To continue a thought from the last post...
Today I discovered that if you are a claimant, on benefits, and you wish to call the appropriate government office to query something, to ask for help, to understand a ruling, to understand what you are entitled to, you have to use a phone line that costs £1.34p a minute. After about 10 minutes you would have used a substantial percentage of your weekly benefit, and one of those calls can easily take 20 minutes as you get passed around.
Why is the government doing this? Presumably to cut costs - that money the hapless claimants are spending on this premium line is presumably going back to them. Learning this today - at the optician's - made me, and the optician and her assistant so appalled that we just gabbled furiously at each other in shock for a few minutes. The optician, I would wager, is not a socialist - but she was very displeased, to say the least, about this particular scam.
Calling the Department of Work and Pensions, or whatever it's called nowadays, is frustrating and upsetting enough (endless menus with irrelevant choices) so that the optician's assistant gave up in despair, and she wasn't have to personally pay for the call - but having to pay so much would make one feel even more desperate and miserable and panicky... "Will I ever get through? How much will it cost?"
How much longer will it take for people to see through the Mr Nicey-nicey rhetoric of Cameron to the ripping talons and fangs of his policies in operation?
Today I discovered that if you are a claimant, on benefits, and you wish to call the appropriate government office to query something, to ask for help, to understand a ruling, to understand what you are entitled to, you have to use a phone line that costs £1.34p a minute. After about 10 minutes you would have used a substantial percentage of your weekly benefit, and one of those calls can easily take 20 minutes as you get passed around.
Why is the government doing this? Presumably to cut costs - that money the hapless claimants are spending on this premium line is presumably going back to them. Learning this today - at the optician's - made me, and the optician and her assistant so appalled that we just gabbled furiously at each other in shock for a few minutes. The optician, I would wager, is not a socialist - but she was very displeased, to say the least, about this particular scam.
Calling the Department of Work and Pensions, or whatever it's called nowadays, is frustrating and upsetting enough (endless menus with irrelevant choices) so that the optician's assistant gave up in despair, and she wasn't have to personally pay for the call - but having to pay so much would make one feel even more desperate and miserable and panicky... "Will I ever get through? How much will it cost?"
How much longer will it take for people to see through the Mr Nicey-nicey rhetoric of Cameron to the ripping talons and fangs of his policies in operation?
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