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Just what were the restrictions in April this year? Because that video doesn't look all that damning to be honest. Isn't one of the big things about the various Johnson photos/scandals is that they were at the height of restrictions in spring 2020 and Xmas 2020? Also, yes, that blurry creepy video of what could be mistaken for the world's saddest party doesn't exactly make you think starmer is having a grand old time while everyone else is shut in, which is another reason the Tory ones hit hard
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Dec 22, 2021 22:14
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It looks like the prelude to an assassination in an incredibly low budget spy thriller. Piers Corbyn is James Bond in WeatherAction.
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Dec 22, 2021 22:16
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Niric posted:Just what were the restrictions in April this year? (having a beer at work counts as work fite me (I don't share an office tho so it's fine)) e: *my bad it's the OP, his av looks like craftywank on a phone Borrovan fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Dec 22, 2021 |
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Dec 22, 2021 23:00
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Borrovan posted:
Working hard here 
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Dec 22, 2021 23:53
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Jaeluni Asjil posted:So yeah, it's always been policy to treat claimants like poo poo. When I had to sign on in the early 2000s, I was forced to at least make myself look busy - I had to take 3 'actions' a week which included looking in a newspaper, doing a jobsearch on the terminal or applying for a job. The staff viewed me with suspicion but not outright hostility because I still had the energy to turn up for morning appointments and turn up looking presentable. There were hints that if I was on too long they'd send me on a training course. Next time I went back in the mid 2000s, I had a diagnosis of dyspraxia and the difference was night and day. They sent me through to a different person who dealt with all the disability cases, they put all my requirements on hold while they compiled a report (based largely on me giving them the ed. psych report and then just telling them what I found difficult). My actions were one search a week during the jobcentre meeting and I got to turn down any jobs I could vaguely link to my condition. Never got any hassle or pushing along, and when I got a job it was because I wanted it. Admittedly that area was extremely middle class, had less than 1% unemployment and I think the staff were just bored. By the time the mid 2010s rolled round I was thoroughly terrified of the reputation they had. I signed on and was immediately hit with a 5 applications a week minimum. If I told them any of them were unsuitable, I got threatened with sanctions and had to justify in writing why I'd turned them down. I wasn't even getting any money out of them (married by that point) so I went self employed so they'd leave me alone and have been ever since. Funnily enough my uncle Tom had been on welfare most of his adult life. My parents were always a bit Daily Mail about it, but I remember hearing around the mid 2000s that he retired early because dealing with the welfare system was becoming impossible. I remember there being a lot of talk in the area and the parents at my mum's work that there were a lot of lifers who were suddenly finding the system impossible to navigate or openly hostile. So the impression I get is that it used to be possible to just eke out a basic existence on jobseekers as long as you kept your head down and jumped through the hoops. If you could provide evidence of a learning difficulty all of the pressure was off. Whereas now the hoops are on fire, there's a guy with a whip and also lions chasing you. And they no longer care if your leg has been eaten by one of the lions, you find a way to jump or they'll set the clowns on you.
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Dec 22, 2021 23:59
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I don't know if given the statements from the current shadow chancellor and also labour over the entire period corbyn wasn't in charge, that that attitude is necessarily confined to the tories, more that they were just the ones who oversaw the initial enforcement of it.
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Dec 23, 2021 00:21
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Bobby Deluxe posted:The major difference over this last Tory government is that the ideological net has been extended to cover disabilities, illness, and especially neurodiversity. Credit where it's due, that changed started under New Labour. They were big on pushing "the dignity of work" for people with disabilities and such like. Obviously it's worse under UC but...
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Dec 23, 2021 01:16
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Met a friend for coffee (outside and both masked) and he's been volunteering in a Trussell Trust foodbank. He said all food donations have to be weighed in and when they're given out weighed out. I can understand that if the purpose is to make sure staff aren't taking the food. But bog roll, toiletries, dog food etc don't have to be weighed. So do they think staff wouldn't steal that kind of thing? Or is there some other rationale behind it?
