Universal Job Match at http://jobseekers.direct.gov.uk

Ratboy

Jerry_Mander wrote: »

Here's a link to a specimen Universal Credit agreement from the DWP. It's all in there: http://data.parliament.uk/DepositedPapers/Files/DEP2013-0285/AWRJoanneBrownAnnex1.docm

This only happens though when you switch to Universal Credit which is some time away yet for most of us.

UC is being trialled in my area from April.

35 hours job search OR apply for agreed amount of jobs as agreed with JC.

If sanctioned 1 time, sent to a4e, TNG, Standguide type place for either 1 hour per fortnight intensive one on one jobsearch where THEY ring up the employers, arrange transport, or in some cases, take you there personally.

If more serious sanction / 2nd sancton, then 9-5, 35 hours a week mandatory jobsearch at above listed companies, plus community work, either painting/litter picking for council or charity shop work/warehouse/shelf stacking eventually swapping from 35 hours jobsearch (yawn), to 35 hours in above trades, with expenses paid from SHOP/COUNCIL, not DSS or Jobclub.

The jobcentre also provides computers for mandatory access to Gateway system, that illegally installs cookies on your home PC, which are embedded, and difficult to remove (as stated by Elvis about 6 pages back, in reply to my previous post!).

I know that they do this, because I have done all of the above.

@ IDS Hope you understand what I'm trying to get across above.

The_ICT_Engineer

Having read through all the postings by Jerry Mander, who comes across as a gullible fool, who clearly believes anything and everything that he had been told or has read either on the net or in the papers.


The ninety minute travel rule is unworkable as it does not take in to the account of the travel cost involve. You can travel quite a distance in that time, For example from my local station to London (84 miles)with one change takes one hour twelve minutes at a daily cost of £98.70 peak rate, nearly double the minimum wage for a eight hour day. The poorly trained Job-Centre Drones tend to only look at the travel time and not the travel cost. I know this from personal experience from my own dealings with the Job-Centre. I even been told to hire a taxi if there was no public transport and that the taxi company would give me a discount for regular use. Which is a bit of a joke, as the local taxi's round here tend to only work 8am-6pm.


As for public access to the internet, There are only a limited number of computers available in the library's that remain open. Councils are closing more everyday through cutbacks. These computers are often old and have long out of date software installed. In my own area of the Fens, we have four library's that remain open with a total of 31 computers available for use (3387 people per computer), The average age of these computers is eleven years. To my knowledge there are no internet cafe's in the area.
The Fens only Job-Centre (Wisbich) has only two public access computers (All there is room for). The 'Internet Access Devices' are the public access computers (2176 in total, procured from HP)that are install in the Job-Centre's. To cut the costs, they have a version of Palm OS installed rather than windows.
As for computers being installed for the purpose in council buildings, where did Jerry Mander get that information from?. That's not going to happen round here.


As for job applications, companies are geting far to many applicants that don't match the profile of the position simple down to the fact that the poorly trained drone's at the Job-Centre have ordered them to apply or be sanctioned. The CBI has repeatedly complained about this to the government as have other groups. In most cases, many of these applications will just get binned or deleted without ever being looked at. Leading to problems for Job-Seekers, many of whom have been sanctioned for not applying when in fact that they had, but the application had been deleted or binned. The "scatter gun approach" which IDS and his drone's prefer simple does not work in this situation. Companies want quality rather quantity when it comes to applications. No Agency would dare sent 100's of applications to a client, otherwise they soon have no clients.

CS007

@ krok, john539, AP007:

check out my post # 668 on page34 of this thread (your page# mileage may vary depending on your PC config).

& remembering that the coin called 'the law' has 2 sides, for example:

'it has been proven that you did X, therefore...'

vs

' it has been proven that you have done Y, therefore you cannot have done X'

Being more concrete:

- WITHOUT any privacy law breach, IDS or DWP or anyone could subscribe to this thread, observe that you have been 'quite active' posting comments from mid-day through 10pm yesterday (and maybe other days, I only reviewed the summary of yesterday's contributions); therefore you cannot have been actively looking for work...BOOM :mad: sanction time.

You can appeal, but then the onus is on you to prove you spent enough hours looking for paid employment.

Several news stories recently have shown that the 'authorities' can obtain copies of emails AND TEXTS that an individual being investigated has sent/received.

Privacy laws control the access (who/when) to this info, but you can bet that IDS/DWP/them can get that law changed if necessary to allow access 'if claimant fraud is suspected'... and of course, 'coz they forced you to sign the mickey-mouse Joanne Brown UC agreement, anything you do outside of that can be viewed as suspected fraud.

