Article by me on politics.co.uk today about a disabled woman’s three month+ wait for Universal Credit:
“Karen Sheader, a Hartlepool film company director, has the bone condition osteopetrosis. Her bones fracture and can take months to heal. In 2017, bones in her legs broke. She was forced to take sick leave. She made a claim for Universal Credit.
What followed was a tortuous three month wait for Universal Credit payment.
“It got to 14 weeks and I was constantly on the phone to them. I kept being told, ‘somebody will update your [Universal Credit] journal by 6pm tonight’. They didn’t… and I was getting conflicting advice from people. It has such an effect on the way you feel. You’re stuck in the house with two broken legs and nobody seems to give a fuck.”
Typical Universal Credit cruelty, and all quite deliberate. They have put as many barriers between the claimant and any money as they can, short of telling them to get lost. Awful that this unfortunate woman has to suffer like this because of Tory vindictiveness, the apathy of the general public and the twisted logic of Duncan-Smith. That well known philanthropist. We seem to be getting a lot of Labour types on this blog, and let me say that if they had done something years ago to oppose Universal Credit, instead of hiding in corners, then people like this lady would not be having to suffer as she is.
Amen to that Jeff. Labour isn’t doing a whole lot to oppose Universal Credit even now. Am not sure how Labour’s legendary Pause and Fix Universal Credit thing is going. It should be Scrap and Trash.
You are right there Jeff, it is certainly delberate. The Tories are vicious & ruthless. It was shameful of Labour (under Miliband) to have abstained from voting against the Welfare Reforms , but I am just pinning my hopes on Corbyn scrappng UC once in power, which certainly wouldnt happen if the Blairite types were running Labour. I think he just Can’t say so yet for obvious Political reasons, & at the moment the Benefits/poverty issues are being sidelined by bloody Brexit. Lets not lose sight of the fact that it is the Tories who are doing all this to us and the only way to get rid of them is by voting Labour, that the fact of the matter.
You’re right, Trev. Poor Corbyn is damned if he says and damned if he doesn’t say.
Karen. I feel your pain sweetheart, I really do!!
This very Corrupt government make it so very difficult for genuine hard working people such as yourself yo claim, that most of them just give up trying too, which is exactly what they hope you, along with many hundreds of thousands will do, just give up!!!
I’ve said it before & I’ll keep on saying it, Theresa May who is so very Corrupt & her very Corrupt government do not give a shit about the likes of you & me, all they are interested in is their rich friends, and for this, we should bring back hanging in this country & hang her, along with her Scumbag Corrupt Bastard friends for their many crimes against the innocent human beings of this once great country of ours!!!
Good luck Karen, I wish you all the very best Sweetheart!!!
Take care
Ritchie xx
When I told my local council I was afraid I’d lose my home, they replied, “If you’re on the street, WE DON’T CARE!!!”
It worries me that many rules seem to be top secret under Universal Credit. If the DWP can decide how something like sick pay will affect someone’s Universal Credit, there must be instructions somewhere that they are following. In which case, those instructions should be available to the public, so that people can challenge errors and have them corrected.
It may be, however, that there are no rules and DWP are making it up as they go along!
This lady must have spent a fortune making telephone calls to the DWP – or is their number free now?
The DWP ought to have to pay people compensation for these sorts of errors. Not just the benefit that has been due all along, but an extra sum to compensate for stress, loan fees, etc. It should be done according to a set of rules, like the ones that say utility companies must pay a fine for each day you have no water or power.
It looks like the system is badly in need of a financial incentive for the DWP to get things right and fix errors FAST. A fine for each day a benefit is wrongly not paid could be exactly what we need!
At one time you used to get a visit from a Social Worker whilst in hospital, and they would fill in Social Security forms for you for SSP & chase it up on your behalf. That was my experience back in 89 after a bad motorcycle accident resulting in a few months off work with steel pins holding my bones together, & no sick pay from my employer. All changed now, everythings gone to pot in this shithole of a country.
Nowadays, Maximus give you a Work Capability Assessment while you’re still in hospital! Someone got an assessment while in hospital after a stroke and they declared him fit to work! It seems to me that you can’t be fit to work if you’re lying in bed in hospital. It defies common sense.
The mind boggles. Utterly ridiculous.
I wouldn’t like to make money doing what they do.
Blood money. I don’t know how they can sleep at night.
