#ukbenefits

This is me, this is my over-planning, and self-denial, in the face of the absolute mess that is Universal Credit. My ‘work coach’ intimated that the six-week minimum waiting period for the first payment could be reduced for new claimants, which is good, but doesn’t help people like me, who are already ‘behind.’ There’s also advice being circulated that claimants can ask for an immediate call-back, to avoid being charged for the 0345 number, that’s progress, but in my experience, you’ll have been on hold for a fair while before you even get an advisor to pick up, so you can ask for the call-back.

Nobody should be ‘better off on benefits than in work’, I haven’t had the TV on, to watch the Terrahawk respond to everyone’s favourite allotment-uncle with that, but I’ve picked it up on Twitter. Excuse me, I just need to rotate the champagne and caviar in my American-style fridge the size of a wardrobe. I’m being sarcastic, I’m not rotating the fridge-contents, because the second shelf of my fridge is held in place with a lolly-stick, some duct-tape, and a jar of chocolate sauce from when my son was here over the summer. 

I spent some time this morning researching the local food-banks. We have two in this village, and there are possibly others that aren’t ‘advertised’ online. I’m not planning to use them, I just know that some of the families that end up going there are going to be completely flummoxed by the 3-day parcel contents, and I feel I should try to help. There’s a skills-gap, that the Daily Mail and such like to pounce on, that poor people don’t know how to cook from scratch. Some don’t, my mother didn’t, ‘food’, was something that went straight from the freezer to the oven, the microwave, or the ever-present chip-pan full of solidified lard. The exception was ‘Sunday Dinner’, which was done in the pressure-cooker. “A bag of carrots is only 40p!”, well, I’m a canny cook, and I’m not sure how many meals I could get out of said bag of carrots, I do, however, know that demoralised parents, with demanding children will know that own-brand chicken nuggets are around 60p, and that the kids will eat them. If there’s credit on the gas or electricity meters to cook them.  

I’m used to ‘this’, to tins with plain white labels, and waiting until the pensioners have finished picking over the ‘reduced for quick sale’ section in Tesco, move aside, Gladys and Alf, you don’t like the look of that ‘foreign stuff.’ I’m used to going into the ‘bashed tin shop’, and trying to find the smallest piece of cheese they have, and then slice it REALLY thin. I’m used to food that isn’t really food, in that it will fill your belly, but provides no nutritional content. I’m used to going without, at first it was the ex who had the larger portion, the ‘better’ bit of the meal, and then it was the boy and the ex, I’m used to putting myself at the very bottom of the food-chain. I’m so used to being hungry that I don’t even notice it any more, years of just-not-eating as a teenager, and years of ‘saving’ food for other people have whacked my appetite as much as the brain injuries have cocked up my sense of when a ‘meal time’ is.

I’ve reverted back to that, to ‘saving’ food, even though I’m the only person in the house. “Don’t eat all of that.” is becoming a problem, in classic ‘Mum’ “You can’t have that, it’s for Christmas!” style. “Don’t eat that, what if the kid, or my weird visitor check the fridge?” “Don’t open that, you won’t use it all!” The irony here is that my cupboards and freezer are packed full, because I’m barely eating. I have enough money, between what’s left in my bank account, and the paltry Universal Credit payments, to last me a couple of months, so I’m ‘storing’ food, rather than eating it. I’m going to make myself ill, and I’m more worried about the other families in the village not knowing how to cook rice than I am about myself. Bottom of every list.

The other families are used to having their various benefits paid weekly, or fortnightly, they won’t have month-cupboards like mine, stuffed with tinned pulses that taste of nothing, and dried beans that take hours to cook. There’s tinned meat, and fish, I’m ‘saving’ it, and that’s my problem, I need to stop doing that, because I’ll make myself ill, nobody wants to read about a woman starving to death in a house stocked with food. I’m well-stocked because I’ve been buying a little bit extra of things that will last a long time. The other families won’t shop like that, when you’re paid weekly, you shop weekly, here’s no ‘big shop’ once a month, on pay-day, it’s a drip-feed, a trickle of whatever you can afford. We have one supermarket in this village, the next-nearest is roughly 2 miles away, and the ‘budget’ supermarket is about 3 miles out. For the ‘helpful’ people who like to comment that food is cheaper from market stalls, the nearest market is about 10 miles away, the return bus-fare is £4. The ‘standard’ element of Universal Credit, for bills, and food, and such, is £317 every four weeks for a single person, I don’t know what ‘family’ rates are, this system is less transparent than the old ones, I tell a lie, I’ve found it. https://www.entitledto.co.uk/help/Universal-Credit-Rates but try working that out if you have limited internet access and your literacy and numeracy skills are poor. I’ll work on my situation, because that’s what I’ve been doing for the last six months. (I’m over 25, no idea at all why the system differentiates on an arbitrary age-difference, technically a person under 25 might still be developing, hello future osteoporosis, and perhaps a resurgence in rickets and scurvy.) 

