To be worried that this news will be buried?

[WhoWants2Know]

What with it being CIN and May having to replace cabinet ministers again, I'm worried that this isn't being more widely reported.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/nov/16/uk-austerity-has-inflicted-great-misery-on-citizens-un-says

For all the government say that Universal Credit is working to get people back into work, the UN reporter on extreme poverty and human rights finds that a fifth of the UK population is living in poverty now.

I apologise for the sarcasm.

But likewise, please don’t be so sneering because you don’t agree with my opinion. I think healthy debate is a great thing, but at some point we have to accept that people have different views based on their own life experiences: what they’ve done, what they’ve seen, what they’ve studied. It doesn’t mean that one person is right and the other is wrong.

Bantering and internet-arguements aside - I genuinely do think it is a good thing if you’ve researched into the causes of U.K. poverty and if you can use that to help. Although, sadly, as the OP says, I doubt our politicians will listen to you as they’re not all too busy stabbing each other in the back and fighting not to be Brexit Secretary.

bow until it gets sold and appears on credit checks and no one wants to know about it because it was once upon a time a student loan. The worst part? If you have direct payments that counts as income too. I'm disabled and if could afford the contribution for direct payments for care I need I wouldn't be able to have them anyway as I'd need to find the money to pay back my student loan! It's not excluded because it's not specifically in my contract, it's taken years to get PIP excluded because whilst DLA was it took years to get them to accept PIP is the same benefit with a different name and criteria

So yes as long as slc/student finance own it, fine.
When they don't it becomes a problem.

And everyone saying they won't be sold on, they will. They want something to show for the loans they've paid out on even if it's just a few pounds because so many don't earn enough to pay them back.

At 20 I believed it was a special government scheme and protected and the parts about it being allowed to be sold on were impossible - I asked about it. Now I know better.

I used to believe that the important things was equality of opportunity - good schools for all, that sort of thing. But I've come to realise that an important factor is who you know, the connections you have. We will all pull out all the stops to give our children an advantage, and there's no way to prevent that. So what we need is to get away from "winner takes all" - yes, you can get an advantage for children, but it's no longer the difference between getting them everything and getting nothing.

Equality isn't about one or two outstanding disadvantaged kids being successful, it's about getting rid of the system whereby the mediocre kid from an advantaged home is found a reasonable job through parental contacts, while a mediocre kid from a less advantaged home gets a MacJob. Or, if we can't manage that, at least make sure the MacJob pays enough not just to feed and house yourself, but to participate in society.

And the ridiculous fetishization of 'work' is also part of the problem, as it fixates on waged employment as the measure of a person's worth to society. Yet waged employment is no guarantee of anything any more. Zero hours contracts and the gig economy; the holding down of wages, the fact that many 'jobs' are utterly fucking pointless as well as badly paid; the attitude many large organisations have towards employees - that they are property, not human beings, and therefore can be treated as interchangable fuel and also forced to display craven obedience and gratitude...

Any competent economist knows (and many of them keep saying so and being ignored) that the way to fix the UK's economy is very simple - give poor people more money. Unconditionally. What we need is trickle-UP, not the myth of trickle-down

Exactly. As a 'developed' country our government systematically fails our most vulnerable at every possible hurdle.

re zero hour contracts are dreadful. So many people suffer because of them. So many don't understand exactly what they mean and think they're getting a good deal because they can decide when they work their hours.

I had a friend who returned to work after cancer and found she'd been migrated to a zero hour contract (which after a long discussion it turned out she agreed to do this as she didn't understand, she had learning disabilities though not severe she was extremely naive) and had no say in her hours which included any day and any time and she couldn't manage it, she was prepared to work "her days" not any day or night as. Thought she could just say no to other days. She didn't know there would be weeks with no work or weeks with lots. Though her cancer was in remission she was still unwell from side effects. She lost her job within six weeks. Everything round here now is zero hours.

She didn't understand.
Most people don't.

I was having a conversation with someone on Thursday about how this increase in poverty is going unreported because of Brexit.
Around where I live there is a visible increase in homelessness. Outside the leisure centre I use there is always at least one tent, some days more. People shouldn't be having to live like this!

Who wants to alleviate their poverty by running a book on how long it takes a politician (any flavour) to say that this in another reason to get out of Europe ASAP so that we will have huge amounts of money to solve this problem?

*is

I thought this clip about government policies being misogynistic was interesting.

skwawkbox.org/2018/11/16/un-rapporteur-alston-govt-policies-could-have-been-designed-by-misogynists/?fbclid=IwAR1Vq8QBAwQQosambiGGBkROompGvY3zOPm_b72a6V4SE--VFpHT4o1EYzc

There's an unused business park in my city that has now become a tent city. Many people there have jobs, but they've no way of affording the bond, deposit etc to rent, let alone the ongoing costs.

And why are employment figures at an all time high? Because zero hours contracts are counted. You can't afford to live, but you're a positive statistic and apparently that's all that matters.

