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Sunak wants to stop benefits after a year

Petcha said:
Does anybody actually care about any Tory policy announcements anymore? The political PR agency I used to work for stopped getting requests for meetings with senior Tory ministers from big business leaders well over a year ago. They're finished.
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Who were they requesting meetings with? Labour or Lib Dems or a mix of both, or neither?
 
Cloo said:
I just fucking wish other parties had the guts to counter the Tory narrative - to just come out and say what a huge lie it is that we can't afford benefits and to point out how much more it costs us to allow rich people to cheat on tax. But unfortunately the rich people who cheat on tax own the media and would immediately frame this as 'Labour wants to give YOUR money to 3 million people who want to sit at home all day in their pyjamas'

'Toughness' on benefits is not only cruel, it's a waste of money on unnecessary 'fraud prevention' and punitive measures. We need fairness, not 'toughness'

Also if I was PM for a day I would rename benefits 'Basic living support' for posterity so that when people say 'We want to reduce basic living support' it would sound as cunty as it is.
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Cloo for PM! I'd vote for you.
 
ouirdeaux said:
I have never understood how anyone can be forced to take a job they don't want. Surely it's easy enough to fail an interview?

Obviously turning up steaming drunk and swearing could be seen as intentional. But if you simply look vacant, ask stupid questions, fail to understand the answers, ask them again, etc. etc. and generally look like an employer's worst nightmare, what could they report back to the DWP apart from that you were unsuitable? They don't know what you're like normally, and the DWP isn't going to get a video of the interview.
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I think the thing is less what actually happens, and more about making people feel uncomfortable. What this is essentially doing is to set them up to fail - either by having to "throw" the interview (which will go against the grain for a surprising proportion of the population, whatever the Tories might think about claimants), or giving it their best shot at interviews they're just not suited for. Or, for that matter, getting a job they're not well enough to hold down.

I work with people with mental health problems, and the majority of them would like nothing more than to have a job and do something more interesting than sitting at home feeling grim. But how does someone who, once or twice a week, can't even drag themselves out of bed and into the shower hold down a job where the expectation is that they'll show up at 9 every morning and do a solid day's work?

I even agree with the idea that doing some kind of productive work CAN be a part of recovery from mental illness. But that has to be hedged around with all kinds of protections and allowances, because being forced into work when you'd rather bury your head under the covers is going, for some people, a really good way of making them worse.
 
Artaxerxes said:
Yes they can do.

It’s different because just auto cut off after 12 months
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So does that mean if you haven't found a job in 12 months your benefits get stopped no matter how many you've applied for? If so that's pretty gruesome but if you can still prove you've been trying and they don't it doesn't seem any different from now bar some posturing from Sevenbins as he tries to salvage the last few shreds of his political career.
 
MickiQ said:
So does that mean if you haven't found a job in 12 months your benefits get stopped no matter how many you've applied for? If so that's pretty gruesome but if you can still prove you've been trying and they don't it doesn't seem any different from now bar some posturing from Sevenbins as he tries to salvage the last few shreds of his political career.
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That's what the DM headline said but it's misleading. According to Ratface's speech, it's if you're still on benefits after 12 months and not complying with conditions your work coach sets you. Whether those conditions are reasonable or not is a whole other matter.
 
LeytonCatLady said:
That's what the DM headline said but it's misleading. According to Ratface's speech, it's if you're still on benefits after 12 months and not complying with conditions your work coach sets you. Whether those conditions are reasonable or not is a whole other matter.
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Can they not stop your benefits now for not complying with whatever conditions your coach chooses?
 
MickiQ said:
Can they not stop your benefits now for not complying with whatever conditions your coach chooses?
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Course they can. He's just trying to make it sound like they're doing something new in an attempt to give the impression they've been soft before. What he's left out of his sanctimonious speech is that 40% of "those people on Universal Credit with nothing wrong with them" are in work! Maybe after 12 months you'll be forced to do one of those bullshit courses a la Blair's New Deal.
 
LeytonCatLady said:
Course they can. He's just trying to make it sound like they're doing something new in an attempt to give the impression they've been soft before. What he's left out of his sanctimonious speech is that 40% of "those people on Universal Credit with nothing wrong with them" are in work! Maybe after 12 months you'll be forced to do one of those bullshit courses a la Blair's New Deal.
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He expects them to find more work, I think he said this.

Of course that would just put in jeopardy the work you are doing because it doesn't stand to reason you wouldn't be working more hours in such a job if that was possible (unless you have, for example, caring responsibilities, which is another issue he doesn't care about either). So people that can't more hours, either because of said responsibiltiies, or because they can't find more work, will just get their benefits cut. Completely counter productive. Just makes the gig economy even more fraught since people wil be pushed from one zero hours gig job to another in a terrible game of musical chairs.
 
ouirdeaux said:
I was unemployed for four years. I didn't sabotage interviews -- I wanted to work -- but I rarely got any. I listed jobs I hadn't applied for, because I couldn't be bothered to send off yet another hopeless attempt, given that similar attempts to find work at things I could do but was too old to be considered for without industry-specific experience, and so they could have questioned my honesty on that, but they didn't. How do they know what you've applied for?

