Category Archives: Benefit systems

Forget #metoo celebs for 5 mins. Where’s the wall-to-wall mainstream outrage and coverage about the violence the austerity state visits on women?

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Am pissed off this morning. Here are my perceptions of celeb domination of #metoo and mainstream obsession with celeb suffering as a priority:

I just finished a phone call with a woman who has three young kids and is homeless. They’re all homeless. She and the kids sofa-surf at a friend of the woman’s some nights and some nights with the woman’s mother in her mum’s flat.

The woman was made intentionally homeless by her council for rent arrears – arrears the woman said she didn’t realise were building up, because her housing benefit, which was paid straight to her landlord, suddenly stopped last year. Her housing benefit was stopped, because there was a problem processing a JSA claim she’d made.

She was accused of “getting money from somewhere else.”

Just about every woman I talk to in these situations is accused of “getting money from somewhere else” – which, for so many women I speak to, often means accused of living with an ex, or sleeping with some bloke who pays, or your choice of variations on that charming theme.

This side of things is remarkable, now that I think about it. I’m actually sitting here as we speak thinking about all the women I’ve written about over the years who’ve received housing benefit, or other kinds of state support. It occurs to me that nearly all of these women were accused by a council or the DWP at one point or another of cheating the state by generating extra cash for extra goodies via a man – ie, living with an ex, or with new bloke, or with some bloke nobody had even heard of.

That should tell you all you need to know about the state’s real view of women. We’re all cheating liars who’ll suck anything for an extra fiver for drink and fags – and that goes particularly for women who receive housing benefit. No matter that the state accuses people wrongly. No matter either that some women need extra cash in austerity and that people take the options they have with good reason. The realities of real women’s lives in this era doesn’t matter a damn. Women are seen as graspers, whether we need money or not.

Back to the story. The woman I talked to this morning was eventually evicted and found intentionally homeless. The woman says that the council told her that it would house her kids, but not her. The council would find the kids somewhere to go if social services got involved – but not her. The subtext there was pretty clear, to her at least: she’d be separated from her kids if she went down that line. I hear this story again and again and again and again. I hear this story every time I interview a woman who has a housing problem, rent arrears and kids. “You’ll go one way and your kids will go another.” It’s the threat to beat all threats. It never, ever ends.

Which brings me to my main point. Where is the wall-to-wall #metoo mainstream press outrage for women in these situations? Where’s the non-stop support and mainstream press coverage that #metoo celebrities have now had for months on end? Why is a night out or a trip in a cab with a groping celeb or politician now the only sure way to get women’s issues on the mainstream agenda, especially as a viral and ongoing concern? Reading the mainstream press at the moment – even those publications we’re supposed to rate for maturity and depth – feels like spending too much time on rubbish celeb sites. I know this, because I do both.

Where’s the widespread mainstream press and political eagerness to believe and report non-stop women’s stories of abuse and dismissal at the hands of the austerity-enforcing state? I tell you this – I bet a lot of the women I speak to wouldn’t even be believed by the media and political classes at the moment. They’d be called liars and exaggerators. Even in polite liberal circles, there’d be smirking about the choices made by these women and about women who have children in poverty (for all the world as though women always have a choice). Councils and the DWP would say that women had lied about making rent payments and about missing jobcentre meetings and all the rest. They’d be believed – not the women. There’d be snarky remarks about the feckless and irresponsible poor, and the working-class mother’s terrible and destructive sense of entitlement.

Celebrities are admired by the mainstream and generate web traffic. Women who are throttled by the state in austerity are not and do not. I know this. I get this. I can’t accept it.

Schizophrenia, aged 55, #PIP payments stopped, forced to the foodbank – why are guys like Andrew called society’s leeches but rich Carillion bosses are not?

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Back to Oldham foodbank last week, where I talked at length with Andrew Smith, 55 [there’s a transcript from the interview at the end of this post].

