Money is tight - Living on Universal Credit in lockdown
By Alex Forsyth & Kate Whannel
BBC News
image captionScott Boerder is having to rely on Universal Credit for the first time in his life.
A report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has found that the coronavirus pandemic is having a disproportionate impact on those already living in poverty, and calls on the government to make a £20 increase in Universal Credit permanent. We talk to some of the people who have had to rely on the benefit to get them through the pandemic.
Scott Boerder, 38, moved to Warwick from Derby in late 2019 for a job in retail management but was made redundant.
Which dictatorship?
I do not know whether government regulations telling us that we should or should not do in the present panic are effective or not. I
I do care when an apparatchik, such as Dr. Liz Robin, tells us, as reported in your paper, … we must all comply with government regulations”.
Medically trained she may be, but she has not been granted dictatorial powers, even benign ones. Expressing her opinion is one thing; dictating to us is another.
From the look of the streets there seems to be a lot of people who are disobeying her.
What does she propose to do about remedying this criminality?
RICKY WILSON/stuff
Bobby O Connor is now looking forward to the New Year knowing he is no longer being pursued for a car loan.
OPINION: Complaining effectively over a shoddy good or service calls for both hard and soft skills. It can also require the wisdom to accept partial victory, knowing the alternative is to waste years on embittered, unproductive pursuit of revenge. During the past year, I’ve met many complainers, indicating some of the factors which lead some to succeed, and others fail. In the months before Christmas, I covered the story of Auckland pensioner Bobby O’Connor, a nice man lacking many of the skills to complain.
Last modified on Tue 15 Dec 2020 05.14 EST
After more than 20 years in the corporate world â at Vodafone, Virgin and Costa Coffee â Eleanor Tweddell found herself, at 40,
unemployed for the first time. Struggling to process the loss of a job she loved while applying for those in which she had no interest, Tweddell went into a tailspin.
Asked in interviews why she wanted the role, âI wished I could say: âI donât, I just need the money,ââ Tweddell says. âThat was all that was going through my head.â That was in December 2016. In 2020, with redundancies in the UK rising at the fastest rate since records began and the numbers set to peak at levels higher than during the 2008 financial crisis, many more people will find themselves in that desperately hard position.