Do Not Support Newly Disabled Claimants Hit By Benefit Cap To Stay In Their Homes Recommends DWP

Last Updated: September 21, 2013By

What a relief it is that local authorities don’t have to follow the evil-minded guidance on Discretionary Housing Payments that has been released by the increasingly-partisan Department for Work and Pensions, as revealed in Johnny Void’s article. This is the second piece of despicable ‘guidance’ to come from the DWP within a day – the first, as announced on the Skwawkbox blog, was illegal; this is none of the Department’s business.

latest video

news via inbox

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

10 Comments

  1. Steven Goodman September 21, 2013 at 5:23 pm - Reply

    instead of unleashing a babbling emotional torrent…just examine UNUM’s role as an advisor to the DWP, when they made it clear destruction of welfare protection was the first stop to privatisation of unemployment protction options…Make the NI funded system a choice that includes abject poverty at its core…thus frightening the workforce into buying a modest UNUM tabled alternative “Unemployment protection insurance” (Which I calculate with national population of 66.000.000 should net them around 100 billion year and then the same each renewal. Profiteering aside…web search “UNUM + US PUBLIC LITIGATION” – words like crimial and immoral pop up next to stories about how willing UNUM were in honouring their pay-out requirements…..(Disbarrment from Stte and federal contracts I do belive)Which explains why they are here making up for the short fall with te help of the treacous Unholy Tory trinity…Why give roles within the DWP to US firms discribed asc “Crimial” by their own couhtrymen ? Haven’t located the cause yet…but an article in the Daily MIrror archives makes great reading an a potential theory £750,000 party donatations (HA HA Ha) from private medical firms…note the pantomine unfolding in the NHS, unlike the Christmas panto only the greedy rich live happily ever after…Back to the viciousness of DWP and also ATOS policies that set the presidence for applying the abuse …

    .then decded what UNUM an orgnistion with unsavoury origins are advising them about…the shade of paint for staff toilets?…Once UNUM are recieving the targeted £100,000,000 policy turnover for their unemployment protection insurance police and a repeated windfall every renewal….if you want to know where vicious policies orgininate just look for the evil men…..

    • Mike Sivier September 21, 2013 at 5:47 pm - Reply

      I think you might be new here.
      While I’m happy for the above information to appear on this blog again, you are rehashing material that has been discussed here before.
      For that reason, I take issue with your comment about “unleashing a babbling emotional torrent” – unless you were directing your comments at somebody else?

      • Adam Clifford September 22, 2013 at 1:37 am - Reply

        Have to say, Mike, Unum are such a shadey bunch that any kind of light shone upon them can only be a good thing. I hear/read the name but not often enough to google. I will do so now.
        The last time I saw the Unum word, a commenter said that: ‘John Pring at the Disability News Services says that media sources have privately told him that there is a bar on the media for reporting the links between Unum and welfare reforms:
        http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/sep/10/changing-british-attitudes-support-benefits#comment-26852405
        Very sinister. Parliament is sinking into utter disgrace.They have lost any sense of decency.
        It’s open season on the plebs.

  2. johnnybramham September 22, 2013 at 3:16 am - Reply

    I think perhaps there is a bit of overkill going on here from both sides; we all know that gorgeous Gordon ran the country out of money in his pursuit of socialist utopia – and in the process ensure that Noo Labour would be the only show in town as far forward as could be forseen.
    ‘Owevver, now that his bubble has burst and his bonfire is a pile of smoking ruins, we have to accept the fact that the culture of permanent benefits for everyone has to come to an end; from my own experience I know that there are third-generation benefit claimants that have never had a job, have no interest in getting one and rely on the experience of their parents and grandparents to provide them with reasons why they can’t or won’t get a job.
    Similarly, I know of many young girls who made a point of getting themselves pregnant so that they could claim both benefits AND a free council house, all at taxpayers’ expense.
    THESE are the people the government should be targetting, and not the genuine people who, through no fault of their own, have found themselves unable to function in our ‘normal’ society; in a perfect world we’d all like to live the life of Reilly, but this isn’t a perfect world.
    Firstly, HMG should stop all overseas aid – we need to get our own house in order before sending £billions elsewhere.
    Secondly, HMG should be far more astute about getting tax revenue from multinational corporations who haven’t paid a bean into the kitty for years – and we’re not talking a few quid here, we’re talking £billions.
    Thirdly, HMG needs to appreciate that membership of the EU is making us a nett loss of over £30Bn per year; okay, the whole Euro-thing is looking shaky right now, so it wouldn’t take much to send Frau Merkel over the edge and pull the GDR out of Europe altogether – allowing of course that she gets re-elected. That would spell the end of the EU, and frankly, good riddance.
    Lastly, HMG needs to get a grip on immigration, bigtime; we’ve had virtually open-door influx of all sorts of waifs and strays over the past ten years, many of whom shouldn’t have been here in the first place and most of which have been kept in relative luxury, at taxpayers’ expense. Whatever the circumstances, if these people have no legitimate business here, they should be refused entry and deported, sine die.
    If I, as a pensioner in my own country, having served the crown for nine years in the Navy cannot get a liveable income from the state after paying into the system for over forty years, then I see no good reason why someone from foreign shores, having paid nothing whatsoever, should be “entitled” to three times my pension plus ’emoluments’.
    I’m a tory, always have been, but it seems to me that Cam and Co are starting at the wrong end of the list of ‘things to do’ – looking after our own first should be his priority.