Keep Andrew in mind when you read about the extraordinary salaries and bonuses trousered by people who are responsible for the Carillion disaster. Ask yourself how we arrived time and place where people such as Andrew must grovel for food at a foodbank while Carillion chancers are paid unbelievable sums of money for risking and destroying vital public services and jobs.

How dare anyone claim that people such as Andrew are the leeches?

Makes me sick.

Andrew was at the foodbank, because the DWP had stopped his Personal Independence Payment. This meant that Andrew was down several hundred quid a month*. He said the local CAB was appealing the DWP’s decision on his behalf.

Said Andrew:

“I said the wrong thing [at Andrew’s face-to-face PIP assessment] and they [the DWP] stopped it [Andrew’s PIP]… I’m just hoping they give it me back, because if I don’t [get that money], I’m going to be in an absolute mess.”

He was right about that. Andrew’s chances of getting the money elsewhere at his age and with his health problems were zero.

Andrew had a schizophrenia diagnosis. He also had varicose veins which ran the length of both legs (I won’t forget seeing those). He said that it hurt to walk – a statement that was extremely easy to understand when you saw the state of his legs. The DWP didn’t give a damn about the state of Andrew’s legs, though – or any other aspect of Andrew’s life. The department stopped Andrew’s PIP about three months ago. Some genius DWP decision-maker had decided that a man of Andrew’s age and with Andrew’s health problems could manage without money or support – or, I suppose, that he could find that money and support elsewhere.

I despair at these decisions – or at the people who make them, anyway. The benefits bureaucracy is disgusting. It stops people’s benefit money and consigns them to poverty at the stroke of a pen. People are not even given lead time or a grace period to deal with such decisions. They just get a letter saying the money’s stopped, or not coming, or whatever. Benefit decision-makers who cut guys like Andrew loose know full well that the Andrews of this world have neither the health nor the opportunities to make up lost benefit or support money. They can see people’s paperwork and the bank statements. They know the dire financial circumstances that people will be left in when money is cut. The bureaucracy makes the decision all the same.

The government and the DWP know that Andrew will not step out of a PIP assessment and into a job. Job opportunities are especially scarce when people are older. I’ll punch the next worthy who says otherwise. I’ve lost count of the number of men who I’ve talked to at foodbanks and jobcentres who are in their 50s and 60s, who did manual work when they were younger and who are now on the scrapheap. Fitters and joiners, painters and decorators, general kitchen assistants: their health goes and they’re dumped.

Andrew said that in his working days, he had jobs on building sites:

“I did wet stone walling with sand and cement,” and, “I worked on canals and paths at Greenfield… building sites.” Needless to say, Andrew can’t do that work now. He’s too old for it and his health has gone, as health does in these circles.

“They [the CAB] have put an appeal [against the DWP’s PIP decision] into tribunal and the tribunal should get it me back… I’m very poorly. I’ve got schizophrenia and I’ve got very serious varicose veins. Horrible, love… I said the wrong thing [at my PIP face-to-face assessment] and they stopped it.”

Yeah. That’s what they do. The bureaucracy casts people adrift and lets them sink. There’s no justification for that, no matter where you sit on the political spectrum and no matter what you think people should or should not have done to “take responsibility” in their lives. I don’t pay my taxes to keep people like Damian Green on the payroll, or to line the pockets of the swindlers who’ve run Carillion into the dirt. I pay tax to keep guys such as Andrew from having to visit foodbanks. Continue reading →

How the DWP makes random deductions from #UniversalCredit accounts to “recover” tax credit debts people can’t afford to pay

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Article by me on politics.co.uk today:

The dreadful DWP is now in charge of tax credit debt collection. It deducts random amounts for debts from people’s Universal Credit accounts without telling them. People say they don’t even owe these so-called debts

These deductions leave people in even more debt and with nothing to live on.

“Without warning the DWP started taking about £25 a month from Susan’s Universal Credit payments for this ‘debt’. She says the deductions stopped and started through the year.

