With all the media coverage of the
TV show ‘Benefit Street’, I thought it might be a good time to look at what
life is actually like on benefits in York.
As you may know, I recently lost my job when my employers closed the
shop I was managing without telling me, leaving me owed a lot of money, just before
Christmas. As a 34 year old, educated, experienced man I figured I would be
able to find a new job relatively easily, I have always had a job, never needed
to sign on.
My first experience of signing on
was relatively positive, but the following couple of visits, not so much. I
want a job, I want to work, but the guy next to me at the Job Centre has
arrived for a 10am meeting already drunk.
I’m glad my appointments have been in the morning, after being there in
the afternoon I never want to go back to that!
Now, eight weeks later I am
increasingly reliant on my £71 a week Jobseeker’s Allowance and am at a point
where I might have to move out of my flat because I only qualify for £11
housing benefit. My wife has a job,
which is good, but she doesn’t earn much more than the minimum wage, however
that is apparently enough to mean that I can’t get any help from this
government. According to the Benefits Agency a married
couple needs £137 a week (after deductions) to live off, not including rent or
council tax. Because my wife earns
around this much, I am not entitled to anything more than my JSA. Not entirely sure where I am supposed to find
the £600 a month, which is roughly average for York, to pay the rent, or the
£150 a month in council tax.
I’m not entirely sure where the
people of ‘Benefit Street’ are getting these funds, because after spending 18
years paying tax and National Insurance, I can only get £11 to help pay my
rent. Thank whatever deity you believe
in for the fact I have an amazing support network of wife, family and friends,
without whom I would already be homeless!
Going to the Job Centre once a week
is probably not going to help me get a job, it helps me leave the house. The
reality of being ‘on the dole’ is that I spend two or three hours every morning
looking for jobs, I usually spend my afternoons being ignored by recruitment
consultants who have never worked in the industries they are recruiting for and
trying not to leave the house, because even spending the bus fare into town is
more than I can really afford. I have
had some interviews, been rejected for many jobs without interviews and never
heard back from at least fifty applications I have made. I have applied for an
average of three jobs per day, most of them I am horribly overqualified for,
but I need and want a job. There are
only so many afternoons you can spend watching TV, I’m finding myself less and
less motivated to do anything other than look for jobs. Long story short, if I could work out where
to get some of this alleged benefit cash, I too would take it!
