well! it at least proves that social services departments are capable of rapid response, after all!
maybe we'll have to make with the 'allegedly' word round here, at some risk of resembling Private Eye.
i'm wondering whether there has been any movement on the subsistence payment issue, and any advice from social services on their position on the selling of personal possessions. it would be rather maddening if the sum total of any legal advice it obtained was directed to obtaining your retraction, imho.
many many years ago, when i was a DHSS visiting officer ( i'm that old!), the department was in a phase of being rather keen on take- up of supplementary benefit by pensioners. it's amazing, when once an idea has entered into the collective psyche, for want of a better term, how long it lingers. a fair proportion of my visits in the early 1980s involved persuading pensioners reluctant to claim because it was means-tested, that the days of the evil and much hated 'means-test man', who told you to sell the piano, were long gone. this went way back to the depression and days of mass unemployment of the 1920s and 30s, and the department was well aware of the obstacle it presented. Folks like me were charged with a responsibility of scotching the 'myth' and showing how warm and cuddly social security really was. : ) i met many elderly people who demonstrated the greatest reluctance to undergo means-testing - because of the 'sell your piano' legacy, and i also observed the utter horror, and underlying fear, found in two even older 'collective memories' - of the pauper's burial, and the workhouse. it was left to my imagination to contemplate just how much damage and trauma was caused to working class communities by 'the system', to have such a long term impact.
you try telling that to 'kids' today and they just won't believe you. : )
this is a long - winded way of saying i doubt that the means assessment by social services could be more stringent than the income support approach, which disregards the value of personal possessions ( unless there is a great deal of wealth tied up in jewellery, which you suggest otherwise), but i don't know. it is difficult to see how a different approach could be argued without it being discriminatory,,,
oh, and a week is a long time in politics, but the memory lingers on. class... race... plus ca change...
jan
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