Not for the first time, a friend of mine has found himself in a Catch 22 nightmare with the Job Centre. He's on a 2 week course. He has to attend every day, or DWP are informed immediately and his dole is stopped and so is his right to attend the course.

On Thursday, he had to sign on - and he had to be on the course at the same time. He made sure he got to the course on time.... but then his dole was stopped because he didn't sign on, and he was told he'd lost the right to attend the course. Had he arrived late for the course because he'd gone to sign on, he would not have been allowed to continue the course and his dole would have been stopped.

The Job Centre are doing a rapid reclaim for him, meantime he has no money and has to borrow to get to Uxbridge.

This is not the first time he's been in this situation and there are four people on the course in the same boat.

How can this kind of madness happen???

From what I hear the job centres are a law to themselves and quite dumb sometimes.

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Lets be careful out there !

people are getting thicker
i see Tulisa , says she gave up drugs years ago , then says she smokes pot at night????
why not nick her for that first , then prison , if she wont say where she got it from
i really dont understand

It sounds to me like the DWP is working to the same Common Purpose agenda as HMRC and the Border Agency. Where the aim is to break the system and coarse chaos, confusion and unnecessary suffering. DWP also create nightmarish problems over Working Tax Credits.

A young woman I know who is receiving Working Tax Credits recently managed to marginally increase her income. To keep everything honest and above board she informed DWP of her small income increase. Rather than make any necessary reductions to her Working Tax Credits, DWP simply blocked all her Tax Credit payments pending a further inquiry. She was also told the inquiry could take some weeks to complete. In the mean time she is having to provide for herself and three young children without the Working Tax Credits element of her income.

Grrrrr. I hear these sorts of tales all the time. It makes you furious

On a personal level it scares the living daylights out of me. Dealing with the various agencies is an absolute nightmare.

A case that the left hand knows nothing of the right hand's existence classic HMG

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Its not always the biggest and the bestest, its them that make the least mistakes.

Once you are on the dole. Is there a limit on how long you can draw on it?
Over here. It's worked out on how much you've paid in. In the last 12 mouths. You get one year max, often only 38 weeks, then you don't get anymore till you've worked around 950 hours. The. Of course you wouldn't have put much in, in that time. So you won't get much back out

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Posts often deleted................Why? I don't know.

Where officialdom is concerned, it is either a case that the left hand is ignorant of what it is supposed to be doing, or there is a deliberate policy of sabotage being applied. From the regular apparent incompetence that officialdom displays, I suspect that sabotage is their preferred function.

I don't think there are any limits like that here, but I do know from people on the dole they have a lot of ways of stopping it and making life unbearable if they feel like it. Often very arbitrary and unfair and seemingly with a total disregard for the impossible situations it puts people in.