Universal Credit – full of hidden traps and cutbacks. Now the disabled on UC lose extra payments that they had before. Nasty horrible system.
My worry on this is that Universal Credit is so big that it will be difficult to scrap if it is finally rolled out. Then we will be stuck with changing it while it’s still operating. They’ve spent 15.8 Billion Pounds on it !!
They should’ve just cancelled austerity and used the £15.8 billion to pay people’s benefits.
It’s awful that there are people unable to claim due to difficulty attending interviews. Welfare is meant to support the most vulnerable. We seem to have completely lost sight of that, in the pursuit of ever more conditionality.
16 Billion Pounds down the drain on oppressing and starving us, whilst ongoing Austerity, and wealth increases for the rich, and still no riots.
Could still be scrapped though, as it would take Billions more to redesign (“fix”) it & make it workable without being so punitive & disfunctional. Corbyn might have a trick up his sleeve – replace UC with a Universal Basic Income? They are studying the feasibility of this, so i hope it happens, in fact I think it is logically the only way forward for post-industrial economies.
But then why doesn’t he say so Trev ? I know there is the political aspect, not wanting to be seen as encouraging people not to work etc. Even so, the sheer amount of misery Universal Credit has caused. To the sick and disabled worst of all. He’s got to do something. And let it be known that he is disgusted with the Tories over this, as so many people are.
People who criticise Jeremy Corbyn, do we really have a better alternative? No matter who leads the Labour Party, there will be critics to the right and to the left. Perhaps try standing as candidates yourselves? For local councils, for example. It’s no good just complaining.
All of this comes down to the Tories trying to destroy social security.
They have even changed the name to ‘Welfare’, which has that feeling of moral weakness about it, to make this easier to do. We need to start calling it Social Security again, and lookiing at it as a positive thing in society.
Unemployment has become “worklessness”, Sick Notes have become “Fit Notes”.
And that’s another classic example Trev of the Tories running the argument in their own language. Re-branding Sick Notes as ‘Fit Notes’. Total crap, but puts the right kind of spin on it.
So fitness is always in the frame. So you’ll be back at work soon after this temporary lay-off. No drifting off into the world of sickness and ill-health. That would never do.
Spin, spin, spin.
Personnel became “Human Resources”, and Benefits Claimants became “Scroungers”. Employment contracts are now often described as “Temporary-Permanent”, a contradiction in terms if ever I heard one. We are living in a topsy-turvy world, It’s like the lunatics have taken over the asylum.
Quite true Emma. We all need to keep repeating the words ‘Social Security.’. Because that’s what it is. Not ‘welfare’. Labour and others need to keep saying ‘Social Security’, loudly and proudly. Then when the Tories start in with ‘welfare’, their mean attitudes will be all the more apparent. This is all part of the problem. The Tories have changed the language of the Social Security debate, and dominated the arguments that led to the so-called reforms. By re-phrasing it in their own terms. As long as Social Security has the word ‘welfare’ hanging round its neck like an albatross it will be weakened by it.
I have always associated the word “welfare” with a concern about how the person is feeling, both physically and emotionally: the “welfare” of the person. That was how the word was used at my work. The Welfare Officer was a counsellor.
Therefore, I don’t understand why people object to the word “welfare”.
I have nothing against the term “social security”, but it is old-fashioned now.
Social Securitycontainsthe word “Social”,as in “Socialist” and “Society”, hence the Tories don’t like it becausetthey are Sociopaths and don’t believe in Society, or in theState’s Duty of Care. Welfare sounds more American and by association more like a handoutfrom those nice Capitalists rather than a Rightful Entitlement owed by the State.
You are right Trev, that’s it exactly. The word is full of negativity and negative associations.
That’s why the Tories use it. And why they are careful to always use it. You never hear them say ‘Social Security’, because they don’t want to sound positive about benefits in any way. The sooner we get back to using Social Security the better.
It has a nice positive sound to it. Something that’s good to have in society. Which it is of course.
Not really, ‘welfare’ is an American import like so much else. Certainly in the way it is used today by the Tories. It is full of negative inferences, like the ‘Welfare Queens’ so hated by Regan. And as Emma quite rightly says, a sense of moral weakness, taking the easy way out.
Emma – totally agree with you on this.
It’s not just two words – Social Security is an attitude. We need to get back to it.
