'Universal Credit' vs Shared Humanity

(Blog editor's note: I had hoped to use image from

https://www.google.com/search?q=monty+python+images+cartoon&client=firefox-b-d&sxsrf=ALeKk03m1sRSVSf5c2RGYsSktQQweaFQcA:1604485804151&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=j_aAUkR25RqvyM%252CNJFoqwtJ-XavBM%252C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kTlvMYIPkpalIaRLfwl2DdU-AMmWQ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjx8Jyz1-jsAhUTHcAKHfcOA_IQ9QF6BAgKECs#imgrc=j_aAUkR25RqvyM

here with caption: "Universal Credit: quasi- or virtual police state," but Blogger is not allowing me to do so. Sorry.)

A Universal Credit claimant has written me in response to the below and yet-to-be-published-in-print letter to Hereford Times:

Subject: Thousands will see five big changes to Universal Credit in November - check now - Birmingham Live

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/big-changes-universal-credit-november-19196317 

In reference to the last letter you posted it should be noted that this month sees changes in UC payments that will benefit those also eligible for PIP,  finally stop the punitive reductions for those who are paid weekly or fortnightly and recognises the problems in transitioning from various legacy benefits by (small) financial awards...

Although the article is just over 24 hours old it also seems that Sunak has also now agreed to extend the Covid-19 payment of an extra £90pcm as part of the revised furlough scheme.

As you are aware, as a UC claimant subject to the Benefit Cap due to my rent being fixed just under the pre-2015 LHA/HB maximum I do not receive any extra monies from the DWP at this time. 

Nor do I get any leeway... unlike other renters in my halfway house who are in receipt of legacy benefits and have had no contact or demands from the DWP since last February I am still required to undergo mandatory, sanctionable, telephone or face-to-face interviews to explain my job searches and failure to gain employment.

Quite why my mental health or wellbeing differs from those in almost identical circumstances but on older forms of benefits has yet to be explained.

Subject: Re: Talking Point by Dr Jonathan Godfrey, and MPs explain opposition to Rashford's meal plan

 

Noting a Resolution Foundation report suggesting that "unemployment among 18 to 29-year-olds could hit 17% by late 2020, and ... the mental health risks linked to lockdown and economic insecurity," Dr Jonathan Godfrey also notes:

"The proportion of adults experiencing poor mental health has increased by 80% among 18 to 29-year-olds compared with a year ago, the biggest increase of any age group." (Talking Point, Oct. 29, 2020, p68)

One 23 year-old apparently not experiencing poor mental health is Marcus Rashford (born 31 Oct. 1997), raised in a very public spirited environment for a life outside football as well as MUFC stardom. Speaking of one of his recent plaudits, Rashford said that he  "had a voice and a platform that could be used to at least ask the questions."(1)

That contrasts heavily with how Universal Credit (UC) claimants are treated. UC’s ‘Claimant Commitment’ and ‘digital by default’ infrastructure micro-manage the lives of claimants and UC functionaries.(2) That makes mutual recognition of a shared humanity extremely difficult: the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) mindset is that the claimant’s low income and not low wages is ‘the problem’. More UC claimants are penalised in the UK and more severely than by Magistrates’ and Sheriff’s courts, with loss of benefit extending to years of what I’d call debt slavery and Law Professor Dr David Webster refers to as ‘Benefit Sanctions: Britain’s secret penal system’.(3)

Then along comes Covid-19 lockdown and greater universality of low income. Tory Government responds by increasing Universal Credit levels but not the levels of the benefits it is designed to replace.(4)

Against this backdrop and Rashford’s campaign to extend free school meals eleigibility to school holidays, Hereford & South Herefordshire MP and First Secretary to the Treasury Jesse Norman says he “has nothing but respect for Marcus Rashord, both as a footballer and as a campaigner. But it is really important to look beyond the headlines.” (Hereford Times, Oct. 29, 2020, p5)

Yes, indeed it is vital to look beyond the headlines, especially those generated by government press releases, and to consider the differences in ‘authority’ between an Old Etonian MP and a top sportsman who delivered food parcels as a youngster!

