Austerity

GillT75, I cannot see myself as a Bamber Gascoine.
I do enjoy reading though, and pick up snippets.

As for the DWP, from which I have rudely diverted the thread ,
It was intended and introduced as a replacement for Jobseekers allowance and perhaps could have been good for that purpose. We will never know, because those with most targets to reach and least understanding of its workings and limitations thought if it can do one benefit it can do another, and another, and another.....like saying a spreadsheet can also stand in for a word processor, and a database.........and so on..... So it had to be patched and tweaked and hacked and recoded and bodged and compromised, each party involved just doing enough to tick a box and pass it on.........
So by sheer mismanagement what may have been a useful updating of a benefit ( Jobseekers) ended up as fit for nothing except randomness and unexpected consequence.
Amazngly some parts of it do work well enough to manage complete claims, and some recipients claim they are better off than under their previous benefits, but these are the exception and not the rule. Any deviance from what it can handle and it freezes and becomes unworkable and getting human intervention is nigh impossible because of how it is written.....So people are left high and dry.
Progress eh?

So glad to read your story stree, and hope you are recovering well. Yes, there are decent, caring people working within the system, and you were very lucky to have found one. It must be a most demoralising place to work, with people shouting, swearing, crying on the phone and in front of you. What is undeniable though is the time taken to process new claims, even in their last budget ( I believe) the government acknowledged the delays and proudly announced the processing time would be reduced from 6 weeks to 5 weeks. Poor comfort if you need to pay your rent and feed your children. Incidentally, with your store of facts, you could have a new hobby as a quiz master!

A horse has 44 chromosones, a donkey 42, so the offspring would have a useless 43, a sterile mule.
Each cell in a human body has a string of DNA 2 meters long
Aforesaid cell starts as one and divides, then those divide, this happens 47 times and makes 10 thousand trillion cells.
Veni Vidi Vici is often attributed to Caesar, but he borrowed it from a Greek General who said it 400 years before....
The Sun is 159 million kilometres away (depending on your sat nav)

and so on, ad deplorum

AH Uni A La 3rd age............too busy for that, and not very academic......Full of useless knowledge though.

U3A?

It certainly does.
How did we ever find time to go to work?
U3A - that could fill your week if you let it!

Jalima1108, yes of course she would wish to help, and now the cat is out of the bag she does, uncomplainingly, although it is difficult not to feel a burden sometimes in those quiet moments, the wrench from being a very practical "doer" of things to being unable can be difficult..... but I think I am adjusting ok, I have replaced things I used to do with easier to cope with things. Photograhy, watercolour painting, building computers, all about manageable if you take on the right aspects.
I never sit and mope, always things to do and consider and life has a habit of filling itself up if you leave yourself open to it!

stree I hope you are now on the mend and learning to take life more easily.

I think the moral of your story is - yes, the system can be like a maze to get through but there are people who work in the system who want to help and it is just finding the right person who has both the knowledge and the empathy to help you through that maze of paperwork.

Sometimes trying to simplify systems makes it all more bureaucratic in the end which is not the aim.

Of course, being a man, I buttoned it all up and shared with no-one, not even my Wife
And I am sure your wife would want to share your troubles and help you through it all.

That was to your eaelier post btw!
Glad to hear you are taking a more laid back view of life now.

Very heart warming stree and no doubt there are others in the same line of work doing the same.

PS 2 weeks after this I was rushed to hospital by ambulance at 3 in the morning, severe chest infection, severe COPD diagnosed and 212 over 96 blood pressure, weight dropped dramatically.
In for 2 weeks............. still around now but learning to take life differently

It is not always as you might imagine:

My own travels into the world of ESA, PIP and the powers that be.

After a lifetime of self employment, I was having to turn work away because I knew I could not manage it anymore, I felt weak and exhausted, a general feeling rather than anything specific on top of a scarcity of work anyway. A grim and gloomy time.
I began asking about what support if any there might be financially but unfortunately in my innocence about such things I rang the council Social Services. I thought they dealt with such things.
No matter what approach or person I spoke with, the answer was negative, compounded by being self employed I was told. By this time I was really feeling low and at a loss. I cashed in a few small pension plans, and a few Lloyds shares from when the Halifax died. That put about £150 in the business bank account.
Then someone suggested Employment support allowance…...I made the initial 40 minute phone call and waited for the transcript, that I was to edit if needed and fill in further detail that was not to hand in the phone call…….I had a certain time to get this done and posted back.
I looked on line for guidance and found forums about this and other benefits and read about others experiences..
Dreadful tales of woe, unfairness, despicable treatment, denial of sorely needed help and so on and I became more and more convinced that this ESA exercise was a waste of time.
In fact about a week before it was due back, I was so disillusioned and convinced by the tales I had read that I stuck it in the bin in my workshop and then really felt helpless and drained of hope and even the will to go on……Of course, being a man, I buttoned it all up and shared with no-one, not even my Wife……….Stupid yes, also tragically typical.
Roll forward to the Friday before the completed paperwok was due back by the following Monday:
I was in my workshop, still going through the motions of having work to do, hiding from the world I suppose, when at about 4:15 PM my wife brought the landline cordless phone out saying that someone was asking for me.
It was someone from DWP, concerned that my paperwork had not been sent in yet and asking if I needed help with the form, and I have to admit I spoke just as I felt, that it was a cruel waste of time, etc etc and I had put it in the bin.”Do you still have it?” Yes, it is in the bin. “Can you get it and we can go through it quickly, I am sure we can do something” I hesitated, but got it anyway.
I read out my alterations and additions section by section and she made notes at her end….Then she asked If I had a sick note, I replied no, no-one to hand it to being self employed..
By now it was about 20 to 5………...she asked about my GP…. Then my National insurance number, then said she was hanging up but please wait, she will definitely be ringing back shortly.

