A tragic statistic hidden in the quarterly report on the performance of the Work Programme proves beyond doubt that both this and the last government’s welfare reforms have been an abject failure.
Buried in the Supplemental Tables at the end of the report are the Work Programme performance figures for ESA Ex-Incapacity Benefit claimants. These are claimants who were previously on Incapacity Benefit and have been re-assessed by Atos as able to do some kind of work and placed in the Work Related Activity Group (WRAG) of Employment Support Allowance (ESA).
These are the people that the right wing press have all too often smeared as frauds, who were faking or over-exaggerating their conditions. People with cancer in some cases, or serious mental health conditions, Multiple Sclerosis or HIV. They are the people who in some desperate incidents have been driven to suicide by the stressful and demeaning Atos assessments. The same group who the Daily Mirror revealed were dying at a rate of 32 people a week after being placed in the Work Related Activity Group.
31,600 people from the ESA Ex-Incapacity Benefit group have started on the Work Programme so far. Just 310 of them have achieved a sustained job outcome, which in many cases means just three months work. Of those who had been on the Work Programme for one year in July 2013, just 0.9% had found a job lasting three months or longer.
This group of claimants is important because they have been impacted by almost every area of welfare reform, from the Labour introduced Work Capability Assessment, to the Work Programme and even workfare. Those in the WRAG part of ESA can now be sent on full time workfare on the Work Programme or face benefits being stopped.
In many ways this group of claimants are what Welfare Reform has been all about. Attempting to harass the not quite sick and disabled enough into work was intended to show how anyone, with a bit of a push from welfare-to-work companies, can get a job if they just try hard enough.
Work Programme providers who are able to find people in this group a job are paid thousands of pounds. Companies like A4e and G4S have been given free rein to mandate these claimants to do whatever they deem necessary, including workfare, in a bid to try and force them back to work. Claimants have little choice over how they look for work anymore and must do what their Work Programme provider tells them or face benefits being stopped.
And yet despite all this so-called help from ‘experts’ in the welfare to work sector, just over 300 people have found jobs.
The figures for those assessed as ‘fit for work’ make equally grim reading. Despite almost 18,000 people starting the Work Programme who have had Incapacity Benefits stopped after a decision by Atos and the DWP, little over a thousand (1,200) of them have found a job.
The shocking fact is that if all of those new to ESA, all of those thrown off ESA due to being ‘fit for work’ and those still on Incapacity Benefits are added together a mere 7,760 people have found a job through the Work Programme, despite 206,870 sick and disabled claimants starting on the scheme.
Astonishingly this is less than the 5.5% of Incapacity Benefit claimants it was estimated found work every year under their own steam – before all this began.
Only 4.5% of those on sickness or disability benefits who have been participating in the Work Programme for at least one year have started work. The DWP’s minimum performance figure for this group was 16.5%. And many of those who did get a job will be out of work again by now. According to the DWP themselves around a third of people who found work on the Work Programme were unemployed again by the time of the latest release of statistics.
Hundreds of millions of pounds have been spent trying to bully and humiliate sick and disabled people back into work. And yet after all the so-called expertise of the welfare-to-work sector and the ‘toughest ever’ benefit conditionality regime almost none of them have found a job. All of that all too real suffering has been for nothing at all. It hasn’t even saved any money.
Iain Duncan Smith boasts that Universal Credit will magically create 300,000 jobs by applying Work Programme style ‘conditionality’ to lone parents, part time workers and the precariously self-employed. Last week’s Work Programme statistics reveal that claim to be a sham. This conditionality has not helped sick and disabled claimants find work and it will not help anyone else.
Often Iain Duncan Smith has appeared to believe his own bullshit in his messianic zeal to blame the victims of cut-throat capitalism for their plight. But the market has well and truly spoken and these figures prove it. Bosses are not lining up to hire hundreds of thousands of sick and disabled people – in fact the opposite is true with prejudice towards disabled people rampant amongst employers. All these welfare reforms have really achieved is the quiet demolition of the lives of sick and disabled people who were already poor to begin with.
The latest Work Programme statistics are at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/work-programme-statistical-summary-september-2013
Above pic found at: http://blacktrianglecampaign.org/
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the void 
It’s not possible to force employers to hire people, so all this is doing is ruining a lot of disabled people’s lives.
