Journey to Work Part 5 - How can I claim expenses like Maria?
Today marks the start of my fifth week in work. I think. To be honest it's all a bit tiring and I'm no longer sure. I love my job, but will that be enough? And did I mention the tired?What I do know for sure is that my benefits stopped on March 10th the day I formally started work. Since then I've applied for tax credits, housing benefit and council tax benefit. There is a four week run on of Local Housing Allowance so that has continued to go into my bank account. But that's it. No tax credits. No letter acknowledging tax credits claim has been received. No wages til later this month. Oh, and no way of talking to anyone at tax credits to check they have got my application, just a recorded message explaining they are taking a minimum of five weeks to process claims and won't talk to claimants until after that time is up.
This is why people end up with payday loans or go to foodbanks. There isn't another way.*
If I make a genuine mistake filling out a benefits application I get fined £50
But if I were a Cabinet Minister, a former Minister for Disabled People, who had pushed through these cuts affecting disabled people and working people...
*Please don't worry - I have friends who are in a position to lend me money until wages and tax credits start properly, I won't have to go to a food bank or payday loan company. But how many people have friends willing and able to lend them hundreds of pounds for an undefined amount of time?
3 comments:
How do you claim expenses like Maria? Well, you start by becoming an MP. But you would be an awesome MP and would put many of them to shame. :-)
Sound posting...the civil servants concerned ought to be shot...furthermore the ministers in charge of them ought to be shot and their graves perpetually crapped on.
I was once, (to my eternal shame), a civil servant, (hopefully one of the better ones), and know what an easy number it was...By the time I left I was efficiently carrying more than a double allocation of work, and it was honestly a piece of piss...I got bored...
I recall being told to slow down because I was making the rest look bad...I recall being told how to manipulate my workload before the auditors came round, (In the case of old or dormant enquiries issue meaningless queries to show the work as fresh/ongoing, and accumulate as much untouched work as possible under two weeks old to prove a heavy workload)
Ok I'm talking over thirty five years or so ago, but do you really think their efficiency has improved a great deal since?
And their ministers fall for this bollocks every time...because it suits their own political needs...
The "system" is intrinsically fraudulent from top to bottom...just as fraudulent as some of the claims upon it, and possibly more so.
This blog is full of emotion. It is doing a great job of personalising the impact of all the current benefits cuts. Whilst the policies are presented as relating to anonymous Daily Mail type caricatures it is so easy to push them through with no resistance from a brainwashed population.Only when you talk about individuals is it possible for the real life stories to rise above the caricatures. I will follow this blog with interest and if you are willing I would love to feature articles from it in the blog I have just set up ( livingwithPovertyUK>blogspot.com) which is intended to break down the bland undeserving images portrayed in the media which do nothing but present all those on Benefits as Scroungers and layabouts.
May you go from Strength to Strength.
Peter
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