For anyone you know who gets sanctioned, remembering that housing benefits are to be part of this idiotic DWP system, go to your local council and follow the instructions below. The government wants to save this money so it does not tell you about the scheme. They would clearly rather that people were made homeless, were hungry and cold.
Rich when you think how much they spend on second homes for MPs (whether they need them or not), accommodation for the lords and doing up the royal family’s palaces. Maybe we should give them some paint and brushes and tell them to get on with it.
If you have no income and have had your JSA or ESA stopped or are in between benefits and get housing/council tax benefit, then you need to fill in one of these forms, and get it to the local housing benefit office, dont take no for an answer as with this your benefit will continue, and wont stop as they will assume you are working otherwise if DWP inform them you have come off benefits.
Nil income declaration
To be completed when housing benefit/council tax reduction is based on the customer receiving no income.
Housing Benefit/Council Tax Benefit Claim number:
Name:
Address:
Postcode:
Telephone:
Mobile:
Date:
Tick the boxes that apply:
I have had no income since (date:__________) [_]
This means I am not receiving any benefits, earnings, or money from any source. [_]
My last job finished on (date:_________) [_]
I am currently awaiting the outcome of a claim for another benefit. [_]
I have claimed a benefit and am awaiting the decision [_] name of benefit _____________
I made the claim on (date:________) [_]
I don’t expect to have any income until (date:______)
I am currently meeting my day-to-day living expenses by (please enter details in box below) [_]
_______________________________________________________________________
If you are living off savings because you have no income, you will need to provide bank statement’s as proof of this.
This is my nil income declaration
Signed
To be completed when housing benefit/council tax reduction is based on the customer receiving no income.
Courtesy of Fightback pro bono lawyers
MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
Anyone with the slightest degree of humanity should ensure people who are being sanctioned are given this lifeline.
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Absolutely agree.
There should be a standard script for people who are told they are being sanctioned, with a letter, explaining the sanction and what steps they can take to pay their rent and feed themselves.
It’s inhuman to cut people off with nothing as they do.
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The Torys want need desire a victim
Scapegoat someone to blame a figure
Of hate in order the people attack
The weak the vulnerable as opposed
To seeing the real and true enemies .
The conservatives and their wealthy
Backers along side those who knowingly
Vote for them.
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And yes NewLabour Tony Blair played
A significant part in the origin and
Implementation of this Political policy.
There being no economic justification
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If they’d sanctioned the people who brought the country to its knees, bankers, politicians, City folk and their likes, it would have been more to the point.
But a good number of them are sitting now in the House of Lords none more ironically than: Viscount Ridley, who oversaw the failing of Northern Rock.
No sanctions for him!
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Great share, Tris.
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Hi Darren.
I thought it was a good idea to put it out there to as many people who might benefit from it as was possible.
My humble little readership may not be huge, but hopefully they tweet it on.
The DWP really are the pits.
Hope you guys are doing well. It’s always a pleasure to hear from you, mate.
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I’m a carer with Power of Attorney for an older adult who is in receipt of DLA, Pension Credits, Housing Benefit etc..
I’ve learned to keep a log of date, time, who I spoke to and a short summary of what was agreed for every phone call. Sometimes I send a back up letter. I do this from experience because things are not recorded or ‘lost’ too often to be put down to human error. It’s beyond short of staff, it’s beyond incompetence, which indicates to me that person or persons, unknown may well be doing it intentionally. The staff you talk to are very nice and helpful when you finally get through but it usually goes tits up after that.
In this case the person I’m talking about is lucky because there’s support there but god help anyone trying to live independently without support who lacks the cognitive ability to deal with the DW effing P.
Whatever happened to duty of care?
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I have friends who have had the same sort of problem with their autistic son’s claims.
Nothing ever goes smoothly; there is always a cock up.
The staff are friendly and pleasant but inefficient… either that or the systems they use are useless.
Fortunately they are solicitors and they keep methodical records of everything and follow it up with written confirmation.
And when, on occasions the lad’s money has stopped it was never a question of starvation for him.
But what about the poor souls who don;t have a support structure like his or your aunt’s?
It’s shameful.