Thomas
They can’t force employers to hire people but they can give them financial incentives once they have robbed the unemployed to do this.
they can force charities to hire people as workfare and it already happens
It actually costs MORE to put someone into the WRAG work programmes than pay their benefit (at Incapacity Benefit Rate) for three years (assuming the WP pimps actually get to claim their bonuses).
WRAG ESA is a holding pen for the sick “stock” as Lord Fraud calls them. The WP providers park them for the duration once they see how ill they are. They make little or no attempt to get them work or training. They take the “sign up” fee, and call it quits. After a year on the WP during which the WRAG person is obliged to only do what the WP tells them, i.e. nothing, they are then shunted onto the conditional ESA which is means tested. At the moment this is set (I think, please has anyone the latest figures?) so that if they have a partner working 16 hours at minimum wage ESA benefits stopped, as this income is meant to be able to support them both. They are dying faster than jobs are found. And these are people, who after all, are actually ill and/or severely disabled who by even DWP / ATOS standards are not actually fit to work.
It is imperative that this affront to humanity is stopped, and I would like the UN to send another Special Rapporteur immediately to stop this suffering and death.
In my opinion, Britain’s sick and disabled are being “parked” in the WRAG for the financial benefit of welfare providers.
Since January 2012, I have been reporting to senior UN officials, on a frequent and voluntary basis. The following response might interest you:
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1rp0uui
—
Samuel Miller
http://independent.academia.edu/SamuelMiller
E-Mail: disabilityinliterature@gmail.com
Blog: Hephaestus: Disability Studies
http://illnessandcivilization.blogspot.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/Hephaestus7
(Montreal, Canada)
(please keep links to a minimum if not relevant to the post, many thanks – jv)
“In my opinion, Britain’s sick and disabled are being “parked” in the WRAG for the financial benefit of welfare providers.”
It’s exactly the same for the able-bodied. Everybody I know on the Waste Programme is parked, some haven’t had an appointment for over 6 months, although they’re not complaining! The only thing the providers have got better at is in quickly deciding who to park, and who might get a job in the first few months. The whole thing is a £££££bn scam.
I concur. I recently had surgery but now fit to work I am dealing with Ingeus in Glasgow and my ”advisor” has missed 3 tele appointments with me I have now been assigned a new ”advisor” who has promised to get me into the sham call center job handling calls for the ”House of Fraser” whooopee fekin dooo! (I am a fully trained chef with 3rosette exp and 1 michelin star but cant get work cos of the influx of illegals in Glasgow)
Ingeus a welfare to work poverty pimp are cunts simples. Britain is broken and cam wank and his bunch of yes men are well in line for a guy fawkes style hammering! Fuk em all!!!
Jon Williams
I was living in Brighton when Thatcher was blown up in her hotel, I’m surprised I didn’t get the blame for that, I usually do for everything else that happens around me.
Failed the first time. Missed the second time. Do you really want to take the blame for being a bit rubbish and not being very good at addressing intended targets?
florence
the work related activity group rate is about 100quid/wk, support a few beans away i think 113/wk, un raquel rolnik, has indeed asked for personal a/c’s of wca/atos/esa, it takes a lot of energy to complain, many in wrag struggle with energy to do both..
for the awareness of others…for many, as i know are too upset and triggered, it takes a lot of energy, expressing the required upset, and then expected to have energy to keeping oneself together to perform, as is required in wrag…
these nasty people knowingly set up this dreadful paradox, and bully the most vulnerable into compliance with their schemes, as one’s survival depends on being paid these merge benefits…telling ones story is very draining , sickness and disability benefits were originally intended to provide sanctuary, they now are used to create purgatory..
what kind of fcuking country do we inhabit, if this barbarity can knowingly go on, on a daily basis?
Sorry for a very late reply – I wasn’t referring to the actual payment to the claimant, but to the costs of paying the WP provider for registering and after finding 3 months and 6 months work. The payments are eye-watering.
I agree with all you say about the horrors of dealing with the actual system & trying to cope with illness at the same time. It’s brutal.
I have been a share fisherman for 25 years.
My skipper has retired and sold the boat for scrap as fishing on the East coast of Scotland has become economic suicide, with unfair fishing quotas and the devilishly high price of derv.
Cameron is a fekin goon and the PURE asshole IDS needs a check up fi the neck up!
