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Champion
 
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Wednesday, October 01, 2008 12:45 PM
Posts: 376,
Visits: 936
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| I am working full time, for a wage that is frankly barely worth earning anyway. My girlfriend (who I live with) is unable to work due to chronic fatigue. For some arcane reason, her majsty's gov't seems to think that since we live together I am responsible for her upkeep. They are kind enough to pay her rent and council tax, but anything else is apparently my responsibility. Were I to be not working, we'd be getting council tax benefit and housing benefit for both of us, as well as income support for her and jobseekers allowance for me. The difference between what we're getting now and what we would be getting is about £50 less a week than what I earn (once you take off the necessary transport costs). So why the fuck am I working 37 hours a week for that extra £50? Apparently I may be eligible for working tax credits, which will make very little difference, and means yet another stupidly complicated form involving giving yet another gov't department information they could easily obtain from all the other forms I've filled in. If the department of work and pensions set up systems as ridiculous as this, then I can really see the attraction of not working. How the hell are people who have problems working for one reason or another supposed to deal with all this fucking bureacratic nonsense?!?
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PD - Machupa Kivull - Sandy coloured great-coated Gnoll
Shards/Ascendancy - Crew
FOIP is short for 'torture me for more info'
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Wag
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Last Login: Yesterday @ 3:02 PM
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I think it's partly because the difference between working and being unemployed isn't simply a matter of quids/week - I gather it also has a major impact on getting better paid jobs later (i.e. work has two payoffs, one immediate and one medium-term). I guess it's a bit like getting a degree in philosophy - you get paid the same whether you work hard or not and it's unlikely to ever be of direct use, but it's sheer inapplicability is a signal to someone considering investing some time/effort/money in you that it's worth doing (assuming you stick it out).
If you're trying to decide whether it's actually worth your while working or not you have to consider the value to you of that signal (are you intending to someday work in a place where it'll be relevant for your potential employers to consider whether you work hard even if there isn't a substantial immediate payoff?). This isn't a challenge I'm personally inclined/able to rise to, which is why I skulk in academia, but then I have no ambitions to own anything/support anyone.
Marios
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Heroic Knight
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Last Login: Thursday, October 09, 2008 7:51 PM
Posts: 183,
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| You're going to be taxed at 20% income tax based on the last budget. If you can get tax credits on that, why not go for it? So you need to fill out a form...work out how long that will take - and if that'll earn you more than your job pays for the same amount of time (which it will), then just do it, and put up with the bureaucracy - it's supposed to be there to stop the people who'd abuse it otherwise, and help the people it can help (like you). Personally, I'd say work, because without good reason (your GF's chronic fatigue for example), I feel it's wrong to just exist on benefits (based on our current benefit system), and it will be hard to get better work (as Marios says) from unemployment. I think the benefits trap is horrendous, and it sounds like you're very near to it. This is why I'm not a big fan of the current system - but we've got to do what we can with what we have.
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Wag
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Last Login: Thursday, October 09, 2008 10:34 AM
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| Usually the pain is getting them to pay the rent in that situation..... if you managed that your doing well.... *thinks* Is your partner registered as unemployed or disabled? Rent and Coucil Tax is housing benefit. She should also be in receipt of JSA or Disability/Sick as well?
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Heroic Knight
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Last Login: Yesterday @ 3:07 AM
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Speaking as someone who's well and truely stuck in that benefit trap, I'd advise anyone to stay well out of it as much as humanly possible. an extra £50 a week with all its associated hassles may not sound much to you, but from my perspective (having a chronic illness and living on Incapacity Benefit) its untold riches beyond my wildest imaginings.
The benefits system is an overly complicated and machevelian pig that seems to be designed to slowly torture and erode the soul of anyone unlucky enough to be caught in it and its all to easy to fall into a hole somewhere and they'll leave you to rot.
For example, your girlfriend gets income support which entitles her to full council tax and housing benefit, I get Incapacity for my chronic illness which although is roughly the same amount does not entitle me to full CTB and HB so I still have to pay some rent and council tax. I have joint custody of my two kids, I see them most evenings (I pick them up from school) and they stay with me at weekends yet I'm not entitled to financial assistance for the kids because they technically live with their mum. Despite my disability, I'm not entitled to Disability Living Allowance because I live on my own, and even though my illness is technically "terminal" I still have to fill in a raft of forms and go through a financial check every year just to get a temporary exemption from perscription charges and even then although my eyeballs are rotting it never seems to quite cover the cost of glasses.
Living on benefits is shit, extremely depressing and a generaly scummy way to exist and trying to get some advice or help is practically impossible.
Umm, sorry, I've had a bad day 
____________________________________________________________
Idiots can be so much fun, thats why every village wants one....
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Champion
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Wednesday, October 01, 2008 12:45 PM
Posts: 376,
Visits: 936
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| She's not disabled so cant get disability living allowance. She's signed off on long term sick so its either incapacity benefit which she cant get because its contribution based and she's young, or income support which she cant get because she lives with me. Of course I'm going to fill out the form. But giving them all the info again after spending months trying to get the current situation sorted is incredibly irritating. If there was one centralised organisation that dealt with all the different benefits it would be alot quicker and require alot less administration at both ends. Call me cynical, but they wont do it because then they'd end up paying out more in benefits more quickly, and we cant have that. Of course I'm going to carry on working. But since I start a 3 year civil engineering course in september, spending afew months in a rubbish phone monkey job between now and then is going to make little difference to my employability in 2011. I jsut wonder what the point of it all is
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PD - Machupa Kivull - Sandy coloured great-coated Gnoll
Shards/Ascendancy - Crew
FOIP is short for 'torture me for more info'
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Heroic Knight
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Today @ 2:00 AM
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Dignity.
I wouldn't want to live off anyone elses charity and I wouldn't respect anyone that did want to live off charity.
Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.
Benjamin Disraeli
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Apprentice
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Thursday, August 14, 2008 9:56 PM
Posts: 21,
Visits: 134
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| Shven- the current system is rubbish and needlessly complecated, did you know that they have a benefits simplification team based in London who will be making current legislation even more complex this April, I think they just like adding massive ammount and overly complex legislation that there currently is. However... I don't think a centrally controlled organisation would work. Look at the DVLA and it’s a shambles. Technically all your benefit comes from the DWP who subsidise HB and CTB to LA’s anyway. My experience with the Inland Revenue (who sort out your Tax Credits) and the DWP who I deal with on a daily basis is that they are a shambles. Considering that many London Burroughs for HB and CTB have nigh on a year’s backlog of claims I don’t think it would make things any easier as they now currently stand. Were you aware that you and your girlfriend could have claimed Tax Credits and HB/CTB when she signed on and the DWP could have forwarded all the relevant info to your LA and to the Inland Revenue? But then again they’d probably just fuck it up and not take all the info needed, which would probably result in long drawn out correspondence.
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