DT1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 15 Apr 2008
- Posts: 1,116
I like your posts Roger, as you do honestly believe in fairness. We need more people like you!
Tax credits are complicated, but then that is surely the result of trying to comply with fairness?
The problem is that we as a nation are not being represented, just manipulated to serve 'growth' - whatever that means on an island of finite size?
Keith thanks for your reply, you are right that they help so many. Anyone else?
Things like tax credits for families are a reminder that the state is a good thing in principle. It is responsible for so much and should be protected. 'the state' is actually the reality of big society, it has just been abused by people that don't care enough and run by those that do not value it.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
the problem with the system up until now is that claimants have filled everything in correctly then find at a later date that they have been overpaid through no fault of their own.
a lot of hardship then ensues, the system needs to be made simpler but most certainly stay.
Guest 653- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,540
Thank You DT1.
Tax credits helped my brother when he needed them on a low paid job. He wanted to work and that was why he took the job; after about four or five months, he was laid off and the Job Centre where he then was (in Hythe near Southampton), told him he wouldn't get Job Seekers Allowance but working tax credits instead. He didn't know any different as he had recently returned from South Africa, so relied on the Job Centre giving him the correct information.
After about 7 months he was told he had to pay back all the money he had received in those WTCs - around £1800 or thereabouts. They wouldn't pay him any JSA money at all for some reason best known to themselves, so he was in deep poo-poo as he had literally no money.
He has now moved to Hythe (next to Folkestone) and is working for SAGA; he's renting a flat, but the job is still a low-paid one and only just covers the rent and he still can't get any WTCs until the £1800 has been paid back - but how can he pay it back when he is literally on the bones of his arse ?
No one is willing to help him and everyone has said "not my problem".
I wrote to Charlie (Elphicke) who took it up with HMRC and they said they won't deal with him because he doesn't have a written form to say my brother would like him to help and they won't send my brother such a form.
I have written on my brother's behalf many times, but it is literally like talking to a brick wall, they simply write back but with no information - they are either very dense indeed, or purposefully unhelpful, no one can be that dense and keep a job (can they ?), so I suspect it's the latter.
Like the saying goes "every month I'm in the s**t, the only difference is the depth".
Roger
Guest 671- Registered: 4 May 2008
- Posts: 2,095
Welcome to the world of benefits.
Roger, your story is typical and your last paragraph is the norm, with a mix of both.
The reason for security guards at Job Centres was not brought about from bad behaviour; it was more to do with people getting angry over complaints from atrocious mistakes.
Walk into any JC in the country and ask those who have had to complain, put their hands up and you would start a Mexican Wave.
Very few people actually want to be on benefits and those that are on benefits are far from enjoying it.
It would suit some people to try and live the life in their shoes, on benefits for a month or so.
The trouble with that would be, they would know it was only for a few weeks, in real life, the victims of benefits, has no idea how long they will be on them.
"My New Year's Resolution, is to try and emulate Marek's level of chilled out, thoughtfulness and humour towards other forumites and not lose my decorum"
Guest 653- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,540
I don't disagree at all Gary.
The most galling thing was that I had written (on many occasions) to the appropriate Ministers - for employment DWP and benefits and have never received any kind of reply from any of them.
For all their spouting about what they are doing and the new initiatives they are starting, none of it is reaching the Managers or staff at the Job-Centres, or the HMRC Managers and staff; if it is, they are all ignoring the directives they are given.
No one wants to help and no one cares.
Roger
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
i think that job centre staff are demoralised now.
not surprising when they know the axe is waiting to fall and their workload goes up and up.
i wonder if they even have time to read up on all the directives that our big governments foist upon them?
Guest 653- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,540
I understand that they are all on short-term contracts which also doesn't help with them caring about their jobs or their customers.
Roger
They have always been lacking in warmth!! I know they have a hard time - I witnessed for myself a while back how foul some of the people using jobcentres can be (I found a new job, fortunately, before the ink was dry on the forms - which it turned out were the wrong ones anyway........) but there is no excuse for the overall ineptitude and lack of sensitivity demonstrated by some of the people paid to work with the unemployed. Either do the job properly or don't do the job!!
Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
roger,short term contracts are the norm at the moment,jobs for life have now dissapeard compleatly.
Guest 677- Registered: 8 Jul 2008
- Posts: 150
I'm probably going to be repeating points made by other posters but I cannot be silent on this subject. My family would never have survived if it hadn't been for tax credits. We are only entitled to Child Tax Credit as I earn too much for Working Tax Credit but that benefit feeds my family as the only thing I can afford from my wage is the household bills. When Chris and I were first married we were living (badly) on a salary of £10K per year, I defy anyone with a family to survive on that money without help. Ah ha! I hear you cry, if you could not afford to have children, why have them... etc. Trust me, there is no such thing as being able to afford children, those people that wait to have children until they can afford them, rarely have them and if everyone had that attitude, where would the population of the country be.
My wages are considerably more than previously stated now, I am considered to be in middle management and my salary is considered to be above national average (what a joke that is, don't get me started). I haven't been unemployed since the six months after leaving university when I was trying to find a job, so it is partially my taxes that pay for my benefit and I thank heavens for them otherwise my family would be in dire straits indeed.
I get very tired of hearing that people who claim benefits are sponges on the state (I'm not saying that anyone here said that, I'm just saying that I've heard it previously). Benefits should always be there to support people who are either unable to work (due to illness, child care or lack of employment oppotunities) and those who do work but do not have enough to support their family in a moderate lifestyle and for goodness sake it's not as if we go on foreign holidays or have fancy goods, we don't go on holiday at all and don't even have a car (not that either of us can drive lol!). So when I say moderate life style I really do mean moderate, but at least we get to eat.
Rant over.
It's not the man in my life, its the life in my man!!
Keith Sansum1
- Location: london
- Registered: 25 Aug 2010
- Posts: 23,942
this forum is so good when you can get so differing views
and also getting lefties like me even agreeing with right winger roger
thats what the forum is all about
we can also disagree with posters such as barryw who is wide of the mark as a number of posters have pointed out
ALL POSTS ARE MY OWN PERSONAL VIEWS
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
Fully agree with you, Stephanie, people on benefits have too often been abused with the wording: spongers.
Of-course no-one on this Forum has ever said it
I must disagree with some other posts further up, as the staff at the jobcentre were extremely friendly and polite.
The same applies to the staff at Skills Training in Dover to whom I was referred by the Jobcentre, and who passed me on to Pitman Training to do IT courses.
But the Government keeps telling us all that things will get worse, that unemployment will go up and income will come down. For the next 13 years, they said, things will be really hard.
Perhaps working tax credits, child benefits and JSA will be abolished and exchanged with a weekly parcel of canned food and 2 loafs of bread.