Reblogged from Kate Belgrave:
To Liverpool, then, where I spend an hour or two with a guy called Peter S_ (may
add his surname later) about his experiences of jobseekers’ allowance. He’s on
JSA at the moment. There’s a transcript of the interview with Peter below.
Peter used to work as a carer. Like many carers, he
had a job which paid so badly that he couldn’t meet his bills. He started
his day early and finished it late, but – again
like many carers – was not paid for the time that he had to spend travelling
between caring jobs, which meant that he couldn’t make enough money to get by. (Said
the Resolution Foundation in an August report on this serious and growing
problem: “Careworkers often lose at least £1 an hour because they are not
paid separately for the time spent travelling between appointments and because
providing decent care often takes longer than the time allocated by the employer
for each visit.”)
Then – this is hardly surprising – Peter became very depressed. He suffers
from depression and the working situation made it worse. He applied for ESA, but
was found fit for work. He was still very depressed and couldn’t find the energy
to appeal. So, he signed on for jobseekers’ allowance and was promptly
sanctioned for “leaving” his job (depression, it seems, is no longer considered
a “proper” reason for breakdown). He was sent on the work programme with the
British Heart Foundation and is now applying for zero hours caring jobs which
will also pay next to nothing.
So.
The best part of all this? – that Peter is supposed to feel grateful for his
crappy wages and his life on JSA. He is supposed to accept every sanction and
attack without complaint. He is expected to rise to all hurdles. Everybody is
supposed to. Everybody is supposed to feel grateful
for the chance to grind away on dwindling wages and get nowhere while the
well-connected and well-appointed loot the nation’s pay packets and the public
purse. I’m sure I tell you nothing new when I point out that when Cameron says
“work hard and get ahead” he means “work hard for stuff all and help my
corporate mates get even further ahead.” Why should anyone feel inspired to work
to advance corporate interests? I’ve never seen that as a golden ticket,
myself.
You’ll read more about this in the transcript below.
You’ll also read a few short comparative paragraphs about very wealthy and
well-connected persons who – unlike people in Peter’s position – genuinely feel
entitled to public money. They are taking that sense of entitlement to a new
plane.
You’ll note, for instance, that I post Peter’s story as we’re lobbed an
“apology” by Nadhim
Zahawi who claimed parliamentary expenses to heat his stables. I mean –
heated stables. Who the hell has stables? People I speak to can’t afford to heat
their homes. MPs can, of course. You
would have read plenty about MPs heating their second homes on expenses. I
head out for an hour to walk the dog and by the time I’m back, we have career
twat Nadine Dorries finally
forced to register her I’m a Celebrity fee. These people are taking the
piss.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – it’s the gross lack of balance I
can’t stand. It’s the extraordinary double standard. This is unreal. It can’t
last. Peter in Liverpool has been paid utter crap, had his tiny benefit cut and
sent to work for free on the work programme. He spends his time applying for
zero-hours caring jobs which won’t pay him enough to survive. If he doesn’t like
this and doesn’t accept it and his mental health suffers, he and people in the
same situation will be pillioried by members of a political class who care only
to trample us all as they race for the lolly. I wonder, on the other hand, how
things will pan out for Nadhim Zahawi. Comparatively, you understand. Will he be
sanctioned, written off as a scrounger, forced to take a zero hours contract for
tiny wages that won’t cover his costs and told to be grateful or to get out?
Will he be forced to queue for one of two computers at a jobcentre to find
non-existent work (as Peter was – you’ll see this below), sent on meaningless
work programmes and made to turn up to a jobcentre each day for pointless
jobsearches and workfare? Will he be held up before the electorate as an example
of someone who is responsible for the recession – someone whose sense of
entitlement and flagrant abuse of the public purse stands between the nation and
economic greatness?I doubt it somehow, but you know –
I live in hope. Very happy to be proved wrong on that one.
Anyway. Here is Peter S_ in Liverpool:
“I was working as a carer in Liverpool, but the pay was so low that I could
not pay the rent. They didn’t pay us for travel time, so I could not make enough
money. I was a domiciliary carer, doing home visits. I had to start at about 7am
in the morning and then work into the night and even then I could not do it. I
was very depressed. I had very bad depression and then I couldn’t work. I got
onto ESA because of that. Then, I was found fit for work, but I didn’t appeal
that because of the depression. So then I signed on for JSA. But I got
sanctioned, because they said I’d left work intentionally.
“Sanctions are doing more harm than good. You do get people who want to work,
but it [low-paid work like I did] is making people ill. Then, it is like
impossible at the jobcentre. Where I go, at High Park [in Liverpool], with
Universal Jobmatch today, there were two computers for 50 people who were
waiting. What’s that going to be like when people have to come in every day
[under new conditionality rules]? It will be like Boys from the Blackstuff
again. It’s going to spiral out of control. It’s like a shooting range. They
said to me to go to the library today to use the computers. Because I’m on
jobseekers’, I can’t afford it. She [a woman at the jobcentre] said to me – “can
you get emails on your phone? Well, then you can use that (to search
Jobmatch).”