I feel for you i really do.My Disabled Friend is wheelchair bound and has MS and a serious unstable heart condition which is deteriorating plus other serious health concerns like Diabetes and Asthma and AF etc etc. She has been waiting since January 2017.for a payment. As she is too unstable medically to attend a ridiculous identity interview. Shes on DLA therefore is officially verified by the DWP as I assume that the DWP would not pay her DLA monthly otherwise. She has NO money for Lifesaving medication .The DWP couldn’t care less
She should apply for an HC2 certificate from NHS Business Services. The forms and information are on the internet and they will send them in the post as well. You have to provide a bank statement. I did that when my benefit was stopped. They posted me a certificate for free everything and it was accepted at the pharmacy, dentist, etc. It came in about a fortnight and was valid for a year.
Surely if they have to scrap Universal Credit when it contains every single benefit for 6 – 7 million people, it is going to be a massive task ? It has taken five years to roll it out this far, and look at all the suffering that has caused.
Its like saying we are going to scrap the railways, but still keep the trains running
The Tories have created a monster.
I can understand the intention: simplify the system. However, people’s lives can be so complex that it’s just not practical to roll six benefits into one. The result has been even more complexity – and rather a lot of chaos.
I agree, much better to stop Universal Credit now before it gets set in stone. It’s going to be much harder to change once the old system is destroyed. A logistical nightmare to alter the running benefits of 7 million people while trying to implement a new system.
This is going to be the acid test for Labour, are they going to walk the walk, or just talk the talk on Universal Credit ?
Our two new Aircraft Carriers, HMS Queen Elisabeth and HMS Prince of Wales which the Royal Navy could hardly afford, only cost 6.2 Billion pounds.
So you could have launched these and another three aircaft carriers at 3.1 Billion each for the cost of Universal Credit. HMS Universal Credit, HMS DWP and of course HMS Duncan-Smith.
Great names for the ships!
But I think the welfare/living standards of ordinary people is a greater spending priority than stockpiling weapons (which we would then be tempted to use by starting another war).
Maybe becausethe Tories would just reply that their Reformshave been successful in reducing unemployment, “helpingpeople back to work” and “makingwork pay” etc. and there are still lots of Politically iliterate people who would believe their horseshit. Somepeople still Don’t get it. They believe all that Daily Mail/Channel4/Channel5 crap about people on Benefits,and that Austerity is necessary to save the economy. There’s a surprising amount of gullible idiots out there.
That was a reply to Alan T. btw, but this site doesnt always work right on my crappy knackered old phone.
If they sanction you, it goes into the unemployment statistics as a return to work. So I am very suspicious of the unemployment statistics, especially when Tory MPs claim to have halved unemployment into their constituencies in just a few months.
Also, the Tories say, “There are more people in work than ever before.” That’s because there are more people in our country than ever before. If a Polish person comes to England and opens a shop, there’s one more person in work than before. It doesn’t mean there are fewer unemployed people.
Yes,the employmen t stats are totally rigged. The arethousands of people doing zero hours contracts, and insecure temporary agency work, thousands of young people doing short-term bogus “Apprenticeships” with no job at the end of it, & thousands doing unpaid Work Placements. If employment was going as great
….as great astthey make out, then Productivity would be higher & higher economic growth, but why we are not seeing that is becauset
…because they arellying.
Jeremy Corbyn came within moments of resigning in 2016. That’s the claim in Front Bench’s exclusives extracts from the book Ten Years in the Death of the Labour Party, by Tom Harris, the Labour MP for Glasgow South from 2001 to 2015 and former shadow minister.
I wish people would spend less time trying to talk down the Labour Party. We’re never going to improve anything if all we do is complain.
Probably a Tory. Who the fuck reads the Telegraph?
Who mentioned the Telegraph?
They imply they belong to Progress, which is a blue Labour faction trying to drag the rest of the party to the right. There’s an article about it on Wikipedia. Rich people pay them £millions to brainwash the Labour Party with a load of right-wing #*!*
Perhaps some Tories have infiltrated Labour and joined Progress. That would make sense.
i think Thomas was.rreferring to an articleinthe Telegraph.
Yes I know about Progress, they are mentioned in an article on the Red Pepper website warning about post-Blairism and the threat it represents to the Labour party. Unable to post the link on this phone.
Progress get a (very) small mention in this article:
https://www.redpepper.org.uk/the-rise-of-post-blairism/
This is an interesting article, Trev.
Owen Smith may try to adopt the language of the left, but there are two BIG things that give his position away: 1) he stood AGAINST Jeremy Corbyn; 2) he used to work in a pharmaceutical co.