    • Mike Sivier September 22, 2013 at 11:51 am - Reply

      Labour’s money management was recently given a clean bill of health by not one but two studies which agreed that Labour ran a deficit that was below the European average and also below that run by the Conservatives before them. It was the banking crisis that caused the UK’s debt problem; THAT is what we all know.

      Benefits were never intended to be permanent – and aren’t permanent for EVERYONE, as you suggest. But there will always be people who are clever enough to play the system and get the results they want. Back in the day, the DSS used to have a fraud section in each office, dedicated to finding those people and bringing them to justice but I don’t know whether this still exists (the Coalition might have cut them).

      It may surprise you to learn that I agree with you about girls getting pregnant to have a council house. That has happened, across the country, and in a land where advice on contraception is freely available, there is no need for this.

      The points you raise are well-discussed by now but, curiously, nothing has been done about them. The government has defended its overseas aid packages – but then, I read recently that much of that aid goes to help British firms with foreign branches who exploit their workforces – so there may be something shady in it!

      You are absolutely correct about tax revenue from large and multinational corporations. George Osborne’s policy has been to change the system so they pay LESS tax in to the UK government. I know this seems like madness; that’s because it IS madness.

      Membership of the EU is, of course, a burning issue. But do we really lose £30 billion a year? If so, is it money that could be made back if revenue from the cheaper cost of trading in the European Community was properly taxed? I don’t know; I merely suggest.

      As for immigration – shouldn’t it be about coming into a country with a reason to be there? British people move abroad as well, you know – and no doubt get the same treatment we give immigrants here. But if they are moving because they have a job, that is a good reason. Or, if they have made their money and are retiring to a different country, that is reasonable as well. The only cause for complaint is if they are a drain on the system and the figures show that this claim can’t really be supported either. Immigration laws could still be tightened but this is the biggest red herring of the last few years, in my opinion. “Most” immigrants are NOT kept in luxury at the taxpayers’ expense. You’ve been listening to UKIP.

      Since you ARE a Tory I doubt this will appeal to you, but it seems to me that Cameron and Co have done exactly what you suggest; they really have been looking after their own first. “Their own” being themselves, their rich Tory friends, big businesspeople in this country and abroad, and very few others – the 1% of whom we hear so much. Ex-service personnel like you wouldn’t even figure in their thinking beyond a calculation of how little they could get away with giving you as thanks for your contribution to THEIR national security – to keeping THEIR money and property safe. As far as they are concerned, sir, you were just ‘the help’ and, now that you have retired, you are of no further use to them. They really do consider the rest of us to be livestock, you know.

