© Murdo Macleod for the Guardian
Leslie Ross has not had a payment since 16 August, and says he does not eat most days until 6pm.
For many of Inverness's universal credit guinea pigs, the past year has been exceptionally stressful. The many glitches of a malfunctioning scheme have already caused widespread misery in this city, which has been trialling various forms of universal credit since 2013. The problems unfolding here offer a taste of what is to come when the system goes nationwide.
The escalating difficulties experienced by Mhairi Thomson, a 35-year-old care worker who faced eviction from her home of 16 years, are typical. She claimed universal credit last September just before she got married; her fiance was moving into the house she shared with her 15-year-old daughter - forcing a reassessment of her benefit eligibility and shifting her on to the new system.
For reasons that remain unclear, the
benefit was not paid for five months, leaving her unable to pay her rent, struggling to buy food for her family and often without £2.50 dinner money to give her daughter, who was studying for her exams. Crucially, with no money to pay her phone bill she lost access to her landline and her internet connection, which left her unable to query the absence of payments because the benefit is designed to claimed online. Without her landline, she had to use her mobile to call the helpline at considerable cost, because delays on the line ate up all the free minutes on her pay-as-you-go mobile package, pushing her on to a 30p-a-minute rate.
Comment: Those last 'reports' are dubious.
If you go to the source, it says 'suggests' and 'claims.'
Further reading: The insanity of gender confusion is overtaking the UK