What people really think of the dole

Over the past four and a half months I have posted 10 or 11 blogs. What I was wondering the other day was, am I coming at this subject from the right angle or am I being unreasonable? I wanted to know if I was being fair about my dealings with the people at the dole office. Or was I just whingeing and feeling sorry for myself and thinking that they're not very nice to me? So, in order to find out what others think about having to sign on, and how they are treated by the staff at the Jobcentre, I decided to do a survey. Now obviously I'm not IPSOS-MORI or YouGov and what I did was hardly scientific but I was interested in other people's points of view.

I set out with three fairly open questions and asked people to participate in my "survey" as they left the dole office. There are three offices where I live, (there's a lot of people out of work and unemployment is higher than the national average) and I decided to divide my time between two of them. I wasn't daft enough to stand outside the dole office where I sign on with a notepad, as that seemed to be inviting trouble if anyone had got an inkling of what I was up to.

I was very conscious of the need to be fair minded. I'm not sure if it's part of our national attitude but there were quite a few people who were just not interested in answering any questions at all.

So these were my 3 questions and some of the responses from the public:

A - Do you think the Jobcentre helps you?

"Sometimes, sometimes not, seems to depend on their mood."

"No, they're just going through the motions."

"No they see you as an inconvenience."

"Up to a point, but not as much as they say they are going to."

"No they're rude. They're stuck up."

B - Do you have any experiences, positive or negative that you think other people should know about?

"They can be a bit irritating, they don't do what they say they they're gonna do, they lose things, you need a receipt for EVERYTHING, they try to make YOU at fault for being slack and losing things."

"They love to claim you haven't done x, y or z."

"Bane of my life. Pain in the arse. How many times have you been in there and they're chatting away, going for a fag break together, sorting out their social life and completely ignoring you."

"Their resources have got better and their staff are better as well, less idiots. People don't shout as much."

"There isn't fucking nothing positive about that place except they're not as bad as they have been."

"Lots of pointless bureaucracy. Lots of window dressing and ticking boxes."

C - How do you feel about coming here?

"You have to just remember your manners though they don't have none."

"You have to so you just put up with it. None of them can tell the fucking time."

"They love to make you feel like you're less than them. Shit I'd be ashamed to have that job - wouldn't do it, would you?"

"No fun, but they're giving you sixty-five quid a week."

"They won't get you a job, they're rude and they lose stuff."

"Not happy, the right hand don't know what the left hand is doing."

"It's the grade of people they use, they love making you feel small."

"Don't do this, don't do that. One time they gave me a mop test! They made miss a course over a bus pass - two minutes of their time was too difficult!"

"It's fucking humiliating."

So what conclusions was I able to come to?

That the Jobcentre were spectacularly inefficient even though their job shouldn't be difficult.

At every given opportunity the staff would try to make you feel bad about yourself.

They would always try to avoid responsibility and pass the buck.

The staff seemed to have rudeness built-in as their default position when dealing with members of the public.

I must stress that some people were quite relaxed and said that the way they were treated by the dole was fine.

All of this I found strangely reassuring, it seemed to mean that I hadn't been banging on unnecessarily and broadly speaking I'd been right. One last thing I learnt was that there isn't a swear word in the English language that I didn't know, but they seem to be in more common usage than I'd first thought!

Now I realise that the staff at the Jobcentre are under pressure and don't have an easy time of things and there are lots of boxes for them to tick, etc. I hope one thing my survey demonstrates is that the service they provide falls some way short of what one might reasonably expect from a Government agency.

Labour Party - leadership news

With thanks to Martin Rowson and the Guardian for the cartoon.

It quite probably won't make a jot of difference to the jobless nor to the looming cuts in benefits, but the Labour Party have elected a new leader.

My fervent hope is now the 4 (yes 4!) months of politicking within the Labour Party is over, that Ed Miliband and his new shadow cabinet can get their act together.


Let's face it, the coalition Government have been allowed to steamroller ahead almost unopposed in the House of Commons. Since the June Budget the coalition have been able to reel off a great big list of ALL these cuts they claim they need to make in order to save the nation. It seems there has been barely a peep of protest with the Commons.

