Universal credit & domestic abuse

[QuarksandLeptons]

Good article in the Financial Times

www.ft.com/content/aaaaf2fa-4c63-11e8-8a8e-22951a2d8493

Brief summary:
10% of the households receiving the benefit are couples. The new system puts it all into one account which means that in the event of it going into the account of a controlling & abusive partner, the abusive partners can end up not sharing the money, leaving women and children vulnerable. There are cases documented of women and children going hungry and not having money for nappies or sanitary items.
Worse, women & children end up being forced to stay in dangerous circumstances because they don’t have the money to leave.

How can changes like these be made to the system without thinking through the real life consequences to huge numbers of women & children? Surely, this would have been flagged up if relevant women’s groups had been asked to comment on proposed changes

UC is working precisely how it is meant to. The public are responding exactly as planned. This bullshit has been going on for decades and this is just the latest instalment.

We cannot afford to centre ‘what people think’, we must centre ‘what is right’ and organise on that basis IMO.

I know that in the current climate no matter how many women speak out this is not going to change anything much. It will come at a cost. We know organising provides protection and can co-ordinate an effective response.

I strongly feel what we need is an organised community with pooled resources (I don’t just mean money but also emotional support).

@offred: I feel we need help from women in positions of relative power and relative wealth

What would you have them do to help? Things that already happen:

• Some British women help Irish women by funding abortions and associated travel.
• Crowdfunding for specific legal cases e.g. Labour AWS, but this could possibly be used to help women affected by legal aid cuts.
• Lawyers like Harriet Wistrich use their expertise (a form of power) to help women who have been failed by the courts.

We are female by biology but women by trade. We lack rights specifically in the trade aspects of womanhood.

By this, are you talking about the care of children and home, the emotional labour of supporting a husband with his stress generated by work, and the sexual labour of being his lover? Anything I've missed?

The thing about being in a trade union is that:

1. You have a group of workers
2. who receive payment for their work
3. and who recognise that the balance of power lies with the employers
4. and who band together to collectively bargain with the employers re pay and conditions
5. and to support each other in disputes with the employers e.g. challenging unfair treatment.

The problem is that women aren't employed by their husbands and kids, so (2) doesn't apply, and collective bargaining can only work when there are many workers employed by one employer.

An entire street of women striking (e.g. refusing shitwork) in support of Jane Doe from number 10 whose husband won't give her enough money to feed the kids would require Jane to be open about her husband's financial abuse, her neighbours believing her and caring enough to anger their own husbands, and said husbands not shooting the messenger but instead going to number 10 to tell Jane's husband not to be a dick. At which point Jane's husband puts her in hospital for daring to talk about his abuse. So much for that thought experiment. The only reason why employers don't set the cavalry on strikers à la Peterloo Massacre is because the legal punishment and public outcry outweighs the gain.

I suspect that funding more shelter spaces and divorce cases might be more workable.

@offred, that last post from me was rather more stream-of-conscious than I meant it to be. I had bold dreams of Lysistrata leading the women of Athens in a sex strike, but transposed to modern Britain and also refusing to cook dinner, but then realised how it would realistically end.

Ha ha!

No, not husbands but the state.

Help with collective organisation mainly.

Universal Credit is a shit show. But there is no absolute criteria for applying. How can there be? It's meant to be Universal.
So if everyone who is agianst it, applied, regardless of circumstances, it would throw a bloody big stick in front of the wheels.
If you're against Universal Credit but probably don't qualify, apply anyway.
If everyone who is against it, did that, I am sure there would be a lot of sweaty brows at DWP.

shameless interesting idea. I can imagine the millional age group getting behind that...those of us who aren't on it already anyway. Those of us on it can declare a change in circumstances to up the workload. Downside is everyone who needs it would be penalized, sanctioned or further delays in payment.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/14/parents-carillion-childcare-collapse-nursery-provider

There seems to currently be a legal challenge against universal credit by a terminally ill man who ended up £178 worse a month after universal credit was introduced.

www.theguardian.com/society/2018/feb/04/universal-credit-faces-judicial-review

The article is from February and mentions that a judicial review was set for March.