I’d like to see him bouncing around the North sea in a 40 foot fishing vessel at 3am in the morning in 60 foot swells with waves crashing all around, threatening to chuck you overboard!…. just so he can have a fish supper (that probably only MPs’ can afford).
So now I can’t get a job because nae cunrt wants a fisherman on their sales team in a dodgy call center etc. etc.
Call me up IDS and we’ll go punch for punch you fekin baldy fascist bastard.
Jon Williams
My father is an honourable member of our smallcrafts club where I worked part-time for a while and is where I learned all about the problems the fishermen were having with the EU fishing quotas that were destroying their businesses.
I’m going to do a bit of name dropping here too because my father during the second world war joined up for the navy and was stationed somewhere in Wales, he was engaged to my mother at the time but had a close friendship with Aneurin Bevan’s neice Mona who was living with Anuerin in
Cricketh I think that’s the name of it and we tease him about how we could have perhaps been part of the political set if he had not married my mother.
Criccieth; it is on the south side of the Llyn Peninsula
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thanks.
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@Jon williams, here, here
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Nothing we didn’t already know (unfortunately) …
looks like the tory party, lie fest. is going to be busy…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-24286582
Even they realise that it isn’t the jobless’ fault I’m sure. This is just the new fox-hunting for the Tories. It gives them sadistic pleasure and is also used to focus the sheeps attention away from the truth.
if you want to spew ya guts out good! BUT they are TORYS not tories!
Not according to the Oxford English Dictionary-
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/Tory and any other source I have checked.
When a singular noun ends in a vowel and a ‘y’, you just add an ‘s’, e.g. boy, boys; day, days; key, keys; if the word ends in a consonant and a ‘y’ you drop the ‘y’ and replace with ‘ies’, e.g. baby, babies; country, countries; spy, spies, Tory, Tories..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24324557
That’s the problem with these tory cunts, they can’t rip foxes to pieces any longer, so instead they rip the lives of the sick, disabled & unemployed apart, if they could get away with it they’d probably set the hounds on all claimants.. It’s their new blood(thirsty) sport.
Trouble is, it’s not a failure from the government’s point of view. Does anyone believe the real aim was ever to find paid jobs for people, or even to save money? It’s aim is solely to punish the poor and promote the lie that unemployment is caused by the laziness and inadequacy of the unemployed. In those aims the Work Programme is succeeding all too well.
evil fuckers hang the tory cunts ,,,
the other night I was thinking that for all the tory MPs there are (red, yellow and blue), there are many times more lamp posts. Surely someone has an unsold rope mountain somewhere. Or maybe it’s rope that is in short supply. Balance out this equation!
Esa wrag is joke been in this group for 4 years and nothings really happen. No advisor phone not hesrd out in over a year been tested twise put back same group. I am never going get better got fibromglia. Ibs .ect to many things to say 3 sugery ect.
So ids can fucking piss off stop pick one find hard live with out have all this on top me god I feel like I am better of died but that make the asshole happy.
People might also want to check up on the progress of M.E. activists and campaigners exposure of the only medical experiment the DWP has ever funded, the notorious PACE Trial study fraud. £5 million of taxpayers money wasted on trying to justify the Labour Government’s neoliberal biopsychosocial (BPS) disability denial ideology using M.E. patients as its guinea pigs (as usual).
The same Whitehall psychiatric mandarins who helped the DWP put together, on the back of a packet of fags, the human rights atrocity of the ESA regime received lavish public funding in return to prove that all long-term patients needed to get over their problems was to just cheer up and just get out and exercise. I’m not joking. That’s what the medical scientific basis of rehabilitation/recovery behind the whole ESA regime amounts to.
The fact that BPS “treatment” has no built in mechanism to record or report patient harms and deaths means that no politicians, professional medics and their governing and regulatory bodies, or privatised medical services such as those provided by fall-guy Atos (and its forthcoming replacement) can ever be held accountable for their singular and collective unethical behaviour.
joe
yeah, they have a very toxic medical model, of recovery…pull yourself together, cheer up, laugh more, make every effort, and you’ll be rushing around in no time..they toxically imply that we can fight our own physiology…like we are in a pitched battle with ourselves…
Thanks overburdendonkey.
