Benefit sanctions

[Kyle]

The fact that we have a parliament set up which uses a decent chunk of its budget to ensure the most vulnerable in our country aren't hit as badly as down south is at least a blessing for most of the poor fuckers so badly affected by this Tory Government. Utterly astonishing that they have to consider that at all in their plans.

[Antlion]

The fact that we have a parliament set up which uses a decent chunk of its budget to ensure the most vulnerable in our country aren't hit as badly as down south is at least a blessing for most of the poor fuckers so badly affected by this Tory Government. Utterly astonishing that they have to consider that at all in their plans.

And yet unionist parties have the temerity to complain about the Scottish government not doing enough to alleviate the draconian policies inflicted by the government *they* wanted to be sovereign. They have no shame.

ETA: For example, there's an absolute raging BritNat cuntwangler on the DigitalSpy forum I read who is gleefully posting "good news, the Scottish government will have the money to reverse the Tory tax policy". It's like these people can take breaks from jerking it into Union Jack hankies only long enough to expect the Scottish government to play good cop to the UK's bad cop - even though they absolutely demand that the latter must be in overall charge of Scotland.

[Loki]

I have recently signed on to the Universal Credit system as my contract ended last month. I don't get anything for the first seven days of my claim, and I will not receive any money for seven weeks. In that time I have to work 35 hours a week looking for work. If I do not document this I will receive sanctions.

I live in a rural area, where there isn't a dirth of jobs. In fact most of the jobs on the government website are the same jobs advertised five times by five different agencies. In the last week I have applied for as many jobs as I could and have secured two interviews. I have searched all the websites and papers and have logged on each day to do so. However I am nowhere near doing 35 hours a week. It is impossible. Maybe if I was in Glasgow I could quite possibly do 35 hours.

At any point in this seven weeks if I do not fulfill my agreement my claim will be stopped and sanctions added. Seems a very bizarre concept, that seems to have been thought of in a think tank. In a more rural place in the Highlands which isn't serviced by public transport you would have no chance of fulfilling these 35 hours.

[Benjamin_Nevis]

I have recently signed on to the Universal Credit system as my contract ended last month. I don't get anything for the first seven days of my claim, and I will not receive any money for seven weeks. In that time I have to work 35 hours a week looking for work. If I do not document this I will receive sanctions.

I live in a rural area, where there isn't a dirth of jobs. In fact most of the jobs on the government website are the same jobs advertised five times by five different agencies. In the last week I have applied for as many jobs as I could and have secured two interviews. I have searched all the websites and papers and have logged on each day to do so. However I am nowhere near doing 35 hours a week. It is impossible. Maybe if I was in Glasgow I could quite possibly do 35 hours.

At any point in this seven weeks if I do not fulfill my agreement my claim will be stopped and sanctions added. Seems a very bizarre concept, that seems to have been thought of in a think tank. In a more rural place in the Highlands which isn't serviced by public transport you would have no chance of fulfilling these 35 hours.

Good luck. Universal Credit is going to be absolute hell when it reaches Angus.

The Scottish Welfare Fund and foodbanks will be fucking deluged by people in your situation.

[Ad Lib]

Because the government have convinced the public that these people are at fault for the country's ills. Look at all the "poverty porn" shite like Benefits Street on TV. When was the last series or journalistic investigation into tax avoidance by large companies? Or the last special on benefits unclaimed by people that have entitlement?

Both of those are far in excess of money spent on benefit cheats.

Pretty sure Panorama and Dispatches have done a few specials on tax avoidance and evasion in the last few years. They've also done documentaries on poverty in Britain and how even those in employment are on the breadline:

1. Panorama: The Bank of Tax Cheats (February 2015) (HSBC gaming the tax system for their clients)

2. Panorama: Workers on the Breadline (October 2014) (in-work poverty)

3. Panorama: Britain's Homeless Families (June 2014) (landlord malpractice)

4. Panorama: Don't Cap My Benefits (May 2014) (looking at the benefit cap's effect on those in areas of high housing costs)

5. Panorama: Hungry Britain (March 2014) (foodbanks)

6. Panorama: Tax, Lies and Video Tape (September 2013) (tax lobbying)

7. Panorama: Inside Barclays: Banking on Bonuses (February 2013) (banking culture)

8. Panorama: Undercover: Debt on the Doorstep (October 2012) (predatory lending in disadvantaged communities)

9. Panorama: The Truth about Tax (May 2012) (secret tax deals especially involving Luxembourg)

10. Panorama: All Work and Low Pay (October 2011) (non-payment of the national minimum wage)

Then there was "The Super Rich and Us", a BBC documentary series that uncovered the tax-courting the UK Treasury has done of non-doms and the globally super-wealthy. Broadcast January this year.