She is now also repaying a Universal Credit advance loan at £67 a month. She took the loan out, in part, to cover the tax credit debt repayments that the DWP suddenly began deducting from her.”

Read the whole article here.

64, homeless, sleeping on a couch that a “friend” charges money for…the Tories should rot in jail for all of this

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Posted below is another transcript from interviews with food parcel recipients at Oldham foodbank on 5 December.

This interview made me wonder again where our world went so disgustingly wrong. Plenty of people wonder about that, of course, but there are times when you really ask yourself.

We have Theresa May and her gruesome cabinet playing Brexit and stuffing themselves with holiday food, and then we have people who literally eat and sleep on the pavement.

It’s unfathomable that such excess exists alongside such poverty in the modern age. We don’t need to do this. We know how to feed, clothe and house people. We have the resources to do those things. We just don’t. I can’t tell you how much I hate “reformers” who insist that an individual’s extreme poverty is entirely that individual’s responsibility. Personal responsibility is neither here nor there in such situations. Societal responsibility is the part that matters. That’s the part that is missing. We’re in a place where extreme poverty persists and is allowed to persist.

The Oldham interview was with Roy, 64.

Roy said he was homeless – not a situation you particularly want for a 64-year-old. Roy’s clothes were unwashed and crumpled, and his glasses smeared and greasy. He was working on a crossword when I sat down at his table.

“Cruciverbalism – that’s what crosswords are,” he said. “Cruci – cross. Verbalism – words.”

Roy wasn’t sure which benefits he received. He got a payment each month, so the benefit might have been Universal Credit. Roy said that he was staying on and off in Chadderton on the couch of a “friend” who charged him for the privilege (no doubt the repulsive Theresa May would say Roy’s occasional access to that couch meant he wasn’t homeless):

“He [the friend] is not a very kindhearted person. He’s always after money and I’ve got no money. [I] got some benefits. They only come in once a month. Me bank balance is now down to £1.99 … I don’t know when I get paid again. I have to go to the bank again to check me statement. I don’t know. It might be two weeks.”

Roy was waiting to speak to one of the foodbank volunteers. He hoped that she could help him find accommodation that night. He was worried about having to sleep outside, as well he might have been. Oldham freezes in winter. There was ice on the streets that day:

“The lady over there [the foodbank worker] – she’s very helpful. She’s like a careworker. I wanted to see her today, because I’m homeless outside… it’s not nice in this weather….I got evicted from me last place…bedroom tax. Got evicted for not paying it.”

I don’t know if Roy had a drinking or addiction problem. Doesn’t matter if he did. Backstories interest me less and less. I can’t be bothered picking through people’s histories for evidence that people do or don’t deserve the basics (which is the main reason anyone picks through back stories these days). Everyone deserves the basics. All that matters is the present – that there are people who live in dreadful states while others have everything. Who cares what has gone before in people’s lives?

I tell you this – I doubt Damian Green will pay this kind of price for his past.

Interview transcript (Oldham foodbank, Tuesday 5 December 2017)

“I come here at least probably once a week. People are nice, the staff are nice and the lady over there… she’s very helpful. She’s like a careworker and I wanted to see her today because I’m homeless outside… yeah… it’s not nice in this weather.

I got evicted from me last place, so…bedroom tax. Got evicted for not paying it…

See – the council come around. I lived in…the place where I was evicted from was a two-bedroom place, two-bedroom cottage flat, me and me mother.

Me mother become very ill and had to go into a carehome, so that left one bedroom empty. During this time, a council come around to insulate the loft. They went up there and it took them a week or something like that, but up in the loft, just above where the steps go, I had been saving some money out of me benefits to pay for me mother’s funeral because I knew that she wasn’t going to get better. Continue reading →

“I got sanctioned nine months altogether – sanctioned, sanctioned, sanctioned.” And £2k rent arrears. No money for fares to work. More stories from the foodbank

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Below is another transcript from an interview made at Oldham foodbank on 5 December.

I post this as an example of the lives that people without money must lead when they’re trying to get things together (after prison in this case).

