The Futility Of The DWP
“Choose a zero hour contract, a two hour journey to work
And choose the same for your kids, only worse…”(Renton, M. 2017)
To say I’m a serial moaner is putting it mildly.
My sports team win, why wasn’t it by more?
My favourite band come to town, why didn’t they come here on their last tour?
My friends laugh at a story I tell, why didn’t they laugh at the others?
Obviously there are simple answers to these questions; competitive sport is not something where you fairly decide the score in advance, bands go where they want and not at my pleasure and the other stories were almost certainly tediously unfunny. Around about eight years ago a good friend nicknamed me ‘Moore-bid’ and it wasn’t because of my penchant for buying a lot of rubbish on eBay.
But let me tell you a story that I know to be tedious and most certainly not a laughing matter.
At the end of 2016 I found myself out of work. Not a unique problem. Millions of people are out of work and with plenty in work with far greater financial responsibilities, burdens and constraints than myself. This is not emotional blackmail I’m selling you here. Just frustration by the bucket load.
After a couple of weeks of refusing — mainly out of misguided pride — to go down the road of benefits after a rather patronising summer of receiving Job Seeker’s Allowance in 2012 I gave in and booked myself in for an appointment with a ‘Work Coach’ at the local Job Centre.
I was armed with enough ‘mandatory’ documents identifying different aspects myself and proving that I was worthy of Universal Credit — the JSA replacement — that if I’d been mugged on the way there, my hypothetical assailant would have the next Randall Stephens on his hands (for any Shawshank Redemption fans out there.
Upon arrival and being ‘greeted’ by a G4S employee with a disdainful Geordie accent I felt like I’d wandered into the latest Ken Loach film. My own personal I, Daniel Blake but there was no bonhomie between claimants as there was with Katie and Daniel in the film. Just a massed collection of miserable individuals being kettled in a room as soulless as a shopping centre on a Sunday morning waiting to be filtered through to the necessary knock off Argos designed office.
There’ll be (few, admittedly) people reading this, I hope. There’ll be even fewer who have gone through the JSA/Universal Credit process. I hope you don’t have to, it’s rubbish. There are people who have no other means of subsistence than through it. I am lucky enough to be supported my a loving fiancé, friends and family. A lot of people don’t have that so I must stress this is not a cry for pity. For those who don’t know what it’s all about, allow me to digress from my Big Day Out to explain the endurance test that is the UK Benefits System to you.
You apply for Universal Credit online. You type a load of information into boxes that describe yourself and your circumstances, e.g. why you are claiming, who you live with, what kind of accommodation you have, how much you pay for it and so on. You then get a call asking you for the exact same information. When I pressed the DWP employee about why they needed this, I was told it was to check I had given the correct information. Me, being the cynic that I am, took this as a coded message of “we don’t trust you and are looking to catch you out”.
Next up is a meeting with your ‘Work Coach’. My ‘Work Coach’ wasn’t there when I went to my appointment. Instead I was seeing their replacement for the day who…you guessed it…asked me for the same information as above. Three times I had been asked for this. All for the purposes of trying to catch me out. I’m one of the lucky ones, I am computer literate so filling out forms on a website is second nature to me (thanks YouGov surveys) and my memory is fairly sharp. A person in their late 50s might not be so lucky.
Then, you’re passed over to someone else who goes through your previous work and asks what kind of job you are looking for. Not wanting to sidetrack here too much but a degree is worth absolutely nothing these days. I loved my time at University, it was sensational. I met some of the best people and did things I never in a million years thought I’d get a chance to do. I’d go back and relive it all in a heartbeat. But I also wish I’d not bothered and taken up a trade. You know where you are with a trade. Everyone always needs a plumber or an electrician. How many companies are crying out for a guy with a 2:2 in English Language & Journalism? I’ll let you decide. Although if anyone reading this thinks they do need that guy, I’m all ears.
“So what kind of work am I looking for? What is my job history? You’ve got my CV there, you tell me what you’ve got.”
(Moore, D. 2017)
Half the prospective employers I’ve spoken to look at my CV and do that weird eye bulging thing to show surprise at the different jobs I’ve done. The other half try and play it up to prove my ‘adaptability’. As I learned when I lost my previous job, it’s a lottery. A total lottery.
So the rest of this ‘meeting’ passes off without incident and I’m told that I’ll receive my first payment of Universal Credit at the start of March. We’re in mid-January when I find this out. Mid. January. Two lots of rent to come out, two sets of utility bills and a life to try and live with things like food…and Asda SmartPrice Orange Squash. This isn’t anyone’s fault, it’s just an absolute pain and a bit of trivial detail. Oh, and with your first payment you have a week deducted from it because…I’m not really sure why.
This afternoon I received a letter from the DWP that I had not given all the information they require. Upon calling to query this I was instantly told to disregard the letter as it is automatically generated and everyone is sent them. Because…it takes three-four weeks to verify your housing information. So less than a fortnight into making a claim I — and I assume everyone else who claims — receive correspondence to this effect. This is absolutely insane. I tried to explain this to the call operator who just repeated “it’s the system that does it” to me. The 2017 equivalent of “computer says no”. What an absolute waste of time, paper and wellbeing. Some poor sap has had to put up with a bemused me on the phone berating the whole system when they don’t care. They just want their shift to be over so they have fulfilled their contract and get out of there.
Claiming benefits shouldn’t be an exasperating task and all these tripwires, proverbial landmines and grey-faced letters of mild threat only result in people turning on each other and passing the responsibility onto “the system” or the blame onto someone who is held as a pariah or an easy scapegoat.
It’s a shite state of affairs to be in, Tommy and all the fresh air in the world won’t make any fucking difference!
(Renton, M. 1996.)
