Article about benefit debt by me on Open Democracy today
We need an amnesty on benefit debt NOW.
The state and its ‘providers’ are crushing people with debt. Rather than helping people, organisations like councils and the DWP own people. The problem is as urgent as student debt – and an amnesty is long overdue.
A string of so-called welfare reforms mean that people are paying extra costs they could never afford in the first place – the bedroom tax, rent shortfalls because of LHA caps and benefit caps, council tax because of council tax benefit cuts and exorbitant court costs when they’re taken to court for non-payment. People lose their ESA, face Universal Credit delays and are often paying off DWP loans. They must try to sort these problems out by dealing with horrendously dysfunctional, bare bones public sector bureaucracies that can’t deliver.
People are in debt – probably permanently – to councils, the DWP and housing providers. These are the very organisations that are supposed to support (ha) people most in need.
I meet people who owe hundreds and even several thousand pounds to councils, courts, housing associations, the DWP, bailiffs and all the rest.
In work or not, people will never have the money to get out. They will never have the income. Incomes are too small and debts are too large.
Because we Benefit Claimants are no longer human according to Tory rhetoric 🙁
they can hardly talk
Today, BBC Breakfast had an item about the abuse that Members of Parliament have faced; the item was front-loaded with reference to Tory candidates being branded ‘Tory scum’. The item starts at about the 21 minute mark on the BBC iPlayer broadcast of the show, and refers to death threats. There is a related July news item on BBC News website, MPs speak out about ‘sinister’ election abuse.
As a Quaker, believing in ‘something of God within each person’, I prefer not to use such words myself; the closest I come to such language is describing T May & Co as ‘state terrorists’. While there is now a Disability News Service item Portraying disabled people as ‘parasites’ could lead to ‘violence and killings’, says UN chair, maybe those labelled ‘Tory scum’ should consider how their party’s treatment of those more vulnerable than them might have set a precedent in the way that they have been labelled ‘Tory scum’? And perhaps how much the ways that the economically vulnerable have been treated under ‘welfare reform’ threatens the sense of safety that such vulnerable people have at the hands of Conservative Government?
The debt is part of the ‘punishment’ for the unemployed, because they have the gall to claim benefits instead of working. Poverty is the stick with which welfare claimants are beaten by the government, beaten into submission.
The poor are punished for not spending enough, yet they would spend more if they werent poor! Many of the longterm unemployed, myself included, are unemployable for a variety of reasons, whether it’s lack of skills/references/transport or criminal convictions or simply age & health problems, plus the fact that there aren’t enough jobs for everyone, so many of us have no other option but to claim Benefits.
Debt acts as a huge barrier to finding employment. All the help that was available under the previous system, Crisis Loans, and the £200 grant paid to long-term claimants who had managed to find a job, have all been scrapped.
So now you have people with no savings, nothing of value to sell, expected to suddenly take up work that pays monthly without any financial assistance whatsoever. These are the same people whose second-hand shoes are held together with Poundland superglue.
How are they supposed to get to the end of the month, pay for fares, keep themselves and perhaps their family clothed and fed ? On nothing ? Starting from a bank balance of £0.00 ?
It’s a complete & utter shambles from start to finish (& it hasn’t even finished yet). The entire DWP is unfit for purpose, Universal Credit is a monumentally chaotic failure, and the only people to blame are the bloody Tories who have deliberately wrecked our Social Security system to further their own egos vin&dictively punish the poor, because that’s what Tories do. The unelected meddlesome beurocrat Lord Freud & his idiot sidekick IDS are fucking psychopaths.
Amen to that
Now of course IDS has famously washed his hands of the whole sorry mess (“out, out, foul spot”) whilst Freud has silently slid back into the shadows, and we have another bunch of twats in charge; David Gauke, Damian Hinds & Penny Mordaunt (?)…whoever the fuck they are, and the whole Welfare/Benefits/unemployment issue seems to have been sidelined by Brexit. The DWP continue with their gushing Press releases saying how well their policies are working & how great everything is , whilst people continue to suffer & starve – foodbanks, universal Credit, debts, loans, arrears, evictions, suicides – and no one in Politics seems to fucking care, certainly not the Tories, and why should they? They don’t have to claim Benefits, theyre all millionaires, better to design policies that benefit themselves and if a few thousand ‘useless eaters’ die in the process all the better, they have enough factory fodder to make them profit, they don’t care if people such as I live or die, and that’s the truth.
*damned* spot, duh!
An aspect not covered by the media is hardship loans for universal credit. These will triple the hardship following a sanction as loan repayments are taken by auto-deduction leaving the individual with less money for a further two months for a one month sanction or perhaps nine months for a three month sanction. I doubt they will give hardship payments for a three year sanction.
good point
Also the three year sanction needs more coverage. I see a number of articles trying to get people to see how horrific this system is but they always temper themselves with statements like “a claimant can be sanctioned for up to three months” and even those who care can say “well it’s only three months, with hardship payments available it’s not so bad” if they knew it could be as long as three YEARS even the most staunch daily bile reader might have to concede that’s a bit much.
Hi, Kate
Looking on the bright side, I would say that through your supporting people through the danger zones of benefit procedures, you are a counter terrorist.
Meanwhile, the latest Kwug Blog post is Appealing against State Terrorism beyond the ‘mandatory reconsideration’ stage is an act of counter-terrorism.