Coronavirus: DWP/Post Office plan to send cash benefits to claimants at risk has one serious flaw
Cash money: it’s one of the most obvious ways possible of transmitting diseases – and the Tories want to send it direct to the homes of the people the coronavirus is most likely to kill.
We’re all being asked to use cash money as little as possible under the coronavirus lockdown because it is a notorious carrier of disease.
Those little gold, silver and bronze coins that we normally handle every day – who knows where they’ve been? This Writer knows of people putting them in their mouths so anything could be on them.
And paper money – what else has been on the hands that have handled them? Again, the mind can only imagine.
So why in blazes is the Tory-run Department for Work and Pensions trying to send this money into the homes of people whose lives are most at risk from coronavirus?
Is it a deliberate attempt to bypass social distancing procedures and make sure they catch the disease?
The DWP and Post Office have launched a joint initiative to deliver benefit payments direct to the homes of claimants shielding because of the risk of coronavirus infection.
The new service from the Post Office will enable cash benefit payments to be sent to individuals identified by the DWP as shielding at home because of the risk of infection from COVID-19 and who agree to receive payments in this way.
The joy of it – for the malicious Tories – is that if these claimants die of the disease alone at home, nobody will know for a considerable period of time and they won’t be added to the government’s already-questionable death figures.
But someone needs to have a serious talk with whoever approved this homicidal plot – and get them to find a less terminal way of paying people what they are owed.
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 could do with a wheelbarrow full of cash bringing to my house please. I can always dowse it in Zoflora.
And are you at high risk of death if you contract the coronavirus?
All you would need to do is dump the coins in a bowl of soapy water and wash them, also with notes being plastic they are easily wiped clean, I’m sure if anyone at risk would have been told the risks of handling money!!
Sure, are you? Based on what evidence?
“So why in blazes is the Tory-run Department for Work and Pensions trying to send this money into the homes of people whose lives are most at risk from coronavirus?”
Because not everyone lives in a town or city. Not everyone has access to online banking and now with the lockdown banks are closed too. Because not everyone has their own transport and can get out to get their own food or access a cashpoint. Because some rural communities like mine are a “cash economy” and shops here don’t have “card readers” or accept online payments. Because, for people like me, if I don’t have cash, we’d starve or be robbed blind each month by unscrupulous people cleaning out our bank accounts if we gave them our cash cards.
Please, be aware of those who are unable to access “modern technology” by reason of disability, rural isolation or mental illness? It really isn’t helpful to read things like this Mike, though I understand you mean well by raising the issue of contamination. The fact is though money from a cashpoint is “clean” it hasn’t been handled. Only money from shops and pubs etc is what you need to be worried about,
All the issues you raise can be overcome by other means than posting potentially contaminated material through the door of people whose lives will be at risk if they touch it.
The flipside is, Mike , that the use of cards becomes ever greater while the perceived need for cash transactions decreases. Poor people rely on cash transactions the most.
We’re sleepwalking to a kafkaesque big-brother style state, and now they almost demand to know how much we have, where we got it, and what we spend it on. They want to monetise that information, and the poor will see no benefit from that monetisation (as per).
Wealth (or rather, the lack of) will be further regulated on the poorest by the richest..
It will no longer be a ‘free country’ once they’ve won, and cash transactions become extinct. We will have far, FAR less freedoms than ‘those dirty commies’ in N.Korea and China in a cashless society
The only difference is our freedoms will be lost to the corporates, while theirs is controlled by their respective states.
I will continue to use cash wherever and whenever I can. I will not allow Covid to guilt-trip or shame me into using my card.
Make sure you wash all the coins and notes you use – thoroughly – before passing them to other people, and do so only while wearing – clean – gloves. You’ll have seen the kind you need to use.
Think you’re being a tad paranoid there, Mike. The amount of germs on currency in circulation has always been at such a level (Always will be) and there’s NO evidence of how many people succumb to all sorts of illnesses from touching contaminated coins or notes – if indeed they actually DO.
Did you wash all your coins & notes during the swine ‘flu outbreak?
Also, I’ve gone against my principles already during this outbreak and started using the self-service checkouts. (Making staff redundant is why I refused to use them previously).
I don’t see any sanitising stuff for the touchscreens…Nor do I see them at ATM’s.
Does that mean the banks & supermarkets are in on this ‘homicidal plot’?
No, I didn’t wash all my coins and notes during swine flu – but then, I did contract swine flu so that’s not an argument in your favour.
On self-service checkouts: I’ve been to Tesco a few times and I’ve seen whoever is supervising the self-service checkouts cleaning them after each customer.
Haven’t used a bank ATM since before the lockdown started.
Because you contracted swine flu, it’s not an argument in my favour? Don’t know how that works…Do you KNOW it was contaminated coins/notes that gave you swine flu?
As for self service checkouts, I haven’t seen them cleaned after each use in my local morrisons, tesco or asda. Can’t say I’ve seen them cleaned at all. That said there is hand sanitiser and disinfectant for the trolleys on offer at the entrance at all three.
That said, when I asked what was the point of having 2 of the 6 self-service checkouts at my local morrisons being card only, I was told they had to give customers the choice(?)
I then asked: ”So what’s the point of asking to use cards over cash at the staffed checkouts? Why not make the self-service checkouts exclusively cash and the staffed ones optional? Less hand to hand transmission, even if the staff wear gloves.”
The girl just shrugged her shoulders and left.
It looks like you’re trying to have it both ways. If I didn’t contract swine flu, you would have told me this proves I can’t contract an illness from coins and banknotes.
Both your – and my – accounts of cleanliness, or the lack of it, at ATMs and self-service tills are anecdotal, of course.