If you follow the line of 'have no PC' and they provide you with an 'access device' as suggested by one poster yesterday (NOTE it will have to include cell network modem technology, since the poor are unlikely to be able to afford the N * £10/month needed for a broadband subscription), they automatically have access to all the info about your activities on the internet.

Easy to (automatically) process the log data to indicate 'looked at Z job adverts per period, applied for Y jobs'...

If you have your own internet access arrangements, it gets a bit more difficult for them, but not at all impossible as per my post earlier; and software tools exist already that allow them to automate the process of sifting through masses of data from many sources to arrive at the point where 'big brother REALLY knew what you were doing then'.

If you can figure out what to do to avoid this, you are probably so smart that they ought to be employing you somewhere like GCHQ or MIx.


What we should all be asking is:

- WHO has access to all the data currently being gathered by DWP (both covertly, & above board on the ridiculous activity pages...note a consequence of the switch from booklet that claimant kept, & adviser copied into their PC on claim day; to A4 page as per my post # 668 that THEY keep [ie may not be entered into the system by people in that building...] ).

- what is DWP currently spending, & projected spending over the next 5 years, on IT technology and outsourced resource to process all data related to benefits.

- how much do they expect to reduce the JSA payments (via sanctions etc) as a result of this investment...

Mary_Ellen

The ninety minute travel rule is unworkable as it does not take in to the account of the travel cost involve. You can travel quite a distance in that time, For example from my local station to London (84 miles)with one change takes one hour twelve minutes at a daily cost of £98.70 peak rate, nearly double the minimum wage for a eight hour day. The poorly trained Job-Centre Drones tend to only look at the travel time and not the travel cost. I know this from personal experience from my own dealings with the Job-Centre. I even been told to hire a taxi if there was no public transport and that the taxi company would give me a discount for regular use. Which is a bit of a joke, as the local taxi's round here tend to only work 8am-6pm.




So make an appointment with your adviser and ask for a better off calculation. The people (not 'drones') signing you on only have a few minutes to speak to you, and wont have time to do the calculation. Nobody expects somebody to sign off and be worse off, you'll just be back through the doors a few weeks later.

The suggestion about local taxis was probably somebody trying to be helpful-the person you dealt with cant be assumed to know the vagaries of your local taxi service, and they would be able to help with travel costs for the first few weeks.

andy2004

sorry mary ellen making an appointment with the advisor and informing them about cost over travel will NOT work, even if you showed them 100% proof fact and figures, they will still tell you its 90minutes travel so i said so 45min there and 45min back, no 90minutes.
so I then said is that 90 minutes public travel aka buses, push bike or car, cause the distance via each is different.
and if thats bus travel does that 90min include standing around waiting for a bus as when i did use the bus to get to my destinations i stood waiting for 30min funny when on the side of the bus is says 1 every 10min. reply NO, its 90min whatever you use, so 90min by bus or 90 min by car, you the unemployed cant win in a conversation with them.
Simple reason if you raise you voice silent to emphasis something you will be classed as shouting and asked to quiet down or else be escorted out of the premises, hell you may even find yourself getting a letter BANNING you from the jobcentre for threatening behaviour if they FEEL as though you threathened them for speaking loudly.

The Drones have no thoughts for themselves they do what they are told even if it doesnt make sense to anyone. And some of the drones need to re-read some of the things they tell people as most of the time what they tell the "customer" is wrong, or they dont actually listen to what the "customer" is asking them and edit the question in their mind, or they themselves has misunjderstood what their bosses have told them.

example of that would be the volunteer scheme, aka picking people up from there homes and taking them to doctors / hospital appoinments.
I was personally told by 1 advisor I could do that providing I didnt do more than 16hrs aka 15hrs 59min a week anything over 15hr 59min you would be considered FULL TIME EMPLOYED even though your not getting paid and therefore benefits will be stopped.
2weeks later i asked a different person. and was told you can do as many hours as you like even upto and over 40hrs a week providing you are still actively seeking work, your benefits will not be stopped at all.
same question 2 different DRONES, and then they wonder why the "customer" is confused.
note: I was later told by andy brown jobcentre manager, the latter was correct.

Vincent_Buenisedes

The_ICT_Engineer wrote: »

Having read through all the postings by Jerry Mander, who comes across as a gullible fool, who clearly believes anything and everything that he had been told or has read either on the net or in the papers.


