Fact: Universal Credit is NOT the only benefit which plunges people into debt and desperation.
The entire benefit system is a wreck. Years of staff cuts, privatisation, jobcentre closures, sanctions, benefit delays and a brutal institutional contempt for claimants have left people reeling in a system that can’t even do the basics.
Universal Credit hasn’t gone wrong. It has gone exactly as planned. The application process is difficult. It excludes anyone who can’t use a PC, or navigate complex public sector bureaucracies. It has built-in delays which leave people in debt – rent arrears, in particular. Universal Credit strikes terror into anyone who might need it. Its depravity is entirely in keeping with welfare reform.
I understand why activists target Universal Credit. Universal Credit is a vicious ideological project which will adversely affect millions of working people (potential voters, that is). It has cost billions and will cost more. Its failures can be laid firmly at the door of Tory extremism.
The truth is, though, that every part of the safety net is in shreds. No politician will fix that easily. I’m not convinced that the electorate even wants the net fixed for a lot of people. Chaminda had that right. Destruction of welfare reflects an electorate view of the poorest. I’ve often spoken with people who are struggling mightily, but who agree with some degree of welfare reform. They receive benefits, but say that too many people get benefits when they shouldn’t.
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Computer Says No
Let’s take a look at a few typical experiences of people who sign on (or try to) at Stockport jobcentre. I attend Stockport United Against Austerity leafleting sessions at that jobcentre and interview people as they come out. Universal Credit rollout starts at Stockport this month. The jobcentre already has some UC claimants.
The interviews below were all made this year. I’ve picked three at random. Readers of this site will know that I have many others.
The theme of these interviews? – Exclusion. Each person went into the jobcentre with an issue and came out with the same issue. Nothing was fixed, or solved. People were no closer to answers to problems than they were when they went in. This is so commonplace that it is standard.
Here’s Kerry:
Kerry was in her 30s. She was out of work. She was trying to sign on for jobseekers’ allowance while she looked for work. Kerry Anne had a job interview set for the Tuesday after we met.
Kerry had filled in a JSA application form. Then, she’d received a DWP text which instructed her to attend a meeting at Stockport jobcentre to complete her JSA claim.
Kerry had turned up to the meeting – only to be told that her paperwork wasn’t adequate. An adviser told Kerry she needed three forms of ID to claim JSA. The meeting ended there.
When I met Kerry, she was standing outside the jobcentre trying to guess what the adviser was on about. Kerry didn’t have three forms of ID. Nobody does. The adviser had not explained what she’d meant.
Upshot: Kerry left the jobcentre no closer to JSA than she’d been when she arrived. She had no idea how to complete her application and no idea when – or even if – she’d get any money.
That sort of scenario is absolutely par for the course. One person after another leaves that jobcentre trying to work out what in hell to do next. There really are times when it feels as though people who try to claim benefits are forced participants in a hellish gameshow challenge – where the prize for navigating one obstacle is a cryptic hint about the next one. The thing is ridiculous. It goes on and on.
Next up: a man in his 30s called Steve.
Steve needed help to buy a cheap pram. Steve and his partner had a baby, but they couldn’t afford a pram for him. Without a pram, they just carried the baby around town.
On the day we met, the couple had asked the jobcentre for a social fund loan. The jobcentre said they couldn’t have one. Advisers said Steve was paying back another loan. Steve insisted that he wasn’t. This went on for a while. The jobcentre wouldn’t budge.
Upshot: Steve and his partner left the jobcentre empty-handed. Advisers hadn’t even pointed the family at local places that might help with secondhand goods. They’d shown the family the door.
Next: Mark, 46. Mark was claiming Universal Credit.
Mark was fuming.
He said that jobcentre staff wouldn’t let him use a jobcentre phone to call about voluntary work at a cafe. Mark had to call the number to set up an interview, but the jobcentre had sent him away.
Mark said:
“I can’t get even get a fucking job as a fucking roadsweeper… Volunteering… I thought that having that on my CV it would be better than [nothing]…[but] they won’t even let you use the phone…”
The jobcentre had recently sent Mark on a course called Changing Attitudes, or something ridiculous like that. The course was about changing Mark’s attitude to unemployment. Mark decided to change his attitude to unemployment by asking for voluntary work:
“[On the course they said] instead of thinking outside the box, think inside the box – so I’m thinking I might just become a volunteer instead of signing off.
