Quote:
Originally Posted by GiRTh
They take into account any income earned but not any customer costs. So if you say work for 10 hours a week then that money will be deducted from your claim but your expenses in taking that job will not be paid. Its so bad that in many cases its better for the person to not declare any income because the deductions from their UC are far too severe. They end up better off not taking on any work or doing work on the side which I'm sure was not the intention of the scheme.
Its a disaster and its so bad I cannot for the life of me understand why it was implemented so rigorously knowing full well that people will clearly suffer hardship
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To be fair, that's always been the case even in the "old system" of JSA + Tax Credits + Housing Allowance. I was unemployed for around 4 - 5 months just before my eldest was born (which is nearly 10 years ago
) and they were expecting me to interview for jobs paying £140 a week, that would have had £80 a week in travel costs. They sanction you if you don't interview or turn down an offer so the only choice was to sabotage interviews
.
I found a job (as a li'l cashier at the bookies
) literally 10 days before my daughter was born and have probably never been so relieved before or since that I didn't have to navigate that system as a new dad. Then of course I ended up staying with the company for 9.5 years and going as high as store manager and despising the soul-sucking mess with a firey passion so... swings and roundabouts I guess
. Odd remembering how elated I was to get that job offer, unware that it was going to wear me down to a stump over the following decade