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wrote this on grumpy scottish man
it is always been the the same no matter which party is in power their rhetoric has never changed demonize the furriners and the poor,disabled and mentally ill all the vulnerable in society.
there may be a small minority working on the side and claiming the government should have gone after them they may know who they were but instead decided to demonize every claimant by imposing a blanket sanctions regime to punish all the poor,disabled and the mentally ill and the reason it was successful was the majority of voters bought into their rhetoric with the help of the britsh media.
ony way to fix it tear down the britsh system of government and replace it with a more democratic government with a written constitution but the politicians,royals,business and the media will not let it happen the only way it will happen if the majority of english voters want it to change and i do not think they would vote that way to change it so we are screwed forced to live in a system most scots do not want but the unionist scots will always vote to maintain it will scotland ever wake up vote independence rid ourselves of these britsh bullies and killers for there is people been forced into committing suicide by their benefit sanctions. but i despair wrong side of fifty now will i ever see an independent scottish nation in my lifetime?
scottish rally cheered me up a bit
Reply
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Yep, you’re right, Billy.
I’ve worked in the employment business and I know perfectly well that there are some that try to fleece to government (and us).
They used to have a fraud department to look into that. There are always enemies who will snitch, neighbour, ex-girlfriends/boyfriends, relatives.
But it’s good to demonise. It makes people feel superior…even if they too are on some sort of racket.
It’s become the way here since Peter Lilly and his “Little List”.
The trouble is that there ARE many people who are sick, who are unable to work. and they are being hurt so badly that many of them either die, or they commit suicide becasue life in the UK has become too awful for them to stand.
I hope that people like Iain Duncan Smith, who say they are deeply religious, know that they are going to burn in hell for eternity over this.
And as for the Windors who lecture us each Christmas about how they live their lives by the teachings of Christ… I suggest they trying reading the Bible.
Anyway, cheer up. I hope that the terrible mess that they will make of Brexit will encourage people to see that life in Scotland inside the EU will be infinitely better than Empire II.
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I see an old grump with a carrier bag is now the face of Evil Nationalism. Two young, fit men, plus whoever was wielding the camera got exactly what they stood there for and our “free press” lapped it up.
Dinnae ken aboot anyone else, but if I went on a march I’d leave the plastic carrier bag at hame and carry a flag…
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Aye, Stuarts on it…
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Ukip. Should have known.
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Saw and heard Nicola on STV introducing the SG gaining powers which would need 1500 staff in Dundee and Glasgow to deal with umpteen “social issues”.
Would someone explain if these issues are not the horrible ones discussed above.
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This is a table showing the new devolved benefit powers.
http://www.gov.scot/Topics/People/fairerscotland/Social-Security/Powers/Devolved-benefts
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Thanks trispw, but still some serious areas dealt with by DWP.
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Oh yes, absolutely. It’s a job 25% done, if that.
But we can start to make it better for at least some people.
The major benefits are still in the hands of the Brits, and will continue to be dispersed like gruel in a Victorian workhouse.
Hopefully bit by bit (or maybe in a great hurry) we will get more powers to help more people in a civilised manner.
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It’s all about culture.
Either we (society) are all in it together or it is every man/woman for themselves (Thatcherism).
The Tories created a situation of mass unemployment and then try to tell those on the receiving end of it that it is their fault.
We need a radical cultural shift that will only happen when we separate from England’s Tories.
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Of that there is no doubt.
When we can steer our own path I hope that and expect that, we will be drawn to our Northern neighbours with whom we have such close ties.
And who are infinitely more civilised than the Brits.
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Tris
I just blogged this below, hope you don’t mind.
September 18, 2017
It’s how I feel, I don’t apologise for it!
I am nearing 49 years old, in so many ways I am surprised I got this far, I’m from Dundee and survived Thatcher’s desolation of Scotland, many didn’t. But the older I get the more I am becoming intolerant, I’m not moving to the right though like so many are alleged to do when they get to that certain age.
You see I really am at the point where I actually HATE the UK, or Great Britain, or shitty little country is how I think of it. I don’t understand how 55% of voters in Scotland could have voted against their own independence in favour of a country that cares little for them, unless they are a part of their clique or have something to serve the few. I can’t stand the Tories, they are a party full of entitlement and hate, and as we have learned over the years, so are Scottish Labour and the Scottish Liberal Democrats. I know that these parties have yes voters within their membership but how can you be a member of a party that goes against your belief in such a big way, I tried it and couldn’t.