“I am proceeding with the judicial review for my own personal financial situation during this very difficult time of illness, but also because it is quite wrong of the government to remove by stealth and without prior warning on a transition into universal credit a much-needed benefit for people trying to cope alone at home with a substantial disability,”

I wonder how this will pan out. It would have an impact on disabled people but it could also give an idea as to how a legal challenge could be made regarding the rights of single parents (mainly women) and how they need to be supported.

Offred I love the idea of a female society that supports its members. I understand that groups like women’s aid originally started like that.

As you said though, it’s the role of the state to provide for its citizens and the current admin would love to wash its hands clean of said responsibilities and would be only too happy to hand the financial burden to a private group of women to do so.

Short of refusing to pay tax centrally and keeping it for a women’s group - I can’t see how this could work beyond the suggestions of bd67th i.e separate individuals and groups behaving altruistically

bd67th

Your ‘modest proposal’ is so thought provoking. Are you a speculative fiction writer? I would read a book with your proposal on the dust jacket.
The interesting thing about it is that most people would recoil at the idea of the state controlling the natural fertility of men but the reality of the present is that women are subjected to much worse treatment by society and the state as a result of our fertility and reproductive responsibilities.

I've just had a look at the website for universal credit and the hours single parents need to work to be eligible.
My child is between 5 and 13 so I would need to work a MAXIMUM of 25 hours. No problem I've always worked around that many hours since my ds was 9months old. But I'm wondering if it really means minimum? Using maximum really doesn't make sense to me and complete changes the meaning and criteria.
I'm really scared of changing over to universal credit, just had my provisional award notice for tax credits which they seem to make deliberately difficult to understand.

It means the maximum numbers you will be expected to work is 25 hours. However it’s earnings that matter you need to earn nmw x 25 so you may earn that working ten hours for example.

Thanks for the clarification. So if you earn minimum wage it you have to work 25 hours a week?

Yes that’s right Zombie .

Have only just caught up read this entire thread. Back tracking to near the beginning:

HelenaDove: In fact when i first joined MN back in 2011 there was a poster called Huntycat who was sounding warnings about several aspects of UC including this one. She got told she was scaremongering by some.

Yes, various women's groups (esp involved with DV) were alarmed at where this would go - and they were right. The very definition of 'not scaremongering', when it all comes to pass.

DJLippy: THIS is the current fire rad fems need to put out. Men in women's changing rooms are one thing but this policy is abusing vulnerable women here and now...

But it should be obvious now, mentioned later in the thread, that these are just different avenues of misogyny on two fronts, each aiding the other in their own ways. Never underestimate the interconnectedness.

AskAuntLydia: They're not fools. They're knaves. It's deliberate. They know this is a terrible attack on women. They were told. They don't care.

Absolutely. It is very deliberate.

The comment I really wanted to come back to though, just to make you really worried that it can get a whole lot worse. So without further ado, I give you Scaremongering Part 2...

Pencils: - benefit claimants should be paid via a separate blockchain currency that would enable the government to track exactly what claimants were buying and intervene with helpful 'guidance' (aka sanctions) where appropriate to 'help benefit claimants manage their money'.

A similar system is to be rolled out down under. Currently it is rather inhumanely being "trialled" in a number of remote aboriginal communities, with the expected horrible results. The govt spin doctors are of course, hailing it as a grand success story, with the eyes on rolling out to all dole bludgers jobseekers, and eventually pensioners too.

It is called the Indue Card and a similar system will likely make its way back to the UK after the guinea pigging streamlining has been done in AU.

Of course, it costs almost a year's worth of JSA to implement per jobseeker, and a couple of grand each year to maintain. Lots of money to be made by Indue, and absolutely no connection that some of the key players have govt mates (cough). All this additional money to 'run' this new system is apparently there, but not enough money to increase the JSA to liveable levels.

