The Nasty Party gets ready to inflict more pain on the Poor & Vunerable

Universal credit has caused untold hardship. But the worst is yet to come

"To a politician, bad policy may be an inconvenience. To someone like Mike, it feels like “sinking”. The 49-year-old is one of half a million people currently going through the universal credit system: the Conservatives’ ongoing flagship “welfare reform” that’s set to be radically extended this autumn.

David Gauke signals he will press on with universal credit
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Until last summer, Mike was a paramedic: 12 years of NHS service in a job he loved. But a freak back injury caused by helping a patient in the middle of a cardiac arrest meant he was forced to take medical retirement. His consultant calls his injury “severe lumbar disc and facet degenerative change”. For Mike, it means shooting pain, weakness, and legs that give out without warning. “Sometimes even lifting a part-filled kettle is too much,” he explains from the family home in Lowestoft.

Money is tight since he had to stop working and his wife’s wage as a teaching assistant has to stretch for them and their two teenage girls. But because they live in what’s already a universal credit area, Mike and his wife aren’t eligible for the family element of working tax credits – a bureaucratic reform that’s the difference between being able to pay the mortgage or not. If they were less than 30 miles down the road in Norwich, the family would be £550 a month better off. Instead, they’re maxing out the credit cards and reaching the bank’s overdraft.

When welfare secretary David Gauke said this week that universal credit is “transforming lives”, it’s unlikely he meant through hunger and pain. It’s reflective of the scale of damage universal credit is causing that Gauke spoke out in response to fears from Labour MPs that – with many areas switching to universal credit in November and December and the infamous “six week” wait for a first payment still in place – families would be destitute in the run-up to Christmas. Hungry and cold children. Poor parents fearing an eviction notice. This is some incompetent 21st-century parody of Dickensian public policy."

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...broken-expanding-conservatives-welfare-reform

I dislike it to Daveeee_e