ESA advisors do the strangest things - I don't know whether to laugh or cry

[Pritti]

Several weeks into the post-ESA struggle for existence and I received the oddest phone call today from my "benefits advisor". Essentially it amounted to her pleading with me not to close my ESA claim.

 

It was so mind-boggling, given the current climate of attack on the benefits system, that I have to set it out here in some detail.

 

The advisor was responding to my letter declining the appointment made between me and her by the powers that be. Essentially I'd said - if they've stopped my ESA to what end would I be attending the appointment. I assumed that the people who stopped my benefit forgot to tell those making the appointments about the stopping. We are all accustomed to government departments which lack joined up thinking or performance.

 

The woman says she's received my letter but please, why don't I apply for income based ESA. I tell her that (a) I can't face going through the whole assessment procedure again because of the stress and negative impact on my health and (b) when my husband was forced into early retirement he got his lump sum which is just enough to put me out of the running for benefit

 

At which point she plays another card. They'll still be paying my NI benefits so I can't get away with not attending the appointments. I then say fine, stop them. Surely you can't expect me to drag myself an hour's journey each way for the sake of a meagre NI payment? It knocks me back for a whole day.

 

The same woman who gave me such uphill the few times I saw her then proceeds to plead with me to let her keep my claim open, register that she spoke to me so I don't have to keep the appointment, and thus buy myself time to rethink the issue.

 

What's going on here? I don't for one minute imagine that she's concerned for my welfare. Or at least not beyond not wanting me to be another addition to the scandalous statistics of the despairing poor, ill and infirm who have died as a consequence of the attacks on the social health and welfare systems. I reckon she's merely acting on instructions to go through the motions of seeing that people who come off benefits are given "assistance" and "advice".

 

Meantime, we all know that people like me, the walking wounded, are the targets whom Ossie Ostrich has in his budgetary sights. Someone in my situation would be declined for ESA were I to apply afresh today. An asthmatic epileptic with a history of biomechanical and mental health problems is considered perfectly fit for work. (Cross the floor of the job centre to the desks dealing with JSA and they would deny this but there you go...............)

 

Then there's that pesky £16 000 my husband received after 30 years of public service. It makes us "wealthy retirees" - we can eke this out over the next few years. If we're careful and only use it to build his monthly pension to two thirds of the official poverty line, it will last three years or four years. By the time we run out of all our resources and have absolutely nothing, not even our ability to work, to depend on, state assistance of any kind will have disappeared.

 

So why's this woman calling me? What's she after? .