Last night’s Panorama went some way to exposing the floundering Work Programme, Iain Duncan Smith’s fantasy scheme that is currently having no impact on long term unemployment beyond bullying, demoralising and sanctioning claimants.
What Panorama didn’t touch on was the reason for the shambles, which goes far beyond a few bad apples in welfare-to-work companies. The entire model of the Work Programme is broken and based on the lie that unemployment is caused by unemployed people. Ironically this has led to perverse incentives which mean that welfare-to-work companies can best profit from the scheme by doing the least work possible.
As described in Panorama, companies are paid large fees on the Work Programme should someone find a job and remain employed for six months. The fee rises considerably if somebody is disabled, or faces other disadvantages such as homelessness. Participants are mandated to the Work Programme for two years, with a further year’s tracking period under which job outcome payments can be claimed.
In three years, even some of the hardest to help may turn their lives around. Many people will find a couple of year’s job hunting finally pays off and find work completely under their own steam. A few people on sickness benefits will get better and re-enter the job market, as might single parents as their children grow up. These are all people who would have got a job without any help whatsoever from private sector poverty pimps like A4e and G4S. Despite this, every one of these job outcomes is worth thousands to welfare -to-work companies.
If that wasn’t enough, welfare-to-work companies have been receiving £400 every time someone walks through the door, rising to £600 if that person is on disability or sickness benefits. And this is where it gets profitable. Welfare-to-work companies usually induct people in groups, often quite large ones. If a welfare-to-work company inducts just ten people a week then they can earn a whopping £200,000 minimum over the course of a year. In terms of staff costs, this is about a day and a half’s work a week at the very most. There would be ample time in the week for just a single staff member to then have a one to one session with every inductee and siphon out the small percentage of participants they think they might be able to help get a job.
For this lucky few – which is probably only around ten percent – welfare-to-work companies have unprecedented powers to use workfare and benefit sanctions in an attempt to micro-manage them into employment. Usually they fail. When they succeed it’s quite likely the person would have got a job anyway. What this means is that all the resources of the Work Programme are being directed at those who probably don’t need any help.
But the welfare-to-work company has a problem, which is the 90% of people they refer to as Lying Thieving Bastards who are still on their books. In a buoyant employment market, then it might be profitable to cream off the next top ten percent. But at present the jobs market is far from healthy. Most of the alleged fall in unemployment has been down to workfare schemes, part time work and casual self-employment.
The large Work Programme contractors have been around a while now. They know, even if they can never admit it, that employers just aren’t hiring people who are sick or disabled, lack experience or have been out of work a long time. They certainly aren’t hiring heroin addicts, street drinkers, those with long criminal records or complex mental health problems – the type of people Iain Duncan Smith seemed to think the Work Programme would magically ‘fix’.
With very little chance of any further profit from the majority of Work Programme participants, welfare-to-work companies do what any other business would. They cut costs.
This is why many Work Programme participants only get phone interviews, or invited in to see providers once every two months. The less welfare-to-work companies pay out in wages, they more money they make. It is not inconceivable that a small Work Programme office, with 2 or 3 full time staff, could generate a quarter of a million a year just by creaming off the most employable and abandoning the rest. Every new staff member means taking a financial risk on the 90% who probably won’t get jobs anyway. With job outcomes so thin on the ground even for ‘job ready’ participants, it’s just not worth the risk. Better to sit on their arses and let the bucks come rolling in.
There is a problem ahead for the welfare to work companies however, which is that the start fees are reducing a by £100 a year. That means in 2013 new starts will only be worth £300 – still enough to make a profit doing nothing, but not quite as lucrative.
Predictably the welfare-to-work companies are already blaming the failure of the Work Programme on the lack of money in the system. These companies are large enough, and co-ordinated enough, to bring down the Work Programme, and both they and the DWP know it. Whether they are successful in their quest for more cash is simply a question of who blinks first.
The whole sorry saga points to the impending and inevitable social chaos being created by the neo-liberal drive to marketise and privatise all public services. Iain Duncan Smith threw open welfare-to-work provision to the free market, giving businesses unprecedented powers to control claimants lives and huge tax payer funded rewards for success. The market responded by demonstrating that it is just not profitable to devote resources to the hardest to help.
Unemployment is not caused by unemployed people, but by intense competition for jobs due to a flat-lined economy. Grasping employers don’t want to take risks on hiring long term unemployed people, especially when they don’t have to. Even in an economic boom, it would still be unprofitable to support the hardest to help – those whose lives are shattered by illness, homelessness, addiction and often desperately sad life experiences and childhoods.
The market has spoken, and it doesn’t give a fuck about the poor. The problems created by capitalism will never be fixed by more capitalism. The tragedy is that this failed model is already being exported to the probation services and social care. It is a naked wealth grab by the rich, who can’t even look at the poorest and most vulnerable without wondering how they can make a profit from them.
Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid
the void 
We live in a sick society today were the sick and disabled are viewed as commodities to be traded thus increasing the wealth of the rich. We are going to need a very long wall.
This is how the Work Programme Private Providers see the unemployed and disabled people referred to them from the Jobcentres.
This is the shit I overhear when the staff are chatting amongst themselves in the elevator, they hate their clients, the really do.
@sami so a claimant with alternate sexual orientation eating a sandwich would be LTB LGBT BLT
Not if they’re veggie.
The fave technical term used by the staff in the jobcentre, to eachother and within earshot of other claimants, is simply ‘scroungers’. They like ‘he’s obviously lying’, too.
@something survived oh come on give them some leeway they are bigoted morons after all
Do then make the point of asking how they are.
Or indeed how many LTB’s they’ve seen that day?
29 January 2013 – Nearly one in three people on incapacity benefits capable of work
http://www.dwp.gov.uk/newsroom/press-releases/2013/jan-2013/dwp015-13.shtml
tHAT MEANS TWO IN THREE ARE NOT, A MUCH HIGHER NUMBER DON’T YOU THINK.
@joanna terry ah the old numbers game….
Yeah cause the DWP are all doctors.
They are like that ‘psychic surgeon’ Gary Mannion, in UK. He says he can cure cancer, paralysis, amputation, Aids… Alzheimer’s and more. On TV the other night. Amazingly, he’s not been snapped up yet by any of the top medical schools! They should clear the decks of all that dead wood, all those senior consultants with degrees in medicine and surgery! Have Mannion teach all doctors how to cure everything and then nobody will ever die, he can cure death too. Then we can go and live on a giant marshmallow with the potato people.
Where do they get their figures from? 33% of people on ESA can work? No because they’d have been on JSA and got jobs by now?! It’s suspect and arbitrary. Imagine identifying as disabled but it is Nazi Germany. They take you to a camp and split you in two groups; one to the gas, one to forced labour. Of course you have to pretend as hard as you can to be ablebodied. Acting to save yourself isn’t cowardly, stupid or lying. Not when under extreme duress.
“Oh no… we mean 66% go straight to the gas, 33% can be worked to death.”
Himmler, Von Ribbentrop, Eichmann, Goebbels, Goering, Mengele, Heydrich, DuncanSmith…
– Sorry, it’s so easy to confuse them.
They get their ESA figures because a vast number of claimants have little or no idea how to complete ESA50 form in such a way that makes the claim a probability for success first time out. The object of completing the form in such a way is to make it difficult for ESA and DWP decision makers to deny you. If it looks good and with a possibility of “Your Appeal” if ESA claim is denied, they are likely to say “Yes OK” , we do not want appeals really!
This Website could help you >>> http://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/join-us?utm_source=iContact&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Benefits%20and%20Work&utm_content=29+January+2013
Yeah according to a machine programmed by a person with a shoe size larger than their IQ, and while drunk.
“””It is a naked wealth grab by the rich, who can’t even look at the poorest and most vulnerable without wondering how they can make a profit from them.””” <<< The tories and Liberal Demotwats could exterminate us all and process us into soap , lamp shades or green biscuits like in the film Soylent Green! Now there's a point for budding tory entrepreneurs to consider, "we are useful after all".
Don’t joke about it …
“we used to dream about being a lampshade”..
“because of the fringe benefits”
It’s no joke, I do not joke about it! I tell it this way because humanity still thinks it to be so advanced – The likes of BNP’s Nick Griffin just wait for the right opportunity. How many people do you know who if in Germany from 1933 – 1939 would fall in with Nazi rhetoric? I unfortunately know quite a few including family, we are easy as species to mesmerise.
The Daily Mail
Anyone listening to the 5live phone in this morning would agree.
Substitute the Jews with unemployed and we’re only a few steps away from the dreaded showers.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/radio
War on the weak never really ends does it? It is a perpetual movement. See when all that is perceived to be weak is removed then all these thick fucks who participate in this war on the weak have done their acts of stupidity – they cannot see that another section of “weak will always exist”.
This is the mindset of such creatures as ian duncan smith. So infinitely they go on and on with this destruction until their is nothing left which
proves ultimately to be a gross act of stupidity.
If there are only 2 people left on earth (In the same mold as any Tory), one will always see the other as weak and try to destroy them – sadly it is their nature.
@mick that’s born out in the video interview with Michael moore and the guy he is interviewing which I posted o
@bobchewie yes I saw that interesting video of Michael Moore’s . I get a feeling a lot of people are so wrapped up in life materially they would never see the point or understand the content of it. All the same, I take much from watching such.
@mick what is glaringly obvious is the effect all this is having on the planet. It’s staring us in the face.
Back to the workhouse .reportt in guardian from last year
http://m.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jun/08/jubilee-stewards-unpaid-labour-growing
@mick and all. A book called ‘policing the workshy benefits and labour market’
Temporarily out of stock
@bobchewie I think I will go for used from $2.60 when back in stock. It is good to get into other peoples thinking, I do this with the DWP Atos guides for HCP’s (Health Care Professionals) who do the medicals.
