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Dear Iain Duncan-Smith, Thanks for nothing……. goodbye!
Posted on
April 21, 2013 by
ladytaylor72
Dear Iain
I’ve got BIG news!! I’ve got a job!! I know, shocking isn’t it? I mean, I’ve been nothing more than a lazy, work-shy slob for the past 15 months; sitting around all day doing nothing, waiting each fortnight for my dole to drop into my account so that I could continue to fuel my lazy, low-down lifestyle. It’s been fabulous. I’m going to miss it so much. Everything you say on the news is so true. As I look back over the past 15 months, I’ve had such a luxurious time living off the state. I can’t count the amount of shoes, handbags and cars that I’ve bought with the money I’ve gleaned from your pocket, the holidays we’ve been on, the treats we’ve had; hell, I’m practically an alcoholic these days with all the top quality Jack Daniels I’ve been able to buy with my benefits winnings……. oh no sorry, wait, that’s wrong. Let me start the letter again, because what I meant to say was this……
Dear Iain
I’ve got BIG NEWS!!! I’ve got a job!!!! Amazing isn’t it? Fifteen months after being made redundant, I’ve finally managed to secure one of the many jobs that you regularly claim in the media that are out there for the taking. We were beginning to think it would never happen. So many interviews, so much hope, followed all too often by disappointment after disappointment. I don’t know where these jobs are that you speak of. Perhaps they’re in London, because to be honest, you don’t have much knowledge of towns and cities outside of the capital do you? Actually to be honest, you’re right, there are jobs out there, but I’m not entirely sure you’re aware of the stumbling blocks preventing folk from getting them. Check out this list of some of the reasons I’ve been given for not getting a job I have applied for:
- You’re over qualified
- You’ll be too bored – the work will be beneath you (yes, I’ve been told that)
- We only look at the first 50 applications. You are applicant number 2217
- You’re more experienced than the person you’d be working for
- You’re too experienced for what we require
- You’ve got no experience operating a till
- You’ve got no experience of working in a shop
- You’ve got no experience of being a cleaner
- You’ve got no experience of working in a food outlet
- You’ve got no experience in the field you’re applying for
So Iain, as you can see,
getting a job isn’t quite as easy as just sending your CV to a prospective employer. Perhaps if you understood that, you may not continue to spout your patronising nonsense in the media, and further continue to get the backs up of those who genuinely want to work, and do not under
any circumstances want to live off benefits as (as you call it)
a lifestyle choice. You make idle comments about how you could
live off £53 a week if you had to, but that’s the point Iain, you will
never have to and furthermore it’s likely you’ll never want for anything for the rest of your life, whether that be a job, a home, or financial security. You are preaching about things you have absolutely no knowledge of whatsoever. You are using the teeny weeny minority of benefit claimants who do live a satisfactory standard of life to attempt to prove your point, and in doing so are destroying those who are genuinely struggling.
It’s been a difficult 15 months Iain. I’m not sure which people you’ve spoken to in order to form your opinions of the benefit lifestyle, but this luxurious existence that you talk of on tv
never made it’s way into our home. For most of the time, you expected us to live off £61 a week…….. that’s £30.50 per person per week. Oh to have had the luxury of the £53 per person per week you speak of. And when we questioned this £30.50 each per week, and pointed out that it was ridiculous to imagine people could live on that amount, we were told by your ‘loyal, and highly experienced’ (your words, not mine) advisors that that was a “wholly appropriate amount of money to live on” and that we should “stop complaining”.
I didn’t stop complaining though and, despite being struck down by a very serious and debilitating illness in June, which not only put a strong halt on my job searching opportunities, but also rendered me unable to walk, move, and function like a regular human being, I continued to campaign, and complain in an attempt to highlight the vile way in which the majority of benefit claimants are treated in this country.
