It was three weeks after Christmas when the bombshell letter arrived. Guy Shahar and his wife, Oksana, looked at each other in stunned disbelief.
They had followed the Guardian’s investigation into the carer’s allowance scandal that has left thousands of families with crippling debts and criminal records. Not once did they think they would join them.
“Important,” it read in big bold type. “You have been paid more carer’s allowance than you are entitled to. You now need to pay this money back”.
In some weeks, she was paid just 38p more than the threshold – but for that tiny infraction she is being forced to repay £64.60 each time, the rate of carer’s allowance at the time.
Wait… An outrageous medical bill in the UK is ~13000 USD? An ambulance ride here costs 8k alone…
I lived in the UK for over a decade until Brexit, and frankly I think that by the time I left they were one of the most far-right countries in Europe, just in this English-upper-class style of posh words and the oppression done “elegantly” via extreme “rules” rather than the direct violence of the (not posh) populist far-right, - people are still made to hurt for the crime of being poor, and the system is designed to hurt anybody who would defy the local elites (just notice the conviction to years in jail of of Environmentalist demonstrators for blocking a road) but all the Ts are traced and Is are dotted, all prim and propper - so people from the outside don’t really notice how so very close to Fascist Britain already is.
(“It’s the Law”, say the far-right muppets over there, same as Nazi enablers would say in Nazi Germany.)
Rules on social security explicitly designed to make it likely that people make mistakes (this allowance apparently changes depending on a person’s weekly income, which floats if you’re in insecure employment, which is exactly the problem of the working poor, and it’s down to the recipient to figure it out precisely, down to the pence, with no help) and then punishing them disproportionatelly hard for the error is exactly the style of “by the rules” hurting of people for being poor (and human, hence making mistakes) beloved by the Posh Fascists and their followers (of which there are many, as proven by Brexit which was the product of a campaign of Racism and Nationalistic Exceptionalism).
The cruelty is the point. I fucking hate this country.
“Post a single comment on Lemmy without calling someone a nazi” challenge: Failed
Are you Dora The Explorer on an acid trip? I ask because you’re licking Boots awfully hard.
lmao Somebody get that monkey some therapy
Lucky Strike - not lucky
Patriot Act - not patriotic
FreedomAdvocate - does not advocate for freedom
“Basic reading comprehension: failed.”
Not surprising from a Nazi.
Right wing people really don’t like being called Nazis, do they?
Actually it that was meant as point about “it’s the Law” being a traditional excuse of Fascists.
Guess it felt too close to home for you.
Why are Anglo-Saxon ‘conservative’ governments hell-bent on punishing the poor to the fullest extent. They no longer hide the strategy that cruelty is the point! And the general public seems to like it, and votes for it in ever greater numbers, until it happens to themselves, of course.
Can someone explain this to a person who grew up in a Rhineland model based society that is now fast adopting the Anglo Saxon model (the Netherlands).
I’ve both lived in the UK and The Netherlands.
IMHO, it’s to do with how socially the UK is a very classist society were people worry a lot (insanely so compared with The Netherlands) not just about their place in the social ladder but about it being visible to others - the TV Sitcom Keeping Up Appearances is actually a pretty good illustration of this: even though it’s a comedy and thus exagerated in the forms the characters in it display such traits and act on them, the way of thinking of the characters is based on how people in Britain (especially England) tend to see their standing in society and the importance they give to projecting the “right” appearances (part of what makes that comedy funny is that it’s a satire of certain traits of British society: a lot of British comedy is even more funny once you’ve lived there for a while and start getting the in-jokes).
Then overlayed on this is the common take there on social climbing which is to spend far more time and effort trying to stop others below oneself in the social ladder from climbing than in climbing oneself. People like to look down on those seen as lower status, expect others to “know their place” and will actually put some effort into making sure those who don’t are punished for it.
This is, IMHO, why punishing the poor is so popular in Britain. It also anchors a lot of the anti-immigration feeling since there is no lower class in British Society than non-Britons.