After my 1st experience with ATOS I soon realised how important the saying “GET IT RIGHT FIRST TIME EVERY TIME” was especially when completing ESA50 and DLA (soon to be PIP) claim forms. I’m even thinking of being one of the first to have a PIP claim in after 13th October this year 2013 (if I am still here that is) simply by reporting a deterioration in my condition.
It started deteriorating noticeably in April-May 2012 and after reporting it to the DWP I got a letter back more or less saying “Are you sure, you could lose as well as gain benefit”? They seemed to give me as many reasons as possible why I should not pursue a change in circumstances so why do they bother to tell you you must report a change in circumstances. I guess this means only if you relieve the burden on the DWP (public purse).
I wouldn’t mind but I worked all my life and paid my way until some uninsured moron driving a car at speed cleaned me up whilst I was cycling home from work (12 miles a day) and smashed me up on my left side very seriously in 2002. Even then I had heart failure but it was not severe as it is now.
You don’t obviously notice how your heart grows overtime with heart failure. Mine is still twice the size of a normal healthy heart. The worst thing is I am very unsteady on my feet now and I know it is my organs which are not receiving sufficient O2 (Oxygen) including of course my brain (it is an organ!).
My Ejection fraction of blood from left heart ventrical to serve my body with blood and therefore sufficient O2 fluctuates between 7% and 10%. Ejection Fraction of a healthy heart is between 60% and 70%. Ejection Fraction (won’t bother giving formula) is the volume of blood pumped out of the total volume in the chamber. The healthy heart retains 30% to 40% whereas that which is failing and in my case is retention of 93% to 90%.
@mick sorry to hear about your grief. That book is available in UK. Out of stock too. I am trying to find out about the author and avebury business school
There are other books punishing the poor life under thatcher. A book about unions. Book on entrepreneur guide and book on limited morality of capitalism
Actually that policing the workshy book is available in uk. Well it would be if it were not out of stock a lot. Maybe IDS and DWP have bought up all the copies.
What no politician will admit: Unemployment is inevitable as Capitalism cannot function without it. Some one must be unemployed. You can never have full employment in a Capitalist system. There has to be more workers than jobs in order to maintain the balance of power in favour of the Capitalists and not the workers, otherwise it seizes to be Capitalism and becomes Communism.
Communism neither exists nor ever did exist anywhere. The only time it can truly exist is by disintegrating the notion of family, Effectively ending what is known as family after which the state takes total control of the welfare of babies, children etc etc in an institutional sense. The result >>> Goodbye neuroses, Goodbye the landed gentry and pecking order/hierarchical grace and favour modes everywhere, hello brave new world! Never been tried has it?
Reblogged this on HUMAN RIGHTS & POLITICAL JOURNAL.
The draft care and support bill is asking for the disabled to comment on it, especially the fact that the independent living fund is being undermined by the local authority, which could see disabled forced into care homes as opposed to being allowed to live in their own home and claim housing costs, benefit costs and care costs independently, leaving private providers responsible for what has been shown to be abusive care in some homes, with no way out back to independent living, robbed of benefits, future pensions and independence to keep the private providers rich.
Achtung Juden!
This is a friendly consultation on your views on the cleaning up of our glorious Reich. Question 1 of 1:
What colour would you like us to paint your gas chambers?
This is costing us all far too much not only in money but in people if only these companies really did what they are being paid for ,how hard is it to provide paid work for the unemployed ? they are saying “we have job brokers finding work “etc.If all the charity’s all business’s etc would employ just one person on say a two year contract and paid the minimum wage just to give us something to look forward to. we wouldn’t need to pay vast amounts of money for nothing and fear the worst when we get sent to a provider.We earn more money ,we spend it locally it’s a win win But to give vast amounts to companies to find crap no paid jobs. is wrong ,where do they spend it?
Not locally!.
Its not hard to discredit the Work programme or the wider welfare reforms because they’re all based on misinformation,lies,dogma and propaganda. Seems that Ayn Rand’s Atias Shrugged.
There’s no independent empirical evidence to support IDS/Freud’s argument of a large lumpen proletariat living the life of Riley on the backs of entrepreneurs and strivers. Its the opposite way around.
What the Sith Lord (IDS) and his apprentice (Freud) cannot admit is there own fuckwit chancellor has imposed austerity on the country for nearly three years killing off demand, investment and employment in a once recovering economy.
Instead of focusing of what the country needs in skills,technology,labour and education the necons have instead contracted out the state’s resposilbiltes to assess its needs for the future and in turn privatised unemployment.
In privatising unemployment in a shrinking economy the Welfare to work providers have performed worse than doing absolutely nothing, hardly worth the millions thrown at the providers.
Now with the providers poor performances exposed to public scrutiny, the neocons and the providers are engaged in a blame game.
So much for the private sector delivering the goods.
redjediknight
But they are not blaming themselves just the sick and unemployed.
I have just read this report in the Financial Times
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d13923c6-6a21-11e2-a80c-00144feab49a.html#axzz2JNhKMr32
It says there are 52 jobseekers for every vacancy in Hull. Sunderland The Wirral, Wolverhampton and Bradford are close behind. There are half a dozen from 50 towns and cities surveyed with fewer unemployed than vacancies. How the Hell do you think the sheer stupidity of the ‘job creation’ scam shown in this Void blog is possible? It should be obvious to everybody just how preposterous it is.
I wish you would take seriously my explanation that he can only get away with it because nobody sees means testing as at the root of the problem – not even the people at the wrong end of it.
http://www.clivelord.wordpress.com
Here’s a story for you. A company called one support gets the contract to run a hostel for mentally ill people. They put in a low bid to get the contract . To maximize profits they halved the staff. That means you have less staff dealing with more clients . One day a staff member had to take a client to hospital and rush back to hostel to see to other clients . When they later went to collect the previous client from hospital they found the client had gone missing . Cctv showed him leaving the hospital. Days passed until the police contacted them to inform them that the client had made his way to north London and had been standing at a bus stop FOR THREE DAYS.
The client didn’t have s mobile phone.
Later the whole staff were told that their salary was to be reduced.
Welcome to corporate Britain.
Capitalism is dead….it just doesn’t know it yet.
And its death throes are savage.
the woman called kate who worked on that program has blogged on bbc site..of which i have posted here for all to see..
These are the last days brothers and sisters
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2em1x2j9-o)
@R33 I will serve ive…
Atlas Shrugged?
More like Atos Shrugged.
Then sent you home to die.
🙂
this is someone who worked on the panorama program
The Great Disability Scam, as told by Kate
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ouch/2013/01/the_great_disability_scam_as_t.html
you know the phrase ATOS KILLS of which they complained about, when technically its correct as Atos origin also operate in the defence field..so yeah Atos Kills is about right…ironic eh?
Atos totally kills, and the bodies are piling up. Maybe they’ll find us work digging mass graves.
i seem to be getting this on wordpress blogs for some reason..quite a lot in fact..
Server Maintenance
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What do I do?
* If you were posting a comment or making a post on your blog then do not press BACK on your browser. Wait 5 minutes and press the refresh icon on your browser. Your comment or post will be sent as normal.
* If you are browsing a blog here just wait a few moments and hit refresh. The page you were expecting will appear.
http://www.disabilitynow.org.uk/article/spending-watchdogs-fears-over-work-programme
Spending watchdog’s fears over work programme
“In a report into the introduction of the Work Programme, the National Audit Office (NAO) found that there was a “significant risk” that the Government had been “over-optimistic” about the number of people who would find work as a result of the scheme.
As a result, the report warns, providers could run into financial difficulties and seek to stay in profit by focussing on people with lower support needs who stand a better chance of finding work.
Amyas Morse, head of the NAO, said that it was too early to judge the success of the Work Programme.
He added: “The Department has set providers stretching performance targets and it needs to ensure that they do not cut corners to stay in profit, such as targeting easy to reach people, reducing service levels or treating sub-contractors unfairly.”
Ralph Michell, director of policy at the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations, said that the concern was shared by members involved in delivsering the Work Programme.
He said: “We’ve been saying to the DWP that they should ensure that providers publish data about the people they support as soon as possible. We also need to ensure that the data that is published has enough detail that we can see how well the Work Programme is working for particular groups, so if it’s clear that a particular demographic isn’t getting support we can do something about it.”
Richard Hawkes, Scope’s Chief Executive, said that the Government risked condemning many disabled people to “an extremely bleak future”.
He said: “The Government must ensure that its Work Capability Assessment ensures people get the right level of financial support they need and that staff across Jobcentre Plus have the right information, experience and confidence to direct disabled people to the support available.”
As Disability Now went to press, the DWP could not provide numbers for the targets for supporting claimants of Employment and Support Allowance into work but in a response to the NAO report, the department said: “As part of the Work Programme’s design, we had to calculate the levels of performance we expected providers to achieve. The NAO has done its own calculations, reflecting performance achieved under previous programmes. We are confident that we have contracted for more positive results.”
The NAO said that the success of the Work Programme would be analysed in future reports.”
http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?p=63929655
“Well it’s no surprise that private companies will only do what is more profitable for them. Sure they can make big bucks if they can keep a ‘hard to place’ client in employment. But the effort required to achieve that is probably not worth their while, and it is far easier to just ‘park’ them and concentrate on others who might be easier to help (profit from).
It is interesting that the charities who were supposed to provide expert help for certain disabilities were used as ‘bid candy’ and seem to have not been asked to help as much as they perhaps should have been, as it meant these work providers would have to share their profits with them”
sorry about this johnny but i was posting this stuff ages ago re ‘bid candy” etc in the warning and concerns that were given about the ‘payment by results’ document…oh well…
“The program also failed to mention.
The changes the Coalition has made to the descriptors for ESA. Who they consider fit for work or work related activity. That these apply to conditions that are not expected to improve or that are degenerative, despite work related activity group being in theory for people currently unable to work but who are expected to become able to work.
The level of appeals and success rate and the Coalition changing the appeals system. The reconsideration system with no time limit and no benefit.
