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campaign against welfare cuts and poverty

BigTom said:
http://goo.gl/xZBTh

A breakdown of the big changes coming with Universal Credit - only glanced at this, on the mylegal forums, but recommended by Suey2y on twitter so I assume it's all there and right.
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Monthly, and new claimants can now only get 1/3 of the dole as a crisis loan - I take it that means if you end up suddenly having to sign on at the wrong end of the month you will potentially have 3-4 weeks to get by on £60-£80 (or less if 1/3 if payments are lower than the current dole). :(

Some blatant hinting that they know the payments will be lower than the dole.

Seems a bit silly to address rent being paid direct to tenants though as that already happens.

Are caring for a child under 1 - I take it this means they will now require single parents to look for work from when the child reaches a year old? Some kids aren't even fully weaned by then! :facepalm: :mad:
 
BigTom said:
http://goo.gl/xZBTh

A breakdown of the big changes coming with Universal Credit - only glanced at this, on the mylegal forums, but recommended by Suey2y on twitter so I assume it's all there and right.
Click to expand...


I suspect U/C is going to be the plaything of the Tories, they will cut it as and when they like, probably salami slice it, They are going to bring back shame and the deserving poor, it is going to be run from call centres in India, so people will get even less sympathy and empathy than the minimum they get from DWP here, many low paid workers there will see it as 'free money' for scroungers, etc.My real fear is if something goes wrong the claimant will not have his or her HB paid and could lose their accommodation. The other plan is that U/C will be a combined sum and the public will be able to see 'just how much the dolies get', they really are cynical and cruel twats...
 
Big worry for UC is to what extent savings will be realised through the drive for internet self-service making it easier to navigate for everyone as opposed to filtering out the difficult cases that really need a human being to talk through.
 
And there was I thinking that when you'd done your time, or payback, you'd paid your debt to society and you had the right to a clean slate. :facepalm:
 
"Background checks"? When did this come about?

So if they did "background checks" as claimed in that article what is this "researchers" involvement?

Researcher Patricia Morgan said: 'A lot of people who have opted for incapacity benefit do seem to have committed criminal offences. 'There are people who claim incapacity benefit because they are alcoholics or use drugs. They shouldn't be allowed to, but they do. 'They do not need to work and often they steal to maintain their drinking or addiction. Generally people who work do not commit crime. 'But for some people incapacity benefit is a subsidy to give them time to go out and thieve.
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Minnie_the_Minx said:
and it just gets worse



FFS
angry-emoticon-13.gif
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CFY
 
The remark "do seem to" from this "researcher" is not very clear is it?​
​
'Not allowed to claim Incapacity Benefit for being an alcoholic or if you use drugs?' What if you have MS, or you seek pain relief using cannabis? What if you're in the midst of a crisis mentally, say after losing a loved one and hit the bottle?​
​
This article stinks, but story's like this are becoming all too frequent and expect more of the same.​
 
From fullfact.org

The Daily Mail has claimed that a quarter of sickness benefits claimants have a criminal record. Here's some facts:

The Mail's percentage figure of 21 percent is stated as being "correct", however:

.....it's on shakier ground in saying these people “claim to be unfit for work [but] appear to be fit enough to commit crime”, as only 13 per cent of offenders claimed a sickness benefit in the month before they were sentenced.
Click to expand...
It’s also dubious as to whether these are “truly alarming” figures as the article claims, and when compared to the best information we have on the prevalence of criminal records in the general population, the claim seems less striking.
Click to expand...
http://fullfact.org/factchecks/do_quarter_sickness_benefits_claimants_have_criminal_record-27624
 
And so it begins.

Universal Credit - DWP.

Universal Credit will go live nationally in October 2013. However, from April 2013 a Universal Credit ‘Pathfinder’ programme will take place in Tameside, Oldham, Wigan and Warrington.
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(((Tameside, Oldham, Wigan and Warrington)))

At the heart of Universal Credit is a partnership between the state and the claimant.
Click to expand...

and

If the claimant doesn’t do what he or she has committed to do, they will experience tougher penalties than at present, such as their benefit being reduced or withdrawn for up to three years. The details of these penalties are currently being defined.
Click to expand...
 
Universal Credit is scaring the pants off me.

This 'it must be paid monthly' thing seems to me to be a direct attack on addicts claiming. Although it will also be a pain in the ass for everyone else.