Maybe it’s unfair, but I wouldn’t put it past Big Pharma to attempt to infiltrate the Labour Party and then to attempt to influence it from within.
I’m sure people like Peter Mandelson have an honourable position. However, when Jeremy Corbyn stood for Labour leader, there was a lot of talk about Tories signing up to the Labour Party in order to vote for Jeremy Corbyn because they said that would ruin Labour’s chances. Someone tried to sign up his llamas as members of the Labour Party.
My suspicion is that today’s post-Blairism/Progress is becoming a front for Tories to infiltrate the Labour Party. Rich people know that, if Jeremy Corbyn becomes Prime Minister, they will have to pay A LOT MORE TAX.
I never liked Mandelson, a Champagne Socialist, too cosy with Billionaire RussianOligarchs, swanning around the Med on his mate’s private yacht, and thearchitect of New Labour, Iwouldnt trust him as far as i could throw him. On a ‘man of the people’ walkabout in Sheffield he once pointed at the mushy peas in a chippy & asked if he could have Guacamole on his! The chippy woman was like “Guaca-what-luv?”
As for Sadiq Khan, I always knew he did not support Jeremy Corbyn because the media showed how Jeremy praised him in his speech at Conference and Sadiq Khan responded by winking at his fellow MPs.
I live in London and I am not very impressed with Sadiq Khan as Mayor.
He stood for Mayor on a platform of making swingeing cuts to Transport for London, even though we were already suffering widespread chaos and inconvenience due to closures of ticket offices all over London’s tube/Underground network.
Since Sadiq Khan became Mayor in 2016, the buses have become more and more filthy. There was a banana-skin that spent a fortnight rotting by a window. So I guess that bus had not been cleaned for a fortnight.
When Ken Livingstone was Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008, he brought us enormous change for the better. The Congestion Charge raised vast amounts of money for City Hall and it also discouraged people from using their cars. As a result, the roads became noticeably less congested. The bus network went from being a motley collection of different private companies that delivered a poor service to being a pan-London network running a very reliable service in the night as well as in the day. The buses were adapted to carry wheelchairs. Fares were frozen for years and all sorts of discounts were brought in. School-children could travel on public transport for free for the first time.
Most of Ken Livingstone’s reforms have not been removed, but I feel like we are living through an extended period of decline, first under Boris and then under Sadiq Khan. There have been no more big improvements.
I would like a credible candidate on the left of Labour to stand against Sadiq Khan in the next London Mayor Election in 2020. Ken Livingstone said he wouldn’t stand again because he lost twice, but I think we need someone with his principles and enough renown that people will vote for the person.
In 2000, Ken Livingstone had to stand as an independent candidate because the Labour Party chose someone to the right of the party to be their official candidate. Ken was elected as Mayor anyway because everybody knew exactly who he was and what he stood for.
I like Ken Livingstone, I just think he is often misunderstood and misquoted. There are a lot ofpeople that have it in for him, like they do with Corbyn too.
Progress is the only way to save the Labour Party from itself.
Bang on Karl. Progress is the only real hope. And in a sense the party does need to progress, to make itself electable again.
So you want the Labour Party to stuff the views of 35,000 Momentum members in favour of 3,000 Progress members? Would you call that democracy? Shall we take away the right to vote from 90% of the population as well?
That’s all pie in the sky, you know. If you don’t like the Labour Party, you can join a different party. But you won’t be able to change the views of the overwhelming majority of Labour members in favour of your tiny elite. No matter how many £millions are donated to you, it’s an impossible task. (I don’t suppose you mind, though, as long as the funding comes rolling in…)
Blundering forward like an ox has momentum. But to make progress you need thought, intellect and consideration.
Well, have fun with Progress, then.
But who’s going to save the Labour party from the Right Wing Karl?
It seems like they are trying to destroy the Labour Party so that they can take it over and change it to suit their views, instead of joining a political party they agree with or forming their own.
And anyway what’s wrong with post-Blairism ?
Lansman is not the leader of the Labour party.
Everything. That’s why we’re in this mess. Rightwing pro-Capitalist neo-liberalism masquerading as Centrism.
I wish Corbyn would simply do more about Universal Credit.
Or is that too much to ask ?