The financial difference between long-term IB and ESA work related activity group including effect on other benefits due to plans to remove DLA as a gateway to premiums. That redefining the disabled saves money.
The Coalition time limiting of contributions based ESA work related activity group. The amount of money this saves.
That the DWP impact assessment predicted that the numbers who would find employment would be very low, right from the start. That this looks like a cost saving excercise with callous disregard for those adversely affected.
The numbers who are coming off ESA and simply going on to other benefits or fate unknown, in comparison to the numbers who enter employment.
The Coalition suspending the work focused health related assessments. That these were key to helping people in to work and were suspended because they could not think of work the claimants could do and could not offer practical help to enable claimants to enter work.
The Coalition getting rid of the independent living fund that helped pay extra costs associated with severely disabled people entering employment.
The Coalition exapnding work program conditionality on the disabled to include work placements and for the disabled that those work placement are of indefinite duration, potentially unending. That they may be uneconomical to employ vs an able person. But if you do not need to pay them?
The Coalition increasing the severity of the sanctions for non-compliance that apply to the disabled on the work program. Including hardship payments being not allowed for failure to comply with work program.
The inadequate safeguards against sanctioning people unable to comprehend or who have fluctuating conditions and had a turn for the worse.
The number of sanctions being applied and the level of disability of those being punished for non-compliance and the appeals system against incorrect sanctions. The government getting rid of the national social fund and crisis payments system. “
http://www.politicsfirst.org.uk/2012/the-disability-strategy-a-cornerstone-for-disabled-people/
The Disability Strategy: a cornerstone for disabled people
“Work is one of the best ways to increase independence and self-esteem and is central to someone’s identity. And although the disability employment rate has increased over recent years, there is still more we need to do to close the gap with non-disabled people.
That is why we continue to invest in successful schemes like Access to Work. Access to Work provides individuals and their employers with advice and support with extra costs which may arise because of an individual’s needs – things like specifically adapted computers and support workers.
In 2010/11, we spent over £100 million on Access to Work to support over 35,000 disabled people in work in a wide range of sectors of the economy from hairdressing to engineering – and at every level.
We know employment is particularly tough for young disabled people. And although we know times are tough for jobseekers, I also want people to know that there are opportunities out there. We are working closely with businesses to support disabled people, particularly those coming out of education. Recently, I was invited to the opening of a new Marks and Spencer’s distribution centre in the East Midlands that will distribute two million clothing and home products a week. One thousand new jobs will be created and the company wants a great percentage of these jobs to go to disabled people recruited through their own specialist scheme. We now need more employers to follow the lead of Marks & Spencer.
I believe giving disabled people the opportunities to fulfil their potential and helping to change societal attitudes are pivotal in reaching the goal I have set myself as the Minister for Disabled people. I look forward to working more closely with disabled people, their organisations and the new alliance to ensure that practical action is happening in local communities to transform the lives of disabled people”
Esther McVey, Minister for Disabled People
perhaps she meant “i will make it possible for companies to profit as much as they like from disabled people..”.
DWP
Dear Ms McVey,
You have been mandated to the following opportunity:
A short walk off a high cliff.
Oh by the way:
It’s like making Dr Mengele Minister for Jewish Affairs, or making Jeremy Clarkson Minister for Vegetarianism.
You make me laugh, not condescendingly either! Keep fighting them.
If anyone still can’t get the ‘scroungers’ (sic) book, I made up a fake book title just now: ‘Knobcheese Skull: Why Ian Duncan Smith and his Workfare Lobby Clones have Brains made of Smegma.’
The long quote from McVey: they don’t distinguish between:
-Work for the sake of work, and work for a purpose (producing things)
-Work you freely applied for and agreed to do, and work you were forced to do
-Work that is good for your health, and work that makes you ill/kills you
(remembering many are too sick to do ANY work)
-Pointless work and meaningful work
-Ethical or unethical jobs (a job created at an arms factory, or McDonalds, would not be ethically acceptable to all)
-Length of time at work (a few minutes counts as a ‘created job’, then anything under the hours and pay, they will hassle you to ‘increase your hours and pay’.)
(I could go on, but no time).
Let’s say to the last point that you have an understanding and rich boss who is willing and able to consider increasing your hours and pay (these are like hen’s teeth). But if you are a lone parent or carer you CAN’T increase your hours, or if the extra hours take you outside of the times when public transport runs, or if you are disabled/sick you are already working all you can (without making yourself worse then getting sacked for being incapable). Even a decent employer probably would not raise the pay of a disabled or slow worker (whose hours don’t increase), and anyway other workers in the same job would be angry their own pay was not increased to the same amount. They’d have a legitimate grievance that they were paid unfairly. The employer couldn’t afford to raise everyone’s pay. Financially it’d be in their interests to sack their disabled/slow/underpaid staff, to avoid having this problem (already happening with older staff approaching pension age). Other workers would resent the disabled person and could bully them, ‘you are only here / getting extra pay, because you are a crip’.
Most *employed* people I know, say they have had their childcare provision cut to zero, and/or their other employee benefits terminated. We are not in a great economic situation, so what employer would shell out to employ people not able to do as much work, as much quality work, be ‘flexible’ etc? Or who have disabilities and commitments?
Watching a consumer show last night I saw enforcement officers stopping people sleeping in restaurant kitchens and basements. Fair enough… But apparently there is a rule that in the catering trade you can’t have a mattress/bed in an adjoining room either, regardless of need. Now, many ‘easier to get’ jobs (not to mention workfare) happen to be in catering, and let’s say you get one of these jobs. People with conditions including ME/CFS, narcolepsy, epilepsy, fainting/blackouts, cancer, and many more, need places to lie down/sleep during the day.
The obvious thing then would be to sack you (for being disabled), as the hygiene law contradicts the ‘reasonable adjustments’ law. As workfare people can’t be sacked, you might be labelled a workfare failure and have your benefits stopped. If you were paid and got sacked, then you could be blamed (by being disabled) for getting yourself sacked, and denied benefits. You could also claim wrongful dismissal (on disability grounds), but of course not in the case of workfare!
Marks and Spencer works with Remploy….that company that IDS said it was about people sitting around doing nothing but drinking coffee..
so much for that Esther McVey….
Click to access m&s-press-release.pdf
Remploy work with Serco and A4E and Working Links. These providers sent me to Remploy. After hardly any time at all, Remploy sent me away, saying I was too disabled to do any of their jobs at all. Right then I got sent by the work scheme to dig holes for a month!
@something surviived well i wonder why oh why Aunty Esther McVey wwas bleating on about Marks and Sparks so much..they seemed to be transixed by the corporates running everything..its like its the only option they can come up with..makes you wonder wtf govt is for really when everything is farmed out to big business all the time..
M&S have decent food… which I can’t afford. Unless it’s on reduced.
They are a company who don’t want to hire me for a paid job there.
Maybe they wouldn’t mind if they were just staffed by workfare, until everyone poorer was doing jobs they hate, and the only people enjoying their jobs are the government and the police. I’m aware of staff bonuses there; but, locals can’t afford to buy their stuff. The main people who just sit doing nothing and drinking coffee are:
-The government
-The DWP/JCP
-The work programme
Nail on head there. What’s the point of a representative democracy if the ‘elected representatives’ farm out all their responsibilities to someone else, who’s not accountable in any way to the public, and then with nothing left to do, just stick their snouts deep into the expenses trough.
No point whatsoever I’d say.
These fuckers yack to eachother about their employee benefits such as breaks, drinks/biscuits, holidays, training courses, leisure centre etc. passes (at the few, private gyms, salons etc still open). They afterwards discuss their paid-for holidays, in full hearing of the work programme recipients. They get big dinners, either the right to go to lunch (often not coming back that day), or the right to ‘luxury’ delivered lunches. The lunches get delivered in front of the jobseekers – most of whom, including me, have not eaten for days. Many of the others (not me) are homeless. Some are in homeless hostels, bail hostels, shelters – some are on the street. Some are ‘couch surfing’. All are mandated to work programme. Another dumb thing is that half of the staff eating in, seem to be ‘on a diet’, and LEAVE most of the food. They pick at it for a couple of hours, then throw it away. I could not eat most of the things there, but none of the others are veggie, and they could eat all of it. So I asked if they could give the leftovers to the others, at least to the homeless guys. Even just the ones on the street. They said no. I asked if we (ie the street-homeless men) could be allowed to fish it out of the bin. They said no. Apparently if they give it, it counts as gifts, something not allowed.
It’s bad enough watching Morrisons staff bundle up 3 or 4 trays of cheese and tomato sandwiches (the one I can eat) that were reduced to 70p a tray when I have 69p, and throwing them away. They are a supermarket and waste tons of food daily. But when you are a workfare org with specific hungry people right in front of you, and wasting food deliberately… These platters cost about £20 to £50 per platter per day for a round of sandwiches, from a private corporate caterer that delivers.
Idiots have said ‘go to a food bank’. What food bank? The cathedral box is usually empty, there are criteria most can’t meet. There is a once a week nonveggie soup kitchen, a prerequisite being conversion to evangelical Pentecostal Protestant Christianity and attending their services (froth at mouth, speak in tongues, roll on floor in convulsions). No gays!! I recently learned of a new proper, probably secular, foodbank in a town half an hour by bus from my city. But there could be a residency requirement, possibly also other criteria. The list of food they want donating, doesn’t look like it’d fulfil my diet/needs. Might just be able to get dried pasta. But I can get dried pasta from Morrisons, 30p for 2 days worth. To actually get healthy food, protein, nutrients, vitamins, calories… not catered for by the food banks.
Soz for the bitterness (and absence), I was busy. I just got a few (reduced) payments in, just in time to hopefully avoid bank charges. All of my dole and HB went immediately on rent, TV licence, bills, credit card minimum payment, etc. It leaves me with how much for 2 weeks? I checked yesterday, being in need of £20 for shopping and having gone without for days. Oh sorry, all I have is a tenner! I left it there.