I can only conclude that this is because the Labour Party have been looking elsewhere. They have been deciding who is going to lead the opposition. So while the Government has been lining up these huge cuts the so-called opposition has been navel-gazing.


So the very first thing I would like to have seen Ed Miliband and his new shadow cabinet do was to start to build a coherent, credible opposition to these vicious cuts. That would mean coming up with credible alternatives. I saw him interviewed by Paxman on Newsnight the day their conference finished, he failed to mention the Welfare State.


Right now I feel that the poorest and most vulnerable in the UK are crying out for someone to speak up loudly on their behalf. Cuts in benefits is State bullying of those least able to speak up for themselves.



Whatever happens come October 20, I'll probably be OK. (Depends how the Housing Benefit cap pans out.) I'm single and unemployed and I'm used to being skint and bitched at by the DWP. I've only got myself to look out for. But there are an awful lot of people who have more responsibility than me and are going to bear the brunt of this much more than I will.

Where do I go from here?

I'm lost and I don't where I'm going. Being unemployed for a long period of time is depressing enough as it is. I have been unemployed for nearly two years. I had to occasionally sign off Job Seekers Allowance so that I could, sort of, get my head around things.

You see they give you up to six months to find a job before they refer you to New Deal. This aims to help you find work, giving you advice, training, and work experience. The benefits of this scheme are to give you more confidence and obtain new skills that employers are seeking. I had to visit my job centre adviser every week. We would try and search for jobs that would be of interest to me through FJF (Future Jobs Fund) but didn’t have any luck.

I was put on a 13-week programme by the job centre adviser. The programme starts from 9:30am to 4:30pm five days a week. They enhance job search skills, improve on your interview techniques, build your confidence and help you find employment I was told.

The first week when I began the programme, I sat at the computer and searched for jobs, which I thought was pointless because this wasn’t any different from what I was doing at home. This is a depressing environment for me and for everybody else I met there. Most of them were just sat at a table waiting for the clock to hit 4:30pm as they felt it was a waste of time being there. The facilities were not that great; the centre is always short staffed so the adviser available couldn’t see all the clients, meaning some were left out. At times we did some sessions such as watching a DVD about interview skills, improving your CV and cover letter and confidence building sessions. I had a lot of help with the content and layout of my CV; also learnt how employers examine CVs, which was very useful.

I do think it’s not in fact necessary to attend the centre five days a week. It’s like I’m being trapped from 9:30am to 4:30pm. There is very little to do there, hardly any attempt to help me find work. But at least I have a reason to wake up in the morning. I'm currently on a work placement at Poached Creative and I'm just glad to be able to do something I have wanted for a really long time. Who knows where it may lead from here?

The cuts....

Well, we all knew it was coming sooner or later; news on the cuts. We get the full picture on 20 October. Details have been flowing out since the June budget, definite Government plans, so we've been told. These, and then non-stop speculation and conjecture from the written press and broadcast media outlets.

I've been expecting grim news for ages but that didn't stop me being furious on seeing George Osborne's pasty face on the BBC six o'clock news Thursday evening (9 September). He was telling us about an extra £4 billion in cuts to the welfare budget - I was seething. And then there's the look of utter distaste on his face as he patiently explains to the interviewer (Nick Robinson) why this situation just "cannot be allowed to continue". Apparently, he didn't even have the good manners to inform Ian Duncan Smith of what he was going to say. (Bear in mind that it's Duncan Smith's department that his latest announcement affects.)

He's making £4 billion in further cuts to welfare, in addition to the £11 billion announced in the June Budget. These are huge sums of money to cut from the poorest sector of our society.

The dole office always gives you a sheet of A4 saying "we have worked out how much money the law says you need to live on" so how come we all of a sudden need less? Is this bloke for real? How would some millionaire posh-boy have the faintest idea what it's like to get by on benefit? And then he's got the brass neck to say we're making a lifestyle choice!

Sure I can credit that some people will steer clear of shitty jobs being paid the minimum wage - it's a living wage that people need. In London the minimum wage is £5.80 per hour. The Living Wage Campaign have suggested £7.85. This has been set by the Greater London Authority. Were one to work a 40-hour week, the difference that makes to one's weekly pay is £82 gross.