The benefits are paid onto the card, and only 20% is allowed to be withdrawn as cash. Bad luck if you pay rent/board in cash. Bad luck if you survive on secondhand goods (only 'approved' retailers can accept the card). No, you must take your bus fare and all 'non approved purchases' etc out of this 20%.

Corruption, what corruption? Local traders diddling the system and ripping off aboriginal peoples already. But it is a success! the govt tells us, a success!

So a big head's up for you in the UK, watch out for this next boot on the collective necks of the poorest of society. They are not finished with you yet.

That idea comes from the US (food stamps). New labour tried a third way version of it here already with the milk/veg for under fives.

Don’t know if anyone noticed this but around 2010 the tories were flying over to the US to learn how to destroy social security. I can’t remember who it was but someone went to Wisconsin (read wisconsin’s spin here and note how similar it is).

The cards thing has been raised in Parliament in the past and there was outcry. The rise in food banks here is not a coincidence and something deliberately done.

Foodbanks/food assistance are on the rise in Australia as well.
The US situation is different (well, worse really) than that of the UK/AU

I'd like to see research into how the increasing levels of state control over unemployed and low income people interact with crime rates (especially "occupation" criminality such as prostitution, drug dealing, fencing, etc). People aren't stupid and will get out of such a draconian system in any way available to them. And I can't see how current policy isn't shifting the calculation of risk and reward and thereby encouraging it.

Lang, in the current context the results of that research would be used to further the argument that poor people = criminals and therefore sanctions, workfare, destitution, food banks etc are appropriate, justified and necessary in order to punish and reform.

I think we all know that destitution increases crime. I think we all understand how and why.

I’m not saying it’s not important to research. I’m saying, similar to the sexuality thread, you can’t divorce research from the context of the society and the politics it is being conducted in.

So many good people during New Labour times were conducting research into concepts such as this related to social security, mental health etc etc etc it has been cited by successive governments as evidence these reforms are necessary.

As I said I went through a phase of writing to the researchers to inform them their research was being used in this way and many were angry.

If you can conduct research into the difficulties facing large families for example and it can be cited as political justification for the two child cap then it’s a total mess.

What is happening here is a consolidation of individualism. Every problem and experience is being made into an individual one that results from lack of moral fibre.

Welfare is being criminalised step by step - just like drugs were back in the 20s. Decriminalising drugs has been proven in Portugal to work but there has to be another scapegoat to replace addicts for the public and politicians to kick. So now it's the poor and sick - many of whom are women.

It's all a rouse to distract from what's really happening - tax payments are being withheld on a massive scale - depriving govts. of income. This is all down to the neocons who play a long 50 year horizon game - they started to dismantle the welfare system back in the 70s and we didn't pay enough attention to the warnings then.

Our systems of governance and welfare are no longer fit for purpose and it's not OK.

BTW re Blockchain - this is being cited as the next BIG THING - until the next BIG THING comes along. It haven't been proven and has all sorts of governance issues - e.g. child porn has been found on supposedly secure financial blockchains. And why is the focus being put on welfare claimants when adequate audit systems would pick up abusers?

Focus on the real problem - the withholding of trillions of tax dollars/pounds each year by those who want insecurity in the population as it makes us easier to control

What is happening here is a consolidation of individualism. Every problem and experience is being made into an individual one that results from lack of moral fibre.

Yes.

the withholding of trillions of tax dollars/pounds each year by those who want insecurity in the population as it makes us easier to control

And yes. And who is easier to control than the woman with legal safeguarding duties towards her children - with failure to meet them being cause for care proceedings and removal?

I'd like to see research into how the increasing levels of state control over unemployed and low income people interact with crime rates (especially "occupation" criminality such as prostitution, drug dealing, fencing, etc). People aren't stupid and will get out of such a draconian system in any way available to them. And I can't see how current policy isn't shifting the calculation of risk and reward and thereby encouraging it.

Exactly.

From Gingerbread "Where next on Universal Credit" There are some single parent case studies in the link at the bottom.

www.gingerbread.org.uk/policy-campaigns/welfare-reform/where-next-universal-credit/