1. Dispatches: Britain's Benefits Crack-down (March 2015) (investigation into impacts of benefits sanctions regime)

2. Dispatches: Low Pay Britain (January 2015)

3. Dispatches: How the Rich Get Richer (November 2014) (investigation into growing wealth inequality)

4. Dispatches: Benefits Britain (October 2014) (a scathing critique of Universal Credit)

5. Dispatches: Breadline Kids (June 2014) (child poverty investigation)

6. Dispatches: Benefits Britain: The Bedroom Tax (February 2014)

7. Dispatches: Rich and on Benefits (March 2013) (investigation into how pensioners have been protected while others reliant on welfare have theirs cut)

8. Dispatches: Secret of Your Boss' Pay (October 2012)

9. Dispatches: Secrets of the Taxman (July 2012)

10. Dispatches: How the Rich Beat the Tax Man (2010)

This list isn't exhaustive. We have a lot of media scrutiny of tax avoidance and evasion and of the poverty that exists in this country. The notion that it's "all about benefit scroungers" is something you can only believe if the only media you're consuming is the Daily Mail and Daily Express.

[kevthedee]

I'm quite sure they will.

Assuming they are blinkered, ill informed, stupid, gullible, easily swayed and have no free thought.

Thats right fide us working class cant think for ourselves.

[The Master]

Do you realise, in the grand scheme of things, how very little benefit claimants who "can't be arsed" drain from the system?

I hope you're enraged by orders of magnitude more by Government after Government failing to reign in tax avoidance/ evasion?

I'm not sure what your point is.

My original post was just saying that sanctions should be used in cases of people who don't visit the Job Centre simply because they can't be arsed. It's nothing to do with the amount of money sanctioning such people could save.

And for the record, yes I do think the Government should reign in tax avoidance/evasion. But the relevance to the current topic currently eludes me.

[strichener]

All the talk of cracking down on Tax evasion and/or avoidance ignores the fact that even if the Tories collected every penny that they could, it would be used to reduce corporation tax and wealth taxes. It is ideologically what they stand for. You could even look at the existing measure taken by companies to avoid paying tax as keeping tax rates artificially high.

[Addie]

I'm not sure what your point is.

My original post was just saying that sanctions should be used in cases of people who don't visit the Job Centre simply because they can't be arsed. It's nothing to do with the amount of money sanctioning such people could save.

And for the record, yes I do think the Government should reign in tax avoidance/evasion. But the relevance to the current topic currently eludes me.

Im fine with giving genuinely lazy b*****ds a kick up the arse when needed. However when the impact is on their kids not eating I draw the line.

[BerwickMad]

Im fine with giving genuinely lazy b*****ds a kick up the arse when needed. However when the impact is on their kids not eating I draw the line.

That's why social services should be involved if parents can't be arsed to do something which provides for their kids.

[Addie]

That's why social services should be involved if parents can't be arsed to do something which provides for their kids.

No. No it's not. Just because someone is skint doesn' t mean they are shit parents and the overall cost of having to foster these kids would cost the taxpayer even more. You would go from having kids removed from parents who might be workshy but fine enough to look after their kids, and even more public spending at the expense of other services such at Primary Care.

[BerwickMad]

No. No it's not. Just because someone is skint doesn' t mean they are shit parents and the overall cost of having to foster these kids would cost the taxpayer even more. You would go from having kids removed from parents who might be workshy but fine enough to look after their kids, and even more public spending at the expense of other services such at Primary Care.

If they're too lazy to provide for their child then they aren't good parents imo. I didn't mentioned someone simply being skint. It's a basic part of being a parent for me, doing all you can to provide for them. I stress again that these are the minority of cases, and I didn't talk about them getting their kids taken off them, but they certainly need help and guidance in how to look after their children. Not every case referred to social services is about removing children.

[invergowrie arab]

That's why social services should be involved if parents can't be arsed to do something which provides for their kids.

First this such blindingly obvious point it's barely worth making. What also makes it an absolutely worthless contribution is the number of parents who "can't be arsed" looking after their kids is so miniscule. It's a complete strawman in the context of a discussion on sanctions.

Secondly it would be fine and well to pontificate on what social services should be doing if the other front of Westminster's ideological war wasn't focussed on the public sector.

[Ad Lib]

There is not an "ideological war" on the public sector.

This is meaningless hyperbole not supported by the facts. Many public sector areas have seen real-terms increases in their funding in the last 5 years despite constraints on total levels of public spending. In England spending on schools and healthcare has gone up in real terms.

Certainly there has been attempts to cut certain aspects of welfare particularly hard, and quite a few of these measures have been hard-edged, ill-conceived and have made life worse for a lot of vulnerable people.

This is not the same as there being an "ideological war" on the public sector or the disadvantaged.