This interview is also an example of somebody who has decided to put distance between himself and the jobcentre as he re-organises his life. I find this a lot. People sign on at jobcentres, because they need the money (such as it is), but that’s the sole reason they attend. They don’t expect support, or help to rebuild from jobcentres and the DWP. They expect aggro and a lot of cat and mouse around sanctions. No more and no less. That’s it.

This interview was with Terry, 43.

Terry was an ex-heroin and crack addict who’d recently done time in Risley for burglary. He said that he’d been in and out of jail since he was a teenager – mainly for robberies which paid for his habit. Terry said that he’d cleaned up in jail and hadn’t used for a couple of years.

Terry had a small flat in the Spring Street hostel in Oldham. He also had casual work as a labourer across sites in Greater Manchester. He was meeting a friend the next day who had a day’s work for Terry at another site.

That was the good news.

The not-so-good news was the number of obstacles that Terry faced getting to these jobs.

A charity had paid for the work boots, hard hat and work clothes that Terry needed for labouring work on construction sites. Terry said the jobcentre had not helped with these costs.

He shrugged when I asked why. I see that shrug a lot. Could have been that the jobcentre didn’t offer to pay for the clothes as it should have. Could have been that Terry kept the jobcentre at arm’s length and sorted things out himself where he could. Terry did not view the DWP as a go-to place for anyone who wanted to rehabilitate. Terry said he’d been sanctioned three times in the past for three months at a time.

“The dole should be doing all that [paying for work clothes], but they didn’t…the charity paid for my CSCS [worksite accreditation card]. They paid for me work boots, work pants, work coat work gloves, hard hat, everything. They got me everything to be able to work. Without any one of those things, I wouldn’t been able to go.”

Terry also had trouble meeting travel costs to and from work sites. The jobcentre would pay for his travel, but only as a reimbursement if he paid up front. That’s always a problem for people who can’t afford fares.

“They will help you get to work – but afterwards. If I am working with my mate tomorrow and it’s in Salford, I haven’t got a penny. So I can’t get there. If I had the money and had the bus fare and showed them [the jobcentre] the ticket two weeks later…[they’d pay]. They won’t give it you up front.”

Continue reading →

In a refuge, domestic violence, no Universal Credit money since October. This government is vicious

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Yesterday, I spent another couple of hours at Oldham foodbank for more interviews with people who needed food parcels.

Here’s one of those interviews.

I spoke for a short time with a young woman.

She’d been abused by her partner, had left him and had been living in a refuge since July. Her kids were in care, I think (she was emotional and had struggled to speak at points). She said she was waiting to find out from the courts whether or not she’d “get my kids back.”

She had a Universal Credit claim, but hadn’t received any money since October. There was a problem, because she’d moved addresses to get away from the violent partner:

“I haven’t been paid for two months, because of a mixup in address – something to do with the address and all that… I suffered a domestic violence relationship, so I went into refuge.

[I am] trying to fight for my children in court. Don’t know if I’m going to bring the children back with me or not. All depends on whether I’m entitled to a three [unclear] or a one bedroom property.

That relationship. I lost everything.”

The foodbank volunteer asked her if she needed tampax. She said yes, so the volunteer made up a bag of sanitary items for her.

This woman’s mother was with her. She’d come along to do what she could. She was obviously concerned.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, because it becomes truer by the hour – we don’t have a safety net now. Social security hasn’t been reformed. It has been reduced to this rubble. People who need help most – help to stay alive, if you will – can’t access it. I meet more and more people whose circumstances should put them at the head of any queue. As things stand, they’re not in the queue at all. This is criminal.

I gave the woman and her mother my number. Maybe they’ll call.

Excerpts from the interview transcript:

“I’m ashamed of coming here, I don’t know why, but I’m ashamed… food, because I can’t afford to feed myself. Can’t afford to live let alone feed myself.

Haven’t had any money since October …Universal Credit. Can’t afford to go anywhere… if it involves money, I can’t do it

The foodbank volunteer came over with bags. “Not got any tampax in there… do you want…?”