“I’m looking for work every day. Ten, 20 CVs – I’m sending them out to care
agencies with the Universal Jobmatch. I didn’t tick the box [on the Jobmatch
screen which would allow the DWP to check jobsearch activity] though, so they
can’t see what I’m doing. I give them the paper copy. I lost my password to
Jobmatch about four times. It’s badly designed. It’s definitely going to fuck up
the whole generation who can’t use PCs. The over 50s – they’ll have to get help
to sign on and get people to do jobsearch. I’m applying for care jobs, but they
are for zero hours.
“JHP Employability is my work programme provider. I was doing voluntary work
anyway. I have done voluntary work since I was 15. We were working on the work
programme at the British Heart Foundation, lugging boxes and furniture and
picking up big bags. There was no health and safety guidelines, or anything like
that. It [the work programme] is going to tarnish the voluntary sector.
“I do some voluntary youth work, but I worry that they will send me on
something and I will get sanctioned. How is this going to work now that the
government is making everyone work for their benefits? I did the youth training
scheme when I was young. At least that trained you in something you might want
to work at. I think workfare is to buy charity. We are finding it hard to get
jobs and I am already out almost every day. I am out practically all days of the
week – either doing voluntary work, or looking for work, or something else.
“Most of the jobcentre staff – you can tell they can’t be bothered.
“I was talking to this girl. She was worried about being sent onto workfare.
I said the best idea for her was to sign up for something voluntary that she
wanted to do.
“This is going to bring a really bad atmosphere to jobcentres. I believe that
there is going to be a death in a jobcentre soon.
“I am working class. I see the things that are going on and I know that is it
Thatcher Britain all over again. You get a lot of negative stereotypes about
benefits.”
So – let’s compare all that to the views and behaviour of some of our
“leaders.”
We’ve already heard about Nadhim Zahawi and his horses.
Let’s also have:
Oliver Letwin and his tennis court repairs (this one is a personal favourite,
because it totally shows the grasping twat up. This is up there with thinking
that taxpayers exist to heat your stables).
From the Telegraph:
The 2009 expenses scandal revealed that Letwin (a
man who, just by the way, was one of the architects of the poll tax)
“claimed more than £2,000 for a leaking pipe to be replaced under his tennis
court.”
Said
the Telegraph then:
“Mr Letwin, who was an adviser to Margaret Thatcher, is thought to be
independently affluent; he has continued working part-time for a top City
investment bank despite being a member of the shadow cabinet…Since 2004, he has
claimed more than £80,000 of expenses for a cottage in Somerset close to his
Dorset constituency. The property is in an isolated area and Mr Letwin claims
for the cost of heating fuel and emptying the septic tank.”
Brilliant. Let’s all take a turn at the septic tank duty. All we need to do
there is open the front door and fire.
Next up we have:
George Osborne and his paddock:
As
the Guardian reported last year:
“George Osborne included the mortgage for a paddock on his taxpayer-funded
expenses, Land Registry documents disclose…The chancellor and his wife Frances
bought a Cheshire farmhouse and the neighbouring land in his constituency for
£455,000 in 2000, before he became an MP.
“Between 2003 and 2009, he claimed up to £100,000 in expenses to cover
mortgage interest payments on both the land and the property at Harrop Fold farm
near Macclesfield.
“The chancellor’s farmhouse featured in the MPs’ expenses scandal of 2009. It
emerged that he had “flipped” his second home allowance on to the property and
increased the mortgage. Throughout the lengthy parliamentary inquiry into
Osborne’s expense claims that followed, there was no mention of the separate
land. But it has emerged that the expenses payments were not only for a house
but also for the neighbouring paddock, which is registered separately with the
Land Registry.”
Great. A pleasure to pay for it. Truly.
Then there’s Iain Duncan Smith and his/his wife’s lovely weekend place in
Swanbourne. I’ve had the pleasure of this fancy home – and it was certainly
pleasurable, because it has a lake and a tennis court and everything you need
like that – because I went with UKUncut and Disabled People Against Cuts to
occupy the grounds of said house earlier this year. We occupied it as a protest
at the bedroom tax. Needless to say, Youtube took down the video I made of that
occupation. Apparently, “someone” complained. Snore. You
can see the video and read that whole sorry tale here. And you can check out
the great big house. It’s just the place for IDS to relax while
he got over his Easterhouse experience by crushing everyone who lives there
with policies like sanctions and the bedroom tax.