They never threatened me. They nagged, and sometimes sent me on pointless courses. That was it.
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When I was on UC after losing my job in the pandemic, my work coach was satisfied with my efforts and then asked if I fancied being a DWP work coach? I respectfully declined
 
LeytonCatLady said:
You DECLINED???!!! How dare you not want a job treating unemployed people like shite. Shame on you, young man, no supper for YOU this month. 🤣
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To be fair to the guy, after quickly agreeing that I was doing all I could to find work, we spent the remaining 10 mins of my appointment time slot talking about his self-published fantasy novel and my idea for a “Recipes on a Budget for the Poor and Desperate” website. Even he didn’t want to be a DWP work coach.
 
Could you not take the job and help people get all the assistance they are entitled to? Or would management quickly reassign you back to the other side of the table for not being shitty enough to people?
 
Storm Fox said:
Could you not take the job and help people get all the assistance they are entitled to? Or would management quickly reassign you back to the other side of the table for not being shitty enough to people?
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The guy clearly hated what he was being asked to do but some of his colleagues clearly enjoyed flexing their power. Interviews weren’t exactly private and you could hear what was being said on either side. Luckily I got another job before they gave me an ultimatum but, had I taken it, I wouldn’t have lasted long at even the training stage.
 
Storm Fox said:
Could you not take the job and help people get all the assistance they are entitled to? Or would management quickly reassign you back to the other side of the table for not being shitty enough to people?
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That probably is what happens, yeah. I remember briefly signing on at London's Walthamstow JCP in 2016, and there was a coach there who was all right with me at first. One day, I turned up for a weekly appointment with her, and she was late seeing me because she was in a one to one with her manager. When she came out finally, it was like she'd had a personality transplant and she started being really strict and unreasonable and arguing with me about not giving her access to UJM, despite the fact she'd known for ages I kept my jobseeking records in clerical format. I bet her manager was pressuring her to be nastier with claimants.
 
LeytonCatLady said:
That probably is what happens, yeah. I remember briefly signing on at London's Walthamstow JCP in 2016, and there was a coach there who was all right with me at first. One day, I turned up for a weekly appointment with her, and she was late seeing me because she was in a one to one with her manager. When she came out finally, it was like she'd had a personality transplant and she started being really strict and unreasonable and arguing with me about not giving her access to UJM, despite the fact she'd known for ages I kept my jobseeking records in clerical format. I bet her manager was pressuring her to be nastier with claimants.
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In the 80s they didn’t even try to be nice. I first signed on in 1984 where we queued round the building (usually) in the rain for half an hour and, when we got in, the people were behind security grilles and complete hostility was the name of the game. The irony that they were only employed because we weren’t was completely lost on them.
 
seeformiles said:
In the 80s they didn’t even try to be nice. I first signed on in 1984 where we queued round the building (usually) in the rain for half an hour and, when we got in, the people were behind security grilles and complete hostility was the name of the game. The irony that they were only employed because we weren’t was completely lost on them.
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There was a difference though. Back in the 80s the "crime" was people signing on while actually working. Now not having a job is the "crime".
 
LeytonCatLady said:
That one's better than the original
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krtek a houby said:
Iirc at the time it was intended to homage Brookside and Bleasdale, which it did very nicely.

The cover is brilliant, and when this youngster eventually heard the original, was disappointed that Mr Springsteen couldn't give it more oomph like Frankie.
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I was more familiar with the Frankie version than the Springsteen one. It absolutely is the better one 😎
 
existentialist said:
I think the thing is less what actually happens, and more about making people feel uncomfortable. What this is essentially doing is to set them up to fail - either by having to "throw" the interview (which will go against the grain for a surprising proportion of the population, whatever the Tories might think about claimants), or giving it their best shot at interviews they're just not suited for. Or, for that matter, getting a job they're not well enough to hold down.

I work with people with mental health problems, and the majority of them would like nothing more than to have a job and do something more interesting than sitting at home feeling grim. But how does someone who, once or twice a week, can't even drag themselves out of bed and into the shower hold down a job where the expectation is that they'll show up at 9 every morning and do a solid day's work?

I even agree with the idea that doing some kind of productive work CAN be a part of recovery from mental illness. But that has to be hedged around with all kinds of protections and allowances, because being forced into work when you'd rather bury your head under the covers is going, for some people, a really good way of making them worse.
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About 3-4 years ago, I had to get a part-time job because I had weekly EMDR therapy sessions for Complex PTSD (I'd ended up suicidal due to antisocial behaviour and harassment from Nasty Neighbour and her Mr Angry boyfriends, and also ended up being bullied and harassed by housing staff.) I ended up having my income topped up by Universal Credit.

In 2-3 years from now, will someone in my position be allowed to work part-time without being harassed and sanctioned and kicked off benefits for not working more hours or earning more? Tbh, I'm not sure I would've survived if the DWP was giving me grief at such a difficult time.

And even now, I'm not 'cured'. I need to contact the Housing Ombudsman, because they've still not dealt with complaints that I lodged against the housing association in 2020. But every time I even think about writing an email, I get flashbacks, I get triggered, and I start crying.

I'm 'lucky' that I've got a full-time job at the moment, albeit an increasingly problematic and precarious one. But I feel fearful that if/when I end up unemployed again - for a neurodivergent person like myself with fragile mental health, it seems inevitable, like it's only a matter of time - though of being driven further into poverty and destitution is terrifying. My finances still haven't recovered yet from my last bout of unemployment and the spate of underemployment necessitated by having regular medical appointments. Sometimes, having several medical conditions can feel like having a full-time job, or at least a part-time job and it can be difficult to find employment that fits around medical appointments/treatment.
 
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