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Dec 23, 2021 02:38
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I would have thought tamper checking, you weigh it and make sure it aligns with the weight on the package perhaps? E: or possibly inventory control? It's an easy way to make sure it's the right thing you're scanning in/out, it's how self checkouts work after all. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Dec 23, 2021 |
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Dec 23, 2021 03:13
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Checkweighing is pretty common in perishable food handling in general, at every step from fresh produce/livestock onward It's not just about fraud and embezzlement, it's also an efficient way to mandate supply chain traceability and discourage adulteration Note that food banks may issue claimable receipts based on weight so the figure quoted is certainly valuable to the donor (since it's a substantial tax credit). Lots of reasons to have perverse incentives to manipulate figures
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Dec 23, 2021 04:39
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https://twitter.com/chortle/status/1473590865893466114?s=21
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Dec 23, 2021 06:06
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That guy looks like a barrel of laughs.
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Dec 23, 2021 07:14
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prediction: this will be entirely unfunny and unpleasant, will fail to gather sufficient audience and will get quietly cancelled with little ceremony but a few polite whimpers about cancel culture or whatever
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Dec 23, 2021 07:42
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That dude looks like he got permabanned from SA for refusing to stop using the R word.
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Dec 23, 2021 07:46
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Trying to imagine the sort of opinions that are unsafe on radio 4. Policemen shouldnt have to wear their helmets in the summer. It's okay to put jam on a scone first. Your neighbours can put some of their rubbish in your bin if theirs is full. That sort of thing
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Dec 23, 2021 08:17
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the sex ghost posted:Trying to imagine the sort of opinions that are unsafe on radio 4. Policemen shouldnt have to wear their helmets in the summer. It's okay to put jam on a scone first. Your neighbours can put some of their rubbish in your bin if theirs is full. That sort of thing "jazz music"
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Dec 23, 2021 09:23
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Bobby Deluxe posted:So the impression I get is that it used to be possible to just eke out a basic existence on jobseekers as long as you kept your head down and jumped through the hoops.. I spent ~3 years on JSA starting in 2010 and had to apply for 5 jobs per week but the trick is, you didn't actually have to apply because no one checks. Eventually they sent me to some private employment agency and then I had to apply for 10 jobs a week but still nobody checked. But bear in mind this was during a financial crisis and in one of Britain's most impoverished areas. So I imagined I was at the bottom of a very long list. So I think some places are more apathetic than others. The thing was I was applying to as many available jobs as I thought I could do and still only had ~4 interviews over those 3 years. My view was the Jobcentre people were content to just not do anything, UNLESS you were 5 minutes late for your appointment and then it was all hands on deck which never made sense to me. "I will assist you in getting a job by taking away your meagre income for 2 weeks, now get out there and hand out some CVs" Can't imagine what it's like if you don't have a safety net or have a disability now. A few of my family have to apply for PIP and I know that's an ordeal.
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Dec 23, 2021 09:36
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Jaeluni Asjil posted:Met a friend for coffee (outside and both masked) and he's been volunteering in a Trussell Trust foodbank. The local foodbank operates a mostly informal system where the staff are allowed to take certain items in return for a donation. A mountainous surplus of baked beans might be used to buy something like sanitary products that are in short supply. A number of the staff are long-term unemployable due to various disabilities, so allowing this is a charitable act in itself. There apparently used to be some abuse of this (one ex-member was cherry-picking the stockpiles to supply their husband's cafe), but the current head of the fooodbank has come down very hard on it. They're also fighting a rearguard action against being swallowed by the Trussell Trust. I'm not aware of the exact details of why, but the consensus is that this would be a BAD THING.