[But] everything has been for nothing.”
Indeed.
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The torturous council homelessness bureaucracy
I want to talk now about the bureaucracy that homeless people must use when they ask for housing help from their councils.
Homelessness is one of the monumental disasters of our times. You’d think that councils would at least ease up on the paperwork around it – you know, make life easier for people who are in desperate situations and must apply for help.
But no.
You wouldn’t believe the torturous, excruciating nature of the bureaucracies that homeless people must negotiate. Finding a path through a council homelessness bureaucracy really is like trying to cleave your way out of a vine tangle with your bare hands. This bureaucracy will literally strangle you. I’ve genuinely lost count of the number of people who’ve told me that they decided to give up at one point or another in their application.
I’ll take you through one example here: a young mother who I’m still working with. I have plenty of other similar examples.
Sara Abdalla is 30. She lives in Newham in London. She has two young children. The eldest is in school in Newham. Sara started a new job this year. She is a low-paid worker.
Like so many people I speak with, Sara has another job which is more or less fulltime – trying to keep on top of the council homelessness bureaucracy that she must use to house her family.
In 2017, in desperate straits, Sara made a homeless application to Newham council*. The council placed Sara in a single-room homelessness hostel in Stratford as a temporary measure.
Then, council offered Sara a permanent flat – in Birmingham. Sara didn’t want to go to Birmingham. She had work, family and support in Newham. Her eldest child was settled in school.
Sara wanted to challenge the council’s decision on all of those fronts.
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The bureaucracy Sara had to engage in to make that challenge was and is a monster.
Sara asked the council to review the decision to place her in Birmingham.
The council reviewed that decision – and upheld it.
The council dismissed each of Sara’s concerns in a pages-long letter which was packed with justifications for sending Sara to another town.
The letter was so dense and so aggressive in its reasoning that it felt like an assault. When you read these letters, you can almost see the system physically slapping homeless people away. There were actually two reviews, but the council withdrew one, because a mistake was made with Sara’s proposed out of London address. This was intriguing. It made me wonder if the council was cutting and pasting We Can’t Help You letters onto some kind of Get Lost letter template.
I digress.
The council said Sara had to go to Birmingham.
The so-called re-review letter was complex. It told Sara that the council would not help further. It instructed Sara to contact children’s services voluntarily since her children were facing homelessness. Sara couldn’t understand why she should contact children’s services. She contacted children’s services. Children’s services couldn’t help with Sara’s housing problem.
Sara said that the council threatened her with intentional homelessness.
Sara found out that she should apply to the courts to appeal the council’s review of the decision to send her to Birmingham.
The council applied to the courts to bar Sara’s appeal on the grounds that Sara was out of time. Sara didn’t realise that she was out of time, because she is only one pair of hands. She was dealing with eviction notices, possession orders, rent demands, review letters, council letters, and meetings with children’s services and housing options – all while trying to work and look after two small children. As I say – just trying to understand what a council is doing and saying is a fulltime job. It’s a nightmarish one at that.
Court dates were set. Court fines and costs mounted. The paperwork and admintration that accompanied each step was unreal. It became impossible to follow. Sara had council letters, court summonses, eviction letters, letters from her son’s school and emails to and from officers, councillors and even the mayor. Calls were made and messages left. Meetings were set, changed and cancelled.
To cap things off, the council closed Sara’s rent account. This was the account Sara used to pay the rent for her temporary accommodation. Sara could not understand why the rent account was closed. Nor could I. Nor could anyone. Last week, Sara got her latest letter – a letter which asked Sara to contact the council about a court hearing and rent and service charges – but gave few details. A possession hearing appeared to have been cancelled, but Sara is worried that the council is saying she owes money.
The problems never end. They never end because they are insurmountable. After much campaigning, the council said that it would find Sara a flat, but hadn’t at the time of writing. I could go on. I really could.
You see my point. This sort of nightmare is standard. Universal Credit, JSA, homelessness applications, PIP applications, ESA applications – the works. Doesn’t matter which part of the support system people try to access. It’s death by bureaucracy at every turn.
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Some names in this story have been changed
* I would ask Newham council for comment on this story, except that the council press office has blacklisted me.
Absolutely true Kate, and very sad. The whole Universal Credit project has been systematic cruelty from the start. But a considerable success for the Tories.