£317, for four weeks, it ‘should’ be possible to live on that, shouldn’t it? We’ll take out of the equation that was probably what I earned in a week when I was working, yes, I’ve ‘tightened my belt’, and ‘cut my cloth to suit’, and such. The £317 isn’t £317 in my case, because the ‘housing’ element, that replaces Housing Benefit for UC doesn’t cover my rent, I’m essentially ‘borrowing’ from the ‘standard’ element. Borrowing the shortfall, of £150 per month from the £317, leaving me £167 a month for bills, and groceries. £41 a week, or thereabouts, I’m not going to calculate it properly, that has a more instant effect on my guts than only eating once a day, because I have to factor-in the energy cost of heating the food I already have stock-piled. I’m still on direct debits for my energy costs, a lot of people will be on pre-payment meters, take at least £10 a week from the £41 a week, to top-up the meters, and you can see where this is going. Another £10, for mobile phone credit, to comply with the ‘Claimant Commitment’ of daily internet job-searching? Gods help them if they have to phone the 35p/minute helpline. 

The assumption that everyone knows how to budget monthly is going to hit a lot of people very hard. A trip to the local pay-point shop, to top up gas, electricity, mobile etc, I’ve been in post-office queues behind people. Now, if you think ahead, and put four weeks credit on the cards/keys at once, that takes one hell of a chunk of your available budget. I’m only having slight palpitations when I check my bank balance, if this continues for a couple more months, I’ll be worse than that. (I’m waiting for the tribunal on my disability claim to go through, so I know how much of a reduction in hours/income I can stand, committing myself to ‘any suitable’ full-time job at this point is a risk I’m not willing to take, for me, or other parties.) 

I am cautious, I’ve had extended periods of my life where there was more month than money, I know about the factory reject shops, and the tricks to pay lower delivery charges than the bus-fare would cost. There’s enough canned and frozen food in the house to last me for months, it won’t just be ‘me’ for one of those months, when the kid is back from uni. (leaving lights on, and doors open...)   For people that only bought food week-to-week, there isn’t going to be that stockpile, and the job-coaches delivering the ‘budgeting advice’ have never been as dirt-poor as we are. (My job-coach doesn’t do her own grocery shopping, her husband ‘deals with all of that’, she has no idea of the cost of anything.) ‘We’ are being lectured about buying essential products from convenience shops, about buying in bulk being more cost-effective, about cooking from scratch being more cost-effective. Yes, a sack of potatoes is more cost-effective than pre-packed over time, but I’m not going to use a whole sack of potatoes, and the £1-odd is easier to bear than the £6 to £10 for a 25kg sack, when you have £40 a week for bills AND food. (I have 2 potatoes left, that’s how poor-conscious I am, I could probably list how many/much of everything I have left in the house.)

I’m watering down my shower-gel and washing up liquid, I’m wearing 3 jumpers instead of turning on the portable heater, because, even on the lowest setting, it uses 67p/hour. The kettle uses 35p/hour, the washing machine £1.47, and the oven £1.53. I’m rationing my hot drinks, both due to the kettle-cost, and the fact that £4 for a jar of coffee, or £2 for a box of tea-bags means something else I can’t-have in my grocery shopping. Yesterday, I un-did my online grocery basket, juggling, balancing what I already had in, because I haven’t used it, with things I’d put in the ‘basket’ on auto-pilot. This is the reality of Universal Credit, we know it’s not supposed to be nice, that’s the deliberate disincentive, if I COULD have ‘just’ secured another job straight away, believe me, I would have done it, but I’m still battling my way through the NHS, and the PIP system with my brain injuries, Ken Loach would have a field day with me, I’m missing-meals ‘Katie’, and disabled ‘Daniel’ in one.