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Dec 23, 2021 09:47
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nurmie posted:prediction: this will be entirely unfunny and unpleasant, will fail to gather sufficient audience and will get quietly cancelled with little ceremony but a few polite whimpers about cancel culture or whatever It's win-win, when the show fails for not being funny they will be vindicated. Lessons must not be learned, under any circumstances
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Dec 23, 2021 09:52
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https://twitter.com/ryxnf/status/1473800341980389382
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Dec 23, 2021 10:05
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Conducted my final shopping trip, 8am Tesco (Norn Irn) is very full of shoppers (95% masked, got an N95 taped to my fat face as big nose = leaky) got everything on my list plus a can of Pringles.  Barring my monthly prescription & walks (exercise) i don't intend to go anywhere until the end of February.
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Dec 23, 2021 10:37
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nurmie posted:prediction: this will be entirely unfunny and unpleasant, will fail to gather sufficient audience and will get quietly cancelled with little ceremony but a few polite whimpers about cancel culture or whatever I don't really get how a mandate that the jokes have to be un-PC works in practice. Like, is there some kind of vetting committee ensuring that any joke that's funny without being sufficiently racist gets cut? Probably not a huge problem for the people being invited on I guess.
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Dec 23, 2021 10:38
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Just Another Lurker posted:Conducted my final shopping trip, 8am Tesco (Norn Irn) is very full of shoppers (95% masked, got an N95 taped to my fat face as big nose = leaky) got everything on my list plus a can of Pringles. I'm about to head off to get the turkey.
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Dec 23, 2021 10:40
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peanut- posted:I don't really get how a mandate that the jokes have to be un-PC works in practice. Like, is there some kind of vetting committee ensuring that any joke that's funny without being sufficiently racist gets cut?
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Dec 23, 2021 10:45
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https://twitter.com/Tall_Paul_05/status/1473730621310705675
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Dec 23, 2021 10:50
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I'm currently waiting on a GP callback about possibly having ADHD and was wondering if anyone in here has any experience of Right to Choose and which companies are good to go for. Psychiatry UK are very highly regarded it seems but they are so overloaded they've closed to new referrals until at least 2023.
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Dec 23, 2021 10:59
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forkboy84 posted:Credit where it's due, that changed started under New Labour. They were big on pushing "the dignity of work" for people with disabilities and such like. Obviously it's worse under UC but... I'm writing this from the perspective of someone who was dumb and from a working class background who at the time believed I had to / should work, so this is more about the experience of being a disabled jobseeker. Back then, as long as I did the weekly jobsearch I could have lived a basic existence on those benefits. Hell even if I didn't want to work, I just would have just had to put up with going on a training course every few years to reset the NEET timer. And call me naïve, but the 'dignity in work' line did seem to be played more straight back then. Under the tories though, it's far less dignity in work and much more openly arbeit macht frei. Second session, they tried to push me onto ATOS and I had to justify in writing why I was turning down the wildly unsuitable jobs they were pushing on me, or get sanctioned. They still didn't understand what dyspraxia was, nor did they care that I had a diagnosis of chronic RSI, but the difference was that this time they didn't want to understand and they didn't listen to anything I had to say. I had to go to a couple of interviews I was wildly incapable of because they weren't listening and the only way I would have been able to argue back would be to refuse, get sanctioned, and then appeal. Since disability and long-term sickness were folded into UC, there has been a huge culture change - the major hurdle used to be getting a formal diagnosis from a doctor or clinician, but once you had it on your medical history they would largely respect it. Now, you're at the mercy of some arsehole with two weeks training who can overrule your doctor, hospital consultants, diagnoses and reports. I have a friend who was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and when she told this to her UC worker they first said she didn't look like she had it, implied something about it being made up 'like ME,' and implied that it was more likely down to her past anorexia. In my past experience the jobcentre staff would respect diagnoses - now they throw it to a panel of these spiteful pricks who look for a loophole so they can ship you off to poundland. We keep touting the 120,000+ dead from austerity figure, but keep forgetting that's extra deaths over what it normally would be. I don't know what the equivalent figure would be for pre-austerity deaths of people in the welfare system who were sanctioned, but the fact that it's 120,000+ deaths over that means that by definition it is measurably worse now. Learnincurve has been updating this thread and the chat thread about the abject hell they're putting her and her kid through in terms of 'losing' paperwork, ignoring her status as his representative / contact and making him attend jobsearches he can't attend while they make decisions about whether he should have to attend jobsearches. It's loving brutal now. I would advise anyone saying they don't know who's worse to please read older stories about how the system used to be for disabled and long-term ill people, and compare them to what we have now. I'm not saying it was great before, but it was at least possible. Now you can just randomly have your money taken away and have to wait 6 months to get it back because a callcentre guy couldn't get off on your misery properly.