What would Esther McVey know anyway, she was nothing more than an airhead TV presenter. who was totally useless without an autocue.
http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-why-leaked-a4e-data-suggests-work-programme-isnt-working/11729
FACT CHECK WHY LEAKED A4E DATA SUGGESTS WORK PROGRAM ISNT WORKING..
The a4e response from that show http://mya4e.com/disability-and-unemployment/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter you dont need to read it we all know what its going to say
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clive lord
The guardian shows the real ratio of jobs per unemployed in a table shown herehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/feb/06/unemployment-vacancies-ratio. How will those at the wrong end of means testing be better off on a guaranteed basic income, when there are jobs only for the few to top it up.
@Eric Greenwood..i wonder if it would be ok if we asked how Emma Harrison is these days…must be difficult swanning about with all that govt money poor thing..
well.. she is a trustee of the eden project, the same eden project that jsut got rid of 70 staff, she used to run amin in isreal/palestine she runs a training in spain where unemployment is at 60%, a4e is in the red this year by a million, they have lost over £100 million in contracts. I dont think she is too happy.. 😉
@Eric Greenwood..shame i almost feel sorry for the greedy old witch…
@Eric Greenwood and all i am still stymied by this message on the DWP website..
“Local Work Programme providers
Work Programme providers play a key part in working with DWP and Jobcentre Plus to help promote the support available through the Youth Contract to local employers and to identify suitable employment opportunities for participants. Where a wage incentive is appropriate, Work Programme providers will liaise with the employer, provide support and issue claims forms.
If you are an employer who is interested in employing an 18 to 24 year old with support from a wage incentive payment you should register your interest with local Work Programme providers.
The wage incentive is also available to employers through Jobcentre Plus if you take on an unemployed 18 to 24 year old who has been claiming benefit for 6 months.
For details of the Work Programme providers in your area please choose from locations below
“Where a wage incentive is appropriate” what the f***k do they mean..??
when is it never appropiate?? its like paying someone is a novel idea..!!!!
what planet do these people come from??
Lying under a bridge passed out with her knickers missing, clutching a bottle of meths…
(Oh, sorry, I was asleep)
* Wage incentives available through Work Choice (GOV.UK)
How does the wage incentive scheme work?
The wage incentive is available if you employ someone for 16 hours or more each week in a job lasting more than 26 weeks. There are two rates:
* for part-time work between 16 and 29 hours a week – £1,137.50
* for full-time work of 30 hours or more a week – £2,275.
This will be paid 26 weeks after the employee starts work. Small businesses with fewer than 50 employees can claim a part payment eight weeks after the employee starts work.
Who can claim a wage incentive?
Wage incentives are primarily available to private, voluntary and community sectors and social enterprise employers. Central government departments, their executive agencies and Non-Departmental Public Bodies (NDPBs) will be excluded from claiming them, however the wider public sector such as NHS trusts, will not.
I’m interested in employing a young person using the wage incentive, what do I do next?
Contact Jobcentre Plus or one of your local Work Programme providers, they will give you further information, advice on the eligibility conditions and support to identify the right person.
So let me get this straight..an “employer” takes on a 16-24 year-old, applies for this “wage incentive” which they promptly trouser while the “employee” works for nothing? I think I need to lie down in a darkened room as I just can’t get my head around this insanity.
If claimants are brave enough (I refer to ESA claimants forced onto JSA) Hitback at government and DWP could come after 7th October 2013 if people will claim ESA again doubled with a claim for the DLA replacement, that being PIP (personal Independence Payment), en mass causing a complete jam and failure of that part of the Benefits system. MAKE THE CIVIL SERVANTS WORK AND SCRATCH THEIR HEADS AT THE SAME TIME.
what wait a minute so the wage incentive is available to the employer????
even though employer is getting free labour from the ’employeee’,,is this nuts?
No shit.
We can’t be trusting the dolescum with such things as actual MONEY.
The u tube link and animated video appears to be talking about the big society David Cameron thought he was going to create, whereby those who have robbed enough to live in luxury will be swanning about amongst those who are growing their own food, making do and mending to protect scarce resources. I believe any shortages will be by design rather than deficiency or disaster and will be manipulated by the capitalist.
@guy fawkes..i came across that true volunteer foundation (pay2work) that got incorporated into daves big soceity bollocks..it went on about trying to attract funding from the corporates..and of course if you went to work for them you dont get paid…i think you pay them judging by the pay2work slogan…???
“How can I claim the wage incentive?
When the young person starts with you, the Work Programme provider or Jobcentre Plus, will issue a wage incentive claim form and give you more details on how and when to make the claim. You will claim the payment from Jobcentre Plus who will validate the claim and make the payment directly into the employer’s bank account. “…
what fricking planet is this??
this would be good if you were a rogue fake ’employer’ (they don’t check) trolling round on UJM hiring girls to be prostitutes. Take all the money that forced *workfare* prostitutes make on the game, and get a government bonus as their employer!
http://www.dwp.gov.uk/youth-contract/stories/#_How_the_Work
Real examples of how the Work Programme, work experience and wage incentives are helping young people into work.
this is unreal…..
“Emma’s story
EmmaEmma is a long-term sufferer of epilepsy who left her retail job in 2009, after having a seizure at work. Emma joined the Work Programme with North Doncaster Development Trust (NDDT) and was determined to get back into employment. However, she was concerned about disclosing her condition and the possibility of it affecting future opportunities.
Her Work Programme adviser provided support so Emma could look and apply for suitable work as well as help with confidence building and dealing with job related anxieties. Emma unfortunately suffered a number of serious seizures and was transferred onto Employment Support Allowance. Although she no longer had to participate on the Work Programme, Emma voluntarily chose to remain in contact with NDDT as she found the support she received from her adviser so helpful.
Emma’s determination towards finding work paid off within a couple of weeks. With her adviser and the employment engagement team’s support, Emma successfully secured a job working at a day care centre as a nursery assistant. Emma told her employer about her condition and they worked together to put measures in place in case she was to suffer a seizure in the work place. Finding a job that she enjoys has been a great confidence boost for Emma.
The Work Programme is part funded by the European Social Fund.”
anyone had to deal with someone suffering from epilepsy…knows this aint easy road…nursery assistant when she us having seizures that can be pretty scary especially for little children watching..
Yesterday I had to do 5 and a half hours jobsearch standing up in the jobcentre. There are no toilets. They don’t let me have a chair to kneel on, and you have to write on the awkward sloping jobpoint machine as a desk, to record jobseeking activity on their forms. Because of the combination of the slope and my height, it worsens the numbness in my arms.
When I signed on in the morning, their clock was wrong. I know, as my watch is several seconds fast and it wasn’t even the correct time to sign on yet. I already had to run to the jobcentre as there was no bus, and got there in time. The security guard said I was already called. I said that can’t be correct as they are only meant to call you at the correct time, which had not arrived yet. I got to see my adviser, and she said I was late. I said I was early, as my watch is correct on BBC News 24 and the London signal, in fact my watch is faster than that. So the whole jobcentre had times that were badly wrong. She said she ‘had to go on what the clock here says’. I said, yes but all yours are wrong.
She asked about Work Programme. Knowing it’s an offence to lie, I told the truth. She wasn’t happy. They display (at JCP) a staggering ignorance of anything that goes on there. I pointed out we are not clients, consumers or customers, all of whom are free to take their business elsewhere. She blamed me for not yet being in one of their work placements. I told her: they only run one placement and it is in construction, and even THEY saw instantly I was too disabled to send so they didn’t send me. Not to mention that the smallest size of clothing and PPE is too large by far. She continued to blame me. I said I can’t change my size. She blamed me for being sick and having other disabilities, as if any of it were a choice! (No I really LOVE being multiple-disabled and longterm sick. I really LOVE the way that every time I leave the house strangers yell munchkin, hobbit and leprechaun at me, including Monday morning on my way to the jobcentre when 5 of them yelled ‘what the fuck is THAT?’ and attempted to rugby tackle me, though I was too fast for them. I LOVE getting on a bus and first being blamed for my near-inability to reach the card machine and then criticised for being a runner who has other hidden disabilities. I LOVE having to ask the location of toilets then finding them inaccessible as I’ve not been granted a RADAR key yet. I LOVE the way I now have at least one proper seizure a day, including in the middle of pouring boiling water -on myself!- or carrying a plate of the only food I’ve got to eat. Or going downstairs. I love being so knackered I have to either cook or wash up but not both, or am too knackered to do either. I love the idiots who are ablebodied and know nothing about disability, speaking ‘on behalf of’ and about disabled people, making endless false stereotypes and asumptions, or repeating popular myths.)
My ‘adviser’, I ought to use inverted commas as the only ‘advice’ seems to be “Get un-disabled and tall ASAP! Being disabled is your own fault!”.
Anyway, she said, why had I not signed up to UJM. I said I had, several months ago, and on her orders; and had reminded her several times that I had done so. I explained the technical problems with the site. She logged in as herself and said UJM has no problems with anything or anyone, you either are lying and don’t use it, don’t know how to use a computer, or are the only person in the UK reporting a problem. I said that is not the case: there are at least several thousand people having exactly the same problems – if she wants to have proof, all she should do is search any search engine for ‘UJM does not work’ etc. She said she could not be bothered and had no time, did not want to anyway.
(Funny that. I’m not allowed to say ‘I don’t want to’ to anything. I’m not allowed to ‘not be bothered’ to do something. I turn up when I’m sick and often SHE is skiving off sick herself so they cancel my appointment or send me to my ‘interview’ with whatever pond life they can dredge up that week. Was she a pimp in a past life? Their teenage employees are not allowed to say ‘I don’t want to’!)
I said that I and all the others on my work programme can’t log in to UJM, or can’t apply for the jobs on it. None are relevant or close. The computers often aren’t working, and Work Programme’s network does not let you ‘save your searches’. She blamed me for being banned from the public library, but the library’s computers don’t let you go to UJM as it is a banned and blocked website. Also you now get half an hour per two months. That’s how long the queues are. Internet cafe I can’t afford, is not open when I’m free/near it, has seating I can’t use as it’s too high, and also blocks the UJM as a ‘risky site’. Hells (all 9 of ’em), I can access fucking PORN easier than I can access any of the basic guest-mode pages of UJM. (I didn’t say this bit!!!)