Away with me, I ‘should’ volunteer to give budget-stretching advice, and cooking demos at the local food-banks, and community centres, but my medical condition fluctuates so much I can’t commit to that. Also, the number of times I cut/burn myself preparing food might be a little off-putting for the type of people who would rather slam a tray of sausage and chips in the oven. (And remember they’d done it, not wander off, then wonder why the smoke alarm is going off.) I’ll do what I can online, signposting and such, and try not to get too annoyed at the ‘luxury’ ingredients that creep into the ‘love food, hate waste’ website. I don’t have ‘leftover’ lamb, thank you very much, I did manage to snag a tray of stewing lamb chunks out of the yellow-sticker area a few weeks ago, and it WAS a treat, the ‘stew’ was watered down on the second day, and on the third day, it was essentially soup. 3 meals, out of £1.46 of lamb, a bag of frozen casserole mix, and a handful of dried beans. I made a tin of tomato soup last 3 meals this week, by throwing a scrambled egg into the ‘other half’ on the second day. It was so disgusting I couldn’t eat half of it, so that was the third day sorted.

‘No evidence of malnutrition’ on my PIP-assessment, to be fair, I’m still carrying a little fat from the inactivity, but it’s impossible to evaluate ‘malnutrition’ based on a visual assessment of ‘appeared to be of a normal weight.’ We are going to see malnutrition return under Universal Credit, the foundations are already there, in the frozen-chips-skills-gaps. This food insecurity presents oddly in me, due to my lack of appetite, I acknowledge that, I’ve had so many years of food-avoidance that I don’t have much of a ‘hunger’ trigger any more. The brain damage making food taste ‘odd’, and all the new difficulties I have preparing/cooking food have just exacerbated not-wanting-to-eat. It will present differently in other people. Skipping meals will lead to irritability, arguments, domestic violence, potentially worse. Lack of money for food will lead to shoplifting, to burglaries and street crime, once all the pawn-able good are gone. 

This system is a mess, and it is my opinion that it was the intention for it to be. A life ‘on benefits’ shouldn’t be a life of luxury, everyone acknowledges that, nobody ‘needs’ chocolate, and Sky TV, obviously, I have neither. The ‘waiting period’ will catapult some claimants straight into zero-hours contracts doing anything-at-all, then they’re not the government’s responsibility when they have 40 hours one week, and 4 the next. The claim is held open for six months after employment is secured, the system knows that people are going to bounce between temporary and zero-hours jobs, but, hey, they’re not unemployment statistics. The influx of ‘seasonal’ work will mitigate the figures for a couple of months, they will spike again in January, as the full roll-out is scheduled for next April.

It isn’t working, other than to further divide this already fractured society. ‘Just’ get a job, ‘just’ buy own-brand, ‘just’ pull your socks up, and get on with it. The system isn’t just, and it isn’t justifiable to assume that thousands of vulnerable people, some lacking skills, can navigate it. I’m lucky, my phone and internet are still connected, I can limp by from home, rather than having to drag myself to the Job Centre or library every day, to check-in on a system that my job-coach told me this week there was no point bothering with, due to the frequency of technical issues with it. I saw a little old man painstakingly writing down contact details from one of the two-of-four terminals that were working this week, I can’t see anywhere in my Job Centre that provides a phone to use, though. 

Poverty line? I can’t even see it from here. Nobody is ‘entitled’ to be ‘kept’ by the state, but these systems, like many people’s food situations, are not providing any level of security. Some of us will quietly starve, some will be unable to access medical treatment, some will be victims of violent crime, as the insecurity widens, and, whether through poverty, or mental illness, or pure, abject inability to cope, neighbours turn on each other. This village has areas where ‘undesirables’ are re-located after evictions, or fleeing domestic abuse, that estate will be the worst-hit, but not the first-hit. The first-hit will be the more affluent areas, because some people who can’t afford to eat will break into houses, and steal goods to sell-on. In the middle band, I’ll be hit by that, because my contents insurance premiums will rise, there’s nothing of value here to steal, but I still pay the insurance, in the same way I paid tax and national insurance from the age of 18. (Possibly a little before that, I can’t remember if there were deductions from my part-time wages between the age of 16 and 18.)