In the psuedo-scientific jargon of the Whitehall medical-welfare mandarin class the folklore remedy of “pull yourself together, just cheer up and just get out nad exercise” has been renamed to CBT/GET to obfuscate its origins and make these shallow government policy apologists and justifying jobsworths sound deep and meaningful.
In a bizarre recent twist, and to the utter dismay of the disabled ME grassroots, the same failed BPS disability denial ideology is going to be used as the basis of a £1 million publicly funded experiment by Bristol University on children sick with neuro-immune M.E. This is the kind of unethical and out of control world our medical mandarins live in these days of ESA regime standards of science and medicine.
References –
Got ME? Just get out and exercise, say scientists
The Independent
18 Feb 2011
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/got-me-just-get-out-and-exercise-say-scientists-2218377.html
£1.2 million for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome research
http://www.bris.ac.uk/news/2013/9741.html
joe
don’t get me started on the abusive way CBT is used, CBT has very limited use as a precursor to deep and true psychotherapy, but never as a therapy in itself, people do use it as a “psychotherapy”, it can never ever get to true self, this whole “policy” is based on CBT..take history, ignore it, change the subject, and blame the victim, all manifold and complexly faceted, primarily stammers minds,.does no good and much harm, driven by denial ..like you rightly say it is wholly based on toxic folk lore and blood letting, not freeing minds, but gaining followers…see work of bob johnson and dorothy rowe she describes it well in her book, “beyond fear”..where CBT is used like a mind altering drug, it creates dependency on another, now why would anyone want to do that?…..
CBT says you’re simply thinking the wrong way!
Of course we are not at war with Eurasia, we have been at war with Eastasia all along! If you thought differently your brain is diseased!
If less than 5.5% of those on wrag have found work, what percentage of those were put out of work after closing down remploy factories?
Cant stand goverment bunch a criminals im long term unemployed i do my job search evry week 15 jobs i apply for n no one reads ur email ive got a year n 6months jobs search sheets since ive been on best n i wunt work for nowt i need a job with over 40 hours to keep me n pay for my flat goverment ant got a clue how to run this cuntry n the let evry body else n dont think about the own
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“Pick up your litter for your dole: Long-term unemployed would also clean up graffiti or cook for the elderly in Tory ‘work for benefits’ crackdown”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2438020/Pick-litter-dole-Long-term-unemployed-clean-graffiti-cook-elderly-Tory-work-benefits-crackdown.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
Need I say more? The fascist are really excelling themselves no aren’t they.
Both picking up litter from public places, and cleaning graffiti can be quite dangerous, who insures them, – could be a nice little earner.
This latest piece of crap is to cost £300 million, where exactly is all that dosh going to go? Will it be used to create wages for all these who have to scrub graffiti & pick up litter? Or is it to end up being trousered by the likes of that greedy cow Emma Harrison?
Can you imagine if mandated litter-picking for unemployed ‘job-seekers’ were in play – some of the types of people who’d delight in tipping ‘litter’ in a targeted fascist (fashion) to be able to enjoy watching them pick it up (even shouting ‘encouragement’ etc)? They’re probably already slavering at the prospect & can’t wait for this new, cheap form of entertainment. This just can’t happen. (or, “let’s just be done with it & bring back bear-baiting”).
Shirl
Those that delight in tipping litter at the litter pickers expense, usually do it from car windows, they wouldn’t dare do it in front of them otherwise they might find themselves face down in unbagged dog shit.
~ true.
**OFF TOPIC**
https://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/tory-sleaze-is-back-george-osborne-in-cocaine-and-kink-scandal/
‘George Osborne’s dominatrix friend is ready to tell all’, Richard Eden, Daily Telegraph, 29 Sep 2013
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10341440/George-Osbornes-dominatrix-friend-is-ready-to-tell-all.html
Did someone mention ‘picking’ and ‘oakum’?
It obvious some of these creeps from Eton College and such like places really do in their heart of hearts believe this gumpff. Allit takes is to give the poor and the sick and disabled a bit of “encouragement. Once we’ve had a taste of work, that wil be us. We will find a job all by ourselves all by magic, and that we will all live life will be happy ever after….. its just that aint no jobs are there any more, but they don’t want to see that. And they seem to be ever so proud of themselves about all these suicides and heart attacks. It’s time then we stopped them being proud!