      • johnnybram September 22, 2013 at 3:04 pm - Reply

        Many thanks for your thoughtful, measured response, Mike; may I also say that it’s a pleasure to read properly composed and lucid text, rather than the more usual chav gobbledegook we tend to get on sites such as this one!
        Now to my rejoinders; to begin with, I would challenge any “study” that deems it acceptable for any government to run its finances at a defecit – and using comparisons such as ‘other European countries’ isn’t going to change that.
        Local authorities aren’t allowed to set negative budgets, so why should national government be treated any differently?
        Moving to the (mis)management side of history, the incoming Noo Labour government inherited a £220Bn surplus when Teflon Tony waved the manifesto at the crowd; Brown’s stated policy on national debt was such that he ruled out the possibility of using the PSBR at all in the forseeable future, and everyone walked away happy.
        By 2001, the PSBR had risen to £640M, and in 2002 it rose again to £1.7Bn; he glossed this over by constant referrals to ‘prudential borrowing’, presumably to give his cronies in the banking industry some much-needed business and to steady the markets – temporarily.
        By late 2002/early 2003 it became obvious that the treasury was getting nervous, so GB did what so many others before him had done – cast around looking for other sources of cash to steady the boat and make it appear that he knew what he was doing.
        So, with the applomb and naivety that only high office can bestow, he then disposed of the majority of the UK gold reserves on the open market when the price of gold was at its lowest point since 1945. Not only did he do that, he also advertised the amount, plus where and when the sale would take place, thus driving its price down even further – what a great stroke of genius THAT was!
        By 2005, the fiscal black hole had grown to the stage where further income was needed to pay for Tony’s ‘social reform’ agenda, so in a calclated act of pure greed and desperation, GB fell back on the only remaining source of untapped wealth – the private pension funds.
        I’m not goint to delve into the whys and wherefores of that despicable act, as it’s far too involved; however suffice to say that through milking off £billions per year, he succeeded in his quest to make the “economy” look rosier than it really was.
        The upshot for hundreds of thousands of people with private pension plans was catastrophic; suddenly their carefully-considered retirement plans were halved or worse. As the great majority of these people had contracted out of SERPS during the eighties, they were left with precious little by way of any workable income, and have had to rely almost entirely on state supplementary income since. Add to that the fact that pensions are taxed as ‘unearned income’ and you’ll get a flavour of what todays pensioners are REALLY facing, all caused by the famous prudential Labour Government.
        Now as regards the banking collapse, we really need to divorce the US financial crash from the situation over here; granted, Wall Street was largely instrumental in shaking the foundations of the system everywhere, but to get to the nub of the matter we have to look at the reasons why, and how the situation came about here in the UK.
        The trouble started when GB decided, in his infinite wisdom, to devolve Parliament of its ability to control interest rates and put the job in the hands of the BoE. Many pundits at the time hailed this move as a quantum leap forward; the reasoning was that as the BoE was “in the business” so to speak, it would have a better idea of how to control the financial sector in this country – so far so good.
        That was the theory of it; however what it did NOT do was to take account of market fluctuations in other parts of the world where financial regulation was as near to non-existent as it could be. This in turn led to British banks and Bulding Societies getting involved with other institutions elsewhere and taking on debt that was already turning toxic – as we found out when Northern Rock went to the wall.
        Financial deregulation – often ascribed to Margaret Thatcher but actuated by GB’s abdication of his duty of care – was the crux of the matter; had HMG retained control of the financial sector, earlier action could have been taken to reduce the UK banks’ exposure to the levels of toxicity that nearly killed it off altogether.
        The bottom line to all this is that Noo Labour inherited a decent surplus in 1997, squandered it on social engineering “reform” and left the UK with close on £1Tn worth of debts – and that ISN’T what I’d call a good or a sound financial record.
        Lastly Mike, I’d like to ask you a question; if private investors and the banks have lost fortunes through the crash, where has all this money gone?
        JB – former Conservative councillor for Elmdon in Solihull.

        • Mike Sivier September 22, 2013 at 3:42 pm - Reply

          The studies I mentioned were reputable – one was from Oxford University, I believe, and the other from the Centre for Economic Performance.
          New Labour did not inherit a budget surplus; in May 1997 the national debt was 41.9 per cent of GDP and the Conservative government had not been paying it down. Labour DID start paying it down, although this policy did not last long (if I recall correctly).
          Gordon Brown’s decision to sell the gold has been well-discussed on this site. He believed that gold was an inconvenience because it was not earning interest for the UK, and wanted to change it into an asset that would earn money for the country instead. That’s why he sold it. The timing was indeed poor, but the current government is spending equivalent amounts every few weeks.
          There was no “fiscal black hole” during Blair’s period in office and the only time debt as a percentage of GDP (the only benchmark worth using – real money figures are not revealing in these cases) rose beyond Conservative levels was after the banker-driven debt crisis.
          Pensioners today – after Labour’s period in power – are in a far better position than they ever were under any previous Conservative government, according to all the indicators.
          The financial crisis happened because of the deregulation carried out by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s – not because of Gordon Brown, although it may be argued that GB’s inclination to re-regulate was halted by arguments from the bankers that they could look after their own affairs (they couldn’t) and arguments from the Conservative Party that MORE deregulation was the way forward (it wasn’t).
          Banks taking on toxic foreign debt had nothing to do with Gordon Brown handing control of interest rates to the Bank of England – I fail to see any connection at all. This was a consequence of Thatcher’s deregulation in the 80s.
          The bottom line is that Labour inherited a deficit in 1997, ensured that it ran a LOWER deficit for as long as it could, and then the bankers ruined it all by proving they could not keep their own houses in order without the kind of regulation that Thatcher had abolished in the 1980s. That is the conclusion of pretty much any financial analyst around.
          The Coalition government then came in and stalled any recovery with its silly little austerity games, taking vast amounts of money out of the economy altogether and thereby ensuring that people on middle and low incomes suffer massive income cuts for years to come.
          I won’t answer your question as I do not accept its premise. The richest in society – the so-called “1%” – have been doing very well out of the recession and subsequent austerity, and have banked something like £350 billion in their offshore tax haven bank accounts since 2010. That’s where all the money has gone.

  3. beastrabban September 22, 2013 at 7:58 am - Reply

    Reblogged this on Beastrabban’s Weblog.

  4. martyne wilson September 22, 2013 at 7:58 am - Reply

    I am a single parent with 5 children and I am just about to become homeless on the 17th of october due to the benifit cap I am deverstated that I fled dv 2 years ago and was able to get myself clear of debt now I feel myself getting back to a state of depreasion as all I have fought for now 10 years with housing an benifits now to take 220 off my rent a month has a big srain on being able to be a good parent and provide a basic lifestyle

  5. samedifference1 September 23, 2013 at 9:40 am - Reply

    Reblogged this on Same Difference.

Leave A Comment