The crazy, mental lady then said I have to be on UJM every single day including Sundays, even if I’m ill or away or on a bus? I said I don’t have internet access every day and don’t have a phone or a computer.
She said I must give her my email. I said I already did and wasn’t doing so again, I am on UJM and the emails they send me prove I’m on it. I said I’m being bombarded by spam as a result and UJM can go to junk while real messages I want go there too, while endless spam fills my inbox and I have to process 60 emails or more a day. I said every email I ever got from UJM, who email at least twice a week, has sent only impossible jobs in other parts of the country or other countries. I said it is actually cutting down most of the time I need to actually look for real jobs. I said, my CFS/ME makes me tired all the time, so after checking a few emails I’m exhausted. It can take a night to read the emails, no sleep or food, then back out jobseeking; and my infections are worse as a result. She kept demanding my email address. Why should I when her bosses could hack my email? I said, get it off UJM if you really want it. She said again that she didn’t have time. In the end she made me stand at the jobpoint a further 5 and a half hours looking at thousands of impossible jobs.
During the day I heard loads of people calling up on the phones to say their benefit got cancelled. Lots of OTHERS smoked in the jobcentre, but nothing happened to them.
At least 3 guys just got out of jail and the DWP was not processing benefits to bail hostel addresses. DWP wanted them to have visited jobcentres ‘earlier’, while they were actually in jail! (Did it want them to escape from jail?) It also told them to move to a different address so it could deal with their claim! (Um the whole point of a bail hostel is that the court sends you, you don’t get to choose where and how you live, and if you move out you are what Americans call a parole violator to be pursued by bounty hunters and cops. You’d be breaking your bail, and liable for instant return to prison.) These people (DWP) could be out-thought by a cabbage! Two guys had court dates in which they were each the defendant in a serious criminal trial for violent offences. Instead of going on the run, they were planning to attend court! (as the law says you must do) But the DWP was trying to stop them being allowed to go to court!
That’s crazy enough but it gets worse. Somebody got sanctioned for going to a funeral. Someone else (I know him) was threatened with being sanctioned because – his dad just died! He only came in to ask how to arrange the funeral. A single mum got a sanction doubt for not being with the father of her child, for not knowing where he is right now, and for not being sure if he was her child’s biological father! Apparently they had ordered her to name the dad, and she had said they were separated and she wasn’t sure if he was 100% the actual dad so had not named him as the father. But Social Services were hassling her and so were the child benefit people. She said how could she say stuff she doesn’t know? Jobcentre apparently accused her of lying. (Probably they get a memo or training day on the subject of ‘All single mothers are lying thieving scrounging bitches who should be wiped off the face of the earth’.) She was trying to get her benefit restored.
Then one person had cancer and needed chemo but the DWP wanted him to sign on instead of attending chemo sessions! Another had an operation that day, ditto. Another had had an operation but was being told to sign on then sanctioned for saying he was too ill. Someone else was due in hospital for treatment. Somebody else had his alcohol rehab/withdrawal therapy session when DWP wanted him to come in.
There was an old guy that came in. He was signing on but technically could get a pension. They had Sanctioned him because they say he was late for signing AND had made a spelling error on his looking for work form. So without dole they had cut or were cutting his Pension Credit! He said he already had Parkinson’s so writing was difficult but now he had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s, and was terminally ill. Despite this (and no dole) he had been told he was not eligible for WRAG or Support group, had to sign on though not being PAID his JSA, the council had said they’d stop his housing benefit and council tax benefit because his JSA got stopped. As well, he was supposed to be actively jobseeking (um, too busy dying!), AND told to go on a work programme and compulsory unpaid Work placement. He said his pension credit was still coming through but was only £23 a week and it was his only income, it’s freezing/subzero and he’d not been able to feed the meter or eat in days. This is probably the worst case from yesterday. He wanted to dispute all this but said they can’t communicate on a bad day when he can’t think. He said Atos ignored medical letters saying the Alzheimer’s would kill him soon. He also had bills to pay. Outcome: they refused to help.
Most cases were like this. Quite a few were where the jobcentre sent things to the wrong address then blamed the claimants for missing appointments. Then some tramps came in. They were drunk, but able to understand a bit. They were homeless so needed to use the phone to ask why they were sanctioned and why they had to continue signing while homeless and sanctioned. They explained, each in turn; on the phones, to the security guard, and to the JCP ‘advisers’; they were accused of missing signing or interviews. JCP said that you didn’t respond to letters. The tramps said (they were mates) they are homeless and they can’t read. JCP said they’d explain the sanction – in another letter!
Imagine you are dyslexic, no good at languages, and can’t speak Latin.
A body in charge of your future sends you letters only in Latin.
Some people in the JCP were homeless individuals at regular signing on. They were mandated to Work Programme. This is stupid. What are you meant to put?
‘Looked for jobs in newspaper I used as a blanket; then pissed on by drunks’
‘Slept in skip. Searched skip for any random miracle jobs that might be hiding in it’.
‘Looked for 35 hours in my adviser’s head for all those missing jobs. Found only empty space.’
‘Spent night under bridge reading graffiti for job ads. Thinking of taking up offer to suck off elderly man for £5.’
‘Conversation with shopping trolley (broken) about where all the jobs are’.
‘Stood on street corner yelling ‘GISSA JOB!’, till arrested.’
‘Hey I just found a job in my armpit. Oh sorry, it’s a dead rat.’
During the afternoon, while the tramps were waiting to be seen, there was this guy that kicked off. I hope it was to my adviser, as she is more useless than a rotten sardine. He started yelling and saying fuck a lot, to the staff. The security guard came over. Told him to leave. His point was that they had changed his jobseeker agreement to force him to apply for any job no matter what, and he didn’t agree, because he’d signed up to the previous agreement. (Note again how they stretch the concept of ‘agree’.) Several times they called the security guard (G4S) back.
To the man’s credit, he managed to shout, rant and struggle for half an hour before finally being overpowered and ejected.
I mentioned it to the tramps and we all watched, but I was thinking: what if we ALL got up and said we agreed with him? Would we all be thrown out, arrested, asked to leave, Sanctioned? I settled for saying to one of the tramps, quietly, that the staff at the JCP are ‘muppets’. (and half of me was worried the tramp could be a cop, or an undercover DWP fraud investigator, or an informer)
Some people reporting sanctions say they did nothing wrong but were being handed the no-fault random sanctions the JCP staff have to give out to fulfil their quota.
Well that’s just 5 and a half hours of it.
Is there any use at all for a DWP Jobcentre adviser? Other than as a draught excluder.
@something survived its good that you document all this . It acts as a testament to what’s really going on . To counteract all the bollovks they publish on their website. I don’t get this wage stuff they pay to employers do you / and as for finding a job as nursery assistant for someone eith epilepsy that’s sounds bloody stupid do they take us for idiots it something . What about treating ppl with common decency for a change
Well I have epilepsy and they want me to be a scaffolder/builder/hod carrier and go up ladders. (I tried to write to ‘Grauniad’ to become a columnist on the inside story of the welfare system, I was a student journalist and freelancer in the past, but they weren’t interested. finally when they *were*, I was about to do an expose on the whole shebang and then was threatened by jobcentre and WPP to not say anything. I still will – I’m gathering evidence against the bastards.)
I also have dizziness, vertigo, low blood pressure, inability to carry weights, hatred of heights, bad back…. They really want me up ladders? The spade to dig holes with was bigger than me (work scheme).
Possibly they want me to pray till I get taller.
@something durvived ok do it write it up get it published because white honestly they are taking the piss.
I still don’t get this wage incentive for employers
They get free labour from employees to help profits then get paid over a grand a week. Taking the effing piss.
I’m am very sorry about how some human beings behave. What a tale of woe. Could I suggest some points for putting your experience to constructive use?
1. If you haven’t already done so write a letter to the manager of your Job Centre with a copy to your local mp.
2. Try and condense each and every point of concern into numbered passages just as I’m doing here.
3. Avoid the quite natural inclination to tell them them what you think in language that they can then use to justify ignoring you. Be polite.
4. Ask for a specific written response to each point you raise and mention that you will allow fifteen days for a response before escalating the matter and contacting the regional manager.
5. I’m told they have fifteen days to respond but if they ignore you or any of the points for which you desire an answer then copy all the messages you have sent along with the additional points about the local Job Centre lack of response in letter to the JCP regional manager requesting intervention.
Click to access jcp-district-managers.pdf
Copy this letetr to your m.p.
6. If they are pushing you to apply for jobs which you are clearly incapable of doing, e.g lack of qualifications, skills, experience, fitness then this contradicts long standing JCP policy and you should include this in your list of concerns. Employers don’t like receiving applications which do not meet their specified requirements – it wastes their time. If it costs you nothing, and can get access to email cv job applications, then you can **choose** to send them to these vacancies anyway pending a response from the JCP/Regional managers office but as a courtesy to the employer state clearly on the cover note that you realise you do not meet the requirements but are being pushed by Mr/Mrs/MS X of JCP/Work Program agent at contact details abc whom they should contact if they are unhappy at receiving spam.
7. At present siging up to UJM is not mandatory. If you know of anyone being told they must (as in my area) show them this letter from the DWP:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/140693/response/347764/attach/html/3/FOI%204776%20Response%20PDF.pdf.html
8. Keep cool and persist.
The sickening thing is that the warnings and concerns about all this appeared in a document i came across a while ago of which I posted on these blogs and john ward posted and reported on too. The payment by results and bid candy was in the doc. Warned about and ignored and now we see it .
