Benefit Thieves

I’m mad, mad as hell, that’s what I am today. Mad with the people who make some distinction between the working poor and the unemployed poor. Well when I was working, I was part of the working poor. On paper I earned way above the national average, but that’s no use when you live in London. The threshold for tax credits and housing benefit was way below my income, so I subsisted.

Housing costs are the problem; I pay/have paid a fortune in rent. That’s not because I enjoyed giving my money away hand over fist to a buy-to-let landlord. No it’s because there was no affordable housing.

If you were poor in the 70s and 80s. There were options. Housing co-ops, Social Housing, Squats. Or just affordable rents. In the 80s and 90s I could get a mortgage, because property prices were realistic. I paid £200 a month in 1997 for my mortgage, and that was a 90% one. I would be pushed to find a weekly rent for that these days. I’m talking about North London, not anywhere else.

I sold my last house when my relationship broke down. But once everything was divided-up, there was little left over for a deposit. So I went back to renting, and that’s where I find myself now.

Because I’m unemployed, Housing Benefit pays my rent. But everything else comes out of the £64 a week. And that requires some serious creative accounting. I’ve sold things, I’ve accepted handouts from family and I’ve even tried to sell my body.

I’ve been close to getting work, had a couple of interviews. Been promised a job working in Europe, but that’s remains just a promise.


My current strategy involves getting part time work, using one of my old skills. One I’ve not actually practiced for thirteen years. Because of the huge gap in my CV when I did something completely different; it’s unlikely I’m going to get any response. But I’m trying, trying to be creative.

A friend of mine was made redundant a month before me. He has three kids, a mortgage and does not receive housing benefit. Or rather he receives a sum that covers part of his mortgage repayment. The shortfall, that includes the cost of supporting a family, is made up by relatives.

Like me he’s at the wrong end of 40. Ageism in our profession is rife, and never discussed. But that’s the great buttress holding both of us back. When a prospective employer sees our respective CVs, he/she does not see a wealth of experience; they see a tired-out old man. And even if we look young and healthy, have our own teeth and hair; we are dammed by the chronology on our CVs.


Before accusing people of being benefit thieves; consider their circumstances first. There is a huge amount of wasted talent, consigned to the dustbin. So employers can employ cheaper, younger, team-players (yes another euphemism for not being old).

And to repeat the theme of an earlier post; everything I have learned is just floating about in the ether. I have virtually a photographic memory for facts, and can put these facts to creative use. But the only openings for people like me appear to involve handing out wire-baskets at supermarket entrances.

Everybody's Free

If you’ve ever had a spell of unemployment, you will know the money covers basic subsistence and nothing else. Forget about your five-a-day, or takeaways, or nights out. You’re supposed to be uncomfortable as a Dole Wallah.

Now stretch that spell out into a year, and you start to take extreme measures.

I’ve sold my guitar for a pittance, sold a tee-shirt I bought back in 1998. I’ve considered selling my body; it’s not in bad shape. But heterosexual male escorts are as plentiful as decent jobs. So forget about being the male belle de jour, unless you fancy men or fancy being conned out of money (those sites on the internet or those classified ads are pure fakery). And you can forget about earning cash from home and modelling work, and just about all the other get-rich-quick schemes out there.


Reality is horrible, and sobering, and a pain in the ass.


I have no plan B. But I’m always open to suggestions, always on the lookout for something that pays more than the minimum wage. I’m looking into teaching, not in the school system though. I’ve lived with quite a few teachers and know it’s not for me.

Back during the last recession, I taught unemployed adults for a year. It was quite dispiriting because the training company were cynically exploiting people down on their luck. I faked exam papers to get the poor unfortunates through, it was positively encouraged. The more NVQs the more money for El Crappo Training Enterprises.


The company selected the best students and made them into unpaid teaching assistants. They hired some, paying a shocking salary. Like the orchestra at Auschwitz, the former students played along, faking results, putting up with shoddy treatment. They were desperate and the company knew that.

I met decent people there. Some Nigerian former boy soldiers, an ex Civil Servant who had been jailed for dope possession and lost his job in Whitehall. An Irish girl who had come to England for an abortion. An ex Pop Star, who had blown his record company advance.


Training company’s do well in a recession. Who needs to know how to re-jig a CV or shine at an interview when jobs are plentiful? I’ve been sent on two such back-to-work courses by my jobcentre. And I play the game, and ask questions, and even write fake comments on their questionnaires. But most of the time, my minds back in EL Crappo Training Enterprises, in a different recession, on a different side of the classroom.

I drank a lot during my time at EL Crappo, drank at lunchtimes, and even taught a class half drunk. Now that was embarrassing. After work I would drink with the former Pop Star and Irish Girl, The Whitehall Dope Fiend and whoever else was around. I drank more as autumn became winter; I drank into the spring. At night I would talk to complete strangers outside Camden Town Tube, or fall asleep on the train and find myself in South London.