In a few short years they have shredded the welfare system, and turned many of the general public towards the idea that mass skiving has now been brought to an end.
Yes it’s the idea that everyone is shirking so the only way to really get rid of that is to get rid of the system altogether. Or something. In many ways, I’ve lost the thread on it all. You go to these meetings and these places, and read the letters and you literally can’t understand what officers are talking about.
I suppose by 3 forms of ID they mean council tax, passport, driving licence, and other utility bill? But many might not have two of them a passport or driving license, I don’t have them two, even though I can drive and left the UK in the past.
Steve needs to put in a Subject Access Request for all the info the DWP have on him and his partner especially concerning loans.
The Job centre took the phones out of the places quite a while ago! This really doesn’t help those who have no phone either mobile or landline.
You can’t help but notice the prevailing attitude of Society in general towards anyone who is claiming out-of-work Benefits. I’ve heard it myself many times; “these that have spent all their lives on the dole…”, “I’ve worked all my life….” etc. Or moaning about a neighbour who is on the sick “but there’s nothing wrong with him, he gets a car, etc.” Blah blah. There’s a lot of judgement and Reactionary assumptions. And there’s also a lot of hypocrisy, many people hate their jobs, hate working, can’t wait to Retire, or desperately hoping for voluntary Redundancy or a way of reducing their hours. And even at the foodbank I’ve encountered people bringing donations who say they think it’s awful that people who are working can’t afford enough food, but when I mentioned the Governmnt’s welfare reforms, UC, or Benefit Sanctions, these people look uncomfortable. It’s like they (not all of them) don’t mind giving to help working families who can’t afford to feed their kids, but don’t like the idea of feeding unemployed who have had their Benefits stopped. That’s the impression I get sometimes. Maybe sucoh judgemental attitudes are indicative of the rise of the Rightwing in general? We’re living in an increasingly divided world with huge extremes of inequality, perhaps that’s at the root of it. It could go even deeper than that, the cyclical non-linear nature of Time, and the way in which history seems to repeat itself. Writing in the 20th Century, American Prophet Edgar Cayce said that we are living through a transitional nt era of experiencing the “polarisation of Thought in a subjective Reality”. Maybe we still are? It’s like Reality itself has become so fragmented that no one can perceive the whole, just their own little bit of it, that then becomes the thing by which they compare and judge others as they are partially perceived.
I don’t know whether you’ve realised it Trev, but it’s obvious that you’re educated, and most of those who are the detractors of the unemployed etc aren’t. Their source of information, ‘enlightenment’ is the likes of the Daily Mail. Reading that kind of stuff, and watching too much poverty porn on the telly is toxic man, I tell you! The only educated people who promote the kind of rubbish about the unemployed etc can only do it cynically. Only those with an agenda, or no sense of human decency could possibly be so hateful towards other human beings.
I can understand the actions of people donating to foodbanks, but perhaps people need to be made to question the need for foodbanks in the first place, and then be persuaded to have a go at the system, and the politicians who support it, (all of them!). The one flaw in my argument, of course, is that those kinds of people have no shame.
Kate is of course correct in telling us there are those who who are struggling who also bizarrely are supportive of the government’s pogrom against the unemployed as well as the poor in general – for that is what it is, a pogrom. I don’t think using that word could be construed as hyberbolic in any way.
The biggest problem, as Kate points out, is that there is no apparent way of opposing this. How do we change a system that seems to have become dog eat dog?
How to change it? That’s a big question. We can campaign & lobby & keep on signing petitions on various issues, as many of us do, but ultimately all one can do is live your own life as you see fit without subscribing to Rightwing selfish discriminatory views, don’t read the Daily Mail etc. Or that free paper they put out to the masses on buses (note they don’t give out copies of the Morning Star on the buses to all the workers!) . Wasn’t it Gandhi who pointed out that society is comprised of individuals? Other than that, all we can do is keep on doing what we’re doing and try help others where possible, and wait for the tide to turn. We canvote for Labour and hope that will make a difference, and we can hope that Capitalism will eventually change because it is unsustainable, and ‘dog-eat-dog’ is an unsustainable model of Society. All things are impermanent, all things come to pass, according to Buddhist philosophy, hence something close to Schumacher’s ‘Economics of Permanence’ must one day emerge. It’s all work in progess, creating a fairer society and a fairer more peaceful world. I don’t think there’s any quick fix, save for Divine intervention!