“Yes, tampax please…”

“Haven’t been paid for two months, because of a mix up in address. Something to do with the address and all that, because the refuge I’m staying at. I suffered a domestic violence relationship, so I went into refuge…

Trying to fight for my children in court. Don’t know if I’m going to bring the children back with me or not… all depends on whether I’m entitled to a three [unclear] or a one bedroom property. That relationship… I lost everything.

Trying to fight for my kids… been in refuge since July… ex-partner isn’t the father. He’d hurt me by using the children and hurting me physically and emotionally. I was on Universal Credit with my ex and then I went onto a single claim, from where I lived… and now have made it into my own combination.

I don’t know my future until I get the result of what is happening with the children… haven’t got a clue, had no money for a month.”

DWP to disabled woman with bone fractures: Don’t miss hospital appointments. To meet Universal Credit conditions, you must show you’re trying to get better

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Wtf indeed.

On Wednesday, I spoke at length with Karen Sheader, a Hartlepool women who is a director at the Shoot Your Mouth Off film production company for people with learning difficulties.

Karen has the bone condition osteopetrosis. She’s liable to serious bone fractures. Both her legs are broken at the moment.

She had to take leave from work, because of those fractures, and so applied for Universal Credit earlier this year. This was a shambles in itself – her claim took months to start and she got to the point where she was worried about losing her flat if she went into rent arrears while waiting for Universal Credit. More on that soon.

For now – the extraordinary comment her Universal Credit work coach made at one of Karen’s work-focused interviews.

The work coach said that Karen must make sure that she attended all her hospital appointments to meet Universal Credit claimant commitments – that conditions for benefits included proving that she was doing everything she could to “get better.”

What are these work coaches even talking about?

Are they saying that attendance at medical appointments is an actual condition for claiming benefits – or is it simply that they’re now all so programmed to bang on about getting back to work or into work that they come out with any rot that might serve as a threat? Maybe the DWP really thinks that the only reason anyone ever misses a hospital appointment is because they’ve chosen to avoid healing and avoid work as a lifestyle option. Thinking that about everyone must be hard. These clowns are obsessed.

Karen says she had literally never considered not attending her hospital appointments, because she would very much like to get better and to return to the job and organisation that she has put so much time into. Would have hoped the DWP knew that.

There are days when I wonder where the DWP’s mania for work at all costs will end – if it ends at all, that is. Don’t suppose we can count on that.

We’re obviously well on course for a point where people have their benefit money sanctioned for not only missing a medical appointment, but for missing an hour with the physio, or even a swim class, or maybe even for not shopping at health-food outlets. It’ll be compulsory to participate in any activity that some policy wonk imagines will hasten a return to health and to work.

“If you don’t pay your rent, we’re going to look at every penny you spend and see whether you’re intentionally homeless…” How contempt for homeless people really plays

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This is the third article in a series with a housing officer who talks about the realities of providing housing services at councils in austerity across London and Greater London councils.* There’s a transcript from the interview at the end of this post.

In this article, the officer talks about two issues that should enrage everyone:

1) the grossly unfair intentional homelessness decisions that some councils make

2) the contempt for benefit claimants and homeless people that drives some intentional homelessness decisions and some frontline officers generally. I and others have certainly seen that in the past few years.

The officer in this article says that some housing officers have completely bought into the government line that benefit claimants are scroungers and deadbeats. This won’t be news to some people, but it needs pointing out for those who don’t realise. Some officers are very fair and helpful (I’ve certainly seen that), but some are not. In austerity, government disdain for benefit claimants can trickle down to officers who are supposed to be providing support services for benefit claimants. Trickle down may not work too well when it comes to sharing wealth with everyone, but it works very well indeed when it comes to sharing disdain.

Says the officer:

“Individual [council] managers will be pushing this [finding people intentionally homeless]. [They’ll be] saying, “let’s look at this… they’re [tenants] expected to pay this [rent] shortfall now. This is why we have benefit caps and LHA rates.”

