In January I booked a hotel for four nights in Whitby for me and a couple of friends to go to the Whitby goth festival. I thought this would be fine, because, when I booked it, I assumed I would be doing a PhD or between courses and therefore pretty flexible. But things didn’t quite go to plan and three very tragic things happened to me. One, I had to leave Newcastle, two I had to go on the dole and three I had to move to Wakefield.
If you’ve ever been to Wakefield I don’t need to explain which of those three was the worst. If you haven’t then good for you.
But I digress. I now am pretty solidly on the dole. As of Monday they started paying me and everything, although they took their sweet time. I’m now going to refer to a span of twenty two days as a ‘JSA Fortnight’. And, because I think it’s only fair that if you enter an agreement with someone you uphold your end of the deal I’ve been looking for jobs and signing on and not being late to appointments (harder than you’d think with the bus service near me). So I’ve maintained the moral high ground over the job centre. Go me.
Except my signing on day falls on a day I’m going to be at the seaside. It’s not a complicated procedure. You fill in a form and then come in the day after you get back and sign on and then everything goes back to normal. Except some of the things it asks you to do just seem a bit, well, dickish. For example, you have to say you are prepared to return from your holiday if you get offered an interview. If you do not say you are prepared to do this it goes to a decision maker and you could lost four weeks work of payments. For those of you who think that’s fair enough think about what that actually entails. What could possibly be your only holiday in years is cut short because some bloodthirsty capitalist can’t be bothered to reschedule. And what if you’re there with other people? Do they have to come home too? What if you can’t? What if you don’t drive or you didn’t take your car or you went with advance train tickets and don’t feel like selling your kidney for replacements?
Also I’m pretty sure most employers would be understanding and give you a couple of days grace. Yeah, I know I just called them bloodthirsty capitalists but I got caught up in the moment a bit. I apologise.
Anyway, back to that bloody form. You also have to promise that you’ll keep checking for jobs. I’m jammy. I have internet access on my phone (in theory. Previous experience suggests signal is less than reliable in Whitby) so I can check job sites etc. What if a person has no internet on their phone? They could look in a local paper I suppose, but how useful is a bar job in Brighton to someone who lives in Carlisle?
But these are just pedantic points dreamt up by me on the bus home. My biggest bugbear is the wording and tone of the form. They kept most of it so I no longer have the juiciest examples but the attitude was that I had done something unforgiveable in asking to go on a trip that had been booked for nearly ten months and at the time of booking, as far as I knew, I would be free. It’s symptomatic of the view expressed by every oozing, self-righteous corner of this country that people on the dole (or any benefit you care to think of) are scum. We’re less than ‘normal’ people and not only do we not deserve the same rights we don’t even deserve the same courtesies.
To be on JSA in 2012 is to constantly search for jobs. It is to never go out, never spend any of the governments money on anything ‘frivolous’ (screw you wankers. I had a half hour wait for my bus and I spent dole money on a second hand paperback and a coffee. A Costa coffee. I am a terrible person). It is to understand that it’s only by the grace of the benevolent state that you don’t starve to death. Although they were so slow processing my claim if I hadn’t had caring and patient parents I would have starved to death. Twice. It is to feel constantly ashamed and like a failure and live with the reality that you are the lowest of the low. As if I didn’t feel like that already.
It’s the same sort of mind set that assumes dole bunnies are scroungers sitting on their arse all day. I know from personal experience that it’s really hard to do fuck all on the dole. Last time I was on it my old computer in its final weeks of life ate an e-mail where I applied for a job. They stopped my JSA for six weeks because I ‘failed’ (accidently I might add) to apply for one vacancy. I had applied for twenty three others in the previous four weeks. Oh, that was over Christmas as well.
So, although I think it’s perfectly acceptable to tell the job centre you’re going away, re-arrange your sign on date and, if possible, keep looking for jobs/checking on jobs applied for it is not acceptable to treat people like this. People on JSA, as the name suggests, are seeking jobs. That can be a really hard thing and if they’ve just been made redundant or something similar it can be a pretty shitty time. They need support not stigmatisation.
Disclaimer: the people who work at Wakey job centre are all really kind and helpful. It’s the system that’s bollocks, not them. As well as being insulting this form was also quite confusing so the lovely Wakey job centre people talked me through it.
P.S. This blog is not getting an introduction. Everytime I tried to write one it sounded shit so I gave up.
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