I don’t know if it’s too much to ask. You’ll have to ask Mr Corbyn himself. I suggest you ought to raise issues like this with the Labour Party or tweet Mr Corbyn or something. I doubt anybody making Labour Party policy is reading this forum.
Hardly surprising with all the Class Traitors stabbing him in the back. If it was me I wouldnt have stuck the job (or any job probably) for 5 minutes without telling them to stick it up their arse.
How many times does Momentum have to hear it ?
Corbyn must go before Labour lose it again at the election.
But Miliband lost the election because what he was offering was too similar to the Tories. That won’t work. I voted Green instead.
Saying that someone must do something is not going to make it happen.
Momentum, just say it slowly out loud. Mo-men-tum.
The drumbeats of doom.
If you hold Right Wing views shouldn’t you really go off and join the Conservatives? Labour is a Left Wing party.
Not at all, we are just not communists, or their stooges either.
We need another election for party leader. People have seen Corbyn in action. Now let the members decide.
But you are Capitalist stooges.
We believe in the contribution that the free market can make to the wider socialist agenda. Without prejudice to to the essential principles of social equality.
But the wider Socialist agenda is that the Workers own the means of production, so presumably produce would then be sold on the free market and any profits would be shared among the Workers, is that right?
I believe Theresa May said the same thing on the steps of 10 Downing Street.
What’s the difference between Progress and the Conservatives?
May has vowed to “defeat Socialism”, which many have taken as a threat to destroy (Privatise) the NHS. We must vow to defeat Theresa May by supporting Jeremy Corbyn!
Just out of interest, where do Progress stand on the issue of Universal Credit, should it be scrapped or can it be fixed, if so how can it be fixed (Corbyn hasnt said)? And what about introducing an unconditionalUniversal Basic Income, do Progress support that idea?
WE’RE NOT COMMUNISTS EITHER!!!
Dismissing us as “communists” does not alter the fact that you should join a party you agree with, not one you don’t.
So Momentum are now so arrogant that they think they are the only judge of who should be in the party ? The Labour party has always been a broad church, as Tony Blair said.
We pay our dues, and we won’t be silenced by a left-wing clique. Nor fellow-travellers and communist agitators.
Well Blair would say that, wouldn’t he?
It’s difficult for people to dismiss us as a “clique” when we are the majority of the Labour Party. The numbers bear that out.
I referred to Progress as a clique because they are a very small group of Labour members with a very different set of views from everybody else. It seems they have an agenda to undermine the leadership and membership of the party in order to impose their will on everybody else. That is not a mainstream view. It is about people thinking their views are somehow superior, despite the principles of democracy. The choice of the MAJORITY is the way forward.
Eddie, if you’re going to join the Labour Party, you need to support what it stands for. You shouldn’t join and then spend all your time undermining the leader and writing off the rest of the membership as communists.
Imagine if you were to join a Monday-night rugby club, only to declare that the rest of the team should play football instead and the club should meet on a Tuesday and the key members of the club should resign from it. People would rightly ask why you didn’t join a football club instead.
What Trev says is a very good point as well.
We should offer a viable alternative to government, not just more of the same.
There are so many people who support the views of Jeremy Corbyn that it’s only right to make sure they are represented by at least one of the mainstream political parties. Otherwise, they will take to the streets and mount a coup, as happens elsewhere in the world.
The whole idea of democracy is to allow the people to choose their own government, whether you agree with them or not.
They won’t learn Gavin until it is too late. History is against them, and they know it. Only Progress offers a real solution to leftward drift.
In the end you can either make Progress, or you can lose Momentum.
…or lose the election, same as Miliband.
Miliband was on your side anyway. If you don’t support Miliband, who DO you support? Farage? Rees-Mogg? You’re in the wrong party.
I had nothing against Miliband personally, all that bacon sandwich nonsense etc was just childish playground stuff, but he seemed to do nothing to oppose Tory Austerity & ‘Welfare Reforms’, then there was Rachel Reeves vowing to be tougher on Benefits than the Tories, and Labour HQ telling me that they fully supported the use of Benefit Sanctions – I just couldnt vote for any of that.
Sorry Trev. This comment was aimed at Progress, not at you. I didn’t think Miliband was on the left of the party. I thought he was a Blairite. Yes, I agree with your criticisms.
The bacon sandwich lost Miliband the election.
Anyone could see that the bread was cut far too thick. That’s why he nearly choked on it.
He took a massive bite out of it and then it looked as if he was trying to chew a golfball.