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Dec 23, 2021 11:09
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Noxville posted:The Tories won’t let Boris lead them into another election now that he’s poison, so it’s all academic. They’ll switch for someone who hasn’t had enough time to become truly toxic in the public’s eyes and then Stamer’s “I’m not Boris” stance won’t be such a vote winner any more Boris won't go more than a year before a General Election, it is true. But the knives are definitely out now, and the Tories rarely knife someone prematurely. I think we're looking at Boris gone by April and a snap GE called for October - May 2023 at the latest. The big question is thus who gets the knife in. Is it going to be the sane business Tories like Sunak (note: "sane" does not exclude "evil") who want a return to normality, or the frothing fascists who don't think Boris is Brexiting hard enough because we haven't declared war on France?
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Dec 23, 2021 11:26
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My experience under Labour was shortly after they introduced the work capability assessments and hired ATOS to conduct them. At the time, I was in a long waiting queue for a neurology appointment, and thought that the ATOS assessment was a genuine medical assessment and would help me get treatment. The assessor was in a white coat, and I genuinely thought I was seeing a doctor. He took my walking stick away, telling me I didn't need it, and got me to walk to the other side of the room and back. I was denied disability benefits at a time when my illness had pretty much crippled me, and I eventually ended up in a homeless hostel (and given a top floor room when I struggled to climb stairs). I was only given this accommodation as I'd appealed the DWP decision and was waiting for my tribunal date. If I had lost my tribunal, I would have been given 24 hours notice to leave the hostel. I thankfully won the tribunal in this timeline, but it could have very easily gone the other way. So, New Labour wanted to kill me. They tried to kill me. They drew up and implemented a system that is designed to kill people like me, and has since killed tens of thousands of people like me - some of those being friends of mine. Labour also drew up the blueprint for what eventually became Universal Credit. Just because the Tories sped up the implementation of the social murders, it doesn't mean that New Labour had any different plans for people like myself.
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Dec 23, 2021 11:27
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fuctifino posted:The assessor was in a white coat, and I genuinely thought I was seeing a doctor. This is heartbreaking  really sorry you had to go through that
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Dec 23, 2021 11:38
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Soylent Yellow posted:The local foodbank operates a mostly informal system where the staff are allowed to take certain items in return for a donation. A mountainous surplus of baked beans might be used to buy something like sanitary products that are in short supply. A number of the staff are long-term unemployable due to various disabilities, so allowing this is a charitable act in itself. There apparently used to be some abuse of this (one ex-member was cherry-picking the stockpiles to supply their husband's cafe), but the current head of the fooodbank has come down very hard on it. I realise you say you're not aware of the exact details why, but do you have any insights as to the issues with the Trussell Trust? My 5 seconds of googling turned up some grumblings about them pushing religion on folks - but I'd guess there are other problems with a local foodbank being swallowed up by a big organisation/charity.
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Dec 23, 2021 11:42
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It's almost like the fash talking point of "the system is set up to reward people who lie and malinger" becomes perversely true, like a half-truth viewed through a spiteful mirror, because the system is absolutely set up to poo poo all over anyone who goes in with good faith assuming that as a social service it's there to help them.