It's just a fallacy that the feckless workshy have somehow bankrupted the country so therefore we must somehow claw back the money from them to prevent them making this "lifestyle choice".

So what's the Treasury doing to save money? I read in the Standard that they're getting smaller desks, so that they can squeeze more staff in - genius. "This is typical of the sort of savings we are looking for in other departments," a Treasury source told the London paper. In the same paper Nick Clegg further reassures us (Thurs 9-9) there is "no sword of Damocles that's going to come down straight away". This remains to be seen.

On the morning of 10 September it seems there were a few dissenting voices emerging after Mr Osbourne's appearance on the previous evening's news. The DWP said no agreement had been reached. In fact, Ian Duncan Smith was quoted on Newsnight on 15 September as saying he did not recognise the £4 billion cuts. Three Liberal-Democrat MPs crawled out of the woodwork vowing to vote against them and Bob Russell went on record as saying the Chancellor "was unethical". He went on, "it would be ethical to show an equal determination to tackle the cheats who avoid and evade tax".

This all seems a little late in the day, the saying; if you lay down with dogs you get up with fleas seems apt. George Osborne was unrepentant; "the welfare system is broken, we have to accept the welfare bill has got completely out of control."

Now, this statement baffles me. This man clearly has no idea how one goes about claiming benefits. He cannot know how many conditions one has to fulfil and prove umpteen times over to receive any benefit at all. I fail to understand how, when the rules are so stringent for every benefit one applies for, how it can get out of control.

Perhaps the figures are a little unpalatable to the Chancellor, but getting money out of the state in the form of benefits that one is entitled to is no mean feat. I think Mr Money-Bags Osborne should choose his words more carefully. Perhaps the phrase should have been: look this Government really doesn't like giving the state's money to the poor and needy and picking on them is a whole lot easier than getting big business to pay the tax that they owe us when they've got accountants and lawyers and stuff.

Google - a company so huge it has become a verb in the English language - doesn't like paying tax in England. They quite legitimately have managed to base their head office in Dublin specifically for the purpose of avoiding paying tax to the British Government. But I haven't heard George Osbourne on the telly telling us the tax system is broken. Vodafone, another company so proud about its connection to this country they used to sponsor both the English rugby union and cricket national sides, apparently owes £6 billion in tax. Question Time (23rd September) queried what Vince Cable was going to do about this.

The very morning that George Osborne was sticking the boot in to the poor, and the sick, and the elderly - again - there was someone on the Today Programme talking about tax. This person, who requested anonymity, worked for HM Revenues and Customs and was begging the Government to resource their department so that it would be able to do its job. Ie, to collect the tax, maybe not all, but so much more than they were able to at present. They iterated what I have said in my previous blog; that estimates of uncollected tax were upwards of £30 billion. And George Osborne wants £15 billion off the poorest! I only got an O level in Maths in 1981 so perhaps that's why none of this adds up to me.

I'm old enough, and perhaps old school enough, to believe in big government. I'm happy for the public sector to employ lots of taxpayers. It's an illusion that the private sector, (the Tories' beloved free market) is going to fill this upcoming gap in employment figures that will be directly caused by these "essential" cuts. (Let's face it, it's a moot point as to how much and how soon). And it's crass pronouncements like those from the Chancellor that inevitably raise class hackles.

What's the difference between a scrounger and a benefit cheat?

I ask this question because the other day (Thursday 12 August) the Sun ran a "campaign" to get members of, what they usually term, the Great British Public to grass-up people who they suspected of falsely claiming benefit. Now I don't know if this is an example of the silly-season that traditionally runs in the British press at this time of the year but knowing the Sun as I do (a notoriously hate-filled rag) I suspect not.

There was a follow-up piece that evening on Newsnight. Now, I would hazard a guess that most of us would regard Newsnight as perhaps a more reliable source of journalistic information than the Sun. It must be said, I do quite like their football coverage and I understand their racing coverage is excellent - I couldn't really comment as I know next-to-nothing about the gee-gees.