The ninety minute travel rule is unworkable as it does not take in to the account of the travel cost involve. You can travel quite a distance in that time, For example from my local station to London (84 miles)with one change takes one hour twelve minutes at a daily cost of £98.70 peak rate, nearly double the minimum wage for a eight hour day. The poorly trained Job-Centre Drones tend to only look at the travel time and not the travel cost. I know this from personal experience from my own dealings with the Job-Centre. I even been told to hire a taxi if there was no public transport and that the taxi company would give me a discount for regular use. Which is a bit of a joke, as the local taxi's round here tend to only work 8am-6pm.


As for public access to the internet, There are only a limited number of computers available in the library's that remain open. Councils are closing more everyday through cutbacks. These computers are often old and have long out of date software installed. In my own area of the Fens, we have four library's that remain open with a total of 31 computers available for use (3387 people per computer), The average age of these computers is eleven years. To my knowledge there are no internet cafe's in the area.
The Fens only Job-Centre (Wisbich) has only two public access computers (All there is room for). The 'Internet Access Devices' are the public access computers (2176 in total, procured from HP)that are install in the Job-Centre's. To cut the costs, they have a version of Palm OS installed rather than windows.
As for computers being installed for the purpose in council buildings, where did Jerry Mander get that information from?. That's not going to happen round here.


As for job applications, companies are geting far to many applicants that don't match the profile of the position simple down to the fact that the poorly trained drone's at the Job-Centre have ordered them to apply or be sanctioned. The CBI has repeatedly complained about this to the government as have other groups. In most cases, many of these applications will just get binned or deleted without ever being looked at. Leading to problems for Job-Seekers, many of whom have been sanctioned for not applying when in fact that they had, but the application had been deleted or binned. The "scatter gun approach" which IDS and his drone's prefer simple does not work in this situation. Companies want quality rather quantity when it comes to applications. No Agency would dare sent 100's of applications to a client, otherwise they soon have no clients.

First sensible post that I've read on this thread for a few days:T

Just want to add that if you really want to know what life under Universal Credit entails, you'd be better off reading the ACTUAL regulations upon which it's based, instead of taking it verbatim from the Daily Mail.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2013/9780111531938/contents

With regards to the 35 hour jobsearch, I'd take a look at part 95 of the regulations, "Work Search requirement - all reasonable action"
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2013/9780111531938/regulation/95

95.—(1) A claimant is to be treated as not having complied with a work search requirement to take all reasonable action for the purpose of obtaining paid work in any week unless—
(a)either—
(i)the time which the claimant spends taking action for the purpose of obtaining paid work is at least the claimant’s expected number of hours per week minus any relevant deductions, or
(ii)the Secretary of State is satisfied that the claimant has taken all reasonable action for the purpose of obtaining paid work despite the number of hours that the claimant spends taking such action being lower than the expected number of hours per week; and
(b)that action gives the claimant the best prospects of obtaining work.

i.e., so long as the advisor is satisfied that you're taking all reasonable steps to find a job, you'll be fine.

oneofmillions768

Just signed and been told that its going to be mandatory to sign up to the Universal Job Match from the 1st March 2013. Mentioned also that its not mandatory to allow them access to your account. Anybody else been told this information?

Asked also if I was going to get a letter etc to confirm this in writing, but the adviser didn't have a clue.

The_ICT_Engineer

Mary_Ellen wrote: »

So make an appointment with your adviser and ask for a better off calculation. The people (not 'drones') signing you on only have a few minutes to speak to you, and wont have time to do the calculation. Nobody expects somebody to sign off and be worse off, you'll just be back through the doors a few weeks later.

The suggestion about local taxis was probably somebody trying to be helpful-the person you dealt with cant be assumed to know the vagaries of your local taxi service, and they would be able to help with travel costs for the first few weeks.

Seeing as I'am in full employment, I have no need to see a poorly trained and clueless Job-Centre drone. I was quoting from personal experience from dealing with theses fools.

Jerry_Mander

Universal Jobmatch mandatory from next Monday after 9 hour downtime on Sunday to update the site in readiness!

Oh ye of little faith. :rotfl:

https://twitter.com/pcs_union/status/306424237973983232

john539

Jerry_Mander wrote: »

Universal Jobmatch mandatory from next Monday after 9 hour downtime on Sunday to update the site in readiness!

Oh ye of little faith. :rotfl:

https://twitter.com/pcs_union/status/306424237973983232

Nothing special there.

It's good you quote PCS union, who you were deriding.