But it will be interesting to see what happens tomoro. I hear they want plebs to attend jobcentres everyday and do “Community Service”…..Isn’t that sort of kind of …like illegal??? I mean how does the REGIME actually criminalize the unemployed without them having passed a law in “Parliament” making it a criminal offence? And they aim to bring this in 6 months from now. April perhaps?
And to do 30 hrs a week, and how do they get by the min wage rules?
I’d like to see how Cleggy foot soldiers tries sell that one!
Notice Tories waited ‘till after the libdemers had their jamboree out the way first. Obviously they knew full well that would have caused them to go into nuclear meltdown, especially as they were in Glasgow.
I have been with Ingeus up here and due to end a few days time. Last appointment was many long months ago. 3 cancelled appointments as the advisors had either been unwell (the irony) or left or been changed or just got lost trying to find Glasgow Cross.
I am fairly astonished that the so called advisors couldn’t tell me where Glasgow Cross was, even though the high tower in the middle of the road a mere 5 blocks along the street from their office is somewhat hard to miss.
These Ingeus ppl all start off all enthusiastic, but soon find themselves, less enthusiastic, and then….they simply don’t be there any more. Working Links over at the Central Station are notorious for losing staff after a mere few weeks.
I kind think this new workfare idea from the NEW NAZIS may well lead to more trouble than they expect.
What is the part that used to be “Labour” going to say??
I notice the same pattern. As regards the big stick approach to getting long term unemployed into work (I think that is already being applied anyway having to attend Work Programme and such like and sanctions etc), they don’t seem to get the fact that employers, in the main, don’t want long-term unemployed no matter how much that unemployed person wants a job. They will look at the CV and as soon as they see the work history the CV will enter the bin. The unemployed long-term cannot win unless the jobs are provided by the government who are prepared to overlook their history. Employers will not! However, my experience with government jobs is that they are just as prejudiced as the commercial private sector when looking at your CV. They talk a good talk though!
Very true JD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most-wanted_Iraqi_playing_cards
UK version? People from politics, business, twonks like Oakley, journalists, etc
Who are the most wanted in the UK?
*erm…’wonks’ (or to be more precise cunts)
The system has nothing to do with placing disabled people into work, more overly the decision letter from the DWP when you are placed into the WRAG group,includes a sentence that reads something like this “Disabled benefits to end in 12 months”…..Its an unanswered question I had posed to the then unemployment Szar Chris Grayling on a web conference ran by eithier rethinkl or mind – can’t remember which but here’s the question I posed before the new reforms had begun:-
“Being a bit paranoid, what can the minister say to placate my suspicion that this is an attempt to push the long term claimant onto a lower benefit, via a failed attempt at gaining or keeping work?”
I predicted the outcome before it had even started…of course like all MP’s he avoided direct embarassing questions and plummed for the ones that called for hot air and double-speak
interesting figure at the time te PM granted himself and his chums an extra 5% tax relief, the savings on welfare totalled £3.2 billion, the tax break cost £5.2 billion….guess where the short-fall is going to come from?.
That pretty much sums it up Steven.
Most disability benefits are higher than JSA, and Govt wants that to end
Many strange new rules came into force under Labour in 2006, whereby some poor pleb getting the standard sickness benefit at the JSA rate for several months, suddenly found they had a bit extra as their money went up after a certain period….but and I had a pal who really got to me by saying I was trying to fake it for the extra pesos, and I would dispute with him on that…but as the pesos went up …in came the extra for Council Tax…and as it went up a little more…in came the extra for the Housing Benefit. By “in came” I mean the extra bills that was. You had to pay towards your Council Tax and Housing benefit as you were now getting what the Govt.. (the “Labour” Govt) said was more than what you needed to live in. i.e more than JSA.
Council tax was easy enough to work out, but the Housing took months for the local housing office to figure out, and by the time they knew how much you were to pay…you already were owing them several hundred. So you were off on the sick, but a lot poorer than anyone on standard JSA, because of these little extras.
Oh…and you had to pay for your doctor’s prescriptions.
Once I was given 2 pres, but I opted for the one. Eventually I told doc not to bother with them as I didn’t think they were doing me any good, and anyhows, could no longer afford them.
So that puts to bed the lie that everyone on benefits got free prescriptions, that Labour’s Jaonnie Lamint likes to keep telling everybody in Edinburgh..