So let's return to Newsnight. There is £5.2 billion wrongly paid out in benefit. Of that amount £1.5 billion is attributed to fraud. Now I can quite credit that £3.7 billion is wrongly paid out in benefit by the DWP. I think we all know they couldn't organize a proverbial piss-up....One of the more startling figures that was brought up that evening was the fact that there are £16 billion of benefits that go unclaimed! We've all heard about the little old lady who doesn't know what she's entitled to claim for and people who are too proud to ask for Government hand-outs, but £16 billion?

The Con-Dem coalition government (or whatever they are called, I never quite know how to refer to them) glibly claim, at every available opportunity, that what they are trying to do is sort out the appalling financial mess Labour left behind. Now I have no party-political axe to grind here, nor am I an economist in my spare time, but I was under the impression that the responsibility for this world-wide financial crisis lay, by and large, with the bankers. That is to say the roots of this recession lay in the shady dealings of the financial sector. In what Nick Clegg called in his article at the weekend (15 August-Observer) "reckless irresponsibility". You have to read deep into his Observer article to see his acknowledgement of this, get him on the telly and it's all Labour's fault. All over the planet an unfettered financial services industry have landed us all in an almighty mess, world-wide.

So how come, in order to rectify the situation, we start off by kicking the poor and then go on to slash services that huge numbers of the general public need and use? Mr Clegg put in the Observer: "this government doesn't expect anyone to reach their verdict after 100 days. We expect to be judged on what we have achieved in five years. That should be a relief." Well, all I can say is that after 100 days this government has scared the living daylights out of many, and that hardly counts as relief.

We cannot know for certain where the axe will fall because we have to wait until 20 October for the results of George Osborne's considerations. There's been enough signposting for us to know that all manner of things are on the list and some things have already fallen by the wayside.

This government seems to be lining up traditional old Tory targets, for starters what they call big government and the arts and then there's the poor and benefit cheats and scroungers, none of whom can be held responsible for the current mess. All this is being done with the active collusion of the Liberal Democrats, who should be ashamed of themselves as the people being lined up for cuts are people they have traditionally stuck up for in the past. One sniff of government and the Liberal Democrats seem to forget their principles. So as I say the government seems quite happy to pick on the poor and the jobless. I've heard no mention of taxation apart from vague noises about a banking tax which seems a sop when you consider that by their own admission HM Revenue and Customs readily acknowledge that there is £40 billion tax that goes unpaid.

While all this is going on what is the Opposition up to? Well instead of building some kind of coherent opposition to these vicious cuts, the Labour Party have been all wrapped up in their internal bickering over who they are going to elect as their new leader.

Have I become unemployable?

Sometimes I wonder about this. Nowadays I'm nowhere near as fussy as I used to be about the kind of work I apply for although there are areas of work I just don't consider, which must be true for us all. I cannot drive and don't consider doing anything that would be especially arduous physically. This is due to my age and the fact I'm hardly in good shape - I've never been what might be called fit.

Other than these considerations, right now I'm pretty open-minded about any options that might be open to me. I have a 20-plus year work history and although I don't have a trade, nor a degree, I do have recognisable skills. My strength, I guess, is dealing with people. The majority of my work background is in public service or the service industry.

The times I've not been working I've not sat at home watching daytime TV and I can clearly demonstrate this. I've been able to do several short courses over the past three years and have been involved in part-time voluntary work for six years and more.

I'm articulate and presentable (I can do collar and tie and I scrub up alright). I apply for all sorts of things, yet seem to get nowhere.

I've not done any paid work for over five years and it is this, I assume, that proves to be the sticking point. For 12 months of that time I did concentrate on getting myself healthy after a head injury. Otherwise, I've been reasonably active in looking for work, to no avail.

As a result of all this I guess you could say I've joined the underclass - that big swathe of the long-term unemployed who muddle by at the fringes of society. I know it's one of those tabloid phrases but it's not a figment of their fevered imaginations. There are huge numbers of people who struggle to get by who generally, through no fault of their own, have to exist on the miserly sums of money the state deems appropriate to give them in one form of state aid or another.

As a nation we seem to be in denial that these people exist. Or if, indeed, we acknowledge that these folk are out there, first we demonize them, then blithely assume that the traditional ways back into employment are enough for them to rejoin mainstream society. This is just short-sighted and downright naive.