Governments get confronted with difficult decisions. Often they make bad decisions. Often their motives are partially at variance with the general public. Often they just genuinely disagree with you about what is necessary to deliver a fairer society. It's not malice.

Not rating their record is a good reason to kick them out of office. But presenting them as some sort of evil incarnate, or suggesting that elected politicians literally want to dismantle the state as we know it, is nonsense and hyperbole. It is just as hyperbolic and inaccurate as the notion that Jeremy Corbyn hates Britain.

[lichtgilphead]

There is not an "ideological war" on the public sector.

Governments get confronted with difficult decisions. Often they make bad decisions. Often their motives are partially at variance with the general public. Often they just genuinely disagree with you about what is necessary to deliver a fairer society. It's not malice.

Would you care to comment upon the ideological measures contained within the Consumer Rights Act 2015?

The feedback I've received so far would suggest that legitimate traders are up in arms about the fact that "dodgy" traders will now receive advance notification of routine inspections by enforcement agencies.

I would be interested in your reasoning as to why this should be considered to be an advance in consumer protection.

[Tibbermoresaint]

The Conservatives have been waging an ideological war on the public sector for the last 40 years.

To claim otherwise is to deny reality.

[welshbairn]

The Conservatives have been waging an ideological war on the public sector for the last 40 years.

To claim otherwise is to deny reality.

I can only think that Ad Lib is about to announce his switch to the Tories. Make a fairer society by cutting taxes on the rich and income for the poor? Ripping apart the social housing stock even more by forcing Housing Associations to sell at far below market value? The bedroom tax? Stopping benefits to the terminally ill? If they thought they could privatise the NHS and just about every British institution and get away with it electorally, they would.

[Ad Lib]

Would you care to comment upon the ideological measures contained within the Consumer Rights Act 2015?

The feedback I've received so far would suggest that legitimate traders are up in arms about the fact that "dodgy" traders will now receive advance notification of routine inspections by enforcement agencies.

I would be interested in your reasoning as to why this should be considered to be an advance in consumer protection.

1. I didn't even know this statute existed until you mentioned it.

2. Which measures, specifically, do you think are "ideological"?

3. What in the name of any deity of choice makes you think that a statute that, as far as I can see, consolidates and amends the general framework of the sale and supply of goods and services in a way that incorporates, among other things, digital content into that legal framework and widens applicability of alternative dispute resolution to sale and supply of goods and services, is in any way relevant to the question of whether or not "Westminster" is directing an "ideological war" against "the public sector"?

[Ad Lib]

I can only think that Ad Lib is about to announce his switch to the Tories. Make a fairer society by cutting taxes on the rich and income for the poor? Ripping apart the social housing stock even more by forcing Housing Associations to sell at far below market value? The bedroom tax? Stopping benefits to the terminally ill? If they thought they could privatise the NHS and just about every British institution and get away with it electorally, they would.

It is possible to:

1. Create a less fair society

2. Fail to build enough new social houses

3. Pursue a misguided policy of underselling social housing stock

4. Introduce an unfair and punitive set of restrictions on eligibility for housing benefit

5. Adopt a welfare sanctions scheme that fails to protect the terminally ill

Without "waging an ideological war" against the public sector or being evil people.

I think the Tories are, for the most part, just really bad policy-makers who don't properly understand the nature of many of the long-term challenges this country faces. They're not evil. They're not motivated by an ideological desire to stop the state from providing important basic public services.

There is no way in hell that they would privatise the NHS. This is the kind of thing that possesses the minds of a handful of inconsequential Tories on the back-benches and in think tanks. It has no practical bearing on their approach to government and even if they had a 100 seat majority right now they would not privatise the NHS. The extent to which they involve the private sector is no more "ideological" than just about every single other country in the world's politicians are "ideological" for having private sector involvement in their healthcare. To suggest otherwise is to say that pretty much every single centre-left party in Europe is waging an ideological war to dismantle the public sector because their health service runs on a form of insurance model delivered by private providers under state subsidy.

Portraying the Tories as ideological public sector destroyers is a facile and stupid argument that distracts from real and effective criticism of their decisions in government.

[kevthedee]

You voted for Scotland to be a minor region of a largely right-wing country which then overwhelmingly voted Tory in May. You must have had a crystal tear glistening in your eye listening to Cameron say how much he loved every "part" of our "one nation" at his conference - after all, you helped ensure he stayed in power and has every right, constitutionally, to govern Scotland.

Simply put, the UK's Tory government/s would cease to be able to inflict their policies on Scotland were it not for your gleeful "No" vote. As I've said: enjoy the consequences of being Better Together.

Your anger and bitterness should be aimed towards the SNP.

It was the SNP job to convince a majority of people that a yes vote was the right way forward for scotlands future and that we could govern our own country.

Perhaps you should question the SNP and why they failed and blame them for us still being better together.