I don’t mind being nuked as long as it’s instant.

They’ll never do this. The government feeds all of the news stories about how benefit claimants have it too good because they want people to hate us and turn against benefits, so they can cut them without backlash. That’s why, despite most benefit claimants struggling on a pittance, there are always news stories about the very few who are doing well on benefits, making out it’s like that for everyone. Just the other day there was a woman bragging in a news article that she’s a benefit claimant and that she’s going to get an extra 5K or something a year, and now angry people are writing articles about how this show people on benefits get too much and it needs to be stopped.

There was stuff in the news a few years ago about how DWP staff were filmed by an undercover person, amusing themselves by making up their own quotas of how many people to refuse benefits to, literally refusing people benefits just for fun. The entire system is designed to torment people rather than help.

Thanks for the bump!

ty

Thanks for the bump!

At this stage I wouldn’t be surprised if we all end up getting herded into gas chambers as useless eaters. Quite frankly at this point it would be a relief for me.

I had a summer job as an au pair in Finland many years ago. While I loved the country, I was absolutely shocked by the number of homeless people, and the state of them. Huge numbers of very elderly men dressed in filthy, literal rags with actual holes in their boots, sleeping outside in the street. The family I worked for also seemed to struggle to afford food despite both parents being in work. The portions we were given were so tiny I would always go out for extra food at night. The kids were always starving, they would snatch food off my plate when their parents weren’t looking. One night I was left home alone with the kids and realised there was nothing to feed them. I phoned the mother who told me to just give them fruit. But there was nothing in the bowl but a pear. I divided the pear between the younger kids and me and the older kid got nothing. The parents seemed to think this was acceptable and the kids seemed used to it.

Yes the UK has been doing this for decades. I’ve been aware of it from 25 years ago. I had a friend at the time who’d been unemployed for a while. He’d been to a school so awful it had been shut down, so through no fault of his own he had left with no GCSEs and barely literate. He had trouble even filling in job application forms. After being unemployed for about 2 years they told him he had to start earning his jobseeker’s allowance. And what they mad him do was just plain weird. He had to stand in the town centre, fundraising from passersby and then use the money to round up all the homeless people in town and take them on a day trip.

In the years after that, unemployed people on benefits were forced to work full time in shops such as Poundland. They didn’t actually get paid wages for this, they just carried on getting their pittance of jobseekers allowance. A woman who was forced to do this took the government to court after the government stopped her from doing voluntary work in a museum and forced her to work for free (except for her JSA) in poundland instead.

A man who was told to do unpaid labour cleaning furniture and refused, also sued the government. The court ruled that these people should be allowed to retain their JSA. However even today people who don’t find a job within 18 months can be forced to take a work placement or “intensive activity” or lose their benefits. These work placements are usually menial stuff that won’t help the person obtain a long term job. It would be better to focus on helping people develop useful skills but we’re still living in a Victorian mentality where people need to be punished rather than helped.

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The world does seem to be falling apart.