Edit, also at the moment with my family income coming from several different sources, paid at different payment schedules across the month (previously wages, Housing Benefit, Tax Credits, Child Benefit - wages now replaced by Income Support) if one of them fucked up and decided to suspend a payment while I dragged myself down to an office to show them the relevant bits of paper again (which happens with tedious regularity) the other ones would still be paid, meaning I was never left in a position where everything was suspended. Under UC all of my income will come as one monthly payment so if they suspend it I'll be having to choose whether not to pay my rent or my energy bills or not to eat.
 
Yep, same here, I've been freelance claiming wtc for the past few years and even though I probably average out 30 hours each week it doesn't come evenly. With UC I'm not sure what would stop me from signing on instead tbh, most of those 30 hours don't earn me any money, it's essentially me trying to find work, more or less what I'd do on JSA instead except that I can take jobs as and when they come without my money stopping and starting. Plus no chance of workfare or sanctions. I get less money from WTC (£52/wk max without kids) but make that up and a bit more in the jobs that I get.
Seeing the rise in the number of self-employed people, I think there's quite a few in the same position I am and UC will end up meaning we claim more not less.. except for all the fucking sanctions. 3 years ffs.

I'm still pinning my hopes on massive IT failure in the pilot.
 
purenarcotic said:
And there was I thinking that when you'd done your time, or payback, you'd paid your debt to society and you had the right to a clean slate. :facepalm:
Click to expand...

Notice how type of crime isn't mentioned, either. The implication is obviously of fraud, but the likelihood, going by the wealth of stats we have for successful prosecutions leading to convictions is of low-level public order and petty theft offences.
 
audiotech said:
"Background checks"? When did this come about?

So if they did "background checks" as claimed in that article what is this "researchers" involvement?



​
​
​
Click to expand...

She's not a researcher I would hire. If I research something for a paying customer, I go to the subject with as few preconceptions as possible. She seems to have "researched" this matter with many prejudices and assumptions already firmly in place.
 
Yeah, but this wasn't research in any normal sense of the word, it was just a way to attack benefit claimants generally, disabled people specifically, to help with the miss one appointment lose your ESA stuff - oh look there are loads of dodgy criminal types claiming disability benefits, well that can't be right can it, they're obviously faking it, so although yeah it's shit for the genuine claimants we've got to weed out the fakers and this is a good way to do it.

Along with Johhny Void's article posted earlier, Sue Marsh has this in Guardian CiF today:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/24/myth-criminals-sickness-benefits

What's more, when the report on which the Daily Mail story is based refers to "a criminal record", the figures go on to show that a full 48% of these offenders got only a fine or a caution. "Summary motoring or non-motoring offences" account for 46% of the total, ie, petty misdemeanours such as parking and speeding fines, or minor drunk-and-disorderly behaviour, which are not tried by a judge. These are offences that many Daily Mail readers might also have on their record – or indeed, any of us

Being a suspicious type, this made me wonder whether there might be a real story in the report – from the Department of Work and Pensions last November – that the government was much less keen for us to hear about. And, indeed, it seems that there is. What the research actually highlights is a group of people trapped in a cycle of short-term work, making desperate claims for subsistence benefits, and compelled to sign up for various work schemes (which fail them utterly) and more short-term work, as the whole cycle repeats endlessly.
Click to expand...

It's a really interesting article and well worth reading all of it.

One of the things that confuses me about this story is how easy it is to show the lie behind the statistic - same level as general population, mostly for very minor things which anyone will know people who have done that. Either they are assuming that everyone who reads the daily mail, their target audience for this story, is not going to read anything else or at some point they are going to push it too far and people who normally accept what they say will realise how they've had the wool pulled over their eyes with such an obvious lie.
It's much harder to manufacture consent these days, so much easier for people to access multiple media sources online, someone who gets the daily mail in print 10-15 years ago would never have read the guardian, now it's just a click away and most people have friendship groups with a few people at least of different political persausions.
At some point I hope the lie will be too big and a chunk of trust in what the government tell you about claimants will be hurt, and space grows for a different message.
 
BigTom said:
Ed Marsh has been tweeting from an A4e course over the last 2 days - well worth reading through it all:

http://storify.com/yeebles/ted-harsh-s-job-centre-course

https://twitter.com/ted_harsh

the tl;dr version is that the course - 2 days on CV building and interviews - was pointless, stupid and badly run. He didn't end up with a CV from it either.
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I got sent on one of those courses when I was unemployed once. Got sent to learn office skills. When they gave me a typing test, I typed 97wpm. They asked why I was there. I told them dole would stop my money if I didn't attend. :D
 
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