Geographically challenged

 

It didn't of course surprise me when I started job hunting to see that the job centre searches stretched search results not just a bit but quite a lot, although I did feel amazement and some anger when a local search in my area for jobs produced results in Manchester. My health and disabilities prevent my traveling and in icy winter conditions I am housebound, but like many in the same position I am being forced by the Department of Work and Pensions to look for work. Its very much a case of luck if I am well enough to get to the jobcentre ,which is some way from where I live, each fortnight to sign on, but although I am often not feeling well, I recognise I am far from being the only person in this situation and if you don't go for your signing you get no job seekers allowance. There is no room allowed for being able to contact the Job centre and say you hope to be better in a few days and can you come then. What happens is that e.g. in my case my day to sign on is Wednesday and the money is not released to go to my bank until I have been seen at the jobcentre, it is then in my account the following Monday. One week this past freezing winter, my arthritis was very bad due to the cold conditions and my blood pressure was up because I could not afford to heat the flat adequately and I was cold. There was still too much ice on the pavements for me to feel safe walking out with a metal plate and six pins in my ankle, even though the weather was actually not as bad as it had been. I telephoned the jobcentre and an adviser told me that she believed that weeks payment would have already been released and I would see it in my account but it would be the next one that would be a problem, They couldn't give me an appointment to see an adviser until the following Monday afternoon, but on Monday morning the money was not in my account. I went to the Job centre on Monday afternoon as arranged and was told that the money would be released and hopefully would be in my account on Tuesday morning. Tuesday came and I was like many others would be kind of desperate for the money, I dialed telephone banking for a balance and...no money. I then managed eventually to get through to the Department of Work and Pensions who explained that they had in fact just checked that my payment had been paid and realised that instead of sending it as an urgent payment, they had sent it via the normal system and it would not be in my account until Thursday. I Explained that I had no food and no money for gas and electricity for pre pay meters , so then began a process of recalling from my bank the payment that had been sent to arrive on Thursday and reissuing an emergency one.

So, I struggle to make it to the jobcentre, half an hours walk away , and would have problems being confident that I would be well enough to make it to a job interview in Manchester. However, another very significant issue is that while the Job centre are craftily slipping into their system job adverts hoping that we are geographically challenged and will indeed once we find the place do as the Tory politician Norman Tebbitt said get on our bikes to get a job , we are being kept rather strapped for cash to put it mildly and while being forced to take any job anywhere it often happens that we can't afford to get to the interview, while very quietly and with no announcement yet another scheme to help vulnerable people into the work they are being forced to take, the travel to interview scheme has been scrapped