My fortnightly outgoings:
£50.00 - rent surcharge.
£22.50 - fags (3x£7.50, 2 ounce packets of rolling tobacco, duty free).
£10.00 - Money owed to my friend round the corner. (Nine times out of ten I owe my mate money).
£2.00 - Rizlas and filters.
£5.00 - phone.
Total spend - £89.50.
Given my fortnightly payment for jobseeker's allowance (JSA) comes to £130, the balance to last me two weeks is £40.50, this works out at slightly less than £3.00 per day.
I'm not angling for your sympathy here. You can call me scrounger, you can call me a lifestyle benefit claimant. You can think what you want. You can think I lie in bed til lunchtime every day and then get up and watch Neighbours. You can think I belong on the Jeremy Kyle Show. You can think I smoke too much. You can think what you want.
This is not a lifestyle choice, this is not enough.
£3 per day - how much pocket money do teenagers get?
As our cousins across the pond would say, you do the math.
Thursday, 25 November 2010
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
Time management skills
I think most of us realise that you mess the dole office around at your peril. For instance, if you don't sign on when they've asked you to, you run a serious risk of not getting your money. This is hardly surprising and it's guaranteed to take much grovelling and a kosher excuse to ensure that you do get your money, albeit a few days late. I guess that this isn't especially onerous, after all they only ask you to turn up once every two weeks!I sign on on a Monday at three-ish, which is hardly a struggle. A couple of months back they were asking me to sign on at 9.30am and travelling at that time of day is just.....worse. It's swings and roundabouts though; now, mid-afternoon, I always catch the schoolchildren and loud teenagers, who I find a little scary. The girls strike me as louder and scarier.
So, up and out the next day quite early (quite early for the unemployed - as you know we have quite leisurely mornings) to walk to the dole office. I was walking due to the fact I can no longer catch the "free bus" because London Buses have discontinued the bendy bus on that route. This has inevitably led to a fitter local populace.
At the dole office I queue up, give my name and NI number and tell them about the appointment. "No sorry, Mr. ......no appointment for you here on my list." I knew that the woman who rang me the day before hadn't done so for her own entertainment and knew the consequences for missing an appointment meant that they would bugger up my claim and I'd not get the money due next week. "Could you please check on the system for me?" I asked. Much huffing and puffing and then the receptionist bod nipped behind the screen to ask one of her colleagues to look me up on the computer.
Then the landlord rings me up. I live in a bed and breakfast that has two managers; a kind of good cop, bad cop arrangement. This was bad cop in his usual shouty mode. Everyone who lives in the bed and breakfast pays a surcharge, if you're on jobseeker's allowance this is 40 per cent of your money. I always pay the day or the day after I get my money. I tried to assure Mr Shouty that I had done this, as usual, then explained where I was, he shouts that I must come back when I have finished at the dole.
By this time the woman who has looked me up on the computer is standing there. I explain the nature of the phone call to assure her I wasn't being rude. "Sorry Mr. ...... I can find nothing about an appointment, what was it about?" Obviously I feel a lemon because I can't tell her (I wasn't paying attention on the phone the day before). I mumble that I'm not too sure, look suitably sheepish and ask if I can have a receipt to say that I have visited the office for this appointment that now doesn't appear to exist. I am asked to wait and the woman goes back to her computer. A quarter of an hour goes by and the woman returns. "Sorry sir I can find no record of an appointment so I can't really give you a receipt, you could ask at reception."
I rejoin the queue, (at the back) it is now nearly 10.30. At 10.50 I patiently explain my situation all over again to the same woman I had spoken to at 9.25 and point out the last thing I want to do is mess up my claim and stress that this would be inconvenient for everyone as it would involve new appointments. The receptionist sighs deeply and says she'll see what she can do and disappears round the screen to speak to her colleague again. I go and sit down and wait, again. After another quarter of an hour this woman comes back with a slip of paper - my precious receipt. I tell her thanks very much and am apologetic for giving her extra work to do. I get out at 11.35. Something that should've taken maybe twenty minutes at most has taken over two hours and I have managed to piss off two of their staff.
All of this is normal for the dole office. If they were in any other line of business, they'd go bust within three months or sooner, and we'd all take our business elsewhere. Except we can't. We're a captive audience, to staggering levels of inefficiency and piss-poor organisation.
So I get back to the bed and breakfast and Mr Shouty says: "Sorry, I was reading the wrong line in the book, you're OK with your rent." I trudge upstairs and sit down, it's 12.15. What a complete waste of everybody's time. I'm worn out. Next Monday I sign on as per with my little receipt tucked inside my signing book. Nobody says a word about the appointment that never was.
Thursday, 28 October 2010
Life in the hostel
"There hasn't been a murder here for ages."
John (not his real name), who has lived here a good while longer than I have, trots this phrase out like he's talking about the weather. It's true, there's been the odd dead body but nobody got murdered. I've been here five years and a bit and I know of four corpses found on the premises, but no murders.
