Search results for: "label/credit"

Universal Credit — the new welfare reform

13 November 2010 //
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There’s always a lot of talk about the welfare state and how it makes people not want to work — benefit scroun­gers, fraud, stories of people swind­ling the system out of huge amounts of cash, sitting at home eating cheese­bur­gers which honest hard­working folk like you and I have paid for fill the news­pa­pers, everyday.

But the truth is that these people are the excep­tion, not the rule. Most people just get on with it, surviving as best they can until they get a job that means they can do more than just survive.

There’s already been a lot said about the plans in this Welfare Reform paper — the idea that people will have to do menial jobs for nothing to ‘get used’ to working again has sparked contro­versy, especially. But that doesn’t tell you what the new scheme, Universal Credit, actu­ally means if you’re unemployed. Is it better? Is it worse? It could even be exactly the same.

You already know how much you’re getting now, and how much you’d have to earn for stop­ping taking bene­fits to be a proper advantage.

Before you take a look:

  • You should also know that ESA, DLA, contrib­utory JSA and Child Benefit aren’t part of the new system — they’ll be separate. How much you get from them will reduce your basic Universal Credit benefit though.
  • Universal credit takes away some bene­fits like housing benefit — the idea is to give you a basic amount that covers housing too.
  • It’s also important to under­stand that this is based on this year’s figures. In 2013 when universal credit comes in, things could be very different.
  • And a last word of warning: I’m bad at maths. I’ve tried my best but may still be quite, quite wrong! 
What am I looking at here?
I just did a little bit of analysis on what the current benefit rates are for certain people (single, couple, disabled, with chil­dren, that sort of thing) — the govern­ment has prom­ised to match whatever you get now under the new system — then working out with the new ‘taper rate’ — that is, the amount of money you lose in earn­ings if you’re still claiming benefit but have a job, and then calcu­lating how much you’d have earn, or how much you’d have to work at minimum wage for it to be worth you not being on benefits.
They’re calling it ‘Universal Credit’, but it’s not very universal — it doesn’t include Job Seeker’s Allowance (JSA) when you’ve got enough national insur­ance to cover some of it (I think that’s called contrib­utory JSA), Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) or Disability Living Allowance (DLA) or child benefit. All of these will still be separate (though they will also be chan­ging soon), but whether they change or not they will get counted as part of your income — so you’ll get less ‘Universal Credit’ if you get enough money from other benefits.
What it does cover is JSA, Housing Benefit, and Working Tax Credit with the occa­sional Council Tax Credit thrown in — but that will prob­ably depend on your council. So the differ­ence is that it covers you from not when you don’t have work right through to when you do.

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Credit cards and store cards: an official translation

26 October 2009 //
5

Simply Understand started nearly a year ago with the not-so-simple idea of making a small corner of the UK’s demo­cracy more, well, democratic!

Everyone know how much of a struggle it can be to get your story heard by govern­ment institutions. Consultations are supposed to be one way for us to get through, but so often they’re so complic­ated and over­whelming. Sure, some­times they deal with complic­ated subjects, but no matter how complic­ated they are, don’t we all have a right to under­stand and contribute to them?

With that in mind, today Simply Understand’s been given it’s first chance at a 100% genuine, offi­cial consulta­tion makeover! The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills are consulting on Credit cards and store cards. Their 100 page original consulta­tion has been reduced to just 10. You can:

The first step?

Is this the first step on the road to making all govern­ment consulta­tions easier to under­stand? It could be, but only if it actu­ally works. And that means more people replying, more people down­loading and more people listening and understanding. And if you read it through, and there are bits you don’t under­stand — well, I think that’s helpful too, and you should tell them that. Because if you can’t under­stand it now, how’s it going to help anyone?

Pass it on!

Email, Messenger, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, heck even Myspace it, or just print it out and give it to people (double sided to save paper). The more people see this, the more chance we’ve got to encourage more easy to under­stand consultations!

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Your credit card is changing

15 March 2010 //
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If you want some­thing to change in govern­ment, replying to consulta­tions is one of the best ways to do it. But consulta­tions aren’t the end of the line. When everything’s over and the dust has settled, the govern­ment has to come up with a response docu­ment.

Usually this tells you what feed­back they’ve had from you, the industry and experts, and what they’ve decided to go ahead and do, based on that feedback.

So Simply Understand has done it’s first ever response docu­ment, after the credit card consulta­tion me and my friend Matt helped out on in October.

Find out how UK credit cards will be chan­ging from next year! There’s a plain English version, and a podcast too. Enjoy!

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