I agree with you Trev about there being no quick fix – and if anyone suggested there were we’d know they would be the ones we should avoid. Indeed, those behind Brexit were offering a ‘quick fix’ and look where that has got us.
On the press front, it’s a pity there aren’t more papers like the Mirror, hardly ideal, but at least it’s on ‘our’ side! Not quite sure about handing out copies of the Morning Star, as someone of anarchist leanings I’m sceptical whether the commies are actually better than the capitalists once they get power. I’ve even less faith in Karma than I have in Divine intervention, and that’s not saying much, given that I’m agnostic! I think nuclear armageddon is more likely, ably assisted by those who believe in the Biblical notion of Armageddon – those people really scare me! Talk about self-fulfilling prophecy.
I really do hope that we do arrive at a situation, sooner rather than later, where we can share a world based on Schumacher’s ideas – I’ve been thinking that since I first read him way back in the mid 80s after having learned about him from the writings of Leopold Kohr. No quick fix, but maybe nudge things along a little?
It’s hard to change the world when you’re struggling to survive. My main priority is just making it thru this week!
Hi Kate b I am 60 years old woman who always work till 2 years ago which I had to have time away from work with depression I claim esa till 4th of December 2017 just a phone call saying I no longer get esa and told to call this terrible universal credit I didn’t know what to do Xmas was weeks away I have suffer since I been on this terrible benefits still suffering now I get £170 per month can’t pay bills can’t eat right and in terrible rent arrears x
I only “Like” your post because you’re telling how things are. I hope nobody thinks I “Like” how people are being treated. The thing about needing so many proofs of being who you are is a pain. I need new Blue Badge, but only have about one proof that I am who I am.
Oh, just writing those last 5 words took me back to when we went to see La Cage aux Folles in London a few years ago when we went to support people at a Judicial Review. Though song is actually “I am what I am” rather than who but nevermind! Sorry to go so off topic! 😉 We saw Graham Norton in it. Enjoy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtGj7mydVwQ
BBC Panorama tonight (Monday) on BBC1 at 7.30pm about Universal Credit:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-45893616
Also BBC One Wales at 21:30, ‘BBC Wales Investigates: Universal Credit – What’s the Benefit? On iPlayer afterwards, and available UK wide.
Just watched Panorama – strongly suspect that the BBC Wales Investigates is just a rehash of the same material.
I wouldn’t bother with watching BBC Wales Investigates as it’s more or less exactly the same programme as Panorama, except for a brief couple of minutes clip of an interview of a DWP Wales official being economical with the truth over direct payment of rent to landlords.
Nice one from the academic saying on camera that he’d ‘probably scrap’ UC! Tory spokesperson ‘UC is working well… Getting people into work faster and keeping them in it for longer’ BS we’ve all heard before. Predictable.
How people like that Tory can repeat such crap with a straight face is beyond me, they know that we know what they are saying is a pile of crap, so why do they persist? Even Josef Goebbels didn’t try that on; he realised that once people know something is a lie, they aren’t going to be convinced otherwise.
It’s a tragedy that so many people’s lives are being totally wrecked because of a politiican’s ego trip. However, local authorities must shoulder some of the blame, as at the very least the Labour led Flint County Council should have been publicly vocal about the plight of those left destitute because of UC. Shame on them!
I saw Alok Sharma sayingthat Universal Credit is working well, is simpler to use, and is easier for people to understand – the exact opposite of the truth. Black is white, war is peace…
I think even Goebbels would have had a problem with that particular lie!
Resolution Foundation:
https://intensiveactivity.wordpress.com/2018/11/12/universal-credit-costs-more-than-previous-system-and-makes-60000-families-worse-off/
(I think it’s supposed to say 600,000 families, not 60,000)
I have sadly been through many nightmares in the fight to obtain a little JSA money, or housing benefit. As a stay at home mum of two , with a partner unemployed and desperately seeking a job, our JSA claim was closed after being unable to get our called answered by the Jobcentre for weeks. My partner was offered an interview which clashed with his sign on time. He tried to call to request a new appt, no answer We tried the benefits line, on hold for 25 mins and then call is automatically ended. Repeated both all day. Next day partner goes into the jobcentre and is told that his appt cannot be arranged, Miss your interview or we log you in the system as ‘failure to attend’. He said this can’t be right. Asked for a manager. Manager came and re-iterated. the ;position. So he tried to change interview time. No possible. He had to pass the jobcentre on the way to his interview. He dropped in with copies of the emails inviting him to interview. Was refused an early sign on time which woulld have been the solution. He went to the interview. But due to the anger and frustration he felt, didn’t perform well and didin’t get the job. Then when he tried again to sign on, he was told that our claim was closed. We were sanctioned! No claim would be accepted for 6 weeks!!
