WTF!!!

In the last hour an article has appeared on Inside Housing to say the DWP will sanction anyone who does not work full time.

Here is the article and reproduced here as IH is now a subscription only site and you really do have to read this to believe it. If you do not work full time you are an out and out lazy bastard who we will sanction is the DWP policy and it is YOUR fault if you do NOT work full time you scrounger. This is incredulous and quite frankly tyrannical.

The article

At present the benefit cap rules mean you have to work 30 hours per week to both claim tax credits and avoid the cap if you are part of a couple or 16 hours is you are a lone parent.

What that means in reality is one member of a couple works 30 hours per week at national minimum wage and so does NOT get welfare benefits capped AND receives tax credits AND is still likely to receive most or all of their Housing Benefit to pay the rent. This is all part of IDS’s oft-stated boast that work will always pay more.

However, since the May 2010 election the amount of Housing Benefit paid to in-work claimants has increased from £2.6 billion per year to a whopping £5.4 billion per year. it has almost doubled in cost and now we have 1.1 million in work HB claimants compared to just 650,000 at May 2010.

What is more is a detailed look at the HB data reveals that in-work HB claimants get on average more in HB than the average for all HB claimants.

In short, this means the in-work HB claimants gets full HB as the wages they are working for are not enough to live on and HB is paid in full.

It also means that Housing Benefit is a £5.4 billion per year subsidy to low wage paying employers.

It further means that the benefit cap policy is yet again proven to be ill thought through and IDS’s boast that work will always pay more means that the welfare system pays more too. The benefit cap is NOT a saving to the public purse at all yet it has an approval rating of over 70% with the general public as they believe any cut or cap must save money yet it actually costs MORE money and forces the taxpayer to pay MORE to pay for this back of a fag packet and overtly political policy – a policy of all fur coat and no knickers.

Yet let’s look at what this means for the tenant and for the landlords.

Tenants have been persuaded by social landlords EET programmes (let’s get our tenants into work to avoid arrears) and landlords have spent millions on these programmes – millions that are now all in vain as the advice they (naturally) gave was work 30 hours and you will be better off even at £6.50 per hour. Landlord welfare teams and job centre plus advisors did the same with the ‘better off calculations’ they ran to persuade tenants / benefit claimants to take up a 30 hour per week position. They too are all in vain as this sneaky back door policy mentioned above does mean:

WORK 35 HOURS OR WE WILL SANCTION YOU

It also heaps the blame onto the scrounger who works anywhere between 30 and 34 hours per week. They are just as much to blame as those who sit on their backside all day behind closed curtains watching Jeremy Kyle on their 50″ flat screen TVs. Those working 30 to 34 hours per week, formerly called the hard working family – that wonderful term all politicians love to quote – are now just lazy scrounging bastards!

How about a headline : – IDS welfare failure forces Cameron to abandon the hardworking family?

That is what this is as well as this coalitions Department of Work (sic) and Pensions abandoning any blame for not providing employment or the conditions to create employment. If you dont’ have a job mate its your fault and you are a lazy bastard so get off you arse and stop blaming us!

I wonder where those who work say 2 jobs at 17 hours per week are going to find the time to search for other work and find the time to go into the local job centre as part of their conditionality? Just how the hell can that work?

Who cares say DWP we will sanction you if you don’t turn up. They care not a jot as to you working 3 x 11 hour jobs all on zero hours contracts when you have to drop anything at the last minute to be called into work and if you do and miss an appointment or be 5 minutes late for it you will lose £29 per week – or about 5 hours pay at the NMW job you are now doing!!!

WTF!!!

Sorry reader no summary here. I have run out of words to say about this fucking outrage

UPDATE 20:00

Prior to this sneaky and new change the requirement was a minimum of 30 hours per week at NMW or £195pw. This apparent change to £12000 per annum is either 35 hours per week or 30 hours at 18% above the NMW at £7.69 per hour.

It is therefore an 18% increased burden on these ‘hardworking families’ to make up for the failure of the benefit cap and the failure of all the welfare reforms that has seen the in-work HB cost increase 93% from 2010 to £5.4 billion per year from £2.8 Billion per year.