“They have this idea that these people are sort of scrounging cunts – they should be paying their shortfall and if they don’t, we need to find them intentionally homeless…”

and:

“Since 2010, you’ve got all the benefit porn on TV – this whole idea of unemployment and benefit claimants being scroungers and getting the blame for having to bail the bankers out… and that is coming into housing as well.”

Some of the “bullshit” intentional homelessness decisions that this officer has overturned at the review stage include an intentional homelessness finding against a woman who left a flat and the local area to get away from a man who’d raped her, and an intentional homelessness decision made in the case of a woman who was evicted for rent arrears after her abusive husband left and stopped paying rent.

Intentional homelessness decisions can have nasty repercussions. When a council decides that people have made themselves homeless intentionally, the council doesn’t help those people sort their homelessness problems out long term. It holds those people responsible for their homelessness.

I realise that’s a simple take, but simple is fine in this context. That is how people on the rough end experience intentional homelessness. I realise that the Homelessness Reduction Act should improve support to an extent, but I’m not talking about acts, or the rules that staff should follow in this post. I’m talking about the ways people can behave at a point in history when whole societies are encouraged to write benefit claimants off. I’m talking about officer mindsets in austerity. I’m talking about the contempt behind some decisions – the institutional contempt which can permeate minds and organisations at a time when political derision of claimants is rife.

Continue reading →

#UniversalCredit is based on a poisonous government loathing for people in poverty – and a genuine belief that people in poverty are lab rats

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This is a rant, but let’s have it:

Here’s a short list of long points re: some of Universal Credit’s fatal problems as I see them (literally – these are based in problems that people I’ve interviewed actually have).

1) Universal Credit is based on a truly terrifying government and political class contempt for people in poverty.

I have a lot to say on this, so let’s go:

The main point I want to make is that Universal Credit  is based entirely on the (false) premise that people in poverty are solely responsible for that poverty and any problems they have finding work. All Universal Credit problems flow from this political contempt.

The (highly misleading) idea behind Universal Credit (and its strict in-and-out-of-work jobfinding conditionaility) is that people only need a kick up the backside to get out of poverty. With Universal Credit, those kicks take the form of sanctions threats, constant reminders to find more hours in jobs that already pay almost nothing, and days on meaningless, fruitless, privately-provided “employability” courses.

In other words – if you’re poor, stop being poor, or else. That’s it.

This should make everyone furious.

It should make everybody furious, because it is entirely about government shifting blame for societal problems onto the shoulders of people who are least able to respond, or to take the financial burden. There is no acknowledgement whatsoever from government that the problems that land people in poverty might be external – that too many people these days can’t find enough decently-paid work to live on. I see this all the time, as does anyone who frequents foodbanks and jobcentres. It’s real.

Why does government think it has a free pass on this? There is no concession AT ALL to the fact that finding secure work which pays a wage that people can survive and thrive on is difficult, especially in some parts of the country, where it is incredibly difficult (I know this, because I travel around). There is no acknowledgement that government needs to address those problems before pointing the finger at the very people it has abandoned. There is also no concession that money which should be spent on wages and social security keeps disappearing into offshore tax havens. How long will this be tolerated?

Readers of this site will know I regularly interview people who experience these employment difficulties. I’ve interviewed cleaners, carers, housekeepers and people who work in warehouses and in other low-paid jobs. They all have the same problem – insecure employment, variable hours and low wages. They never get ahead. They never will. They never have the money to get ahead. They’re thousands of pounds behind, because they’re in debt. Welfare reforms such as council tax benefit cuts (and court fines for non-payment of council tax) and LHA and benefit caps pushed people into debt even before they were moved to Universal Credit.

As I see it (and I do see it, as I say) government’s answer to its own glaring job creation and wages failures is to set up a system such as Universal Credit and to tell people who receive it that they are responsible for the lack of local jobs and money, and that they need to pull finger to sort problems out. They must fix financial problems by meeting Universal Credit’s strict conditionallity rules and working endless hours for very little money in an unreliable, low-wage economy.