This is just one of many fights we have had with a broken system which appears to aim to discourage the needy and desperate to claim for money that they have previously paid into the system via taxes and NI. They treat ‘customers’ like idiots, make up rules to suit themselves. Delay payments and generally plunge those who need help into despair, debt, homelessness and poverty. A
Sorry to hear about your situation. It’s beyond Kafkaesque, you try your best to work within the system, but the system just doesn’t work. It wouldn’t be so bad if Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition stopped sitting on their hands for a change, and really challenged the Tories over the human rights abuses they are responsible for. And it a human rights abuse – if prisoners in gaol were made to go without food and possibly shelter it would clearly, and correctly be seen as an abuse of their fundamental human rights. Yet the DWP gets away with denying people the means to basic subsistence and puts them in real danger of becoming destitute and homeless. It’s a pogrom against the poor.
On a lighter note, on my Facebook stream I saw this comment by a friend of a friend about the DWP – it’s in Welsh, but I will explain. Basically she said that calling them the DWP was about right, as in Welsh, they were twp – Welsh word for stupid. In Welsh, we have mutations where the first consonant of a word following a vowel in certain circumstances changes, in this case, the T of twp becomes a d. So, in Welsh we have the sentence, Mae nhw’n DWP! (My noon doop) “They’re STUPID!” You could do worse than mutter this under your breath when you’re in a better situation and dealing with the idiots in the DWP.
I’ve just got back from signing on at the Jobcentre, and what a stressful experience. I narrowly avoided getting Sanctioned. It always stresses me out anyway, I dread going, I suffer with Anxiety and find it traumatic. Usually I take printed evidence of jobsearch & applications, but for a while now no oe has asked to see it or had time to look at it. Today was the first time I didnt have anything to show them, and sod.’s law it was the first time in ages that I got asked for it. I explained that I normally print it out but that no one ever looks at it, and also that I had no money left this week to pay for prints at the library, on top of which my local community library closed down last week. The adviser got a bit shirty but ended up giving me a booklet to write my jobsearch in from now on. What a bloody waste of time. She also started asking when I last had my CV redone, and gave me a list of local(ish) jobclub type places to visit/attend. Then let me sign. Phew! I am exhausted now with stress, and still have to make it thru to Friday with no money, no fags, no milk or bread, and very little food. My phone payment goes out of the bank on Thursday but there’s nothingin my account to cover it. Life on the dole is far from easy without the added stress of the Jobcentre. Roll on Retirement.
This is why I insist on giving my job search verbally trev it so much easier to say 3 steps per week, the rest is my business.
Searched online Find a job
Speculative postal letter Aldi
Ask family and friends
Check shop windows is 3 such steps.
More fun and games today after a months break from signing on, the battles continues I will hopefully be forcing them to have a staff awareness training session the level of ignorance they show is incredible.
https://killwelfaresanctionskill.org/the-conversation/unbelievable-ignorance-at-the-jcp-know-your-rights/
I am ready to take the DWP to civil court when they confirm my last complaint letter.
They tried it on with me a couple of years ago, saying that I had to do35 hrs jobsearch on JSA ! The Regional Director of Jobcentres confirmed to me , via a newspaper journalist who contacted him on my behalf, that JSA Claimants do NOT have to do 35 hrs jobsearch, and the adviser at fault got moved on to reception/new claims on the groundfloor. My (Labour) MP was completely useless in all of this and did bugger all.
