this isn't it.

Im going to have to hide this thread now.

I cannot take anymore of xenia.

Wouldnt it be lovely if the whole world operated in the way she thinks it should. But it doesnt. People are going to be homeless, they are going to die.

(Just reread yr sentence Xenia, I get it)

They have stood to have them reduced by sanction since the regime was introduced in November 2002.

The updates are minor compared to the damage that was caused a decade ago when the principle of having a punitive element was introduced.

But in practice, sanctions are applied sparingly and fictional worst cases are scaremongering.

xenia a 19 year old who's got on a coach from Eastern Europe and is room sharing with 3 others can afford to work for £4.
Someone supporting a family, who will lose tax credits, fsm, council tax credits etc. cannot. Did you mean what you wrote about suicide btw, I'm assuming it was a typo.
OP, I've helped with the forms you mention- surely there must be a discrimination issue there. If you have a learning disability you will lose your benefits.

Family support is a nice idea xenia, but what if everyone in your family is poor? My DH's family are all retired, un or underemployed, or scraping by on minimum wage. We can't afford to keep them all afloat. And i imagine it'll get worse.

Missing one appointment or calling in sick does not automatically lead to sanction (I have direct personal experience of this), and people go through forms carefully with you, so errors arising from dyslexia will not lead to sanction. So the examples cited in OP cannot yet have happened, and there is no reason to believe they will start.

Forms filled in incorrectly because you are putting inaccurate information may lead to suspension, whist the claims adjusted or as sanction in fraudulent cases (which may be less than MN's favourite newspaper splashes, but which does exist). Missing multiple appointments may lead to sanction, as can repeated illness with no doctor's note.

These are not new obligations, even if it's being portrayed as such now. They have been in place for at least a decade.

Where was the protest then?

Well lots of people from abroad manage to motivate them to mvoe countries as many of our own relatives and ancestors will have done to find work because if the choice is not enough food (although I am not suggesting most people on UK benefits cannot afford food), suicide or move to find work the latter may be the right solution.
The apprentice care home programme was for young people. His company was paying £4 an hour and he said that was well over the £2.60 but many just could not get into the routine of getting out of bed and being on time. I presume the idea is tha if you rae 16 you might still be living with your parents. Perhaps we need a shift ni attitudes in the UK that family supports you when you are young, ill, old rather than the state, a new kind of personal responsibility which many other countries still have and which perhaps benefits them in difficult times such as those through which we are going.

I moved hundreds of miles from family to find work as lots of people have done in earlier recessions. It is not always easy and I know it is harder for those with no money to fund say a night bus to London but it is not impossible.

On the news tonight, 7 suicides in 10 days in East Belfast.

Now Belfast has some more complex issues than just these cuts. So they cannot all be down to this and that isnt what I am saying.

But times are getting desperate for deprived areas. I think that this time next year there will be a significant increase in the number of deaths in the UK. Not just suicides, but people dying from illness, malnutrition etc.

This country is at the start of a long miserable road.

Unfortunately the decent majority are being punished for the sins of the scroungers and much as I dislike that we cannot, as a society, afford to continue as we are.

I work in a deprived area and there is a sizeable minority of people who, by choice, will always try to stay on benefits. If they put the same effort into jobsearching as they do into trying to claim extras, appealling decisions, etc they would be great employees

May be it will push some of them into finding work. there is a company with 500 apprenticeships - care home business - available and had only 100 applicants - this is for young people. They don't turn up, they won't do the work. I think it's in tonight's Evening Standard. If those people would not eat unless they turned up may be they would attend the work.

I dont think people realise that what they think will happen and what will actually happen are two completely different things.

The feckless benefit cheat has become the only type of claimant due to the propaganda being circulated by the government and the media. People are forgetting that the majority are honest people trying to get by.

I think the problem is that it's not what the majority want, but the Tory scum have managed to get in to power with the Lib Dems who are enabling them to destroy people's lives.

I keep on asking myself how the hell can 30% of the population vote Tory when they are destroying the NHS, killing disabled people, wrecking the economy, increasingly poverty and homelessness, and generally making the UK a nastier, more brutish place to live.

But then a large portion of the Tory voter base are pensioners and rich shire-dwellers, totally disconnected from the lives of most people. These are also the people most likely to vote.

It's a sad state of affairs and the UK is going to be a worse country when the Tory scum are booted out of office.