If anybody dares to supplement their non-income by thieving or dealing, they’re chucked in jail (I’ve lost count of the number of people on the breadline I’ve spoken to who’ve done time for such offences. Nobody seems to want to talk about that). It’s just a pity that the same strict rules for behaviour aren’t applied to all these tax dodgers we keep hearing about. Those people walk away from the havoc they create (or fly off in their private jets, or sail away in their yachts, or whatever).

Continue reading →

There is and will be another kind of austerity death – the slow death through neglect

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There’s much talk and fury (there should be more) about deaths related to benefit cuts: people dying after being found fit for work and people committing suicide following cuts to their benefits. There’s no doubt that current and one-time government ministers need to do jail time for this. And they will. There will most certainly be a reckoning.

There’s another sort of government destruction of people taking place that I want to raise again here.

It’s hard to quantify, but very obvious when you keep seeing it. A lot of people talk about it.

It’s the all-round annihilation of people’s health via the universal destruction of all the services they rely on – housing, care and income help in particular. The life expectancies of people in these situations MUST be adversely affected (to say the very least) by this all-round destruction. I really don’t care if anyone thinks such a statement is hysterical. It isn’t.

I know what I see. I keep interviewing people who are assaulted by government cuts on all fronts. Assault is not too strong a word.

People live in cheap rented housing which is disgusting and full of mould (I’ve posted pictures of some places I’ve been in below). This is the only housing that people can afford on LHA rates. I’ve interviewed people who live in tiny, grotty, falling-apart static caravans because they can’t afford anything else.

People’s care services have disappeared, because they can just about achieve the daily basics such as shopping and dressing on their own. They’re left to it as a result. No matter that they struggle with other aspects of running a home, such as keeping the tiny places they must rent clean and clear of mould (you can see that in the pictures below).

They are getting older, but must drag themselves to weekly jobcentre meetings to talk about work they’ll never get. They’re banned from jobcentres because they lose their tempers (perfectly understandably) when the DWP insists they apply for jobs that everyone knows they’re not eligible for. They’re thrown out of jobcentres when they try to drop in the sick notes their doctors must keep writing to cover people’s very obviously deteriorating health. The hours I’ve spent posting or delivering sick notes to the DWP and jobcentres for people who everyone at the jobcentres knows is neither fit nor eligible for work – I tell you what.

The “lucky” people are supported by collectives such as the Kilburn Unemployed Workers’ group who really do make herculean efforts to keep things afloat for people. Other people just rot.

There’s no doubt in my mind that each of these problems hacks away at people’s health. Together and over time, these problems are dynamite. Because I see people again and again, I see the deterioration as it gathers pace over time – the weight loss, the worsening diabetes and respiratory health, and the decline in mobility. It’s neither hysterical nor naive to say that. I spend most of my time out talking with people who are in these situations.

People like me and plenty of others know what we see. We’re not the ones who are hysterical or in denial. Seriously. This is not exaggeration, or hysteria, or even the dreaded fake news. Fake news is the sort of thing you find in the average DWP press release – press releases which say, for example, that the DWP provides “tailored” services for sick and disabled people, even while jobcentre advisers are telling you that the DWP does nothing of the kind. I think that every mainstream outlet which publishes a DWP justification-for-policy statement at the moment is publishing fake news.

—————

Here are some pictures of places I’ve taken in the last few years.

You can’t tell me that the health of the people who lived in these places hasn’t been affected by these cramped, mouldly, filthy conditions. Anyone who says otherwise really is naive.

The man who lived in the first two places (he has learning difficulties and diabetes) has recently been found sheltered housing thanks to the efforts of the Kilburn Unemployed Workers’ Group.

Mould in one-room studio flats in London (kitchen, bed, living space all in one room):

Man in his 60s living in an old static caravan (Oldham):