The problem with universal credit is....

Where to begin really?

*sigh*

Many years ago, when people claimed benefits of all types, all the money was paid to them. This included housing benefit for rent payments, council tax payments for paying council tax (believe it or not) and of course Jobseekers allowance or disability living allowance etc.

This scheme was changed eventually, because when you're living on benefits, you don't live, you exist. You don't have spare money and what you do have you really have to stretch to make it do, with living in these standards anyway. People would often under the way things were, avoid paying rent and use the money for food or paying other bills etc. It all got a little too messy, so a new scheme was set up whereby (and like how it is for me and millions of others) any housing benefit is paid straight to the landlord or housing owner, council tax benefit is paid straight to the council. So all the money that you recieve is yours to spend how you see fit.

In walks the Universal credit scheme, which the DWP is forcing all benefit recieveing people onto.

Universal credit is said to make people manage their money better, that it will give people responsability in paying bills etc. As we have seen in the past, this type of scheme does not work and even more so in this day and age. The amount of money people are expected to live on is already a laughable joke, so you're going to give them extra money and expect it all to actually go to the rent office and the council? I think not.

A number of times now, i've had to do 2 weeks worth of shopping and make it last a month, because the money just isn't there to be out looking for work and to then be able to live too. It's not too rare at one point in the month, nearly every month, to find my freezer empty and un-plugged and a few packets of noodles in the cubard or something like that. While i don't exactly starve to death, i do sometimes go a day or two without food (but that could also be down to the way i eat, which isn't exactly normal either).

If universal credit thinks that they're not going to make people homeless, they really need to think again. Many people will simply see that they have extra money in their bank account and it will get spent on shopping, paying bills and just general living expenses. If the scheme has any chance of working then the amount that a person on disability allowance or job seekers etc, needs to rise and much more than this 1% cap that was introduced by the government a few months back, while the month after, the very MP's who voted on this also put forward for a 33% pay increase for themselves. All in this together are we? I think not parliament, i think not.

This will be yet another thing that the DWP does and gets completely wrong, but will not admit to it. Like mandatory work programme and the countless back to work scheme's, they have failed, yet the DWP does and says nothing to admit they got it wrong. My main question to them would be how many lives do they have to ruin, before they actually work with us to get people back into work and stop working against us?

For people having to live day in and day out on a disability living allowance of just over £70 a week, while your adverage MP can claim over £100 a week just on food, how long will this continue?

I have said many a time that i would love to see the government work on a minimum wage or even better, see them trying to live on benefits, long term. Yet no MP, despite what they say, actually get's that we are not in this together. More and more i find myself thinking that it really is an us vs them situation and i honestly cannot say how long i can carry on like this.