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

[AnyFuckerForAMincePie]

This is the 3rd thread in a series.

It is for people who are horrified, frustrated and downright sad at the erosion of human rights with respect to how this country is being run, just now and in the recent past

it is apolitical in nature, but of course due to many recent initiatives by the recent govt, there will be rants against our current "leaders"

please join in

I shall post the link to the old threads, our "Too Many Cuts #Frothers" blog that is attracting a lot of widespread attention and a little bit of what we are about in a moment

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

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??

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...

Kafka-esque

mis-type

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.

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

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

I can understand ... because they are bastards

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

:(

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.

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?

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.

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.

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 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 :(

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?

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.

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.

Tianc - how can they take the dc into care when they are cutting SS budgets too? No, they will be left to starve, because it's their own fault, they aren't working hard enough, they haven't got a beter paid job, they're not working enough hours to earn enough.

They don't justwant to do away with Tax Credits, they want to do away with the safety net altogether.

And that's the state of play for me under the CURRENT benefits system. I only have winter boots that don't let in water because of a kind person giving them to me - I would rather buy the dc good shoes than myself.

What the fuck is my life going to look like under the new UC system? 20 hrs a week on LIGHT duties is the very maximum I will physically cope with with my epilepsy and possible fibro. Yet if I don't take a 20hr a week job in a factory (which, BTW - is barred to me by law, operating heavy machinery), they will stop my UC for 3 months. If I don't travel god knows how many miles to do a job, when I can't legally drive due to my disability, they will stop my UC for 6 months. If I then refuse to do Mandated Work Activity (their posh name for Workfare - which will be 40 hrs a week, that I'm not fit to do) then they will stop my UC for 3 years.

I'm SCREWED. My disability isn't a disability as far as the DWP is concerned now, despite me having on avergae a seizure a week.

unMN hug to Hunty
surely people will be out on the streets in protest...won't they? otherwise they'll be thrown out on the street

People just don't KNOW. Not many people on benefits HAVE the internet. I only do because my uncle pays for it for DD's homework. So they have NO CLUE of what is going to hit them - and the ones I have tried to talk to don't want to hear it. Nor do those I know on low incomes claiming WTC. .

They won't get angry until it is too late. It's not apathy - it's lack of knowledge. They don't buy newspapers, don't watch the news, don't look at the internet. They go by what they can see in the jobcentre, or what they are sent in letters by the DWP/HMRC.

I just can't understand how ANYONE, least of all Tory supporters, can think this is the right thing ot do? If people get their UC sanctioned, they will also lose their help with rent, as that will come under UC. So they will be homeless.

People won't complain because the Tories and the press have done a great job of convincing the public that the poor deserve to be poor and are all lazy benefit scroungers stealing their hard-earned taxes.

That's why we're hear hunty making noise. I understand why people don't want to know because they want to believe they'll be safe. It's too scary to think of the rest.

I was trying to do the maths last night but I haven't got my paperwork here so can't check but I think DD and I would have been made homeless when DH was finishing his degree. Our only chance would've been the hardship fund at his Uni, and they are given out first come first served...

I haven't darede to do the maths about how I will manage when I have to do 20hrs a week. The £500 UC cap a week might be fiiiiiine ooop North, where housing and childcare costs are much much lower - Nursery for £32 a day!! It's £52 a day here, but in the SE, £500 will NOT cover everything. Christ, right now, my childcare just for DS1, DS2 and DS3 would be...£88 a day Nursery for DS3 and after-schol for DS1 and DS2. If I needed Breakfast club too, it would be £108 a day. And that doesn't even ALLOW for the non-existant childcare for 13yo DD with SN....

I already can't get more than £210 a week childcare paid for by WTC - how the fuck can they expect £500 a week to cover food, utilities, rent AND childcare in the SE or London?!

Did you know that there will be NO UC for anyone earning over £365 a week. Even couples. Even for help with childcare.