A few thoughts against the grain. There is a long history of welfare in the British Isles, but the formal UK welfare state is relatively recent, so it’s important to note cultural attitudes to welfare pre-date the expectations some groups have. It’s also too easy to misuse the term ‘safety net’. I think it’s fair to say the modern Welfare State was envisioned as a safety net, but a certain degree of mission creep means that’s no longer the expectation for some. It was set up around post-WWII norms, I’ve no desire to glorify these, but they tended towards nuclear families where work was the norm. It also conformed to much longer established cultural conventions of welfare as a temporary stop gap, or for established members of the community who had severe disability. It’s also meaningful that it’s formal development ran parallel to declining birth rates and rising absolute living standards.
As a ‘safety net’ it wasn’t designed for what are euphemistically called ‘troubled families’ and ‘chaotic lifestyles’, communities where absentee parents are the norm, families with complex interpersonal relationships, families where stable work is not the norm etc… There are specific problems in London, post-WWII the population was falling, but mass immigration skewed towards London in the last 20 to 30 years placed huge pressure on housing. Not unique to London, but particularly salient, are specific cultural challenges, some of which are taboo or uncomfortable to discuss without provoking an aggressive defensiveness which makes them difficult to address.
So I don’t think the safety net is in tatters, I’m not even convinced it’s being destroyed, I think it was never designed to meet some of the current challenges or expectations being thrown at it. And as brutal as UC is for some vulnerable people it’s a reversal of the creep and a reversion towards much longer established attitudes to welfare.
Fair point, but the population has grown, and will continue to do so, whilst industry and jobs have declined, and will continue to do so due to advancements in technology, so there is more need now than there ever has been for State financial support. Perhaps an Unconditional Basic Income is the answer in the form of a Stipend? That would also go some way towards creating a more equitable redistribution of wealth and a fairer Society.
P.S.
I’m not sure what you mean by “specific cultural challenges…taboo to challenge/discuss” ? Seriously, I have no idea what you are referring to in the context of this subject. Do you mean some people have difficulty in claiming the State Benefits to which they are entitled because of language barriers, or likewise with gaining employment? Or am I missing something?
Basically he’s saying that those poverty porn programmes on Channel 5 represent a sizeable minority rather than being exceptions that prove the rule – that the vast majority of people want to work, but it just doesn’t pay because Tories don’t believe in people being paid enough to live a decent life. Oh, and maybe also because there are no fucking jobs. Forty years ago if someone had a job it was more likely to be full-time and you actually got paid. Now you can have a job, but not actually be able to do any work, or even get paid for having a job!
He (at least I assume it’s a he) fails to note that the reforms to social security are driven primarily by the psychopathic egomania of people like Iain Duncan Smith and David Freud, (notorious for describing the unemployed as ‘stock’ and for being of the opinion that some disabled people were to worth even £2 an hour). It was also an attempt to blame the poor for the crimes of the bankers when the financial system went into meltdown in 2008.
Some of what he said has a sliver of truth there, but again it contains such grotesque distortions that it’s seriously misleading. Being kind, you could, I suppose, at a pinch describe it as ‘revisionist history’, but on the other hand, you could see it for what it is, Tory propaganda, (and I’m sure you do Trev). If one actually finds out about the Beveridge proposals from 1944, or see him speaking in film, he is quite clear, and specific; his scheme was directly aimed at abolishing want. The ‘Welfare State’ was an attempt to deal with the very societal problems he says it wasn’t, but then, this is topsy-turvy Toryland, where the truth is what they say it is.
It might have worked and solved many of our social problems by now, only, every now and then we get a Tory government which messes everything up again. I’m not saying that Labour are perfect, but they’re a darned sight more perfect than any Tory.
Nye Bevan was right, Tories are lower than vermin!
Sorry for the rant, but I read what Mr Tory wrote and a red mist descended.
I don’t watch poverty porn, and I’m not talking about people prioritising booze and fags over food, the taboos I’m speaking of relate to ‘deprived’ groups where cultural norms are causes of poverty, me listing some of them will only cause offence, which is why we have to accommodate them and try not to ‘judge’.
“cultural norms are causes of poverty” ? Nope, still no wiser. You’ve lost me there. Poverty could be ended tomorrow, simply by sharing the wealth, if the Government really wanted to. They’ve just thrown at least £16 Billion down the drain on Universal Credit, and waste money on all sorts of things, running the Jobcentres for example, which serve no useful purpose or function whatsoever.
None the less, you do fucking judge. Exactly what ‘cultural norms’ cause all this poverty you claim? Tell us, please don’t spare our feelings, we are pretty tough you know, after all, most of us here have had to endure 40 years of Tory shit.