As I said, in June I became ill – paralysed down my right hand side, which totally destroyed me physically. My partner was unable to work because I needed 100% round the clock care. At the worst points, there was nothing I could do alone; I needed my partner’s help all the time……. there was no longer any privacy, and in some cases, no longer any dignity either. What dignity I did have left was finally smashed to smithereens at the hands of the glorious ATOS folk. I’m not going to revisit that revolting experience in this letter, other than to say that I saw people, in far worse conditions and situations to me, being subjected to the most humiliating, embarrassing, and downright disgusting procedures in order for them to prove they were not fit for work. I met a young man, who despite being paralysed from the neck down following a car accident at 16, and because of this also had the mental understanding of a 7 year old, was expected every other month, to be transported at great expense by his mum, to the ATOS offices to prove that (a) he hadn’t regained his physical ability, and (b) his brain hadn’t suddenly healed. This is an extreme case I agree, and yes I’m sure there are a number of people out there ‘swinging the lead’ and claiming things they shouldn’t, but honestly, do you seriously think that the easiest way to weedle those folk out is to humiliate the people who blatantly are
never going to be in a position to function regularly in society, let alone be able to ever go to work? In all honesty, I wonder whether it’s worth all the money you waste attempting to clamp down on those who are fiddling the system, because it appears to me that as they’ve been scamming the system for as long as they have, they probably know more about how it works than you do! Will you ever find them? I doubt it. And yes you will say “is that fair on those who are going to work each day earning a crust, whilst others sit around pretending to have a bad back?”, but I would argue back, “is it fair that people who are severely physically and mentally disabled are being forced on a regular basis to prove that a miracle hasn’t happened since their last appointment, just because a tiny handful of folk are getting an extra few quid for lying?”. I don’t believe in God, but I do believe in karma, and in what goes around comes around. If they want to scam away, then so be it; let it sit on their conscience. I’d rather they got away with their cheating, than ever have to witness again genuine people being persecuted in a vile way in order to tick them off a list of genuine and non-genuine claimants.
I was deemed ‘fit for work’ by your ‘eminently qualified doctor’ (again, your words not mine), but then you know this, because I wrote to you to tell you. You must’ve been too busy persecuting innocent everyday folk, because you didn’t respond to my letter. You got one of your lackies to do it for you instead. He, rather like you, didn’t seem to care that I was disabled, or unable to function properly. He agreed, like you, that I should just force myself to get better. How do you force yourself to recover from a condition that at that point, didn’t actually have a diagnosis? Are you aware that your staff are actually using farcical comments like that? Moreover, have you ever sat in on an ATOS assessment meeting? Do you have any idea of the crap that goes on in there? Let’s be honest, do you know anything???
I contacted my local MP about the whole benefits situation. He was interested in the beginning, but when he realised that I was giving a good impression of a dog with a bone, and that I wanted to drill down the details of everything and anything to do with benefits and the disabled, he tailed off somewhat. I contacted councillors in my area. Sadly, their responses were much the same. I even wrote to your boss, the darling David. What a waste of a stamp that was! I’ve joined websites, focus groups, forums and the like in an attempt to try to strengthen my case, but it seems that where benefits and the disabled are concerned, there is no help. It appears there is a commonly held view that everyone on benefits is a lazy scumbag, and everyone who claims to be disabled is a liar who spends their weekends out of town dancing in clubs and laughing at how they have conned the world by sitting in a wheelchair 5 days a week.
Anyway Iain, the upshot of the whole situation is that now that I’ve got my job, it means that my partner and I have to start again, at the very bottom of the ladder. The only thing I have left to show for my previous 20 plus years of hard work is my flat, and it’s only through my dogged determination and refusal to be walked over by the bank (
don’t even start me on the treatment I’ve received from banks) that I have managed to keep a firm hold on it. Everything else: car – sold, clothes – sold, shoes and handbags (a stunning, 15 year long collection bought and lovingly kept in pristine condition) – sold on ebay for a pathetic fraction of not only what they cost, but what they were worth. I have sold so much more besides, and all this so that we could survive.
We have existed on a diet of frozen fish fingers, cheap bread, and other processed crap. If we saved up enough, we could manage to treat ourselves to do a shop at Iceland!! I’m in no way knocking Iceland at all – I actually quite like going to Iceland – but it comes to something when you’re having to save up to shop there. My recent health has suffered once more, due to the e we’ve been forced to eat over the past year or so. I’ve been diagnosed with high cholesterol and acid reflux. Hysterically, the doctor gave me a government leaflet about healthy eating, and how to improve my health in general. There were sample menus in it. I priced one of the meal ideas suggested. It came to £13 to buy all the ingredients. FOR ONE MEAL!!!!! I priced the entire booklet, and by shopping at Aldi, it would still have cost just short of £70 for a week. So explain to me Iain how it can be that you think it’s possible for people to live on £53 a week when (a) the government are providing healthy eating leaflets that recommends a £70 a week shopping budgets, and (b) if we were are to overspend (a physical impossibility, but go with me on it) on our shopping, who is paying for gas, electric, mortgage, council tax, management fees, house insurance, buildings insurance, and everything else that you need to pay each month in order to keep a roof – and a warm roof at that – over your head.
