Originally posted on Same Difference:
From yesterday’s Guardian:
Tucked away in this week’s work and pensions select committee report on employment-related disabilitybenefits is a section on an innocuous-sounding policy called Mandatory Reconsideration (MR).
Its blandness hides a host of Kafka-esque sins, however; this is truly a monstrously perverse and bureaucratic generator of poverty and stress.
Here’s an example of one claimant’s experience of being caught up in the strange limbo-land of MR, taken from research by Citizens Advice Bureau:
Tucked away in this week’s work and pensions select committee report on employment-related disabilitybenefits is a section on an innocuous-sounding policy called Mandatory Reconsideration (MR).
Its blandness hides a host of Kafka-esque sins, however; this is truly a monstrously perverse and bureaucratic generator of poverty and stress.
Here’s an example of one claimant’s experience of being caught up in the strange limbo-land of MR, taken from research by Citizens Advice Bureau:
It has affected me badly. Financially I am struggling – when I pay gas, electricity and bedroom tax I have nothing left. I sometimes don’t have enough money to buy food. Sometimes I go hungry. Sometimes I just have toast as it’s cheaperSo what is MR and how do you get caught up in it? MR kicks in when claimants of ESA or Employment and Support Allowance (unemployment benefit for people who cannot…
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