As for other Anglo-Saxon countries, I don’t really know.
Its the overwhelming success of divide and conquer politics.
Back in the 00s British newspapers (overwhelmingly right wing and owned by very wealthy people) were constantly running stories about people on low income benefits supposedly living better lives than hard working normal people.
They were so successful that it was practically common knowledge that the country was full of families who chose to remain unemployed but lived in a cosy house paid for by the state, and spent all their time watching cable TV, paid for by the state, drinking beer and smoking fags, paid for by the state, and maybe also doing a bit of crime.
This supposedly huge group of “scroungers” were the hate target for regular, honest, hard working people, whose taxes were being wasted supporting them.
So high was the public interest in stories about benefits cheats or scroungers that TV shows were made about them like Benefits Street or Shameless. It was seen as one of the great failings of the labour government, an example of irresponsible government spending which exacerbated the effects of the 2008 financial crash.
So when the Conservative government arrived, they made a big deal of reducing benefits and benefit claimants and introducing a kind of bureaucracy designed to make it as difficult to claim as possible. This system resulted in cases like a blind man in a wheelchair having his disability payments stopped and being told by letter that he was ruled fit for work following a phone assessment by someone with no medical training. It has resulted in millions of children now living below the poverty line and often going hungry.
But these stringent measures were broadly popular because most people had been reading and talking about all the terrible problems of benefits scroungers for over a decade.
And the same thing happened with immigration and with the EU. Every week another story misrepresenting some EU regulation like bendy bananas, or a crime committed by an immigrant where his nationality is bold and underlined in the article which makes some comment about uncontrolled immigration. Articles covering crimes committed by white British people don’t mention nationality and get less space further back in the paper.
There was never much prominence given in most newspapers to issues like tax avoidance, or wealth inequality, so most people didn’t talk about it. Their hate was well focused elsewhere. Meanwhile the rich keep getting richer, everyone else keeps getting poorer, and most people spend their energy complaining about something else.
Great analysis and insights, thank you.
Perhaps, Monty Python has some insights?
If they take money from poor people, they can give tax breaks to the rich and still break even.
a breach of even 1p would trigger a fine of £83.30
Sounds extremely, extremely stupid. A breach of 1p should trigger repayment of 1p.
Also, a person should be notified at once, at the latest next month.
Also, why does the system even allow people to claim more than they are entitled? Is there no maximum set into the payment field or whatever they have for it?
To be clear it’s not a “claim.” If you are full time caring for a member of the family you are entitled to get some money as a benefit, but only if you earn less than £196.00 (inclusive) per week. Because it was setup by the tories, if you earn more, you are no longer eligible and need to pay back the whole amount, instead of it being a sliding scale where earning more is subtracted from the stipend.
In my experience, it’s either total incompetence of the people in charge, or it’s malicious in order to “catch” people doing something bad.
Like a bait car, but way more malicious since the person getting in the metaphorical car doesn’t even know it’s not their car because the keys worked, and nobody bothers stopping them for a few days so they get extra criminal charges.
If it’s anything like unemployment insurance claims, you could possibly be entitled to different amounts every week depending on whether you made income. But it’s odd that it lets you get more than the max.
If the punishment for deliberately claiming more in benefits than you’re entitled to is simply to repay the benefits then there’s no incentive to not do it. If you get caught then you’re no worse off than if you’d not broken the law so why not do it?
Having said that, if the punishment for accidentally claiming more than you’re entitled to is so harsh then that is unfair.
I’d imagine that the process for both of the scenarios is the same but it definitely should have some human element in it where intent is taken into account.
The system should protect people from that by having proper checks before the money is paid out.
I’m not a lawyer or barrister, but there are already laws against fraud, which is what you are describing. There’s a huge difference between deliberately over claiming and making a mistake, and what the article is describing is at worst honest mistakes.
If the punishment for deliberately claiming more in benefits than you’re entitled to is simply to repay the benefits then there’s no incentive to not do it.
