I sometimes wonder if the general public are fully aware of what is happening to the ordinary people of this country, and if they are, why do they accept the humiliation and insults. Workfare and sanctions are turning us into nation of poverty ridden, low paid and/or slave labour. The full impact of universal credits has not yet hit most of us in the face, but the blow is on its way. This is legislation, that punishes you if you are not earning enough or working long enough hours, and is designed and introduced by a bunch of pampered, privileged millionaires who have never in their entire life had to sit down and try to budget a totally inadequate income in an effort to survive. Their value structure is built round the philosophy that, at their income level, to get the best out of their people you have to pay them lavish incomes, at our level, to get the best out of us, they have to punish us and threaten us with deprivation. Your an idiot if you think that running to the ballot box to replace them with another pampered, privileged cabal will make any difference.
This not a problem just for the unemployed, it is not a problem just for the low paid, it is not a problem just for the part-time workers. This is a problem for all the ordinary people in this country, what happens to these vulnerable groups will impact on the whole fabric of our society. Increased homelessness, increased hungry children, increased poverty across our society. Increased mental and physical health problems, putting an ever increasing strain on an underfunded NHS, children's potential stunted by lack of opportunity and proper nutrition. All in an attempt to get us to be a national workforce of subservient, low wage serfs, ever grovelling and thanking our most gracious employers for having the generous heart to giving us a miserable low paid job, or for useing us as slave labour.
Johhny Void on his Condemned site explains the universal credit system well in his article,
The True Horrors Of In-work Benefit Sanctions Have Not Yet Been Understood
Here are a couple of extracts:
---------When Universal Credit is fully introduced (stop laughing) part-time workers on a low income will be expected to constantly look for more, or better paid work as a condition of receiving vital in-work benefits. Any failure on the part of claimants to prove that they carried out constant job searching in the hours they were not working will mean benefits are sanctioned.
For claimants who are unemployed the sanction system will remain largely unchanged under Universal Credit. Those without health problems who are sanctioned will lose all of their personal benefits except what is required to pay for housing costs or children. This will mean a childless claimant will have no money at all once they have paid their rent – although they may be eligible to apply for emergency Hardship Payments of around £40 a week. It is this nasty regime that has led to the explosion in foodbanks and been linked to a growing number of suicides.----
---------Take a single, childless person in Bristol working at the current minimum wage for 20 hours a week and paying £120 a week in rent – the local housing allowance rate in the area for a claimant over 35. Under Universal Credit this person will have a weekly income of £244 made up of £144 a week in wages and £100 a week in benefits. Once their rent is paid this will leave them with £124 a week. If they are sanctioned however they will lose £73.10 leaving them with just £50.90 a week to live on. That’s over £20 a week less than the current dole and just £10 a week more than Hardship Payments. Universal Credit will therefore not make work pay for those who have been sanctioned. It will however make work compulsory.----Read the full article HERE:
