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Is a phone contract a luxury? Owning a smartphone allows you to both 1) look for a job, and 2) use the Universal Credit portal.
Both of those things are absolutely essential if you want to claim UC because well, they made it mandatory to claim online, so...yah.
Tory gonna Tory I guess. I won't lie, I do enjoy watching them shoot themselves in the foot as often as they do.
They could always use the libr... Ah never mind.
Yeah I was going to say, most libraries have free internet that you just have to register to use (my current library even has a few workstations for unregistered), then remembered how many libraries have closed due to funding cuts imposed on councils by the tories.
My local library has signs up asking us to use the services as much as possible. Everything is recorded for budget reasons. They can justify there place if they can show we have x visitors for y.
Why are they doing this? So the council can decide which library is under performing so it can be closed so people can go to the big library in the city centre.
It's a terrible plan.
That's disgraceful. Got to feel for the people working there, knowing that their jobs are on the line with pretty much no control over the outcome.
My local library was going to be demolished and the Council were going to use the proceeds of the sale of the land to build a new one. Until people pointed out that it was pretty much the only one left in the area where people could get online for free and the plan would leave a gap of unknown length (parts of the plan involve sites that have been in planning limbo since 2008) until a new one was available.
Next the Tories will get outraged about people owning flatscreen TVs as though it's totally new technology.
A £30 contract is not needed to have a phone to browse the Internet.
Lots of people don't know how to find good deals, and funnily enough that is impossible without the Internet and good knowledge of how to avoid the various traps laid out for people. I learned about this stuff and general computing myself, not at school. Most of my friends and family still don't know a lot of this so rely on me for advice.
It's easy for us to judge but imagine you had no Internet. What would you do? You'd go into a mobile phone store where they are engineered to make you leave with the highest contact possible, and you don't know enough to challenge them. Or you search on a friends phone but what comes up is SEO gamed to again, give you a high contract. Or you know there's Vodafone as they advertise heavily so go straight to their website. Funnily enough, the contracts they initially advertise are pretty high and they don't advertise their cheaper sister brand talk mobile.
Now, imagine trying to do all this when your PIP payment has not come through so you have £6 in your account. You try going to the job centre but they just say you have to go online. The council can't help. Your friends don't know enough to help. So you desperately are trying to get a phone contact to figure out what's going on and decide £30 sounds reasonable and it's less of a concern than trying to find money to feed my kids today.
I dunno man. I used to be on the dole, it was something like 56 quid a week? Anyway, I didn't have the money to go into a mobile phone shop and get shopped into a 30 quid contract. I had the bog standard pay as you go.
Seo and getting dunked on by salespersons are not good excuses for why the state should manage a persons money. If you are skint, you tend to be really good at budgeting.
The issues tories have is with people who want to have it 'all' and not cut their cloth accordingly.
Granted I'm fairly sure if every poor person sat on their hands all day, they'd complain about that too.
I feel that debating whether a £30 p/m contract counts as a luxury or not just serves to further dehumanize those experiencing poverty.
Yes. But we will continue to do it. I have no idea when it will stop.
Maybe they took the contract out before being forced into welfare? Last I checked companies aren't overly happy if you ask to end your contract early.
That's possible and will happen, but most likely it's that within the group who can't afford a 30 quid contract, there will be a contingent who will take it out anyway and that smaller group will get the headlines and that's what we chat about.
It ain't as sexy to talk about then people who budget relentlessly to make ends meet and still struggle.
I get 10 texts a week just to authenticate things. And I'm not even looking for a job.
Yeah, I agree with this. However there's prolly more people who were not doing well financially prior to the contract compared to those who were fine and then suddenly in the shits.
Tories are weird, they want us spending money and aspiring us to achieve more yet seemingly want people to sit in a dark room eating gruel.
Texts are typically free these days, especially at 30 quid a month.
I think you mean to say, texts cost £30/month.
Yes. What's the norm for editing a post?
Just giv'r
There is some element of Vimes boots here. People cannot afford a new smartphone outright even though that is cheaper long-term, so have to take an option that gives a phone ..phones these days are designed to break after 18months as "updates" grind them down
That theory is a bit lost when someone doesn't need the latest smartphone to begin with. Even if they were to break after 18 months, which they aren't and the market is certainly moving towards devices lasting longer, its easy to pick up a decent mid range or flagship for half that price monthly or comparable second hand.
Yeah with a minigun.
They seriously need to learn to shut the hell up.