I have blogged, not as well as others, but I have blogged about the injustices of this country and it’s not just now, this country (UK) has always been up its own arse, some parts of it more than others. To my mind too many are too easily influenced by people who could not give a shit about them. Do you really think the Tories and the other yoons care about you, I don’t. Many within the YES movement, and especially the organised part of it, hate the word quisling (a traitor who collaborates with an enemy force occupying their country), but the more I hear from the ultra yoons and read things from the yoon media like David Torrance, Sinclair, I can’t escape the fact that this is how I feel and I don’t feel the need to apologise for it anymore. I appreciate many will not agree, and will find the word offensive, but how can you explain people like Davidson, Rennie, Dugdale, Sarwar, Baillie, Carlow, Fraser, Tompkins, Marra. How can you get past the fact that it is what it is and they are basically agents of a foreign government doing their bidding to maintain their colony, the older I get the more I can’t get past that.
Look around you, look at the rise in foodbanks, the poverty, the inequality, stagnant wages and draconian employment practices. This from a state who profess that their main duty is to protect their citizens but who are in fact doing the attacking to their most vulnerable citizens, and least able to defend themselves. How can that be decent, how can that be right, how can you support that and even vote for it because let’s be honest, a NO vote was a vote to give this shitty state of affairs your endorsement. You see the more intolerant and angry I get the more I think about this clip from Trainspotting It’s Shite Being Scottish, not politically correct, but you know what, how far off is it most days now.
When you hear the total shit that is being spouted every single day by the yoons how can you not get angry. When you read that even more of their promises or f vows are being broken, how can you stand by and continue to accept that, continue to excuse it, to make some reason out of it, I can’t. How can you go to a polling booth and vote for a party that supports a union that gives 1.5 billion pounds to bigots to cling to power, there is no excusing that, rationalizing that, it is shameful and that is the fact of it. How can you sit back and accept the increasingly aggressive language used by yoons like parking tanks on lawns, and not be offended by it. When you see what the Spanish Government is doing to Catalonia do you think the yoons won’t celebrate in the streets with the troops if the Tories did it here, they would all be volunteering to join up and if that doesn’t make you ashamed nothing will.
Some people have said to me that they have seen a change in this blog, that the language is more choice, that my view is less tolerant, that I am not helping the YES cause. I never said I was helping the YES cause and if the state of this country doesn’t make a YES voter angry then I really don’t know what will and as I said, I am not going to apologise for how I feel. Every second that Scotland is a colony of the United Kingdom is an embarrassment, and if you don’t agree we are a colony you are wrong, we are. I make no apologies for hating the United Kingdom and all that it stands for, I make no apologies for hating the three Tory Parties and the harm that have inflicted on this country, and on other countries, in the name of their superiority and their sense of entitlement. Hate is a horrible word but that is what they have brought me too, when I see what they do and how people support it in ignorant and not ignorant numbers how can you not hate it.
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Powerful piece, Bruce.
You made many good points.
I’ve been asking myself why the Spanish government is doing what it is doing. It says that it is maintaining the constitution which says that Spain is indivisible. I suspect that it is making a huge mistake. You don’t persuade people by putting them in prison, confiscating ballot boxes and taking back control of finances. Au contraire in fact.
I can understand that Quisling is an emotive word. People like Davidson will say that she isn’t a traitor to Scotland, she just sees Scotland as a part of the UK.
Personally, I respect that some people want to be a part of the UK, but it is certainly sad that they have to produce so many lies to do argue for that support. And yes it’s starting to make me very angry that they support all the things the UK is doing, having admitted that it is very bad from Scotland. I’d like to see what the Col has to say about Gove refusing to give Scotland what it is due.
I’m sick of the BBC and press taking only the very worst aspects of what goes on here and pinning it on the government
in Edinburgh, but never reporting the good stuff they are achieving.
I too hate the UK and all that goes with it. The way that the people at the top are protected and the people at the bottom are crapped on.
I’m seriously worried that the most incompetent government of the last 80 years and more, has taken to itself the kind of powers that Adolf Hitler took to himself in 1933 to bypass parliament, and as I said in a post the other day, on top of all the other travesties of democracy, this fool of a prime minister has made the UK a dictatorship and bought £1,5 billion of support from a party of lunatics after she lost an election (which cost a £150m pounds) that she didn’t need to hold.
The idea that a bunch of ministers at war with each other, led by a blundering fool who hasn’t even got the authority to sack the Foreign Secretary when he openly mocks her in a newspaper article, is simply incredible.
You rant all you want on here Bruce, but I’m going to suggest to readers that they take themselves across to your blog if they wish to comment (because I’ve just put a new post up).
https://grumpyscottishman.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/its-how-i-feel-i-dont-apologise-for-it/
Incidentally I think your blog is excellent. Written always from the heart with passion. Like Munguin’s Republic, it ‘s maybe not in the same league as Wings… but who is?
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