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Dec 23, 2021 11:44
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Guavanaut posted:It's almost like the fash talking point of "the system is set up to reward people who lie and malinger" becomes perversely true, like a half-truth viewed through a spiteful mirror, because the system is absolutely set up to poo poo all over anyone who goes in with good faith assuming that as a social service it's there to help them. I get this - especially as the advice usually given in this thread for these assessments is "Imagine your worst day, and make that your every day for the reports" because anything else will be taken as "Sounds like you're good to work then!". I'm one of many that can relate to the pre and post 2012 job centre experience as being very, very different - my first time in 2010 was much more about finding suitable work, in 2015 (or 16, I can't remember) it was much more about making me apply to incredibly unsuitable jobs. (Such as the guy who insisted that I applied for a Barclays job at 160k/year despite me saying I did not have anywhere near the experience and reminding me that I would be sanctioned if I didn't.) I applied, and to my great surprise I didn't get the job!.
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Dec 23, 2021 12:02
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fatelvis posted:I realise you say you're not aware of the exact details why, but do you have any insights as to the issues with the Trussell Trust? My 5 seconds of googling turned up some grumblings about them pushing religion on folks - but I'd guess there are other problems with a local foodbank being swallowed up by a big organisation/charity. It seems to be mainly be a mixture of increased administrative burden and loss of control, arbitary limits on the type and amount of support that can be provided to clients, as well as fears of asset-stripping. The example I was given is that there is a hard cap on the amount of aid that can be given to an individual. Need an extra hardship foodpack? Tough, starve.
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Dec 23, 2021 12:09
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https://twitter.com/Trickyjabs/status/1473590030597705728?s=20 Incredible stuff
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Dec 23, 2021 12:37
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Thing about our UC claim is that it's vastly different to Bobby's, what it is is that if he has two years of NI he would never have had to go on UC, it would have been old style ESA. But he's young so it's UC, and then they work out what ESA you should get after the main claim has been processed, until that goes through you have the job search requirement struck off but still have to attend fortnightly interviews by phone. our problem was we got one evil worker who was crashing and burning her way to being fired, so the phone calls became other DWP workers fixing what she did. So what we are going through is very different to most people just because of the level of disability he has; we are talking statemented at 3 years old which put him in the dedicated special needs school system and onto higher rate DLA, until switching to PIP at 16. I would urge anyone who has PIP or the carer of someone who is to apply for ESA if you can and UC if you can't. The problem for us was the length of time it takes for all of this to go through, if he was old style ESA then it would have been fixed in 14 days - we are coming up on 4 months and it looks like we might miss the cut off date for the backpay to get to us in January. The difference between now and 16 years ago is that it used to be "severe Autism and Learning disability" now it's "severe learning disability" because they don't care about the autism, and it is known amongst the special needs community that if you put the autism down then you are likely to get less points/questioned more. To play devil's advocate on that one though, it was around the mid 2000s when it became a thing where people would "self statement" their kid with autism and apply for DLA, thus loving it up for the rest of us and giving them an excuse to be dicks.
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Dec 23, 2021 12:38
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The SNP's handling of new COVID restrictions is so bad that they're now being bollocked for it by Celtic fans
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Dec 23, 2021 12:59
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https://twitter.com/fromarsetoelbow/status/1473960843230519306?s=20
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Dec 23, 2021 13:03
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Look Queen Nic was quite clear in her last covid message, in fact she wants to make herself very clear. 1) There should be no household mixing around Christmas 2) You can still meet up for Christmas parties with your family
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Dec 23, 2021 13:04
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| # ? May 25, 2024 07:03 |
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Soylent Yellow posted:It seems to be mainly be a mixture of increased administrative burden and loss of control, arbitary limits on the type and amount of support that can be provided to clients, as well as fears of asset-stripping. The example I was given is that there is a hard cap on the amount of aid that can be given to an individual. Need an extra hardship foodpack? Tough, starve. Figured it might be something like that, thanks.
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Dec 23, 2021 13:17
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