I don’t think you are allowed (staff or jobseeker) to object any more to inappropriate jobs. They sent me against my will to the military college to apply as a recruiter to get kids 14-19 to join the military. Though I’m a pacifist, and days earlier led a demo against the same military college. So I could be hardly any less inappropriate for the job, though if you want someone to work with kids you could hire a paedophile presumably???? Which I suppose is even MORE unsuitable. I applied against my will but they stopped my benefits, first they lied I didn’t apply, then after a year or so conceded I had applied but ‘lacked sufficient enthusiasm’. (As in ‘Jew lacks enthusiasm for job in pork sausage factory’). I’m STILL on the books of the military college! No idea WHY they’d want me!
Incidentally on the topic of ACTUAL paedophiles, I noticed that last night’s BBC1 documentary on bail and probation officers said some stuff I didn’t know. The paedophiles were not meant to go anywhere kids could be, or ‘loiter’ (stop in public at any time). They were meant to tell new girlfriends they are paedophiles. [Now, a workfare computer could order them to a job working with or being near kids.] (The main paedophile in the programme, raped an 11 year old girl and calls it a love affair!)
Staff at the JCP have to put people forward for the stupidest jobs. A woman in a wheelchair whose spine is broken had to apply to be a lorry driver. And many men are being made to apply for female-only jobs: bra fitters, carers, nurses, security guards… personal assistants (toileting), etc. The staff get in trouble if they don’t fulfil the Quota.
At least our JCP hasn’t recently advertised any sex work jobs, like nude models or escorts. There was one at the sex shop, I used to apply and never got it as they said a disabled person was ‘wrong for the image’. Now the JCP don’t tell me to apply, as they readvertised saying nobody is allowed if they have a criminal record. Phone sex jobs have been seen at other UK job centres, and as the job of being nude female hosts on babestation or similar channels. There are also ‘jobs’ working on the internet, involving being a naked woman who will stick things up herself or have sex on webcam. (No ugly/plain/fat or disabled women, no butch women, no women too old, no body hair allowed anywhere!) Fine if the woman really wants to do it, but will this become a workfare job? Perhaps less work for men: only looking for handsome muscular well-endowed men able to perform. There’s no gay male version of babestation on Freeview, and like the heterosexual side of the industry you need to be able to get an erection and ejaculate at the right time. If the outfit’s even halfway legit, you need sexual health screening of some kind. And nonsexual infectious diseases or parasites, also rules you out.
Mad that I got sent in one week to apply to be a Catholic priest, a Muslim imam, and a sex party planner, all on the same day! As I suspected, the sex party planning company wanted women only. I was relieved, I don’t want to be walking round (no car) door to door lugging
a bag of vibrators. The Catholic Church for some reason is not all that eager to ordain me. Well I wonder why on earth could that be? You should have been christened, baptised, confirmed etc. and I wasn’t; you should go to church. (I attended 2 services in my life! One was as the peace group representative at an Armenian Orthodox service to commemorate the Armenian Genocide. The other was at the farewell service by my retiring Anglican priest friend, pro-gay, he gave me communion though I could only have a wafer and no wine, technically he wasn’t supposed to give me a wafer as i’m unclean and a sinner and not a Christian. The church was replacing him with a bigoted guy, and as a protest I ended up shagging my then partner in the church [not in the actual church-y bit].) You should believe in God and the Catholic statement of belief. I don’t believe in God, and am pro-choice.
Also you should be celibate (though it seems to like hiring paedophiles!), single, not into sex stuff (I’m not a big fan but from time to time watch porn). Like the pope a lot: I don’t. He’s an ex-Nazi (Hitler Youth), who thinks gay people are ‘objectively disordered’. He is against rape victims getting abortions, also against protecting spouses getting HIV by using condoms. He doesn’t like gay parenting or marriage. Meanwhile my application for the job of IMAM went equally badly. (Though I could point them in the direction of several groups for gay Muslims!) I don’t believe in Allah (incidentally the exact same god as the Christian and Jewish God). That is probably a big obstacle to becoming an imam. Being a hypocrite by saying you believe when you don’t, is seen as much worse than being an unbeliever. If Richard Dawkins got put on workfare they could make HIM apply!
Where is the logic in having to write 3 job applications on one day: the first selling sex toys, the second applying to be a Catholic priest, and the third applying to be a Muslim imam? The latter has a lot going for it in some ways, I don’t believe in gambling and I’m not a fan of capitalism/interest. Also as a vegetarian I eat absolutely no pork. But you are expected to eat other meat of course. I don’t believe in separating men and women for worship, don’t believe in women either being forced to wear or banned from wearing a covering. The JCP say now you should show enthusiasm when applying?! Was I meant to show equal enthusiasm to be a Catholic or Muslim priest and a sex toy vendor? Would they like me to rollerskate too?
Or perhaps do a jobshare? Then do one day at church, sermon on ‘Witches are cool really’, than two days selling dildos, and Fridays at a mosque giving sermons like ‘The benefits of gay relationships’.?????
The same day they wanted Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh and Jain priests as well. I found out in a documentary a few weeks ago that you can’t be a Jain priest or food-server if you are disabled as that renders you impure, also you can’t be gay (even worse than just impure).
None of the JCP staff would apply for these jobs so why order us to?
In the past they have told women (and some men) to be life models, a job requiring nudity. Would *they* do this job? If the jobs came in the same week, you could have to rewrite a CV to say:
‘Dear employer, I am a Catholic priest/practicing imam who has experience as a sex worker, I’m great at installing batteries in vibrators
and in leading religious services, I’m also happy to strip off..’
Something survived
I’ve laughed and cried at your above post and find it unbelievable that your adviser can get away with treating you like she does. As a master of futility, can I ask have you tried talking to your MP or writing a letter of complaint to the work provider or dwp. This is victimization in the extreme.
No wonder nobody wants to know those who belong to the pcs union.
MP is supportive and aware, but from a minority party that lacks clout in westminster. My previous letters of complaint to the DWP/JCP appear to have gone chez shredder. As I say above, the treatment of others even on that one day snapshot yesterday is way worse than what I’m getting. I’m only getting sanction doubts, not a sanction yet, only threats of a sanction.
The one I feel most for is the terminal guy whose hands shake while holding the stupid DWP phone and being earblasted with Vivaldi on a loop tape, before being passed on to someone whose ability to handle his ‘query’
(as in ‘your query is very important to us’) is less than that of the least intellectually endowed of the unable-to-read homeless tramps that day. At least they might feel some compassion.
oops that was my adviser on a GOOD day
Should see her in a BAD mood.
Ahhhh, Spring. Ad Infinum.
Didn’t the Yanks use loud repetitive music as a tool of psychological warfare during sieges?
And one of the finest pieces of music written, ruined, reduced to shit
The content of this website needs to be read. Not by us – by us I mean those of us affected by what you talk about and are somewhat informed already. Yes of course it helps to build up a state of righteous indignation and I am all for that but really, we are not the people who you need to be informing. It’s the right wing press. And am I right in assuming that Owen Jones thinks that it isn’t good to engage with them? Well, they do need engaging with, in order to get the ignorant better informed. How is that ever going to happen if they never read/hear the other point of view? If people refuse to give them that view point how will people be able to read it and judge for themselves?
Channel 4 support your views but most people do not listen to channel 4 news. Preaching to the converted is good but there is work to be done in getting the masses to hear the truth about what often affects them, instead of the lies that are touted to them about the causes. Guardian readers should read the daily mail (another ridiculous story about ‘benefit scroungers’ just put up) and make it their business to comment. Huddling in groups and bickering among themselves on the Guardian does no one any good.
It is so sad, but I think civil unrest is truly a possibility in winter from October this year. I may not get to see or hear of it but it is I think on the way.
mary
I’m sure your suggestions to something survived are well intentioned, but do you really believe the daily mail and the rest of the right wing press will be sympathetic towards something survived, I’m not sure about channel 4 either.
it’s up to him if he wants to try and I wish him all the luck in the world, but I won’t hold my breath, given what we know about how the right wing press handle material relating to the disabled and the unemployed.
This lad should have his own column in a newspaper to retell his experiences and those of others he has encountered
okay I used to try writing to rightwing publications, and made exactly the right points, in the ‘least unlikely to be published’ way. But as soon as you veer half a degree left of Farage and Griffin, a ‘reds under the bed’ alarm goes off, you hit a political tripwire, and surprise surprise, do not get published.
BENEFIT SCROUNGERS BARBECUE YOUR DOG
SINGLE MOTHERS A SECRET ALQAEDA PLOT TO DESTROY BRITAIN
ASYLUM DOLE RAGHEADS EAT OUR KIDS
POLAND – NOT FAR ENOUGH EAST!
DEPORT THE SCOTS
PATRIOT SMACKHEAD, 26: PAKI DOCTOR NICKED MY JOB!!!!
ABOLISH CURRY
DEPORT POTATOES
REPATRIATE BRITAIN TO OLD PRE-DRIFT LOCATION
(Page 3: Look at the tits on this sexy geological syncline!)
SHAMI C. EXPOSED AS MUSLIM TERRORIST -Deport her!
OBAMA BORN ON MARS
CHOP UP MIXED RACE PEOPLE, FOR CLEANER UK
INDIAN SUMMERS BANNED
PRINCE PHILIP: SAINTHOOD NOW!
UKBA DEPORT SMALL PIECE OF INDIA RUBBER: That’ll teach it!
OUTLAW FRENCH KISSING/FRIES/LETTERS
GRIFFIN FOR P.M.
MIXED MARRIAGE BAD FOR YOU: Dr Mengele on racial purity
CHILD WITH GERMAN MEASLES DEPORTED TO BERLIN
BOY CAUGHT WITH MANGA COMIC
EMMA HARRISON v. SARAH PALIN: New talent show, World’s Dumbest Bitches (Ed.: who sneaked this in? We love both these ladies! Scratch this story! Invite them over for page 3 shoot instead!)
