Benefits Shmenefits
Benefits Shmenefits, Dole Shmole: Working Hard Gets You Nowhere
Words: Katie Woo
Pictures: Daniel Grosvenor
A week before finishing my Creative Writing Dissertation I received a cool £2,000 and, for the first time in my student life, I didn’t blow it on frivolous things like beer, new shoes and cheap flights to Italy. I paid bills and rent, because in February I lost my job and had to sustain myself by living on credit, to save my sanity during dissertation hell.
This is the plight of the student and graduate: unemployment and poverty. I am a whore to the temp job. Tomorrow at 5.30pm I will be unemployed again, which makes finding rent and bills an uphill scrabble. I thought that I would be able to take the pressure off by applying for benefits to help me until I found full time employment. I know many people who claim benefits while exerting little or no effort and so, as I was actively seeking work, assumed the application went something like this:
Me: Hello. I am in need of money and am seeking work. I have finished university so have no commitments and am actively searching for jobs on a daily basis.
Jobcentre: That's brilliant. You clearly qualify for Job Seeker's Allowance. Here you go!
This is not how it works. I am wrong. Because, apparently, I am still a student until September 1st.
Ann at the JobCentre’s pressroom in Cardiff explained: “Generally students get their grants shortly before their exams end and are not eligible for further help. The £2,000 is allocated to you until September 1st.” Are there any exceptions? Apparently not.
To add insult onto looming destitution, although graduates are not entitled to any benefits, we have to start paying council tax as of July 1st. When I challenged this, Dan at Connect to Cardiff offered me a “No comment,” followed by, “You will need to get in touch with your Local Authority to find out the finish date of your course. Maybe you won’t have to pay.” This is what I did.
The LEA explained that the official end date for University of Glamorgan students was the 5th June (yesterday). Fantastic, I thought. Beginning today I am entitled to claim my much-needed benefits. The LEA told me to phone Cardiff’s JobCentre. But the JobCentre didn’t know what I was talking about and dismissively passed me the national number for job seekers. I had now lost my patience.
After a five minute battle with an automated machine, I was passed over to a human who became flustered and panicked after I asked her for some clarity. "Can I claim benefits?" is, after-all, a pretty straightforward question to ask at a benefits office. Right? She put me on hold for ten minutes and when she finally came back to me, the woman seemed only slightly more enlightened: “I think what it is? it all hinges on the student loan... it lasts until September? find out when your student loan is designed to keep you until.” I told her twice that I had found out the information and twice she ignored me. “The best thing you can do is make a claim and then they’ll be able to tell you there.”
Why do I have to waste an hour on the phone to some unenthused call-centre agent, just to wake up at 6am on a Saturday morning to meet with another miserable soul, just so I’m told that I’m not eligible for benefits until September; while paying 45 pence a minute from my mobile because I don’t have a landline; I can’t afford one.
Let’s work out what £2,000 will cover. Student loans in the third year are considerably less than the other years. The average student received £1,000 in loan and £1,000 in grants on April 21st. Five months' rent at £260 a month will be paid straight out of that amount, which drops the total to £700. An average phone bill phone is £35.00 a month, which deducts a further £175. Food shopping is typically £50.00 a month, this lowers the amount by an extra £250. Bear in mind that this is the final and most important term of a student’s academic career, and money will need to be spent on paper, ink and dissertation binding etc, which could cost about £50.00. Finally after all that hard work and stress, the student will most definitely reward herself, and out goes another £50.00
The graduate is left with £350.00 and searches for a job, any job, just as long as it’s something yet she can’t find a thing. This makes sense because statistically for every job now advertised, seven people apply.
The government system of benefits was created to help people who have fallen on financial hard times and the JobCentre website agrees. “It is part of the social security benefits system and is meant to cover the cost of living expenses in periods where the claimant is out of work.” The graduate definitely falls into this category, but sadly the money that should go to her lines the pocket of some indolent dole scum.
If you average out what is left of the student loan until September 1st, the graduate will be living off £35.00 a month, which is £7.00 a week. Arguments over this amount might ensue and some lovely person may say something along the lines of: the rent bills and food have been paid for until September, so what else could a person possibly want? In answer to that question, how about a standard of living? Do I need to mention MP's expenses?
According to the BBC, the “typical” weekly income is about £200-£300 which is 35% to 65% less than the reported national average of £463 a week. Poverty.org calculated the national figure for poverty is 60% less than the average weekly income; £150 a week for a “typical” income or £278 for national income.
If a graduate is unable to find work, and lives on the remainder of their student loan, he or she is living 95% below the national poverty figure.
There we have it. To put the icing on this rant, a person my age is entitled £64.30 a week, which is £257.20 a month? and I’m entitled nothing because I decided education was important.
There are many students that go to university to mess about, but the same amount of students attend university to have a better quality of life in the long run: I place myself in the latter category. I worked my ass off to get my degree and now the prospect of indigence emerges on the horizon because mummy and daddy will not be bailing me out and I cannot move home. I am unemployed, flat broke and come July 1st will have to pay council tax. I have been backed into a dark, dirty corner of education in a shared student house and my only release is in the form of an extortionate graduate loan. We live in a society that deems it acceptable to hurl money at people who do nothing to better themselves, and stand by their mantra: “unemployment or death.” What the hell is going on? Who’s to blame? And when is it going to change?
LINKS:
BBC Article - 'Just What is Average?'
1 Comment – Post a comment
untamedclare
Commented 84 months ago - 7th June 2009 - 09:36am
I can understand how you feel. Last may I left uni because I simply couldn't afford it anymore, I didn't have support from my parents to fall back on and the LEA were no longer willing to fund my education. I tried to claim benefits as finding a job was proving to be very hard but they refused on the grounds that I was still a student and no amount of letters from the uni would change that.
It took me nearly three months to find a job and I racked up even more debt just trying to make ends meet. The job I finally got was working for McDonalds which just goes to show that in desperation any job will do. However I got screwed over by emergency tax, apparently because I'd tried to claim benefits, how this works I'm unsure but my pay was pitiful for another three months. In October it was all too much, I had been relying on my boyfriend's money to get by and so moved out to live with family. I had £50 to my name and somehow, with a LOT of blagging, I made that last until I finally got a job in February.
Now I am just trying to pay the bills and slowly chip down my massive wall of debt that came from the months of unemployment and minimum wage. I don't know if I'll ever be able to save enough to go back to uni, I'm probably going to be working awful jobs for the rest of my life. It makes me wonder who comes up with these rules and if they live in the real world at all.