Benefit sanctions – a morally repugnant and empirically flawed system, where claimants have their benefits stopped by jobcentre staff, who are themselves under pressure to meet sanctions targets.
In just another twist to the surreal awfulness, Welfare Weekly has found out that a leaflet produced by the Department for Work and Pensions about the system, contained fictional profiles supposedly about claimants who’d had a positive experience with sanctions. Yes, that’s right. They included profiles that were entirely made up. One profile was of ‘Sarah’, who was really glad her benefits had been stopped because it helped her to rewrite her CV (because having no money to buy food is really good at focusing the mind):
As one twitter user nicely put it:
I wonder what the cost of these horrible staffers is.