Alan Raymond Wheatley, BA Interdisciplinary Studies (Major: Sociology)

(Postal Address and telephone number submitted, too)

Note
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Rashford#Recognition
2. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&ei=5hOgX7rYGqTaxgODoqrgCQ&q=%22universal+credit%22+micro-manage&oq=%22universal+credit%22+micro-manage&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQA1CNgwNYjYMDYKCZA2gAcAB4AIABR4gBhQGSAQEymAEAoAEBqgEHZ3dzLXdpesABAQ&sclient=psy-ab&ved=0ahUKEwi645u9heTsAhUkrXEKHQORCpwQ4dUDCAw&uact=5
3. https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/resources/benefit-sanctions-britains-secret-penal-system
4. https://www.disabilityrightsuk.org/news/2020/september/dwp-response-coronavirus-inquiry-inadequate-says-work-and-pension-committee

 

 

Poetry for Wellbeing

 Adapted from e-mail sent last night to Hereford Times newspaper:

Dear Letters Editor

Nigel Heath writes: “At the beginning of the lockdown back in March, I decided to write a poem a day as a stay-at-home-challenge….

“There is so much one can say in a poem, perhaps to express joy about some aspect of being out in nature or about something you have found funny or about actually any subject you can think of.” (Letter, Oct. 29, 2020)

Financial and career-ladder immobility lockdown for disadvantaged people has existed long before Covid-19. An ‘Employment Rehabilitation Centre’ (ERC) Social Worker told my parents in 1978, “Yes, Alan [then aged 24] has an academic brain, but he’s too slow to ever gain from further government-funded education and training. It just wouldn’t be worth it. He’ll just have to learn to lower his sights.”

While the system never helped me get sustainable waged work and I was never properly signposted to disability benefit entitlement until 2009 — despite six weeks ‘vocational assessment period’ at ERC three decades earlier! — I got more skilful through self-expression and self-directed learning despite an unfair system, especially as “too many gaps in your employment history” proved a barrier. Yet as I wrote a troubled 21 year old poetic soul on Universal Credit recently, writing for self-expression helps us ‘get a handle on things’ and while it might not make us stars it helps makes us better survivors as we find our own meaning in what we are going through.

In some of my poems, I expressed a deep rage rather than turning that rage inwards against myself with disastrous mental health consequences. I realised in terms of the bigger picture that I was not being punished for “a birth defect”(1) but maltreated.(2)

Now, 

“NHS Digital’s 2019-20 Mental Health Act statistics report ... states that there were 147.9 Mental Health Act detentions per 100,000 people in the most deprived tenth of areas, while the least deprived areas tenth recorded a rate of 42.8 detentions per 100,000. Data for other areas showed a clear link between deprivation and detention risk.”(3)

I applied skills and understanding to what I was facing. What do Hereford’s Tory MPs apply as elected public servants?

Alan Wheatley

Note

1. ERC Occupational Psychologist to me: “…. birth defect [sic]. There’s nothing more we can do to help you here. You [sic] will be terminated at the end of next week.”
 
2. Example poem:

They’re Robbing Themselves

Some laws are made behind our backs —
Such as subjecting dole money to income tax.
Do cushioned bureaucrats in Whitehall
Have any love for me at all?

Here am I: long unemployed
‘Twixt them and me an awful void:
On their work they seem to thrive
While the poor are struggling to survive.

What must it take for them to see
That they’re robbing themselves
Of their humanity?

Yet while they make it ever harder
I must pray for them with greater ardour.

Alan the Poet Therapeutic
(c) 1982 by Alan Raymond Wheatley

3. https://www.communitycare.co.uk/2020/10/29/mental-health-act-detentions-three-times-higher-least-deprived-areas-race-gap-widens/

Mental Health Act detentions three times higher in most than least deprived areas, as race gap widens

Social work leader calls for action to tackle root causes of mental health crisis as annual statistics show clear link between deprivation and risk of detention

By Charlotte Carter on October 29, 2020 in Adults

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