And when it wasn’t drink, it was drugs. Rave music was still quite fresh, Ecstasy plentiful and popular. I remember siphoning off drinks discarded by e-d up builders in our local pub, and going in search of an elusive club called The Love Lab. When we gate crashed a South London Poly student bash, I danced with the Nigerian boy soldiers to Rozalla’s Everybody's Free. It was Christmas and the training company closed down for a couple of weeks.


A blur is all I have of January through to March. But in April, things changed. Or rather I changed things. I stopped going to the pub and joined a gym. I had a trainer and drank protein shakes to bulk up. With my freshly cleared mind, I looked into PHD Scholarships, and fantasised about becoming an academic. Except my heart was not in teaching, and my enthusiasm took a nose dive. I soldiered on, faking NVQs, reading out of text books to my more able students.

On my birthday the director of El Crappo Enterprises called me in to his office. I was sacked on the spot. It was called redundancy.

He did me a great favour, set me free. And for a little while I felt the same about this redundancy. Except the current recession feels deeper, and my reserves are depleted, and I’m that much older, and Raves already been revived once since Rosella sang Everybody’s Free.

jobseekers allowance

Take away this posters origin and look at the text and images. Somewhere at the back of that unemployment line you will see me. Too small to make out, yes. But I’m there in the dole queue.



I have to walk past people with dangerous dogs who smoke rank cigarettes outside my Jobcentre plus. Sit next to alcoholics and the mentally ill; and listen to different automata every visit offer me advice.



At my last interview I was harangued for reading a book while waiting for my interviewer to zip into action. I was supposed to be checking the job board machine, but the very same jobs are available on-line, and I have an internet connection.




Occasionally I encounter a human being, who is sympathetic and offers encouragement. Who knows how to converse and understands the difficulty of my situation. But mostly I’m ritually humiliated by an ignorant box ticking drone.





I am an unemployed man. Who’s never been out of work, until now. One of the thousands made redundant because of the credit crunch. With skills a plenty I earned way above the national average. I moved South from the North East in the Eighties, to find a job. Survived the last recession by the skin of my teeth. But now I’m broke, impecunious. The last of my reserves dwindled back in November. I can’t borrow money, because I can’t pay it back. I can’t support my child, and I can’t find work. Bankruptcy looms.





I suffered a heart attack the day after my redundancy was confirmed. I am a slim, healthy eating, non smoking, marathon runner (Berlin, Madrid, Chicago and even London). I’m not old, but I now have an old mans pill popping regime. Have a face that bleeds like a pig when I shave, and no prospect of ever running a 3.30 marathon again.




Unlike the people who took the train in front of me on 7/7; or those who come back from Afghanistan badly maimed. I only have a nodding acquaintance with death. And I recovered quickly, was at a job seminar three weeks after my attack and operation. I was back running after a month. I was also running with a new business idea, registering a domain, buying equipment, making plans. My mind had shifted. I was now walking the tightrope without a safety net, and I didn’t care about the consequences.




Yesterday I sat in front of a claims advisor. My story was irrelevant. What mattered was the last three weeks. What mattered was whether I had selected a job from their list, regardless of its suitability. He had a box to tick, and was not going to diverge from his simple minded script. He countered my arguments, with a threat of withdrawing my benefits for six months. He also sarcastically commented how easy this was to do, and how surprised he was someone could survive on nothing for six months.




A person with permanent damage to their heart (an attack kill’s cardiac muscle) often suffers from angina. Stress and excessive activity can bring on such an attack. As the claims advisor made his threats, I experienced mild angina. It’s a tightness in the chest and I have a spray that can alleviate the symptoms if pain persists. But it’s next to useless at removing the cause.




Removing myself quickly from the situation and from the jobcentre was my only choice. So I played the game, and accepted a print-out of a job, and walked home dejected and dispirited. I called the number on the print-out, and was told applications were closing in 30 minutes. I took down details of the company’s website and checked the full job description. It was totally unsuitable, and bore little resemblance to the jobcentres specification.





On the way home I had toyed with the idea of Incapacity Benefit. And for a minute or so it felt like a quick and dirty solution to the box ticking sessions. Incapacity Benefit would erase my claimant advisor for good, but in his place would step another. Rather like Duncan Jones’s film Moon, where every three years a fresh clone is woken-up to man the moon-base. The new box ticker, with a different set of questions, would sound strangely familiar.




I thought about winning the lottery and walking up to my claims adviser, tearing up all the crap they have passed on to me. Dropping the scraps like confetti over his desk. But even that fantasy was tempered by the fact that these people are always at lunch or off sick.
And then I thought about an old Patti Smith song, and recited a few of the words.



“I WILL GET OUT OF THIS PISS FACTORY”