this post was submitted on 04 May 2025
385 points (97.8% liked)

World News

46368 readers
2811 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]

Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
385
Mother of autistic boy left with £10,000 debt after breaching DWP rules by £1.92 a week (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 2 days ago by HellsBelle to c/[email protected]
61 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

It was three weeks after Christmas when the bombshell letter arrived. Guy Shahar and his wife, Oksana, looked at each other in stunned disbelief.

They had followed the Guardian’s investigation into the carer’s allowance scandal that has left thousands of families with crippling debts and criminal records. Not once did they think they would join them.

“Important,” it read in big bold type. “You have been paid more carer’s allowance than you are entitled to. You now need to pay this money back”.

In some weeks, she was paid just 38p more than the threshold – but for that tiny infraction she is being forced to repay £64.60 each time, the rate of carer’s allowance at the time.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Its the overwhelming success of divide and conquer politics.

Back in the 00s British newspapers (overwhelmingly right wing and owned by very wealthy people) were constantly running stories about people on low income benefits supposedly living better lives than hard working normal people.

They were so successful that it was practically common knowledge that the country was full of families who chose to remain unemployed but lived in a cosy house paid for by the state, and spent all their time watching cable TV, paid for by the state, drinking beer and smoking fags, paid for by the state, and maybe also doing a bit of crime.

This supposedly huge group of "scroungers" were the hate target for regular, honest, hard working people, whose taxes were being wasted supporting them.

So high was the public interest in stories about benefits cheats or scroungers that TV shows were made about them like Benefits Street or Shameless. It was seen as one of the great failings of the labour government, an example of irresponsible government spending which exacerbated the effects of the 2008 financial crash.

So when the Conservative government arrived, they made a big deal of reducing benefits and benefit claimants and introducing a kind of bureaucracy designed to make it as difficult to claim as possible. This system resulted in cases like a blind man in a wheelchair having his disability payments stopped and being told by letter that he was ruled fit for work following a phone assessment by someone with no medical training. It has resulted in millions of children now living below the poverty line and often going hungry.

But these stringent measures were broadly popular because most people had been reading and talking about all the terrible problems of benefits scroungers for over a decade.

And the same thing happened with immigration and with the EU. Every week another story misrepresenting some EU regulation like bendy bananas, or a crime committed by an immigrant where his nationality is bold and underlined in the article which makes some comment about uncontrolled immigration. Articles covering crimes committed by white British people don't mention nationality and get less space further back in the paper.

There was never much prominence given in most newspapers to issues like tax avoidance, or wealth inequality, so most people didn't talk about it. Their hate was well focused elsewhere. Meanwhile the rich keep getting richer, everyone else keeps getting poorer, and most people spend their energy complaining about something else.

[–] Tiger 4 points 1 day ago

Great analysis and insights, thank you.