She rang back having checked my Nat Ins record ( full) then rang my GP who agreed I qualified for a sick note, she asked for him to fax it to her without delay, she then completed my form at the DWP end, then rang me and told me my first ESA payment would be with me by Tuesday and 13 weeks backpay by the end of the week…..It was by now well after 5 on a Friday evening and well past the time she would have normally finished.
To say my faith was restored in human nature is understating it. I did not know how to thank her enough…...She wished me well and rang off
So when people say that the DWP are all evil and so on, I know different. I know at least one Angel works there.

I eventually ended up in Support group, with a review date of 2023, and on PIP with Higher mobility award and a daily care award, both of which face to face assessments were unrushed courteous and truthfully with better outcomes than anticipated and 10 years review dates.

This sort of story never makes the news, rarely appears on chats, blogs forums etc, as we know, good news is no news……..even though it just might lend a little hope to those who need it most.

It’s never impossible to hold onto your humanity with any job, and if everyone had a proper asessment which suited their needs it wouldn’t happen. Sadly, bureaucracy has been ever thus, it was for me (over 50 years ago!)

That's good to hear, POGS.
It is important to show that the system does work, too.
Mine wasn't pip, but esa, the 'temporarily unable to work' benefit.
I decided my mental health was more threatened by trying to have a little time off than it was to just go back to work.

MissAdventure

Well actually I have been fortunate this year because my PIP assessment was courteously handled and after many years of trying to get higher rate mobility this was passed.

I am not crowing about it but putting another side to the situation.

Its a pity isn't it, POGS to realise that things are no further forward?

MissAdventure

It was no different when I was made redundant in 2000 !

To answer your question, jura, it is astoundingly dishonest of May to promise the 'end of austerity'.

She cannot possibly achieve it while subscribing to neo-liberal economic beliefs and running the country in accordance with them.

We are just a number not a human being to them MissAdventure. Ripped to pieces by grief and expected to fight for everything we need.

I found the humiliation hard to cope with.

When I found a part time job I paid tax and NIC , when I was on the sick for two weeks I applied for sickness benefit, refused, I asked why because I was paying NIC, I was told
‘We are keeping you once , not keeping you twice. I didn’t know widowed mothers allowance prevented me from any other financial support.

Austerity anyone? Do you really believe that at this catastrophic stage in the negotiations, it is honest of Mrs May to promise the end of austerity?

I really don't expect the Tories to change Universal Credit much, it would cost to much and go back to what?. Much more likely are tax changes for those in work, but who knows what Hammond is going to come up with, or how it's going to be paid for.

Yes, it was, Annie.
I don't consider myself to be particularly fragile, mentally, but for those who are... well, they have my deepest sympathy, because the system is just awful.
I didn't get my certificate, because I couldn't and didn't want to argue with the gp about why I shouldn't have to work. (Totally humiliating!) so I went without money for around the last 7 weeks before starting my job.
Job coach was unable to help at all about what I should do for money whilst waiting for my start date, and I was just too worn out to spend any more time on the phone, in the job centre, and so on.

Grim MissAdventure and cruel x

I was also asked "do you want to claim contributions based job seekers, or another type?" (Can't remember the term used) as if I knew all about a benefit I had never claimed before.
Its all these little embarrassing things, carried out in front of everyone else which really really drag you down.
"Go to the doctors and get a certificate if you say you're too ill to work".
Gp produces a letter which advises her to 'support' me by not issuing a certificate, since during my half hour medical I wasn't 'rocking to and fro', I said I can get in and out of the bath ok, and I coped well with the medical. (I cried all the way through it. The nurse had to keep stopping to wait for me to get myself together.

When I was widowed I was allowed widowed mothers allowance £10 less that the full amount because of my age, I was told ‘ young widows do marry again or enter a relationship. This was 42 years ago. I was assessed on what may happen not as the situation was at the time.