Greenie said:
Its a wicked world out there
Ain't it just!
Greenie said:
Also once you are registered as a claimant you are entitled to free rent/or proportion to pay only -no council tax- the sort of hidden earnings thats kept quiet.
But, if you've ever worked or have any assets whatsoever, its not easy to register as a claimant!
Greenie said:
If you work ------------to pay rent council tax NI contributions Income tax try to feed yourself etc you would need to earn at least £250 a week and still just break even with a DSS.
Minimum wage at the moment is about £200 pw. before deductions so you are better off on the dole!!
I am a professional engineer and have nearly 20 years post-graduate experience, including 12 years in a consulting environment. I have a reasonable size mortgage and live in a large-ish house with wife and kids. For a variety of reasons (that I won't explore) in April 2003 with absolutely no warning I found myself out of work. Being a responsible person, having mortgage + council tax, recent holiday bills and a family to support, I'd taken out mortgage unemployment insurance, which required me to sign on as unemployed to be able to make a claim. I duly ventured into the clutches of the DWP at my local Job Centre Plus where I was presented with a 43 page application form for "benefit" - when I explained that I didn't want any benefits, I only wanted to register as unemployed, I was told that the only way of signin-on was to apply for benefits. I could either claim for a flat-rate benefit of £52 per week based on the fact that I'd previously been contributing NI (this involved only about 10 pages of the application) or I could claim for a more lucrative benefit based on family income which would give rise to the whole range of council tax and incomoe support subsidies - however, if I had more than a couple of thousand pounds in any form of asset, including accounts held in my childrens' names, then I would not be eligible.
Having duly completed my benefits application for the princely sum of £52 per week, I was required to declare any income that I received from any source, which would then be deducted from my payment. My regular RNR drill attendance which attracted 1/4 days pay immediately came off this figure; if I'd been away for a weekend at Colingrad, the fun really started, because the Job Centre Plus (aka CFN or Clueless Fcuking Numpties) regarded this as 16 hours or more employment - this is the break point at which they regard you as being employed, so I was being told to sign-off. This is incorrect, the DWP have an exception to the 16 hour rule for the Reserve Forces and retained firefighters, however it appears that the local offices don't hold the details, only London!
From my own experience of the benefit system, it only benefits people who have no intention of working and no intention of saving for their future and who are long-term unemployed. For anyone with short-term employment problems, it provides nothing other than needless bureacracy and certainly doesn't assist in getting new employment. In the 8 weeks or so that I was technically unemployed, I received the grand-sum of £0.00 in benefits from the DWP through the CFN office (although the Inland Revenue were extremely quick to adjust the Child Tax Credit payments, which I'm now paying back). Needless to say, I cancelled my mortgage unemployment insurance immediately, and have no intention of ever setting foot in any Job Centre ever again!
