[user104658]

Originally Posted by GiRTh

Thats not my recollection. I was unemployed for almost a year about 15 years ago and I thought they were very understanding and any work I did was fairly judged. It was an easy system to abuse but UC is too far the other way. I'm hearing stories of one person who was recently made unemployed, but as part of his old job he got a bus pass that still had six months left. His employer took six months worth of bus pass from his final pay check which accounted to about £300. The UC took that as income and deducted the £300 from his initial claim. That wouldn't happen under the old system.

I believe it was something called "New Deal" (I might be remembering the name wrong) that was just coming into play when I was on JSA. They were also phasing in mandatory weekly "jobseeking classes" - I had to attend ONE of them, even though I had already secured a job, because I still had to claim for the three weeks up until my start date. So I was lucky enough to know that I was just there as a "box ticking exercise"... but it was utterly awful. Everyone lumped in a room together, so you literally had guys stinking of alcohol and people who were struggling with literacy in with temporarily unemployed professionals with Masters degrees, being patronised by some of the worst people on the planet. Like I say... I'm glad I could treat it as a "fly on the wall" situation because if I'd actually felt like I was "in it" it would have pushed me over the edge at that point. And all of that was a Labour initiative. Again, none of it anywhere NEAR as bad as the mess that is UC, but it would be an error to remember the "final" Labour system with rose tinted glasses.