My Opinion on The state of DWP and Finding Employment in the UK (Edited - 16 March 2016)

Before I start, please consider this is all written in my personal opinion and not all observations/judgements will be accurate, and are mostly down to what has been read from various sources, and attained in conversation.

It should all be based on basic expenditure expectation per based upon basic living costs per family member, andfamily members, not per housing band rating.

For example, I closely know a runaway domestic abuse divorcee with 7 children (2 disabled including her) who was forced to privately rent a run down 4 bed house given through the council.

The council is reluctant to help people living in dangerous conditions

But despite a recent official council inspection turning a blind eye, after 3 years tenancy with a negligent landlord, many maintenence issues often are left un-repaired, leabing the house in a state of be hazardous to health with re-occuring leaks, mould, broken floorboards, mouldy carpets, and growing rot, and smelly,  broken toilets/shower and plumbing. If anything is fixed by the landlord, it usually takes and average of 12 months or more. Even if it is something needing urgent atention. This is fine by the council, who even turn a blind eye at there being no fire alarms, which is illegal for him not to install.

Repairs, temporary fixes, and general maintenence contracted to be done by the landlord and at his expense end up being done by her and at her expense from money from disabilty and child benefit money.The mould has even given the kids respiratory problems.

She is working hard to care for her kids, and is currently continuing her education at masters level so she can seek a sustinable income career, and not have to rely on an increasingly oppressing and morally/real life situation detached DWP, despite being noted several times as being unable to work by a doctor, despite (disproved) DWP calims of her being "fit for work". They would see this if she was observed in her daily life. She has whole weeks of illness, from severe muscle/back pains, exhaustion, and other things, all from a vitamin deficiancy based illness, let alone her diagnosis of Severe Anxiety, which cuses a complete inability to cope in a stressful enviroment. Even a small misunderstanding can cause an explosive blizzard of panic and fear.

In order to truly make the benefits system fair, help disadvantaged individuals and families, there desperately needs to be a reform in the system:

• There should be multiple exceptional circumstance clauses put in place,
  for specific situations, events, ailments, and physical/mental conditions
• A Local Economy measured and Geographically segragated Band for Benefits, based on:
  
  • Location
  • Average employment rate below 25k, 
  • General local population health or common health problem's accosited with the area
  • Local costs of local monthly groceries, essential travel/transport
  • Average energy bill & housing costs
  • Average cost of Educational and Disability equipment, aids, clothing and transport.
  • Average costs of basic personal hygeine & healthcare per person and family
  • Average Essential seasonal clothing, domestic cleaning and basic maintenence products

Although it costs money to calculate,
It is better to do this than use often misleading and biased statistics that often only represent a certain group of damilies from a very generalised area and average situation, often missing out those who are on their last teather and spiralling into debt, forced in to pawning items and getting loans, with no hope of a recovery unles their children can one day pay it back, after paying back their own education fee/loans by the age of 40.

If you are working:

The current system for today's average sub £40k wage working, disability class member families is due to prove a huge failure and injustice for today's children and futur generations
I is growing rapidly in to a system designed to take money away from the public, and in to the capitalist big city high life areas, and will do nothing but plunge them all into such a huge chain of burden, that they could never escape it, and will never get a chance to live a financially stable life off their own back.
Even if they started their own business, as big corporations slowly take over local economies, and stealing all the money from them, removing it and exporting it in to the big cities only the rich can afford to leisure and shop in.

You've seen it everywhere, coffee shops, big brand fashion chains, gambling venues, and Malls with shop space only affordable by national and global businesses. Most jobs in areas like this mean most of the work is low wage, which means most of the money made by the workplaces does go fit fairly with the income of the workers, and ends up being taken away from the local area's economy. This is how poverty begins, where only the privelidged will survive. Why so many people are being forced to move away from their home towns, and live in more rural areas, and spend large amounts of their income on travel and transport just to pay their bills. It's a real shame to see, big business causing towns and villages to become nothing but jobless, increasingly delapidated and depresissive rows of flats and shared housing blocks, with no loclly run shops to give the pace and identity. Relying on the daily export and lending of it's local talent and workmanship to the corporately owned cities industrial complexes.
Remember when kids used to play on the roads, at the brooks, on the local greens?
We don't se this so often, with parents working many miles away, and mothers having to go to work instead of looking after their kids and the house. Expenses rising even more because of it.

How much money do you really get?

We are becoming slaves to a wage that no longer gives the quality of life people experienced in the 1970s, freedom is behind us, and relabelled as a your friday night out drinking or dancing.
Holidays are compressed in to few and far between, rarely with a choice of date, location or even togetherness.
Just 3-6% of your year is allowed holiday for a full time job. That's only time you get to truly enjoy time off with the money you earn.

Overall, 40% of your wage is spent and lost on Taxes, of which it's usage we don't really have much control over, if at all.
Rememmber it's not just Income Tax removed from your wage before you receive it, it's Value Added Tax on almost everything you pay for too, including energy bills. Then there's other government controlled taxes and pre-payment expenses, like National InsuranceStamp Duty, Inheritance Tax, Bedroom Tax, Capital Gains Tax, the so called Pension Fund, which keeps being stolen by the government, Council Tax.


