When on Job Seekers Allowance, you are living on/below the bread line, so life is tough and stressful. To be "sanctioned" (having your benefits stopped) is obviously a very serious event, so you would imagine those caring advisers, who are there to help you, would take the matter of "sanctioning" people as a last resort. However, the reality is they don't give a damn and carry out "sanctions" in an arbitrary, vindictive, callous and very mean low-life manner.
The following are some of the reasons for people being "sanction" pushed into deprivation, taken from the site
DWP Uspun:
Cruel, arbitrary and ridiculous reasons why people have their
benefits stopped.
You’re a 60-year-old army veteran who volunteers to sell poppies
for the Royal British Legion in memory of fallen comrades. You’ve
applied for dozens of jobs – including the supermarket where you
sold the poppies – but without success. You are sanctioned for four
weeks.
You get a job interview. It’s at the same time as your job
centre appointment, so you reschedule the job centre. You attend your
rearranged appointment and then get a letter saying your benefits
will be stopped because going to a job interview isn’t a good
enough reason to miss an appointment.
Your gran dies during the night. The next morning your partner
calls the job centre and asks if you can come in the following day
instead. The centre agrees, and you sign in the next day. Then you
get a letter stating that you failed to sign in and would be
sanctioned if you don’t reply within seven days. You reply,
explaining the situation. The job centre gives you a six-week
sanction for not replying.
You’ve signed in on time, been to interviews and applied for
work. Your job centre advisor suggests you make a two-line change to
your CV, which you do, but fail to give the updated CV to the job
centre (you weren’t told you had to). You are sanctioned for four
weeks.
You work for 20 years and then miss a job centre
appointment because you haven’t had the process clearly
explained. You are sanctioned for 3 weeks.
You get a job that starts in two weeks time. You don’t look for
work while you are waiting for the job to start. You’re sanctioned.
You are forced to retire due to a heart condition, and you claim
Employment and Support Allowance. During your assessment you have a
heart attack. You are sanctioned for not completing your assessment.
It’s Christmas Day and you don’t fill in your job search
evidence form to show that you’ve looked for all the new jobs that
are advertised on Christmas Day. You are sanctioned. Merry
Christmas.
You are given a training appointment that clashes with your job
centre appointment. The job centre is unwilling to rearrange its
appointment and tells you to get a letter from the training
organisation. The training organisation says it doesn’t provide
letters.
You apply for three jobs one week and three jobs the following
Sunday and Monday. Because the job centre week starts on a Tuesday it
treats this as applying for six jobs in one week and none the
following week. You are sanctioned for 13 weeks for failing to apply
for three jobs each week.
You miss your job centre appointment due to the funeral of a close
family relative. You are sanctioned.
You’ve been unemployed for seven months and are forced onto a
workfare scheme in a shop miles away, but can’t afford to travel.
You offer to work in a nearer branch but are refused and get
sanctioned for not attending your placement.
You have a job interview which overruns so you arrive at your job
centre appointment 9 minutes late. You get sanctioned for a month.
You can’t afford to travel to look for work so you get
sanctioned.
Your job centre advisor suggests a job. When you go online to
apply it says the job has “expired” so you don’t apply. You are
sanctioned for 13 weeks.
There is more of these cruel, vindictive, callous, brutal actions on
DWP Unspun. Though I'm sure if you ask around your friends and neighbours, you'll be ale to come up with a page or two of your own. That's capitalism for you.
Visit ann arky's home at
www.radicalglasgow.me.uk