But likewise, please don’t be so sneering because you don’t agree with my opinion. I think healthy debate is a great thing, but at some point we have to accept that people have different views based on their own life experiences: what they’ve done, what they’ve seen, what they’ve studied. It doesn’t mean that one person is right and the other is wrong

Ok fair point about opinions and I am sorry. The point I’m trying to make is that this is more than opinions. I have an opinion but my opinion won’t solve the problem - it’s beyond that. Which is why politicians keep failing - their opinions are being used to drive policy when we need evidence.

I work with various charities each Christmas, and each year when it's time to make contact I find another one has closed down due to funding cuts. Last year it was a group supporting female refugees, this year it's one that worked with victims of child abuse. No one else picks up the work they were doing, just more people left to suffer.

I believe some of the thinking behind uc was good I.e. to simplify benefit claims into one easy claim but in practice it has been terrible for everyone, especially the most vulnerable in society.

One thing that could immediately help to ease the housing situation would be to pay a guaranteed rent directly to private landlords like they used to. Most landlords refuse to rent to benefit claimants because universal credit is so insecure it seems risky. Before the system changed, working people claiming housing benefit and tax credits were seen as some of the most reliable tenants.

Its impossible for me to view UC as anything other than social engineering that would do credit to Stalin. It's a deliberate attempt to manage out 'the underclass' and banish the impoverished to the far reaches of this country which are, and have been for 30+ years, regarded as beyond saving. All of us unaffected by UC should hang our heads in shame a what we are allowing our country to become.

I agree with the statement that only waged work is seen as having any value.

I work with a group of people who are unable to do consistent paid work as a result of disabilities. But with the right support, they are growing food for people to eat and refurbishing furniture so that people with nothing have furniture when they eventually get a place to live. There are people with beds to sleep in and chairs to sit on because of this group's graft.

And yet they will go home and have to fight the system for the roof over their own head and the food on their table, while we fight to continue getting them support.

I fucking hate the tories, sorry, just had to get that out after reading about the injured care worker getting £6

i remember a few years ago saying on here about the problems caused by paying rent direct to the tenants rather than the landlord. At the time nobody thought it a big deal. At the time i wanted to know to know the reasoning behind it. Now it’s clear.

.

I believe some of the thinking behind uc was good I.e. to simplify benefit claims into one easy claim but in practice it has been terrible for everyone, especially the most vulnerable in society

Yes, benefits are overly complicated and difficult to navigate. UC seems not to actually have lost the complexity - the same, or actually higher and more complicated, hurdles have to be jumped to get it.

There are many complex reasons why people will need state support, and to just lump it into one is madness.

Something needs to be done on the “supply side” which could reduce complexity.

For example:

If there was more government owned housing, you could reduce the need for housing benefit to be paid to claimants. The government just charge a lower or nil rent depending on income. Instead at the moment, there’s a nonsense of council “charging” rent, some of which is clawed back via another government department or housing benefit paid to the tenant then back to the council.

Or childcare. We have a nonsense of tax free childcare orchildcare vouchers. The circle of money goes via the employer to the employee to the childcare providers. Why doesn’t the government just pay money directly to childcare providers to enable them to charge parents lower fees?

It’s all one big circular nonsense designed to keep some people in admin jobs etc and allows politicians to create seemingly good schemes which are anything but.

I was reading something recently about 'work' and it stayed with me: there are basically three reasons for people to work.

1. To provide necessary goods/services
2. To distribute resources (wages)
3. To feel they are making a positive contribution to the society they live in.

The thing is, all of these reasons are fucked to some degree. A lot of the provision of goods and services can now be done by machinery.
Wages are being artifically held down.
Lots of jobs are pointless bullshit.

There are things that either need to be done or, if done, can make the person feel they are contributing - these include looking after children or dependent adults, producing art of some kind, and of course the essential but unglamorous jobs like cleaning, maintenance, catering which are so poorly paid when they are paid at all. What is really needed is a universal basic income, plus an understanding that, to get people to do the essential-but-unglamorous work, wages for it need to be higher. At the moment, the shitwork is done by people who are pretty much economically coerced into it - if you don't take this horrible job at the minimum wage, you will be starved into submission.

if you don't take this horrible job at the minimum wage, you will be starved into submission

Why shouldn't they take the jobs though? That's the whole point of UC reforms, people deciding that they don't have to work and can expect to still be fed, housed, clothed etc.

Paying more for unskilled jobs solves nothing as all the jobs that require skill will simply demand even more money. It won't suddenly give everyone a work ethic or the desire to not claim benefits.

Why shouldn't they take the jobs though? That's the whole point of UC reforms, people deciding that they don't have to work and can expect to still be fed, housed, clothed etc.

The number of people doing that was always very small. And the real problem with these 'minimum wage jobs' is that now the vast majority of them are zero hours. They are not regular paid work. But the contracts often demand the employee be available 24/7. How can you survive in any remotely normal way on this if you do not already have a secure tenancy and/or some savings as a cushion? And the gods help you if you need to apply for credit on such a job (say, to buy the car you need to get two and from there because public transport in your area doesn't run 24/7). These contracts work for people whose work can command a high salary and/or those who have an alternate form of income or are in training.

Paying more for unskilled jobs solves nothing as all the jobs that require skill will simply demand even more money. It won't suddenly give everyone a work ethic or the desire to not claim benefits

So you think people without a work ethic are the only ones claiming benefits?