John has got huge muscly arms and tattoos all the way up his neck, as well as all the other places you'd expect. He looks like he could snap you in two. As far as I know, he hasn't killed anybody but there are people here who have. All sorts live here. I often read about ne'er do wells who share my address: in the weekly local paper, every Thursday, in the library over the road. This sometimes involves selling crack, or stabbing someone but there have been folk who have committed sex crimes.
Mostly there are three ways of coming to live here; just out of nick, just out of the local loony bin, or knocked back by the council. There are other folk; the very recently separated, even the odd tourist. I'm sure that statistically it shortens your life expectancy, living here.
I always said I'd stay here because it was a sure fire way of getting moved into social housing. I guess I can kiss that one goodbye now, thanks to our all-singing, all-dancing coalition Government.
There are 33 boroughs in London and I suppose there are places just like the place I live in, in every borough. The people that run my place have another one in the market, less than half-a-mile away, that's much, much worse than where I live. More junkies, more cockroaches, more grief generally, to the extent that if things go a bit wrong here, but not wrong enough for them to kick you out, they threaten you: "Any more trouble out of you and we'll move you to the market!"
It works both ways, the people in the market get told that if they keep their nose clean and up to date with their rent, (surcharge) "we might let you move over to ..............road."
There are umpteen stories I could tell you about this place, but let's leave that to another day.
John (not his real name), who has lived here a good while longer than I have, trots this phrase out like he's talking about the weather. It's true, there's been the odd dead body but nobody got murdered. I've been here five years and a bit and I know of four corpses found on the premises, but no murders.
John has got huge muscly arms and tattoos all the way up his neck, as well as all the other places you'd expect. He looks like he could snap you in two. As far as I know, he hasn't killed anybody but there are people here who have. All sorts live here. I often read about ne'er do wells who share my address: in the weekly local paper, every Thursday, in the library over the road. This sometimes involves selling crack, or stabbing someone but there have been folk who have committed sex crimes.
Mostly there are three ways of coming to live here; just out of nick, just out of the local loony bin, or knocked back by the council. There are other folk; the very recently separated, even the odd tourist. I'm sure that statistically it shortens your life expectancy, living here.
I always said I'd stay here because it was a sure fire way of getting moved into social housing. I guess I can kiss that one goodbye now, thanks to our all-singing, all-dancing coalition Government.
There are 33 boroughs in London and I suppose there are places just like the place I live in, in every borough. The people that run my place have another one in the market, less than half-a-mile away, that's much, much worse than where I live. More junkies, more cockroaches, more grief generally, to the extent that if things go a bit wrong here, but not wrong enough for them to kick you out, they threaten you: "Any more trouble out of you and we'll move you to the market!"
It works both ways, the people in the market get told that if they keep their nose clean and up to date with their rent, (surcharge) "we might let you move over to ..............road."
There are umpteen stories I could tell you about this place, but let's leave that to another day.
Thursday, 21 October 2010
"Back from the brink" or should that be over the precipice?
The headline quote is from George Osborne and apologies for the cheap pun but it was a gift.
So we had the Comprehensive Spending Review yesterday which, to you and I, is known as "the cuts". We are going to have at least four years of these cuts.
This prospect makes me think of the eighties. I reached working age in 1982, I remember the eighties well. England was a miserable place. In large swathes of the country, thousands of people were out of work. It seemed that wherever you went you always found loads of places boarded up and shut down. Life struck me as bleak throughout most of that time. I'm worried these cuts will be worse.
I'm not planning to write an exhaustive study of what played out Wednesday 20 September. If you wish to read such a thing I'm sure you know where you can find it. But I want to comment on what I saw and heard and some of the implications I think it may have for those in receipt of benefit.
The cuts to the welfare budget have gone up twice since George Osborne's emergency budget in June. If you remember, he said he was going to cut £11 billion. On 9 September he announced a further £4 billion, by yesterday he announced in the Commons the total cuts to the welfare budget had risen to a total of £18 billion. Of this £18 billion, £2.5 billion is the cuts in child benefit announced a couple of weeks ago.
The contrast in the reactions to these different cuts has been startling:
It is so difficult to find hard information right now. This will only appear over the coming weeks. I think a whole lot of people will be in for an almighty shock come next April. Here are just four shocks I noticed.
1. Anybody who is on long-term sick pay will lose a third of their money and be moved onto Job Seekers Allowance after twelve months.
2. My local MP, Meg Hillier, says anybody on Housing Benefit will see it cut by 10% after twelve months. There are a lot of worried people talking in the press about people being forced to move further out of London to cheaper areas.
3. Another implication for Housing Benefit claimants is that single people under the age of 35 won't be able to claim Housing Benefit for anything other than shared housing. So, if you work as a civil servant, are 30 years old, and live in social housing and the Government puts you out of work - for instance - is the Government saying you're going to lose your flat?