Now for those who wish to avoid being "scroungers" and do whatever they can to work for their income:

What is Workfare, really?

Firstly Workfare is the worst form of encouraging a healthy working class economy, it's apparent aim to improve an ndividual's chances of being chosen for employment in the workplace with newly learned knowledge and skills does nothing but create a mandatory modern form slavery.

Secondly, the Job Center does not encourage people based on their current skill set and abilities, but rather treats the unemployed as if there is something wrong that is causing them not to be employed. This is very often not true and actually the unemployment can be the result of job cuts, redundancies, personal injuries, bad business management practices/ work ethics, busisness moving away, the need for a better paid job, ends of contracts, and changes of circmstance, etc.

Also finding a job in this climate does indeed depent on ability to reach said place of employment and relevant sectors or positions may be weaker in different locations, or even redundant or non existant. Pretty much due to the way this government manages the world of business, and the current instabilities and volatile GOP/Stocks/Overhead costs, every job is literally a lucky dip. Especially for those who cannot afford transport or to work certain hours or meet sometmes overly excessive skill/eudcational acheivement or experience requirements. There used to be a day where employees were given the chance to "Learn the Ropes", but businesses seldom prefer to train new employees for certain job roles, often making previous academic acheivements pointless and irrelevant to a chance at landing a job.

(Mal) Practices of The Job Center

I stand witness to this, and have found that most practices in Job centers involve punishing and fining people for not applying for enough jobs, regardless of viability and relevance to skills needed.

Job Center agents also seem to make a point of forcing decisions upon people on JSA to go to group meetings and classes that are often irrelevant to their personal case or needs, which in fact both waste time and government resourses, let alone essential time needed for someone to find appropriate work for their life situation.

Often people are forced to fill huge "life story" forms for each employer, and post a minimum number of CVs online and make daily phone calls to job agencies (despite being asked to wait for call backs) and premium rate numbers and help lines on their own phones.

The sheer amount of time and costs needed to use and have a communications device, make phone calls and go online is tough enough!
And with it being a mandatory requirement, regardless of personal circumstance or disability, it really should be left optional to the job seeker to seek a JC mandated 'job seeking' course, seminar, or group meeting.

Agents at job centers forget that often these people are still struggling to suport their own families or disabilities. Some are even carers for the diabled no longer covered by the Post-Atos  DLA.

I have in the past myself been forced to attend pointless and demoralising classes to help improve employment chances, teaching basic skills and common knowledge that I was already well versed in, which were not something to even be progovernmentud of in a CV. For someone who have been a professionally focused and hard worker all their life, being sent to these sessions is to say the least, a complete lack of respect or intelligence from whoever it is that decided this was non optional.

There is also the CV Writing classes, where you are forced by the Job center to change your CV, which in fact totally upended my chances of employment even more according to at least two professional contractors, including my father, who had come across my now very different CV online and told me my CV was a "terrible mess", and actually commended me on my well made original CV when I explained why my current CV was the way it was.

Finding and using relevant Data to influence benefits decisions

Oh, and of course may I remind people that Atos used [non medically trained] agents to evaluate disabled and ill people on DLA, and is a foreign business whom the government hired, that were illegally SOLD confidential doctor-patient personal medical data of every person on DLA, which was actually queitly and illegally (Lookup Data Protection Act) [sold] by the government to Atos without any consent from the patents.

The thought alone the the government's ability to attain and transfer ownership of this personal medical data from the NHS and it's patients is astounding. 
So the next time they tell you statistics cost money, dont forget they practically own all our data via the NHS and previously hidden Spy agencies/projects and operations through MI5 and MI6.

Of course it will cost money to compile the data, make correlations, and stuff like that, but that what our Taxes pay for.

Self Employment and Government practices vs Statistics:

The government may tell us that there are more self employed business out there now, which is very misleading - as it does not indicate a good wage or financial stability or a successful venture. The reason why many people turn to being self employed or starting a new company is because it is easy to apply for, and they are often cornered in to it, with no financially viable form of employment available for people with mouths to feed and debts to pay from unemployment.

It does not count for that fact that most of these startup sole trade businesses literally begin from almost empty pockets in desperation often from being made to feel criminalised and often sanctions unfairly with the guilt of "sponging off the state". It seems imposible to get a government grant for self amployment, as advisors will primarily direct you primarily to loans supported by the government which were once grants, but now privatised into loan shark companies. There are no longer nay lonks or phone operators granting any kind of access to these apparent grants,only applicable with online forms, of which there are no links to anywhere on the relevant official web sites, just vague documents which send you in cricles, of which phone operatiors claim are 'there somewhere', full of misdirection.

Thanks for reading, and please consider, as forst mentioned, this is all written with my personal opnion, and not all observations/judgements will be accurate, or indeed still relevant, and are mostly down to what has been read from various sources, and attained in conversation.