To think Toby Young deserves scorn for this article?

[BowieFan]

Apologies for linking to the Daily Mail, but I've used a service that denies them advertising revenue: <a class="break-all" href="https://anonym.to/?www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3869182/Why-Lefties-misty-eyed-movie-romanticises-Benefits-Britain-says-TOBY-YOUNG.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">anonym.to/?www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3869182/Why-Lefties-misty-eyed-movie-romanticises-Benefits-Britain-says-TOBY-YOUNG.html

Aside from the basic errors (it's 100minutes long, not nearly 3 hours), it's just an awful article. The fact that Toby Young thinks everyone claiming benefits is a smoking/gambling/drinking loudmouth is just offensive. I'm shocked - not that it was published - but that he thinks his opinion is the opinion of everyone.

I'd love to see him survive on benefits. I wonder if he'd be saying the same things then?

BowieFan Because your using specific incidents when the article is about everyone. Are you saying everyone claiming is like those in the film? I think its more balanced and that's what TY is saying.

I work in a Jobcentre and can honestly say that the vast majority of staff do their best to help claimants especially those with disabilities however ......there are some claimants who are very very hard to help.

Quornflakes

Nope, but equally not everybody is a smoker/gambler/drinker with Sky TV and an iPhone, like TY is making out.

Oldbutstillgotit

Maybe your jobcentre is good, but that's not the experience of the majority. I have had people in tears because of their treatment at the Jobcentre, and I've seen it myself.

My experience is that there are some good staff at Jobcentres, but they don't last long. They get burned out by the cruel, cold and clinical nature of it all. I've heard secret recordings where new advisers are told not to see the claimants as people. I've seen the sanctioning targets.

I work with a man at the CAB who had a nervous breakdown after working at a Jobcentre for 6 months.

The DWP don't care about your disability and neither do the advisers. It sounds awful but in my experience it's true. If they can get you off the benefit for any reason at all, that's all they care about.

Can't afford Sky, fags, booze, gambling, heating, food, going out. But you judge away Quorn. When I was turned down for PiP, I was given a copy of the report. It bore no relation to my life whatsoever. There was no mention that I have days where I need to change my clothes multiple times, where I have to do multiple wash loads because I've shit myself, it said I couldn't possibly have AS because I said Thank you to cashiers and talked to the interviewer and turned up unaccompanied. She lied. The assessor lied. What that did Quorn was condemn me to a further six months with an abuser thereby creating the PTSD from which I now suffer and leaves me with next to nothing to live on. I still have to do the wash loads, buy new underwear more than others, as well as other disabilities that I have to contend with. There are more like me than there are shown on Jeremy Kyle but this government has brainwashed people into believing that we're all feckless arses who don't want to work. The film is accurate.

Oldbutstillgotit - I know there are many people who are difficult to help; I work with people with mental health and learning disabilities and often the hardest to help are also the most disabled.
You say that Job Centre staff are doing their best. But why do we see so many people with disabilities being sanctioned?

Your organisation has a legal duty to do disability related reasonable adjustments to the claimant commitment under the Equality Act; and yet routinely this is not done.
See www.mirror.co.uk/news/ampp3d/how-benefit-sanctions-punish-people-5005786 for example of such sanctioning

Bowiefan, I think I love you

Bowie I have worked in several Jobcentres and simply don't accept what you are saying . My colleagues and I work very hard to help people, and are then shouted at, sworn at and threatened by SOME of them. I care deeply as do the majority of my colleagues but it is a very hard trying to help people who sometimes do not want to be helped. The media is very good at giving one side of the story but I could write a book about the other side !

I have never sanctioned anyone .

Odious Tory lapdog with a massive chip on his shoulder about not being able to afford to send his children to public school. Plus he looks like a testicle.

He even polluted the last series of Masterchef by appearing as a guest judge. Sneering supercilious twat.

And he thinks Philip Green should keep his knighthood.

Okay Old, it's entirely possible that you are one of the few good ones. Few. Because looking at the whistleblowers, the endemic attitude is to sanction, sanction, sanction. We've had targets, denied, then proven, we've had deaths, denied, then proven. These aren't lies

Hideous man and vile article

Final words - no targets. None. Doesn't happen. Never.

Oldbutstillgotit - you don't seem to get it as evidenced by you saying" it is very hard trying to help people who sometimes do not want to be helped".

Does it occur to you that their behaviour is very likely to be a symptom of and arising from their mental health, neurological or learning disability?

We have seen massive cuts in acute hospital provision, in support workers and the other advocates who previously would help very mentally disabled people navigate their way through the labyrinthine benefits and social care bureaucracy? These posts don't exist anymore, so disabled people come to you without support and rely on your staff to understand they need help and compassion. Something that feels in short supply nowadays.

And it will get worse with further cuts. I appreciate you are on the front line but some of the terrible cases I have seen over the years are systematic failures by the Job Centre and Benefits Agency.

And they are not even cost savers as routinely sanctions make disabled people iller and the health costs escalate much greater than any benefit saving.

Sorry, I've just read the article and I actually agree with Toby.
" when the test was introduced in 2013 by the then Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, roughly a million people decided to come off the Employment and Support Allowance rather than go through the assessment "
You can't really argue with this. But then I live in a region with huge council estates and my last job in education allowed me first-hand experience of "Benefit Street". Oh, and I also like the West London Free School.

To the poster who pays £200 for her DD's laptop: Cash Converter sells them far cheaper.

There. Are.No Targets. For. Sanctions.

Interesting final word Old

He's always been a twat.

Targets
More Targets
leaked job centre letter

So that million people who came off benefits, where are they now?

and this just popped up on my timeline

BusStopBetty, they did not come off benefits. They came off disability (or whatever it was/is called). Some of them will be on JSA; some of them will be in work (because JSA as opposed to disability will not be sufficient to maintain their previous lifestyle and so they'll have opted for working).

Sorry I will just add- by reference to Toby Young that with the great privileges he was given growing up, he seems to failed to learn any humility or understanding of what it like to live without those privileges. Here is an old article by Paul Bernal that explains it better than I can (though referring to Boris Johnson) paulbernal.wordpress.com/2013/11/28/a-few-words-on-privilege/

So that million people who came off benefits, where are they now?
Some of them died due to loss of their disability benefits. Quite a few, in fact.

Oldbutstillgotit

There are. I've seen them from three separate job centres thanks to whistleblowers bringing them to me. I've also seen one myself in person that the job centre manager failed to hide when I went to see him with one of my CAB clients.

Maybe it's not in your jobcentre, but they are in the majority.

You are trying hard to help people? Hmm, maybe you are, but you do realise the whole reason they are acting unreasonably is usually due to stress from being targeted by the Jobcentre, or because their condition makes them unpredictable in the first place.

I work with a lovely guy who has a very challenging condition. He has never once raised his voice at me, because he knows I am genuinely helping him - I am not being paid for my time and I genuinely care. He knows I have no targets, no boss telling me to sanction etc.

He was sanctioned by the jobcentre because he raised his voice - the whole reason he raised his voice was because they refused to let him sign on when he was 35 seconds late for his appointment.

It is the uncaring and clinical nature of the jobcentre that causes people to get angry. A normal person would've bent the rules to let him sign on, realising that it was genuinely a problem that arose because of public transport. But the jobcentre advisor sat there smiling saying "Nope, the rules are the rules." and she sanctioned him. That is low. Really low.