Let's face it, any support on offer from the Jobcentre is minimal or takes the form of one-size-fits-all so-called training; courses run by agencies whose raison d'etre is to milk money from Jobcentre-Plus. Mickey-Mouse training - how to write a CV, Health and Safety, the Power of Positive Thinking, that kind of thing. Give people access to a computer and Bob's your uncle, whack in a bill to Jobcentre-Plus for a "class" of twenty and you're laughing. Sure, use of a free computer is helpful but this is by no means any kind of solution!

The alternative, getting to know the jobseeker, helping them target their jobhunting, or to access appropriate training, introducing them to possible employers, opening doors usually firmly shut to them, is costly and time-consuming and therefore a non-starter. It's there in theory, in reality it's a charade, an empty aspiration.

They say you get de-skilled if you're out of work - this is undoubtably true even if it is couched in a rather clumsy modern phrase. At the very least, one loses the discipline of maintaining attendance at the workplace.

So one is compelled to exist in a slightly otherworldly place; economically impotent, part of the society one belongs to but only on the periphery.

How do you find yourself homeless?

How on earth did I become homeless in the first place? Even now several years after the event I look back slightly bemused that it ever happened. In retrospect it was a coming together of circumstances that led me to not having somewhere to live. I went from a settled, secure situation to a very precarious one in quite a short period of time.

The homelessness industry says you're only ever two or three pay cheques away from becoming homeless. There are different ways of getting there. The end result is the same. Its the path you take to get there that varies.

I've lived in London 25 years and in that time I have only spent 4 nights without a roof over my head. I was working and it was the middle of summer. I visited the swimming pool early in the morning and then went to work. At night I slept in a big wooden Wendy House in Highgate Wood. I stored my sleeping bag and clothes in a locker at the pool. It was a silly domestic argument that led to it. That and my pig-headedness. It was hardly destitution and I rejoined the housed population immediately afterwards.

Anyhow that was all along time ago, fast forward to a few years ago when I did become homeless in a much more real and enduring way. I had my own little flat. I lived there five years, I'd made it my own. It was the first time I'd ever lived in public sector housing and I'd anticipated being there for some time. I did all the things you do; decorated, put up shelves, furnished it, got it just so it suited me. Like I say, I made it my own little home.

Then the Housing Benefit went wrong - not unusual where I live, the money was paid direct to the landlord. So then it went to court. In fact it went to court 5 times in 9 months - I managed to get the housing benefit department to turn up on one solitary occasion. As far as I can tell I did everything I was supposed to do. The housing benefit people seemed to act in slow motion as if it wasn't going to amount to anything. Except 9 months at £65 a week mounts up and this was all on top of arrears of £500 to start with, by my reckoning that's a lot of any body's money! The magistrate ran out of patience. I remember my last visit to the HB office; "We can't guarantee we'll be able to get to court Mr..........but don't worry we'll write to you." " Write to me?" I exclaimed, "Where? I'll be sleeping in the park!" So as I said the magistrate ran out of patience and served a notice to quit.

I spent 6 months living in a squat, was assaulted, spent 10 weeks in a hospital and came out to live under the council's care in emergency accommodation, which they withdrew after 6 weeks. I wasn't "in priority need" so they said, so I moved to where I live today in a Bed and Breakfast.

It's not a bad place to live except I share my front door with 120 others. There's a roof over my head, hot water, electricity and my own room. I can touch both sides of my room if I stand next to my bed with my arms outstretched. There are 4 types of people who live here: folk like me who've been knocked back by the council, people just out of nick and people just out of the local psychiatric unit. Lastly there's a handful of transient types and the odd tourist.

Forty per cent of my benefit money is given over to the landlord as a surcharge to cover electric, hot water and heating. You also get a basic breakfast; 2 sausages, beans, toast and a fried egg.

So I have somewhere to live, I'm not sleeping in the park, or on the streets so I'm a lot better off than some. To you it might not seem too bad and I guess it's OK when you get your head round it, but it's not my home. The last thing I want to mention is that you don't need an awful lot to go wrong to find yourself without a home.