Guy Fawkes
Read my blog for a full answer. The public in general should be alerted to the fact that the whole workfare scheme – compulsion – is a lunatic idea. Why does such lunacy persist? Because if you haven’t noticed the effect of means testing, the idea of everyone being obliged to pull their weight seems to make sense if you have that kind of mind. The only way it does make sense is to make a killing for non job providers. Thanks for the reference. It forcibly makes my point. A strange discrepancy though. The FT says there are 52 people chasing every job in Hull. According to the Guardian, 16.3.
Reply to Clive Lord (and guy fawkes)
Here is some mental arithmetic – prompted by your references to 52 and 16.7 Jobseekers for each job vacancy!
You don’t need to get very many Jobseekers chasing each job for the competition level to go sky high. Even with a handful of applicants as a simple illustration, it means only one in five can be successful – which also means that 4 out of 5 applicants or 80% can not!
So when you get to a level of 16.7 or 52 applicants for each job, it really does not matter one iota, because we are already long since in the realms of the ridiculous.
I know of one (local) job which attracted 620 applicants, and that figure is beyond the ridiculous – just like the Government’s increasingly frantic policies on so-called Welfare Reform!
It depends on what you are measuring. You could do a simple count of the average number of people for each vacancy, or you could count the average number of people applying for each vacancy. They will come up with very different results.
Reply to HOMERJS
Presumably, your comment is an example of mental arithmetic – mental, right enough!
If you have 10 jobs and 50 unemployed people you have 5 people for every job. But job applications aren’t done on a quota basis so you could get an average of up to 50 people per job (if everyone applied for every job). Presumaby simple mental arithmetic.
Further reply to HomerJS
It looks as though you are advancing into statistics – and you know what they say about statistics!
In any event, there are simply not enough proper (paid) jobs available for all of the unemployed – and at the end of the day (or in fact the beginning of the day) you certainly can’t get a quart out of a pint pot!
It was just a simple response to Clive’s stats question. Personally I happen to agree with your point that it doesn’t really matter as either way there just aren’t enough jobs.
Oh you can – they will employ the FRACTION of the jobseeker for the FRACTION of the pay. Line up all the jobseekers by a sawmill and cut them into bits.
Coronary arterial disease, emphysema, shadow on my lung.
Cannt walk from here to there without being at risk of dying.
That’ll make The IDS Gang happy.
See you on the other side.
Good luck with the revolution.
Left heart ventrical reduction surgery, mitral valve repair, triple coronary artery bypass, told I need a heart transplant, can walk a very little, bigger chance than most I won’t be here tomorrow. After surgery and unusually long 14 day stay in hospital (8 days on Intensive care unit on which 3rd day I was resucitated twice so I was told). On arriving home, there was the A4e letter inviting me in on the next day for further interrogation, If failure to comply, benefit sanctions will apply. Letter from DWP decision maker after ESA50 medical (must have arrived around time I went for surgery) Been awarded 6 points (I think), placed in WRAG group – At this time, I couldn’t even walk! They are incredible or is it “incredulous”? A4e, ATOS and DWP decision makers must all be disabled “THEY COULD NOT HEAR ME AT ALL”!
I was not referring to something survived but to this blog and other blogs, to journalists etc. To those who have a public voice and who need to direct it to those who cannot yet hear what needs to be heard, because they do not access it. And yes, just a few of those daily mail readers might be outraged too.
Perhaps we should retaliate with MFC miserable fascist cunt
Yeah but miserable is 4 syllables long, they won’t get it
https://cache.kzoo.edu/handle/10920/11520
Good American reading.
LTB: Labeling the poor:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/waragain.htm
This June, I will have been on the Work Programme for 2 years.
I am looking for work daily.
I am demoralised. I have been bullied and lied to (plus given misinformation about many things, including the length of time I can claim for me and my children’s housing whilst on the WP). During this time I’ve been made to do totally irrelevant ‘training courses’. I dread meeting my advisor every 2 weeks. It is totally depressing and I always leave feeling like a failure. (Do I hope I’m one of the ‘job ready customer’s’, and not one of the ‘Lying Thieving Bastards’?). During this time my ‘advisor’ has not given me one job to apply for.
Instead, I have been given more job application targets..at the moment I have to ‘prove’ I am spending at least 16 hours a week applying for, at least, 10 jobs, plus handing out speculative CVs to restaurants, bars and cafes. I’ve been told to offer my time for nothing, ‘for a trial shift’….
Although I am writing this here, I am scared of speaking publicly about my first hand treatment on the WP.
I live in fear of being sanctioned.
Do not offer your time to work a trial shift for nothing, if you do that even once you’ll expected to do so regularly. Inform your brain-dead adviser that if you are to do ANY work, you expect to be PAID for it. Stick to your guns & do not give in to their bullying. Here’s a tip, while your “adviser” is prattling on, try to imagine him/her sitting there in their underwear!
Oh god no way – I can’t afford to vomit.
This is your best posting yet Johnny, a very clear explanation of the situation. Thanks.
Mary
Perhaps you could point the daily mail readers in the direction of this site instead of us having to move in their direction.
Clive
It may as well be 52 because 16.3 still needs a lot of job creation.
To piano man
When you do, like all of us will, reach the other side, you will go down in posterity as another great contributor to the johnnie void blogg.
All the Work Programme Private Providers along with the DWP ‘MUST’ now be investigated regarding what they are doing with the unemployed and disabled – a full no holes barred investigation that exposes the fact that they are not helping people on benefits and are robbing the tax payer blind via the DWP who are happy to pay them for very piss poor results that don’t even meet the minimum targets set in their contracts.
I suggest Dispatches or Channel 4 News should do this over a number of programmes – not just a half hour or 1 hour presentation.
They are all criminal – beginning with fraud! The government too are criminal – beginning with fraud. How quickly they and DWP move the goalposts. The most recent time being on Monday 28th January in relation to ESA50 forms and claims.
Get rid of the UJM and jobpoints, bring back the noticeboards with jobs on. We could see real jobs and apply for them. The employers would not be deluged with fake applications. Stop all the sanctions. Signing on should not have extra conditions, you should just have to sign like in the old days. Stop the work programme and workfare. And stop Atos being in charge of doing ANYTHING, as they are unfit to wipe their own bum.
Stop forcing sick and disabled people to work, look for work, or attend ‘schemes’. Stop screwing up housing benefit. Etc.
Well said and couldn’t agree more, but what can be done about it?
If enough evidence is brought to light and put into the public domain to show the Private Providers are making millions for missing their targets the programme will be closed down due to public fury putting pressure on the government.
members of this government have never forgiven those opposing fox hunting, which still got banned despite bringing out thousands of workers that pay homage to such cruelty, so I can’t see anyone stopping them from inflicting further cruelty on unemployed human beings no matter what the opposition is.
Apparently they are trying to overturn the hunting ban and bring back hunting.
In the Horrible Histories books it says the Western (usually British) colonial people used to shoot/hunt the native American, Indian, Australian, African etc. people for fun. Or trick them into shooting themselves. Some people did things like elephant-based hunts of Indian people with guns and dogs, so they could be shot or torn apart. Of course after America was a country the KKK and similar groups did lynchings of black people.
‘Where they burn books soon they will be burning human beings also’.
Reblogged this on Dawn Willis sharing the News & Views of the Mentally Wealthy.
I have just read something in following benefits guide pip_guide_jan_13v7a-1 This is what is put >>>
Medical Examination centres
Atos will be using NHS hospitals, doctors surgeries and private hospital and physiotherapy premises to carry out medical assessments. They claim that over 90% of claimants will have to travel for no longer than 30 minutes to get to an assessment centre Capita will be using their own premises, plus Remploy offices and Assist UK independent living centres. They claim that 91% of claimants will be within 90 minutes travel time of a centre and 78% within 60 minutes.
“””Both will also use mobile assessment centres in vans to visit more remote areas.””” <<< Will these mobile assessment centres in vans be like "Gas Installations" for Carbon Monoxide distribution if we fail medical I wonder? What a way this will be for the tories to save money – Mobile Undertaker in tow possibly too!!!
@mick I thought atos had their own centres up and down the country also some hospitals are closing also why would gp surgeries be taken up assessing when they have other patients to see . Isn’t this a waste of resources
http://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/ is where I gleaned this info from bobchewie and you are right, it is a resource waste “This government piles disbelief onto disbelief”. Nothing surprises me with what depths the leaders? of this capitalist society we are in will stoop to. How could a nations people be so gullible to rubber stamp them in a general election. Gordon Brown was right when he said “This is not a time to let ‘apprentices’ run the economy and country”.
@mick when atos put in the bid for PIP there was an outcry because they claimed they had support of DPAC etc which was a lie . as result they passed the job onto nhs related organisation but ago took the money ( something for nothing )
am wondering if this latest info is related now.
@bobchewie http://www.disabilityrightsuk.org/f60.htm <<< This is only free access stuff I can find. The other from http://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/ is through my paid inclusion as member and don't want to break their copyright regs as I think my membership is too valuable to spoil otherwise I would upload the file willingly.
@mick i have a feeling that disability rights UK are working with atos dwp which has angered DPAC .
@bobchewie This >>> http://www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/pip-assessment-guide.pdf is from DWP direct with no extra “opinion”
@mick fair enough I will pass that on all the same I think dpac are pissed off with disability rights uk working.with the ‘enemy’ as they see them
Left heart ventrical reduction surgery, mitral valve repair, triple coronary artery bypass, told I need a heart transplant, can walk a very little, bigger chance than most I won’t be here tomorrow. After surgery and unusually long 14 day stay in hospital (8 days on Intensive care unit on which 3rd day I was resucitated twice so I was told). On arriving home, there was the A4e letter inviting me in on the next day for further interrogation, If failure to comply, benefit sanctions will apply. Letter from DWP decision maker after ESA50 medical (must have arrived around time I went for surgery) Been awarded 6 points (I think), placed in WRAG group – At this time, I couldn’t even walk! They are incredible or is it “incredulous”? A4e, ATOS and DWP decision makers must all be disabled “THEY COULD NOT HEAR ME AT ALL”!