It’s got to be knife & fork only for Labour at the next election.
Like I said Neil, I couldnt care less about how anyone eats a sandwich, though I am more likely to vote for a vegetarian if the Policies are right. That’s what matters, not bacon sarnies. Miliband was trying to emulate the Tories, and that sort of Labour won’t ever get my vote. Now that Corbyn & McDonnel have steered the party in the right direction I finally feel that I can vote Labour again. I want a real Labour Party, like it was back in the 60s under Harold Wilson when I was a kid. I never voted for Blair either, I saw thru him, that wasnt Labour, it was Blue Labour.
In the end, you can either lose Progress or gain Momentum. Both would be nice.
But what is the point in gaining Momentum if you then lose Progress ?
Progress sounds an awful lot like Aspiration, that dreaded word. Why do we have to progress or aspire, whatever happened to attaining contenment? I’ll be content when the Tories are kicked out, when we have a proper Socialist Government, when Universal Credit is scrapped, and the wealth is redistributed via higher wages and an unconditional Universal Basic Income, and peoples’ wellbeing & happiness is put before profit.
Progress are starting to remind me of THE ELECT: the people who think the end of the world is coming and everybody will go to Hell, except them. They believe God has chosen THEM alone.
Anyway Thomas, coming back to Kate’s topic, the pitfalls of Universal Credit, as a Progress person what’s your opinion, should UC be scrapped, can it be fixed, or is it fine the way it is?
No matter what Kate posts about, we inevitably get a stream of posts about Progress’s view of the leadership of the Labour Party. I wouldn’t like to silence anybody, but you really have made your point already, many times over.
For the record, we DON’T “know it”: we don’t think we’re on the wrong side of history at all!
Leftward drift is not a problem and doesn’t require a “solution”.
Alison, please try and see that Progress are trying to save the Labour Party from itself.
A proper election for leader, and the unions to have a greater say in the final choice, along with the MP’s.
If the party keeps going leftwards there won’t be much between it and the communists. It has got to stop. For all our sakes.
Youre being over dramatic Andrew, Corbyn isnt. steering the party to Communism, he’s just redefining the Centre ground after years of neo-liberalism has shifted the Centre too far to the Right. Corbyn is a “true” Centrist and his ppolicies are moderate.
Andrew, what do you consider to be a “proper” leadership election? We’ve already had two! What was wrong with them? Was it just that people didn’t vote your way? You do need to learn to respect the views of other people, even if you don’t agree with them.
The country can’t afford the self indulgence of all this. You could make a second shadow cabinet from all the people who have resigned rather than serve under Mr. Corbyn. His own deputy leader first tried to get him to stand down, and then voted against him !
But the country can afford to throw £16 Billion down the drain on Universal Credit? I’d say we can’t afford NOT to back Corbyn to introduce a proper Socialist government to fight these recklessly irresponsible Tory maniacs.
It does if you happen to be a Conservative. Look at these posts from ‘Momentum’ and their opponents ‘Progress’. ( Are these ironic titles ? ).
They cannot even decide who they want to run the Labour Party. But they expect people to vote for them to run the country.
Charles, It’s been decided who’s running the Labour party – Jeremy Corbyn. The “Progress” trolls Don’t like it, theres only about half a dozen of them pretending to be a ‘Movement’ by leaving lots off off-topic comments on blogs & forums. And no, I’m not a member of Momentum.
If you are in a council place contact them and ask for a nil income form as the DWP are fecking you about with your benefits claim. Do this by email and if you have to print the email on their site then copy it to a word program on your PC and save it. Date it at the end so you know when you contacted the council, email allows you to keep a track of your sent stuff the council might have auto-reply to all emails with a copy of what the person sent you could always save it to your sent folder as well as send yourself the same email as you sent the council then save it to your sent mail folder.
I don’t think the councils accept a nil- income claim if you have applied for Universal Credit. I’m sure it’s worth a try, though.
Trev, I think Universal Credit was largely a mistake. It was based on the views on Duncan-Smith and his group. There is no real financial case to be made for it in the long term. As the Treasury have always maintained. After development costs of almost £16 Billion, It has proved to be both inefficient and unresponsive in operation. There are strong questions to be raised about a sanction system that lacks any sense of proportion or justice. The treatment of the disabled under Universal Credit has been quite frankly disgraceful. It must be scrapped and replaced with an updated and more compassionate system. That would be progress.