Get your head out of the arse of the hand-reared, corn fed swan that it’s obviously stuck up, and check out the real world. You won’t catch any diseases if you leave London. Why don’t you actually do proper research, and SPEAK to REAL PEOPLE, who genuinely suffer in REAL SITUATIONS, rather than just get your lackies to fiddle with figures, pick out obvious targets (women with 20 children selling their stories to papers et al), and concoct ridiculous articles which bear no reflection on real life at all. I’m not saying you’d be entirely welcome in some towns and cities up and down the country, but perhaps if people thought you were genuinely interested in listening to their stories, and genuinely interested in helping them, rather than tarring everyone with the same ‘scum brush’ that you do, you may actually get somewhere. I’m not saying it’s a winning solution, and I’m not saying it’s going to win you the next election (because it won’t), but it’s a start, and considering you’re going to be sat in post for the next few years (twiddling your thumbs til you’re evicted), you could spend that time far more productively and positively, than pissing about down the golf club with bankers and shonky businessmen who are more criminal than
Mr X from Bradford with his alleged dodgy back, scamming his extra few quid a week is ever likely to be.
So anyway, like I said, I’ve got a job. And it’s a good one too. And it’s one I deserve. And it’s one that I’ve worked hard to get. I’ve overcome a debilitating illness (If you’re interested I was poisoned by wrongly prescribed medication), I’ve learnt how to walk and function properly again. I’ve watched my partner suffer too – unable to work because he needed to care for me, and unable to claim carer’s allowance because according to you, I wasn’t ill enough to justify him looking after me. Interestingly though, when he
did get a job, he was advised by your department that he would have to turn the job down, because he would have to be my carer, because the DWP would not provide help for me whilst he was at work. How can you say that he cannot claim Carer’s Allowance because I’m not well enough to be cared for, and then with the same breath tell him he can’t go to work because I need constant care? Arse and Elbow Iain, a pure case of arse and elbow!! But I digress, I’ve worked hard for this. Application after application, day in day out, going for interviews when often there was never a job (“sorry, someone internal is having the job, but we have to do interviews because it’s the law”), spending money we don’t have on travel to get to interviews - I didn’t qualify to get help for travel to interviews because I was over 25!!! (Not sure what
that rule is all about). I’ve constantly questioned myself: Am I good enough to do this job? Have I forgotten what I’m trained to do? Am I too old for this job? It’s been hell on earth. Even whilst I was waiting to find out if I’d got the job I eventually secured, I was sat convincing myself that I wasn’t going to get it, and resigning myself to more disappointment. But I did get it Iain, and I am more than delighted. But just because I’ve got a job doesn’t mean that life is going to suddenly improve overnight. It is going to take a long time to rebuild our lives. My partner still needs to find a job, and until we do, we will survive on my wage. I’m sure we are now on the path to a better life, but it’s going to be a long journey back, and it will be a long time until we’re straight. We’re probably starting another chapter of struggle……but a less painful struggle. We wouldn’t all be lucky enough to get a job with your salary Iain. Hell, if we did, I doubt any of us would ever struggle again.
So as I wave goodbye to my ‘benefit lifestyle’ I turn to reflect on how I’ve been subjected to some of the worst customer service in history by staff at the DWP, and how we have been treated worse than I could ever have imagined. If everyone on benefits is treated in the same way we have been, then sooner or later I fear you may have some form of revolution on your hands. I can rest easy knowing that I have fought all the way, and have written letters and emails making sure that anyone who would listen knew of the hardship we were being forced into by your crazy rules. My latest complaint was heard, and upheld by the DWP (locally that is, not by your generic robots in London) and I’ve actually had quite a favourable response to the issues I raised, but that’s just me. What about the rest of the folk out there who maybe don’t have the ability to write and protest like I have. What about those out there who no longer have the inclination? What about those who have decided that there’s no point, and are currently plotting their own demise because they don’t see any point in living in this life any longer. Who hears their complaints and worries? Nobody I guess, until it’s too late.
Iain, I am not sad to be leaving the benefit system behind, far from it. I am however, worried about those who will continue to be persecuted whilst you’re in power, who you will continue to take money from (money they don’t have) because you refuse to turn the tables on your golf club buddies, and you refuse to open your eyes and speak to real people about real problems.
This has been the worst 15 months of my life Iain. I would love to say I hope that one day you too could experience just a portion of what I’ve gone through; but you never will. I am looking forward to a more positive future. Sadly, under the current government I don’t think many more people will be able to say the same.
Thanks for nothing
Janet x
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