All the surgery was done in one operation too. Family helped me make A4e understand my condition – I could hardly breathe let alone speak for 3 days on returning home. A4e let me off mmmmmmmmm’ They allowed (over the telephone disbelieving me I think) me 4 weeks’ to recover mmmmmmmmmmmm’ Then I had to go in for WRAG for 3 days out of 5 in one week, this way they would not sanction my benefits! I said I would be there if I had crawl to get there.
My medication did not even occur to me until the night before my 1st visit. Hell! I thought, what about my Furosemide water tablet I take in the morning, I will piss my pants before I get there. Solution = Don’t take in the morning, take at night. It didn’t dawn on me that subconsciously DWP, ATOS and A4e had become my medical advisor. Trouble was ahead. On 2nd day at A4e I had an accident, my bowels went, no clean clothing, no towel, nothing just a few frowns and grimaces around me because of odious situation. When they “half understood” they offered to get me home and some “Thick Fuck” ordered me a taxi. I should have asked if it had a sun roof in it so I could stand up. I refused and said I will travel by bus whereby I could stand and not “spread” matters too far. I was lucky as the bus was virtually empty and I could stand where a wheelchair space was allocated. I arrived 20 minutes later near home and it took me all of 10 minutes I think to struggle the 100 yards but it was relief just being near home.
Thing is the Furosemide water tablet was the big problem. I realised I will be forever changing from morning to night and back. Another Mistake, because of this I lost awareness that I should take only in the morning given my condition as I take another water tablet (a different one) at night. I just kept taking at night and not realising this change could have finished me off, I kept taking Furosemide at night for 2 years without realising or being aware. I assume I felt DWP, ATOS and A4e had medical control over me in a subconscious sense. In the 2 years I felt constantly dehydrated in the morning and seriously breathless from the afternoon on It was just “shit” in every sense of the word the way I was treated by DWP, ATOS and A4e. A4e did not even believe me until I pulled open my shirt without prompt and showed them where my breast bone had been sawn through. They have no shame.
@mick they don’t care and have been told not to care or even to ask how we are as that wastes time and money. In fact there is a logic to this as it would contradict the breifing they are given which is that all claimants are LTB workshy scroungers and their job is to remove benefits no matter what and if we were allowed to explain our medical circumstance it would confuse them so the only way to square this is to assume that any illness can be put down to malingering .
The panorama program for those that missed it.
@johnny and all on here. I want to say something about these blogs. The MSM and dwp atos would have the public believe there is a flood of benefit scrounging workshy layabouts . Since I have been following these blogs for a while now full of tales of woe and hardship and severe ilnesses suffering and the vilest treatment by despicable ppl and organisations and reading a great deal showing ppl with courage and determination much to be admired. I can find not one not Fucking one single post that shows anyone boasting or gloating how much money one can fiddle from the system or even pass on advice to others how to do so. In fact I have yet to find a thread or site or forum that does that . If one did I am sure it would have had to have been invented . Thats my take anyway. This site is a valuable resource for anyone gling through awful procesz of fleecing the country and diverting public monies into the hands of people on callmedave best mates list.
@mick I see disability rights UK were part of the PIP consultation exercise I haven’t read their report as yet but i noted quite a few others were not happy with it mostly saying the remit was far too narrow and concerns about the assessments too short. If they follow this advice and use gp surgeries and hodpitals it will result in long waiting queues at these places
And more discontent too bobchewie
@mick just read it they are taking the piss. As if atos hasnt done enough damage already and as for being assessed in your own home .. dont get me started
Unfettered capitalism
Private work program provider fails to provide support and training
http://indusdelta.co.uk/discussion/triage_stirling/9697
Mary, Guy Fawkes and others
No point in talking to the gutter press, but in theory Twitter can go viral extremely quickly. 10 sending to 10 gets to 10 million in 6 retweets. Sorry to bog things down with figures. The point is 6 applicants for every job – the national average – makes workfare the stupidest idea ever. I keep trying to point out that means testing is why the reasonable majority not directly cruciified by IDS and Fraud and their private companies don’t see that.
@something survived if any story illustrates exactly what inclusion London and the strathclyde report highlighted in the levenson enquiry then yours certainly does that well. Your courage and wit is to be admired. When i read that vs the daily gobtripe that appears as ‘journalism ‘ I am convinced we are systematically being lied. to and let down by MSM
I think there is someone boasting/gloating, the government. They are tricking us out of our rightful money. If one of them had to live on £71 a week they could not manage it, that is their wine bill or drycleaning. When Michael Portillo did a ‘pretend to be a single mum’ stint for reality TV, he was so thick (how did he get in the government?) he misunderstood the basic budget constraints, and blew the week’s budget on the first day.
On Atos: They refer to it as a medical assessment, but when you challenge it they say it is not a medical assessment! They do nothing medical etc. Most things you could say, are irrelevant to their computer programme.
If they made it more medical that is a big breach of our human rights and privacy. Anyone has the right to refuse a medical examination.
At Working Links and JCP in 2004 they wanted to see my hospital incisions as proof. I nearly did, but was not meant to take off the dressings (or I’d reopen the wounds), so I didn’t. I showed the dressings and they said I was faking it! Even though I had letters proving I’d been in hospital. I had bad infections as well, made worse by the jobcentre and Working Links. I was meant to be resting at home, not jobseeking or attending work schemes. At my first two post-hospital Working Links sessions I still had a collapsed lung. They knew, and were trying to make me be a builder! Great job with septicaemia, fever, open wounds (infected), some tissue necrosis… and sick and dizzy from drugs, blood loss, side effects of medicine.
@something survived you should write a blog and put in everything and if you have a phone cam video the shit that goes on at jcp. I would love to see that stuff. We need something akin to revolution and haul the whole establishment in and put them on trial and question them .
what puzzles me is that the general public who are in work & who like to claim that unemployed people are scroungers whether they be disabled, sick, mentally ill or homeless, don’t grasp that this ethic of laziness that they say is causing them this intolerable, self righteous angst & hatred if it were indeed true, would be a drop in the ocean financially compared to what the workfare companies are looting the taxpayer for (& let’s not even go there about politician’s expenses claims, the Royal family, multi-national corporations tax avoidance, etc).
The “great” British public stand by every day & let the government virtually murder the disabled & the sick without so much as looking up from their ready meal.
There is a malaise running through this country whereby people just don’t care about one another & are basically obsessed money, property & buying crap they don’t need.
Wise up before it’s too late. Let’s change this by direct, peaceful action. Otherwise we’re all as bad as each other…
@phildobbin they also think that removing benefits from ppl they will pay less tax which is absurd because they won’t because they are paying the shortfall that the corps are avoiding including the private health bods who are wrecking the nhs and workfare provider parasites who avoid tax.
Poll tax bombshell for the poor
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/new-poll-tax-blow-for-uks-poorest-8473963.html
It’s not wrong to avoid tax say rich bods in guardian
http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/07/its-not-wrong-to-avoid-tax
Daily Mail changes tune after family die in fire
http://www.thenewjournalist.co.uk/2012/05/17/daily-mail-changes-tune-over-coverage-of-philpott-family-after-6-die-in-house-fire/
And some people talk utter bollocks like this twat …
http://ralphanomics.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/ed-balls-and-workfare.html?m=1
@phildobbin my first problem with panorama program was 1 the mail readers will use this to confirm the bbc is run by communists who maligned an innocent Tory .even though they didn’t
2 they couldn’t give a fuck about the ppl in the program only the amount of money claimed that tax payers used on them .
It’s a psychopathic mentality where they enjoy seeing vulnerable ppl being kicked
Hmv rogue tweets.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/hmv-live-tweets-sackings–staff-of-troubled-chain-take-to-twitter-to-liveblog–mass-executions–151122974.html
I am concerned about PIP assessments are assessors really going to watch. ppl wash and bathe themselves and if the assessments are to be carried out in hospitals and gp surgeries will create longer waiting times for other patients and also cause resentment from other patients I see disability rights organizations in the consultation exercise have expressed concerns on a lot of matters on the PIP assessments the remit as being too narrow
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Not totally sure if this is what i was put on to be honest but i signed on one week and was asked if i wanted to do a retail course and then one months unpaid work at a shop of my choice. I was given another option also. Both required me to put in the hours unpaid but i didnt mind because i truly hoped this may get me a job in the end. So i did my retail course and listed 10 shops that i would like to work in.
The lady sorting out this shop work, apparantely didnt get any response from the shops that ANY of us had listed. This was a group of 20 odd people. Big hmmmm, anyways i digress.
I ended up doing 4 weeks unpaid work at argos, who told me that, should we put the work in, there were 30 jobs going over christmas. Of course some may even be taken on after.
There were 3 other people who i worked with, also unpaid. Not one of the members of staff had been employed following one of these placements. The staff there told me that we were part of a long list of ‘work experience’…It appears to keep argos’s wages down. So every 4 – 6 weeks they have another little influx of unpaid workers. Meaning, they have absolutely no intention of taking anyone on because they continually get people to work for free. The paid workers there were also put out as they were having their actual hours reduced because of this work experience scheme. The unpaid workers were also required to do more hours a day, than the paid workers. As a disgruntled worker grumbled ” great hey, the work experience get more hours than us paid workers “..i responded with the ” you hit the nail on the head, you get paid, we dont “. The management made no effort to show us the workings of the retail sector, they wanted free labour. None of us were employed following. I know myself am quite a sociable person and i put in the hours, i was friendly and a few customers even praised me up. Yet they didnt employ me. And as i said, they dont employ any of them it would seem. Even 4 weeks free labour dont get you a foot in the door it would seem. Pfft. Anyhooo thats my whinge of the day. Sorry if it is not strictly what you were all talking about.
Makes me wonder if the staff on these wp providers only care for the money they make off jobseekers, and not helping them into work.
Also that “payment by results” method doesn’t sit well with me.
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