Uh, what? The incentive is not having to pay anything back by claiming the correct amount. They’re poor, that’s why they’ve applied for the benefit in the first place. They can’t afford to pay stuff back.
The reason this is punitive is literally because they’ve chosen the amount they’re able to manage and yet are hit with huge fines when they’ve “gotten it wrong” by small margins, some as low as 38p like in the article.
And as a poor person, every cent counts. That’s why you claim the maximum (or a bit more than you think you’ll ve given), since it’s the government’s job to actually calculate how much you’re “better off” than the other person and adjust the rates accordingly. Ideally, you’d just request something and get that something - you shouldn’t have to be the one to decide how miserable your misery is compared to other miseries.
Someone on benefits, especially someone caring for their sick child shouldn’t be an accounting expert. This isn’t the US, where 15 year olds are expected to do their own taxes (and pay a $15.000 service that does about 10% of the work for you), and even in the US if you fuck up the IRS mostly just tells you to cover the difference.
So, this system of “you dared to ask for ONE CENT MORE? Now you owe me ALL back” is not only asinine, but it doesn’t even fly in the US of all places.
If we want to punish people, then ask for, say, 2% interest on the overclaim. Taking ALL is more discriminatiry, since it rewards trying to claim an ungodly amount and hoping one of your £15k claims somehow goes under the radar.
All in all, not a good system.
Using something proportional would be a progressivs disincentive, and it will keep actual “accidental” overclaimants better off than malicious ones.
Unless your rich and break the law then the fine you a small amount relatively speaking and you made more by breaking the law.
A 7 million fine for stealing 1 billion in profits.
Just another day in late stage capitalism.
Of course someone usually has to go to jail for something so public, so Steve from accounting is getting his “jailbird bonus” and will be admitting to fraud, and spend 4 months in a
hotelcushioned cell. He also gets weekends off.
Starmer is working hard to force the working poor into bankruptcy.
Wtf is happening in the UK???
The same report released in May found the DWP had known since 2021 that overpayment of Carer’s Allowance has left some people in financial difficulty.
Remind me when were last general elections again? Another conservative mine they left hanging about by sweeping it under the rug.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20jln81w72o
Not a fan of labour but please give credit where its due, as to which government did nothing first.
Starmer has a Parliamentary Majority.
They could have changed this anytime they wanted.
So they’re either malicious, incompetent or both.
The government currently in power is fully responsible as they could stop it entirely, they choose not to and are complicit.
“Fully responsible” huh? Like on day 1, or is there some sort of grace period? How long does a gov have to review all historic legislation? Is your timeframe based on empiric evidence or hopes and dreams? Why aren’t the individuals who wrote and passed it “fully responsible”? Or does their culpability end the moment they vacate office?
Last I checked the current UK Government have been in for nearly a year.
They would have been aware of this legislation when it passed as it’s not like the politicians are born on election day.
A current majority government is always responsible for how the government is running.
Bureaucracy moves pretty slowly i think. We’ve got another few years to find out for sure.
This smells of “thanks Obama” lol
Mate, the UK isn’t the US: Starmer has a Parliamentary Majority in a country that doesn’t even have a written constitution and which is not a Presidential System, so nothing stops him from changing this.
It’s just that New Labour isn’t left of center (probably not even center anymore) and so they couldn’t care less about the “plebes”.
The UK is absolutely cooked if a return to Blairism is the best they can come up with.
Can they do the same with rich people and corporations? Error in subsidies, pay back 100 times the amount for the infraction. Now they often get a relatively small fine.
this is your government doing this??
The Australian government tried something similar, an automated, probably black mirror inspired orphan crushing machine called Robodebt announced to millions of Australians that they had to repay their welfare payments. There was no human arbiter in the loop to whom one could appeal. After a bunch of suicides and legal challenges, it was eventually scrapped after federal courts ruled it illegal and the government returned $1.2b of stolen money.
This was a rightwing conservative government initiative.
