I personally could give a fuck if they are well meaning the old adage the road to hell is paved with good intentions springs to mind.
The bottom line is whoever speaks to people on the phone isn't going to be the ones making the clerical decisions
Depends on which decision you want making actually because some of the first contact people you speak to DO make those clerical changes that you refer to.
the reality is you and I will never ever get to speak to these people
Factually incorrect, I work in Income Support, I speak to claimants, the exact claimats who phone the Contact Centres' every single day, to find out the best way of paying them if their payment is due that day, get extra info off them if we need it or to arrange for them to go into a JCP office to hand over info, get more info or get a counter giro whuch they are due. ...
let alone have a face to face meeting with them.
The centralisation of benefit processing has been a massively retrograde step and stpops claimants having a proper relationship with the Adjudication Officer, which in turn means the AO doesn't get to know about the claimants in their box split and doesn't form a relationship that makes life and the claiming of benefits easier for the staff member and tha claimant.
Moreover, they will never see the lives of the people they make arbitrary
Decisions aren't arbitrary, they are based on Social Security legislation and JCP/DWP regulations. That the legislation maybe bad, harmful and downright outrageous is entirely true, but it's not acted on in the 'arbitrary' manner you so wildly claim.
and usually incorrect judgments on.
You are claiming the decisions are usually wrong, as such the majority of decisions DWP staff make are wrong. Have you evidence for this claim? Or are you referring to a specific decision as regards a specific benefit?! Which is it?
It's not that the believe everyone is on the take in fact they know full well that this is likely to be utterly unrepresentative of the majority of legitimate claims they'll be turning down but like every other aspect of govt which has been run on a 'profit motive' basis since the last tory govt in the 80's there will be targets they have to hit and so when it comes to it they are merely managing books not real people. Their decisions aren't based on the humanity of the situation they are based on pure maths.
Staff in JCP offices complained and whistleblew and attacked DWP targets to demand that individual Personal Advisers sanction JSA claimants for failing to live up to their side of tha bargain
it was a DWP staff member who blew the gaffe and PCS who provided the evidence to various news outlets.
the reality of this is that until we accept health education and welfare cannot be run on any profit motive and that the systems in place aren't fit for purpose nothing will get changed.
and if you work for the dwp, that doesn't make you a bad person but a little integrity in admitting that the system you work in has none would go a long way.
Why do I need to admit anything, why does any DWP worker need to admit anything? We will be on strike soon, partly over attacks on out conditions, partly against the attacks on the public sector and ALWAYS with a mind to the fact that we know the people we deal with day and daily are some of the most vulnerable and poorest in our society, a better properly funded DWP makes for a better funded welfare system that is more humane to it's claimants and more focussed on lifting people out of poverty rather than harrassing them off benefits.