Ok, thank you Thomas, I would agree with you on that. I think the way forward would be to introduce a Universal Basic Income aka Citizens Basic Income, whatever you want to call it.
Yes Trev, I would entirely agree with you on that. Universal Basic Income has been shown to be far cheaper to operate than the current system. Importantly, it always ensures that people have sufficient basic funds for food and general living. Which I think any decent person wants to see. We may not be quite ready for it yet as a society, but I am sure that one day something like this will be introduced, and they will look back and wonder why we did not do so.
I see that gorgeous George Osborne says that his cruel austerity programme has been a great success !! And he’s not kidding either. Or Cameron, who backed him up. Jesus H. Christ, can they not see what they have done to the country ?
The deaths, the homeless, the poverty. Disabled people left without food, or care, or hope ? Unbelievable.
They’re fucking psychopaths.
Still there is some good news, MPs’ basic pay to rise to £77,379 from next month.
Now that’s what I call an earner.
Yet we are told the government has run out of money!
There is always money when it’s really needed. This is still the 7th richest country in the world. With a £45 Billion a year defence budget. This is a wealthy, first-world country. Like austerity, it’s not that the money isn’t there, but that they have decided not to spend it on certain things.
There’s ALWAYS money for cuts to Income Tax and Corporation Tax, MPs’ pay rises, new computer systems, Trident, the DUP, the EU and, of course, wars in the Middle East.
There’s NEVER money for benefits, schools, hospitals, housing, social care, nurses, teachers, firefighters, prisons, policing and MENTAL HEALTH.
The Tories keep SAYING they will increase the number of mental health professionals in the NHS, but the local statistics show they have CUT mental health nurses DRAMATICALLY in my local area, while we have borne the effects of a HUGE population growth.
Unless we ban immigration and show two fingers to all asylum-seekers, it is inevitable that the population in my area will rise. Universities expand and London is increasingly the place graduates come to to find a good job. Freedom of movement has had its effects, but so has a massive influx of professionals and their families from all over the world, many of whom make good neighbours and friends. Despite all their pledges, the Tories have presided over a significant rise in non-EU immigration.
Whatever you think about immigration and the EU, there is no doubt that the tax base has risen dramatically. So has the tax take, in spite of massive tax cuts since 2010. Yet the Tories have deprived the NHS of its fair share of that rise in tax revenue, capping its funding instead. The contract with the people is that we pay tax when we work and that pays for our health and public services. So a rise in population should bring a rise in NHS funding: not just a token rise, but a rise that is in proportion to the rise in population. Immigration is 300,000-600,000 per year, depending on which figures you believe.
Don’t believe all these stories in the right-wing papers about British people “demanding” more from our NHS. Believe me, people expect and receive less than before.
Rising demand is about the rising population, more dramatic is some parts of the country than others. More people are in work than ever before, so there is more tax going into the government’s coffers than ever before. People on short-term work visas pay hundreds of pounds each year in a new upfront NHS-related fee. This new money should be being passed on to the NHS, but it’s not.
plus expenses. And they expect us to live on Min. Wage, or apittance of JSA, or nin…”in”… some cases nothing at all. ( I Can’t even afford to get a phone that types properly! )
Still as Theresa May has said, without apparent irony ‘A country that works for everyone’.
Pity they didn’t think about uprating the benefit rates at the same time.
UK State Benefits are underpaid by 40%, but I haven’t heard any Politicians of any persuasion mentioning that fact lately.
No it’s all done by plan. They think this will push more people off the dole. Extra poverty as extra encouragement.
‘Getting a family into work, supporting strong relationships, getting parents off drugs and out of debt – all this can do more for a child’s well-being than any amount of money in out-of-work benefits’. Iain Duncan Smith
Was ever a man so deluded and ridiculous ?
Yep, a totally deluded ego maniac. One clueless fucker. E manently dangerous. As mad as an Hatter.
Trev, he needs to held to account for what he did in the name of so-called ‘welfare reform.’
When you look back at what the Tories have done it’s incredible. In a few short years they have destroyed whole sections of the welfare state. Treated disabled people so cruelly that the United Nations has officially condemned it . Made foodbanks and homelessness a commonplace, along with workfare, and benefit sanctions worse than any court could impose.
The NHS is being slowly privatised before the eyes of the public, who overwhelmingly don’t want this.
The ghost of Thatcher must be jumping up and down with glee. How did they ever get away with all this ?
All are important.