Now I could get away with skipping a prescription. My life did not depend upon on it, but a young student, in Glasgow I think did depend on his. But being unable to afford the two he was given, went for one. The poor guy died. And that was under Labour.
So it is as you say, nothing whatsoever about getting ill, and disabled ppl into work, but about making sure they have less money
Things like that is what lost “Labour” the last election. It was not the tories just going back to tory, but the poor saw nothing to vote Labour for.
Regards what I wrote above about the new workfare proposals being kept quiet from the lib dems, I now realise I was wrong ‘bout that. It is not a mere tory policy, this IS GOVERNMENT POLICY.
As such, Nick Clegg would have known full well this was coming. It would have been discussed and signed off at meetings in Downing Street. Gideon Osborne did not come up with this idea over the last week. It has been trail blazed by the Nazi propaganda media over the weekend. And even with a proposed time line.
Clegg knew all right, and has kept it from his activists the other week. The guy is an evil little Nazi sympathiser.
Also, as this is Regime policy….and of such importance, it should have been announced first in the House of Commons, and be voted upon.
Having done it this way, appears to me to be in contempt of Parliament.
I am sure now all the little useless lib demers will be sure proud of themselves now.
The most evil, satanic mind Regime for centuries in these islands, and they are “proud”
Though I somehow doubt it will happen they way they want it to……
There could well do trouble over this one.
I’m thinking of starting a business making black shirts, the amount of nazi’s there appears to be in this country should see me doing a roaring trade.
Who else would love it if IDS got a stroke and ended up disabled for the rest of his life?
I’d settle for him to get a house visit from Dr Trager.
I think a visit from Dr Mengele would be more appropriate.
When we took power in Germany(now England?), we announced for the first time our intention to establish a Reich Labor Service. Many superficial observers of our movement believed that we did this only to give employment to our unemployed people and to our youth growing up with nothing to do, that we would sweep them from the streets into “work camps.” We know that it is surely better for the German(english) youth to work rather than to wander about without purpose or meaning. And not only in the sense of simply putting the unemployed to work. We wanted to found a new National Socialist university! http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/pt36lab.htm
I remember someone on these boards who would pretend to be IDS having one of his rants, he would invariably tell everyone that he wouldn’t stop until he had everyone ‘hauled into the Jobcentre every fucking day!!!’.
Life now apparently seems to be imitating parody as George Osborne seems to think having jobseekers hauled into the Jobcentre every day is a wonderful idea.
Anyway, that’s me despairing at the state of humanity for the day anyway.
We might be allowed into the JCP for a little light relief (job search) in between 13 hour litter-picking/graffiti removal stints …. if the temperature outside falls below, say -10 or is extremely hot for more than 2 consecutive, unbroken hours in any 8 hour shift …
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“Minister looking at making it harder for sick and disabled to claim benefits”
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/30/iain-duncan-smith-sick-disabled-benefits?commentpage=4
keep smilin were all in it togeather
I don’t think I can take much more of this government and the society it’s shaping.
Swings and roundabouts, my friend. This too will scrapped in X amount of years (once it’s succeeded in winning some votes and so forth) so that another Party can preach it again in X number of years. They can’t fix everything, then there would be no fixin’ left to preach, therefore nothing sustains and the social game goes round and round.
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last year my father died and as if that wasn’t enough I got sanctioned the week of his funeral because according to the JCP I didn’t look for enough jobs that week.
I can’t describe how this effected me! I had no money for three months and all this happened in the coldest winter for 50 years.
I couldn’t take my daughter to school as I couldn’t afford her bus fare nor could I launder her school uniform.
The only power I could afford to have on was the lighting and the TV (I’m on a prepay meter), my daughter and I walked around the shops to keep warm in the daytime and at night we huddled together in bed to keep warm.
I had to walk 3 miles in the ice and snow to the foodbank and then they couldn’t feed us every week.
I know that if I didn’t have my daughter I’d have killed myself! The ironic thing is, I’d tried for months to get work and never got an interview, so I was sanctioned out of pure cruelty!
Were it not for the help I received off a family member (who’s a pensioner and didn’t really have the money to spare), a friend that helped me with the appeal paperwork and The Guardian newspaper that heard of my plight and helped me too.
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