For A Peoples Bailout
As the economy of the UK slides into recession for the first time since the early nineties we can be certain which strata of society are going to be affected by capitals current phase. It is not going to be the rich monkeys who caused this mess. Well when we say caused this mess, capitalism itself is a mess. Staggering from crisis to crisis like a depressed drunkard on a monday morning capitalisms current quandary poses us some pertinent questions. (more…)
0845 Scamming The Poor
Being as I am currently on the dole I have reason on occasion to have to phone my local benefits office. Time was that I would just call the office up the road from me and that would be fine. They have however recently changed my local DWP into a JobCentrePlus, the ‘Plus’ means that it does less than it used to. No longer can the people at the office answer benefits enquiries I am now to phone an office on the other side of the city that has no regular phone number, just an 0845 number. I am sure that most people out there have come across these numbers before. The 0845 number for those of you that don’t know is a scheme that is presented to us as making things more convenient i.e. one number that can be called from anywhere in the country and is charged as a local call. Sounds OK eh? Well the thing is these numbers are no longer charged at local rate and the main reason a lot of places use them is that the organisation recieving the call makes money off the call.
That any business would jump at the chance to make money off people before they are even customers is hardly surrising and not the sort of thing that even gets me angry anymore. However when the Job Centre starts using them to make money out of claimants that really pisses me off. People who try to get by on state benefits are some of the poorest people in the country and that the very organization that is supposed to help them is making money out of us is disgusting.
It’s not only the job centre that is doing this however no! Glasgow City Council also use these 0845 numbers as a way of making money out of us when we need to contact them. Not content with selling the city out from beneath us they have now figured out that they can charge us if we want to complain!
Bastards the lot of them.
And as Cocksparrer sang all those years ago…
Take ‘em all,
one and all,
put ‘em up against a wall and shoot ‘em!
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