Since I fell victim to the Karenocracy at my media company, and was shown the door last summer for not bending the knee to neo-Marxist dogma, I’ve been out of full-time work – except for a short time at the Royal Mail doing Christmas sorting. I now get £92 a week Job Seekers’ Allowance (JSA) to sustain me. This is an article about what it’s like.
I would have written that I was ‘signing on’ above, but you don’t actually ‘sign on’ these days, either physically or even online. Instead, every two or three weeks someone from the job centre phones you and you have a ten-minute chat about what you’ve been doing to find work and how you are. This follows an initial in-person interview at the job centre. One of the things you are told is that you must spend 35 hours a week looking for employment. You tell them that you will. Like millions, you don’t. It’s probably not even possible to.
If you take on 16 hours or more of work then you lose your JSA. You can stay on JSA for up to six months – after that you can move on to Universal Credit (UC), which is means tested. If you have £16K or more of assets then you probably won’t get anything. If you take pension contributions you will likely lose money too.
I tried to apply for Council Tax relief to see if I could get my hefty bill down. A nice woman I spoke to on the phone emailed me a form to fill in, but my computer didn’t appear to let me do it. I phoned back and spoke to another woman, who talked me through navigating the council’s website to apply for the discount. I applied. A couple of weeks later they emailed to say my claim had been unsuccessful because I had too much capital. Well, that won’t last much longer, as my essential expenses outstrip the money I get in by ten to one. Maybe I’ll return to them cap in hand at a later date.
Some days are better than others, as Morrissey didn’t quite say. I have two wake-up times on my alarm clock radio (yes, I still have one), 8.07am and 9.07am (set for those times to ensure I have a good chance of waking up to Classic FM’s music rather than its news, which I hate waking up to). Nowadays it tends to be set to 9.07, because what’s the point of getting up earlier? It’d only give me more time to kill in the day.
After breakfast and bathroom, I do five minutes on my exercise bike (I used to do ten but found it too boring), I do this Substack, I look for jobs and see there are few, I make food, including tasty fresh coleslaw, I play online chess, I write emails, I pet my cat, I go for a walk in the nearby hills after lunch, I watch films, I read the news and sport, I listen to podcasts, I crack spirits open around 5.30, turn the heating on and browse X.
When I check out job websites it seems there are an awful lot of NHS jobs – and, blimey, the salaries are generous. No wonder the country’s broke. There are also many jobs in the care sector (with lots looking after teenagers and young people), and some in hospitality, which I deduce is because of the high level of churn as opposed to the sector being in rude health, which it isn’t.
A few days ago I got the call from the woman at the job centre, checking how my search was going. Slowly, I told her. When I said I had the chance of a few small things, including freelance writing, her ears pricked up and she said she’d send me a form to fill in detailing any work, because money earned would need to be subtracted from my JSA. It makes you wonder whether it’s even worth claiming JSA because it’s so little, and the admin involved in telling them you’re doing a bit of work is onerous. You don’t really want them intruding into your business and your bank account. But I guess that’s in part the intention, to put you off claiming.
I appreciate that deciding on the levels of welfare is akin to walking a tightrope. The Right are usually correct when they say aspects of it are much too generous; even the Left are occasionally correct when they point out injustices of some folk not getting enough. It’s impossible to create the perfect system.
I’m of the opinion that in general the welfare state is too generous and unfocused, and it’s helping steer the country towards the rocks. But not because of people like me. I have no desire to watch YouTube videos instructing me on how best to bleed the State by claiming I am anxious and depressed and need the Motability scheme and I even need endless marijuana paid for by taxpayers (that’s a thing, did you know?). Even though I despise the British government and the awful things they spend our money on.
(Don’t forget that it was the Tory wing of the Uniparty that decided to reward those with mental difficulties (and made-up mental difficulties) with benefits. That party would do anything – hitch the minimum wage, write Net Zero into law, introduce the Modern Slavery Act, bolster the 2010 Equality Act – to try and persuade people who wouldn’t vote for them anyway that they weren’t the nasty party.)
I believe in a welfare safety net, of course I do. But Britain’s is torn to shreds not just because of allowing the natives to claim for too much but because we’ve allowed the world to come here. In theory, a fellow could wake up tomorrow in Somalia, feel a bit grumpy with his life and decide he needs the generosity of British citizens, make the (admittedly arduous) trip here, perhaps decide he’s gay on the way because that’d mean he’d be persecuted in his home country, and this time next year he’s as British as you and me, or so the Left believes. Social housing, here he comes.
Anyway, I soldier on in day-to-day life. I’ve just seen an ad for exam invigilators, I might apply. Hope it doesn’t involve too much Wokery (a genuine worry – I’m just not sure I can properly function in any institution in modern Britain now, they’ve all gone crackers).
I’ll no doubt write again about my plight. It’s enervating, it gets you down, you question your self-worth. Days can be bleak and challenging. You limit your plans. In the meantime, what are those four words you see after this line…?
Russell David is the author of the Mad World Substack.
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