4. Future social housing tenants will be asked to pay rents at a rate of 80% of private rents in the area. Tessa Jowell, a South London MP, said on BBC London TV news (Oct 20), "This is the end of social Housing in London."
The implications of these vicious cuts are huge and very frightening for so many on benefits. None of us can know for sure what the ramifications will be.
Yesterday there was no mention of the VAT increase coming in January. Nor was much made of local government cuts. The suggestion yesterday was that these would come in as 26% over four years. This works out as 6.5% annually, so that's more cuts we will suffer.
The one cheery fact I learnt yesterday was that these cuts are the worst cuts since 1976, not since the second world war as had earlier been believed.
So we had the Comprehensive Spending Review yesterday which, to you and I, is known as "the cuts". We are going to have at least four years of these cuts.
This prospect makes me think of the eighties. I reached working age in 1982, I remember the eighties well. England was a miserable place. In large swathes of the country, thousands of people were out of work. It seemed that wherever you went you always found loads of places boarded up and shut down. Life struck me as bleak throughout most of that time. I'm worried these cuts will be worse.
I'm not planning to write an exhaustive study of what played out Wednesday 20 September. If you wish to read such a thing I'm sure you know where you can find it. But I want to comment on what I saw and heard and some of the implications I think it may have for those in receipt of benefit.
The cuts to the welfare budget have gone up twice since George Osborne's emergency budget in June. If you remember, he said he was going to cut £11 billion. On 9 September he announced a further £4 billion, by yesterday he announced in the Commons the total cuts to the welfare budget had risen to a total of £18 billion. Of this £18 billion, £2.5 billion is the cuts in child benefit announced a couple of weeks ago.
The contrast in the reactions to these different cuts has been startling:
- Take £2.5 billion in Child Benefit off some fairly well-off folk (one parent earning over £44k). Reaction: General uproar in the House, lots of disapproving muttering in the press.
- Take £15.5 billion of the poor, disabled and the out of work. Reaction: no-one bats an eyelid.
It is so difficult to find hard information right now. This will only appear over the coming weeks. I think a whole lot of people will be in for an almighty shock come next April. Here are just four shocks I noticed.
1. Anybody who is on long-term sick pay will lose a third of their money and be moved onto Job Seekers Allowance after twelve months.
2. My local MP, Meg Hillier, says anybody on Housing Benefit will see it cut by 10% after twelve months. There are a lot of worried people talking in the press about people being forced to move further out of London to cheaper areas.
3. Another implication for Housing Benefit claimants is that single people under the age of 35 won't be able to claim Housing Benefit for anything other than shared housing. So, if you work as a civil servant, are 30 years old, and live in social housing and the Government puts you out of work - for instance - is the Government saying you're going to lose your flat?
4. Future social housing tenants will be asked to pay rents at a rate of 80% of private rents in the area. Tessa Jowell, a South London MP, said on BBC London TV news (Oct 20), "This is the end of social Housing in London."
The implications of these vicious cuts are huge and very frightening for so many on benefits. None of us can know for sure what the ramifications will be.
Yesterday there was no mention of the VAT increase coming in January. Nor was much made of local government cuts. The suggestion yesterday was that these would come in as 26% over four years. This works out as 6.5% annually, so that's more cuts we will suffer.
The one cheery fact I learnt yesterday was that these cuts are the worst cuts since 1976, not since the second world war as had earlier been believed.
Thursday, 7 October 2010
Future Jobs Fund and the careless adviser
One of the things I hate is I can only access the FJF jobs through my adviser. This means I can't access them through the Internet or though the jobcentre's job search machines. There are times when I go to the jobcentre to see my adviser to get an update on jobs and I'm told “We don’t have any jobs for you this week. See you next time.” They don’t care about their clients.
I want an alternative way to access available FJF jobs other than through my jobcentre adviser who rarely updates me. My adviser gets frustrated when I take my time going through the vacancy list. There is no rush. I made myself crystal clear about the jobs that interest me, yet I’m being forwarded for jobs that my adviser wants me to do.
Sometimes I get an interview. The interviewer expects me to have some company knowledge. This is when I have asked my adviser for additional information about the company and the sort of the questions I may get asked at the interview. Didn’t get anything back. From my point of view it seems that my jobcentre adviser doesn’t want to do the job. It’s like they love seeing me back there at the jobcentre week in, week out.
In May 2010 they began to cut the FJF programme from a couple of organisations and the number is increasing. According to statistics this was the most progressive employment scheme in the generation. This offers people from the ages of 18-24 a chance for a real job in a real working environment.
My brother who is 19 years old currently has a job which is an FJF job is a community arts worker. He tells me he enjoys his work, meeting new people and learning tons of new things everyday. Also adding "it's difficult enough as it is for people my age to find work, stopping the FJF programme just makes it harder for young people to get into employment."
Those who have not worked before or getting back into employment have a chance to train and also put something more on their CV and they are taking that away.
Thursday, 30 September 2010
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.
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.
Wednesday, 29 September 2010
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.
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