Propaganda: DWP sweet-talks mainstream news media about low Universal Credit pay
This is a blatant bid to manipulate the media.
It’s also fixing the barn door after the horse has bolted. The DWP’s Universal Credit supremo, Neil Couling, already gave the game away to Disability News Service on April 16.
So we know that the Tory government has adopted a hard line with people claiming UC because they have lost their job or their income due to the coronavirus lockdown.
As This Site already reported, he told DNS firstly that there is no way he’s going to speed the automatic processing of UC claims and they’ll all have to wait five weeks from the moment they claim, before they get any cash.
The system is designed to bleed you dry, weeks before you get any payments. Then you have to beg for a loan, and then you spend months trying to pay off that loan, while the lowered payments you get because you took the loan mean you go further into debt.
In the Torygraph today, Mr Couling is quoted, warning new claimants to brace themselves for the fact that their payments won’t be as high as they expect.
Look at the state of this reporting:
Director General Neil Couling counselled a “little bit of caution” over Universal Credit sums, saying that people may be “confused” about what they are entitled to.
He said: “People will get their result and they’ll say, ‘Hang on, that’s not what I was expecting’.
“There will be a few confused people out there for the first couple of weeks because they have not had experience of how Universal Credit works before.”
There are fears that new claimants will take home substantially less than they had anticipated because they received a redundancy payment in the past month or declared earnings from self-employment.
What a way to describe the financial enslavement of 1.4 million people!
Meanwhile, I hope you noticed that the Conservative government’s ministers have refused to take a voluntary pay cut, in solidarity with the working people whose income has been decimated by the lockdown:
Matt Hancock today flatly dismissed the idea ministers should take a pay cut in solidarity with millions of workers facing coronavirus hardship.
So much for us being all in it together!
Source: Coronavirus benefit claimants could be ‘surprised’ by low payments, DWP warns
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical
3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
I suppose that the warning about first UC payments being less than expected is , sort-of, sensible, as the Tories and their allies in the mass media have been spinning the line about how people on Benefits have been rolling in easy cash for years. Now we are having thousands of new claimants who have been brought up on stories of the easy life for lazy claimants.
The reality will come as a real shock.
Unfortunately, some of the new claimants may cling to their old beliefs in the face of the new reality that faces them. The only available explanation may be that the “old” claimants (you know, the “asylum seekers/immigrants!”) WERE getting loadsamoney but, mysteriously, all that has changed once true-blue Britons started claiming.
I hope that the truth will emerge but we know from experience, that there will always be an explanation for Tory meanness and it will involve blaming the worst off in the country.
His excuse for not removing the 5 week wait was bad enough, but this is appalling. Basically ‘Oh what a merry jest, the plebs don’t realise all the nasty little ways we have of not paying them!’.
At the same time politicians refuse to take a paycut and some indeed get an EXTRA £10,000 for ‘working from home’. And government ministers break their own government’s rules about staying at home and travel between their second – or indeed third – homes.
All those satirical t.v. programmes ‘Yes Minister’ ‘In the thick of it’ just don’t cut it any more do they!
I posted this and got gaslighted by Neil Couliing with the usual nonsense I can’t find is reply now but he went on about how they’d brought their IT in house which is a blatant lie Atos still runs their IT I have a link to the committee meeting where Frank Field questioned Lord Freud I’ve shared it many times but not even those speaking truth to power seem interested in reporting on it Freud states clearly ‘It was a monumental mistake for government to outsource their IT’ Was asked Why ministers allowed UC rollout in the trial when fully aware it had never and would never work – Apropos 2017 Universal Credit ‘One off update’ Lord Freud told Frank Field ‘It was a monumental mistake for gov to outsource IT’ Asked Why ministers allowed rollout in trial aware it had/wld never work George Osborne admits UC doomed https://twitter.com/1kilroywashere/status/1251247761305096197?s=20