Some families spend all their money on drugs. That’s why it’s not always a good idea to pay all benefits to the man of the house. Gambling and alcohol are also vices that can eat up money in a family.
The issue now is that benefit cuts are causing problems in households where bills were paid and money was handled well in the past.
Only a minority spend all their Benefits on drugs, & most of them will already be on DLA/PIP & under a Doctor for their addiction problems. IDS seems to think every unemployed person is a drug user or an alcoholic, which is not the case, and there is a lack of facilities for those who do need help. The rich have drink & drug problems too but they can afford private rehab clinics. I don’t know what he means by “supporting strong relationships” but no family can be helped by cutting their Benefits. And if peopleslives & circumstances can beimproved by getting into work how come there are working families having to use foodbanks? IDS is deranged.
PS.
It’s not always the man of the house either! Ive known plenty of women with drink/drug probs.
Jeremy, I’m still waiting for those three little words, the ones I want you to say to me. You know the ones, ‘Scrap Universal Credit.’ #StayInLabour
Is Progress campaigning to stay in the EU/single market/customs union? Or is Progress as broad a church as the wider Labour Party on the Brexit issue?
As for #stayinlabour, I’m glad Progress want to stay with our party, but I hope they will consider the “broad church” philosophy on issues such as Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, rather than branding other Labour members as “communists”.
Pity about all this anti-semitism stuff. This is another gift to the Conservatives.
Brexit is in pieces, and they should be too. But the Labour party has now found another argument to quarrel with each other about.
Hitler didn’t support Zionism. He did support the forced re-location of European jewish citizens to what was then Palestine, and which later became the State of Israel. Not sure why Ken seems to have this the wrong way round. This kind of thing just gives ammunition to the Conservatives. Glad to see Jeremy Corbyn will not stand for anti-semitism in the party.
There’s a big difference though between anti-Semitism and being opposed to Israeli aggression.
True. They are still occupying land they were supposed to leave in 1967. And what about all the settlements they keep building on Palestinian land ?
Ken Livingstone wasn’t just about anti-semitism. That was what hit the news, but he did great things for London that seldom get a mention (probably because the right-wing media was embarrassed about how successful his reforms were).
It was only years after Ken was no longer Mayor that he made his infamous comment. I was disappointed because he is a politician, so I thought he should have known better than to make such a controversial comment, whether it was true or not. I put it down to age: some old men get very opinionated and stop caring if they offend anyone!
The sad fact is that Ken will be remembered more for offending Jews than for all the good things he did for London. That’s why it’s good to know when to close your mouth – or “put a sock in it”, as my dad would say.
Universal Credit is such an aggressive, challenging system. It bullies claimants into submission. Makes people guilty that they are claiming it. And with the DWP now in charge of people’s rent as well, it’s even worse.
You can tell the true Tory attitude a mile off. There is a national crisis of homelessness and shortage of affordable housing. Yet Housing Secretary Sajid Javid ( the bald one ), has given £292 million of cash earmarked for housing back to the Treasury, without spending a penny of it ! Some people think, perhaps unkindly, that he has done this largely to impress Theresa May. So that she can see what a good boy he has been in saving the money. Teacher’s pet you might say. If only he had just given her an apple instead
A poisoned apple.
Good one Trev ! It’s a disgrace though. All that money, and all those people homeless on the street. Sooner the Tories are gone, the better.
Yes It’s appalling what the Nasty Party have done to the people of this country, and of course it’s those at the bottom who suffer the most. Meanwhile, the richest in the country have increased their wealth by at least 300%.
It’s disgraceful that the Tories don’t think they ought to spend housing money where it’s so badly needed. People like me get turned down for Discretionary Housing Payments and then our local councils hand that money back to the government (for MPs’ pay, etc.).
That money could have helped me! I badly need it!
That money could have paid for the construction of thousands of council homes that would have bypassed foreign investors and gone directly to local people in need of somewhere to live. Their rents would have gone directly to their local councils to pay for social care for their local elderly and disabled people. (What we never hear in the media is how social care is not only about old people. It is also about investing in care and support for younger people with learning disabilities and severe Autism, instead of condemning them to cheap privatised dens of horror like Winterbourne View.)
Instead, the government is content for councils to pay £millions to slum landlords who house vulnerable families in APPALLING conditions while pocketing vast rents, far above market value because they know councils are so desperate they will pay anything. I doubt these landlords pay much tax.