Isn’t it also the case that there were fewer Millionaires & Billionaires in the 30s/40s than today? So in effect the modern society is far more unequal in terms of the disparity of wealth now versus the level of disparity that existed when the Welfare State began. A greater proportion of wealth is now in the possession of an elite, which therefore must mean that there is a greater amount of people in poverty who need State Benefits. Isn’t it now the case that the country can no longer afford to sustain such obscene levels of disparity of wealth, and that the wealth must be shared to ease the burden placed upon the State by an unduly wealthy elite having too great a share of the pie?
There is also the slight consideration that when the Welfare State was established in 1948 the UK was virtually bankrupt after having had to finance a war for nearly six years. They had very little money to play around with, so it was doubly more expensive in relative terms. It was, and remains a terrific achievement. Sadly, we don’t have politicians of the same calibre as Aneurin Bevan or Ernest Bevin, and many others who had come from very ordinary backgounds. All of them had done the normal kinds of jobs that working people do, unlike today where a large proportion of politicians on both sides come from privileged middle class backrounds having been to public school and then Oxbridge.
Our society is so many hundreds of times more wealthy, and the UK has the sixth largest economy in the world. The UK is literally afloat with wealth. Yet, as you know, it’s not shared fairly.
I’m guessing this Rupert (Mr Tory) also believes that money can be made through hard work. I always remind myself of an old IWW slogan “When you meet someone who says they made their money through hard work, ask them, ‘Whose?”
Beveridge may have desired to abolish ‘want’, but it’s clear his intention was never to create dependency. There’s a big leap from social insurance as minimum standard below which people should not fall to the point of state intervention some people are expecting today. That is the issue that is really politically contested. The Welfare State was sold as pragmatic solution, a safety net, if it had been sold as an obligation on some people to equalise outcomes or to subside people’s personal preferences about where they want to live or what work they’re willing to do etc… it would have received far heavier opposition.
UK society is many times richer than in the late 40’s, and the poor are many times richer in absolute terms than the late 40’s. In fact the poor of today have material things that were out of reach of even many wealthy people back then.
In principle I support the idea of a Citizens Basic Allowance, I think it’s actually fairly consistent with Beveridge’s original intention. But I doubt it will ever happen because if UC is a contentious reform, a Citizens Basic Allowance would be a sh*t storm of sectional interests and special pleading from protected classes. As it is I don’t think UC is fundamentally flawed, drop some of the punitive aspects that cause more problems than they solve, and fix some broken processes, and there is long-term benefit in consolidating the creep of different benefits.
One of the main fundamental flaws with UC is that by lumping Housing Benefit all together with JSA it puts people at risk of eviction/homelessness if there any delays or stoppages to payments (which there nearly always are). Also people are getting random amounts deducted for alleged overpayment of Working Tax Credit that is difficult to challenge and which causes real hardship. Not to mention the initial wait of several weeks for UC payments to begin. People cannot live on fresh air, hence the rise in foodbank use. It’s flawed and should be scrapped in my view. Benefits need to be increased from the current miserly rates and paid on time, preferably weekly, and Housing Benefit kept entirely separate. Conditionality needs to be removed also, i.e. specific and unrealistic jobsearch requirements and Sanctions. after all, there are not and can not ever be enough jobs for everyone, someone must be unemployed. Capitalism itself requires unemployment in order to function.
My initial reaction was to respond with a short, expletive laden rebuff. But for now I’ll reign in the infantile urges. You’re a Tory troll, so just go away, unless you can add something positive to the commentary here.
It’s no longer possibleto work your way out of poverty, becauseof the gap betweenearnings and cost of living, and the amounts of debt/arrears people have around their necks.
We’re at a point where we need to say: “do we want a decent society with everyone provided for, and social ills minimised; or do we want a Dickensian freak show where everyone is a single paycheck from destitution, but at least we get to spit on those one rung down the ladder from us?”
Sadly, I think many people would go for the latter. The conversation around welfare has become extreme over the last 15 – 20 years and we need to stop and get a sense of perspective. I feel ashamed and appalled to walk through British streets and see the effects of our punitive benefits system and social spending cuts. Why aren’t we more angry? How can people pass through our cities, see such suffering, and think that everything is OK with this country?
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