AIBU to be worried - Reintroducing the Truck System for the unemployed in the UK

[nickymanchester]

It has been reported that the UK government is starting a small trial in Manchester to pay (what I presume is) Job Seekers Allowance to people in a brand new blockchain currency called "GovCoin" - similar to BitCoin.

And that what this "money" is spent on will be tracked by the government - initially, the tracking will be on a "voluntary" basis.

So instead of actually paying real money in to a person's bank account they will now provide them with a crypto-currency on their mobile phone which can only be used in certain retailers and where the government will be tracking what the money is spent on. I can well imagine where this will lead.

One of the main backers of this is Lord Hunt, who is the Minister for "Welfare Reform" - boy does that phrase ever put the fear of god into me. As an aside, Lord Hunt was the government minister who, in 2014, said that disabled people were "not worth" the minimum wage. He is also the person behind the move to Universal Credit that, while it may have very laudable aims in theory, in practice it has been a nightmare for many of the people on the receiving end of it.

This is a quote from one of the sources:-

GovCoin Systems tests blockchain-based platform for social welfare payments in UK

Speaking at the Payments Innovation Conference 2016 on 4 July, Minister for Welfare Reform at the Department for Work and Pensions Lord Freud highlighted the ongoing trial saying:

We have been working with GovCoin Systems (and their partners, Barclays, RWE npower and University College London) for this trial. Claimants are using an app on their phones through which they are receiving and spending their benefit payments. With their consent, their transactions are being recorded on a distributed ledger to support their financial management.

Jeremy Wilson, Vice Chairman, Corporate Banking at Barclays, explained that the initiative focuses on adding an additional layer of richer data and identity onto payments, so that a deeper and more effective relationship can be established between the government and claimants.

www.econotimes.com/GovCoin-Sy...s-in-UK-233316

There are many other sites reporting this as well which you can find through googling them, for example:-

www.cityam.com/245128/governm...ain-technology

www.fstech.co.uk/fst/GovCoin_...ents_Trial.php

So why the title of this post and why my concern? Well, at school, one of the A levels I studied was history and a major part of that was the Economic & Social History of Britain in the 18th and 19th Centuries (the other part was Britain and Her Relations with the World 1914-1945, not that anyone's interested). Anyway, the Truck System was an infamous form of payments that became widespread in the UK and led to a great deal of abuse.

While, currently, these are just trials that are happening at the moment, I really do see the awful potential to become a fully fledged Truck System where the state monitors exactly what unemployed people are spending their money on, where they spend it and eventually will be able to control these things. This bit is really scary:-

so that a deeper and more effective relationship can be established between the government and claimants.

AIBU to worry about where this might lead or is it just an example of how new technologies can help young unemployed people so that they don't have to worry about pesky little things like actual having some cash in their hand but have to have pay for a mobile phone in order to access their benefits?

Lord Freud has hinted at mandatory job training/workfare for people in hostels and womens refuges!

You're joking Helena!?

Wow this is so bad

Not a joke unfortunately.

johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2016/06/30/shades-of-the-workhouse-lord-fraud-hints-at-mandatory-jobs-training-in-hostels-and-womens-refuges/

So women who have escaped abuse are then packed off to work at a time when their dc's probably need them constantly . I was lucky enough that I carried on working when my abusive ex went and the dc's were tiny enough to not notice but IMO for the majority of women that isn't the time to send them to work. They'll have fewer choices and more stress.

Either the rich cunts who came up with this don't know how poor people cope, or they really do hate them. We're poor, we buy clothes and stuff from charity shops (some of which don't even have normal card machines) or car boots or from people on FB selling pages. When the kids go to school, I will try to get uniform secondhand from other parents. We don't have a car and it's hard to get a lot of shopping on the bus so we shop on Amazon Prime for big boxes of washing powder etc and use Amazon Video and the Sky app instead of getting a telly licence - cheaper than getting loads of DVDs for the kids.

I am looking for the elusive job that realistically works round DH's hours and still leaves me with time to sleep, so the internet is important, it also keeps you up to date with local news, if stuffs being given away cheap/free on FB, let's you sell your stuff if times are hard, let's you keep in touch with family on FB/Skype.

internet is important, it also keeps you up to date with local news, if stuffs being given away cheap/free on FB, let's you sell your stuff if times are hard, let's you keep in touch with family on FB/Skype.

People communicating and sharing information the government don't control must really piss them off.

'Money' is currency - it's something that can be exchanged widely for goods and services and has an exchange rate with other currencies.

Govcoin is not money. It will only be exchangeable for goods in certain shops and services from certain companies. It won't be (officially) exchangeable for pounds or euros or dollars.

Govcoin is a token scheme, with all the limitations and implications of any other token scheme.

Plenty so it will be like toy money, because they can't be trusted with real money?

meglet i doubt it will ever become policy. I cant see charities like Womens Aid going along with it for a start

meglet i doubt it will ever become policy. I cant see charities like Womens Aid going along with it for a start

And who are they going to appeal to if Theresa May even wants Britain out of the European Convention on Human Rights? This is all going back to the Victorian system of the deserving poor and there's fuck all people can do about it. If they try, they'll get the Queen doing one more appeal to the masses or Kate will dress in something that doesn't suit her so the masses have their games to forget they can only have certain bread and attend a course to showcase they deserve it anyway. And if they protest, they will show the repeats of the Benefit Street so the middle classes can have disgusted conversations over their Ocado bought quinoa salads.
And believe me, Britain will get it. Just before the privatisation of the NHS which will be proclaimed unsalvageable after years of misuse by fucking foreigners.