Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) has released a report detailing “the reality of universal credit”, with links to hundreds of newspaper stories from across the UK that have reported on the damage caused by Universal Credit (UC).
The report contains “harrowing stories of people forced into debt, rent arrears, homelessness, crime, prostitution, hunger, people unable to afford fares to get to food banks, parents unable to get essentials for their babies, child poverty, worsening mental health, ex-service people considering suicide and even cases of actual suicide”.
The report is in response to Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) advertisements in the METRO newspaper in Sheffield, which air-brushed concerns over Universal Credit. The advertisements, promoting Universal Credit, are not clearly from the DWP or a Government department and are designed to appear to be real journalism. A leaked DWP memo mentions the avoidance of DWP branding on the advertisements saying, “The features won’t look or feel like DWP or UC – you won’t see our branding, and this is deliberate.”
Members of Sheffield DPAC have been removing copies of the METRO newspaper, which is run by the same company that publishes The Daily Mail.
They have even offered a prize of a DPAC tee-shirt for the most creative way in which an activist can recycle or reuse a copy of the Metro, and so prevent the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) advertising features being read.
Photographs on DPAC Sheffield’s Facebook site show copies of the Metro in wheelie bins. They say “Re-use them, recycle them, just don’t leave these LIES on the stands.”
DPAC have stated “This nonsense is going to be going on for nine weeks from this week and each week we will be stepping up this campaign […] we are absolutely not giving up […] if anything it just makes us angrier and more determined.”
* Read the DPAC report on Universal Credit here
* DPAC Sheffield facebook site https://www.facebook.com/DPACShef/
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