Yes its that time of year. The run up to Christmas. The time of year where Jobcentre staff are told to reach their quota of sanctions before the Christmas holidays. You see they cant sanction for those few days. But the person either on JSA or Universal Credit must constantly search for jobs. Even on Christmas day. Even on Boxing day. Even when you have the audacity to be ill.  Today a man found out that he had been sanctioned because he was ill in bed with a severe chest infection. He wasn’t shirking. He wasnt pretending. He was ill. The doctor had given him a sick-note. But this isn’t good enough. Even though this cruel government say that when you are unemployed you are allowed to be ill twice in a year. Yes twice. We feel blessed that they allow us this grace…. only we do not feel blessed. We feel downtrodden, humiliated, suicidal. This man will go without Christmas this year…. how is this right? It isn’t and I’m angry.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.