Ds that sounds like utter shit. Reminds me of my time doing Tech Support at The Tech Guys. Utter nepotsim, impossible to ever progress unless you were knocking shoulders with the right people. Hated it, especially since the job was appalling for your self-esteem.

I am still waiting for Universal Credit to tick over and actually give me some money, but I have a question if anyone here has been on it.

I still do a tiny bit of freelance when my husk of a brain can fathom it. I have about £1200 worth of stuff lined up between now and December/January. Not a lot, but I enjoy writing, and still have my Uni work to resit September - Novemeber, so can't throw myself into it fully, but also don't want to turn this stuff down.

Any idea how this interacts with my UC? It's about 4-6 articles, 2 of which are £300, 2/3 of which are £150 each. I worry from reading around that it'll trip some arbitrary earning thing and cancel out my UC... which seems utterly fucking awful, but also the exact kind of BS that UC is known for.

Any advice welcome.

Have a read of this.
https://www.understandinguniversalcredit.gov.uk/new-to-universal-credit/universal-credit-and-work/

The basic concept is you get whatever it was decided your UC payment will be.
Then for every pound you earn and declare they take 63p up until that take reaches the UC payment.

The idea is it is always worth working as you will always have more than not (costs of working such as transport aside of course).

So if you got one £300 article they will take £201 and you will pocket £99 + £UC, assuming you are getting £300 or more in UC.

If I was you I would go on the UC portal thing and just ask them how to declare it and if you need to officially state you are self employed for these articles.

Depending on how much you can secure it might be worth invoicing for it all in one month.
That way you maximise how much you take.

Normally it is always worth taking work on, just think of UC as the absolute base you get every month.

The difference in your scenario though is if it is worthwhile if the time would be better spent on portfolio work. That's up to yourself to decide.

How do you get paid for your writing, T? Keep it off grid?

I think it’s very easy to say that, when you’re not doing the work? This first article for £300 is an interview, bare minimum amount of time i’ve spent on it so far is about 12 hours. That’s ignoring pitching, research time, continued emails to work our all the logistics over the course of a year etc. I’ve not even approached the edit properly yet, that’s gonna be another 4-6 hours minimum. So now that’s worth something like £99 because I was made redundant and have rent to pay, so I’ve looked to UC for assistance.

The system is meant to get you back into work, but taking steps to become self sustaining is treated punitively? My work is being devalued. For the sake of £99 it feels like it hasn’t been worth the time at all. It feels backwards in a lot of ways. I’ll likely still be doing them but it feels incredibly backwards to create a system that provides a safety net and encourages people to get back in to work by... devaluing any work they do whilst on that safety net?

It feels like being treated like I am gaming the system for trying to do some work.

mistercrayon wrote:

Tempy wrote:

It seems incredibly punitive. I’m better off shitcanning the lot until I get another part time job really. How incredibly depressing to know that the 20+ hours i’ve spent on this interview piece are going to net me £99 cos I had the temerity to get made redundant whilst still at uni.

Surely more money is more money? can’t you pretend that you’re getting the full wage and the rest is topping up? At least until you can find other work don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

This is the correct way to look at it - UC is a higher wage for the work you do anyway

Sure, that’s the rational way to look at it. If these were regular gigs i’d probably feel better about it, but there’s a huge difference between logic and feeling.

given that i’ve literally come out of a huge depressive episode and as a result have to do three more months of my Masters as a resit, which isn’t covered financially by SAAS, it feels bad, and feeling is quite important to someone who is taking drugs to make the serotonin happen.

I think if you can’t see how the UC system seems counterintuitive, demotivating and exhausting, you’re probably really lucky.

Governments can get fucked. Just tax the rich already. Like one rich guy pays one more percent tax a year and that saves thousands of dollars for people who need every cent. System is so cracked.

In normal times with UC an applicant would be thoroughly assessed to see their experience and qualifications.
They aren't doing that right now because there are too many applicants, but it will return. Either because people are going back to work or more likely the government just decides they need to bring down the bill.

When assessed, if you get a good case handler they can look at your qualifications and might give you a period of time to focus on that type of work before being told to apply for any old shit. This would all be under the pressure of being sanctioned (fined) or having your UC stopped completely if you weren't satisfying the case handler's goals.

If you start taking these writing roles now it will give you a body evidence to carry on doing so if they begin to start properly assessing while you are still claiming.

The alternative is you will be told to apply for call centre work because you have experience and while they won't stop you taking any paid writing work they won't necessarily count it towards your efforts.

I have a huge amount of sympathy for you, this shit is tough even without underlying mental health problems. 
The concept of UC is fine but I do think the ratios are unfair, they should probably be reversed.

This is the current reality though and you will need to decide what the best approach is for yourself. Whether that is protecting your mental health or focussing on other things that can help with your career more long term and your Masters. As always Im here to help with the 3D shit whenever I can. I dont want the above to feel like a lecture and please do rant away, we all do genuinely care.

Cheers Liv. I know it must come off in some ways as an entitled rant but the idea that I can simply just extricate my feelings from all this and just plough on with logic and reason alone is just beyond my ken really. The last three years since graduating have been exhausting and humiliating, it’s not like I’ve been sitting pretty since going to Uni and am suddenly caught with my pants down. Every single purchase I make outside the bare minimum of my outgoings is days and weeks of calculating wether It’s worth it or not. It all just adds up. I’m gonna do the work, and just take it on the chin. But I still think the system is shite.

In fairness the old system would have completely discouraged doing anything outside of nothing.

(I may be chatting shit but I believe the old system really hurt anyone who tried to do any extra work - I imagine this system is probably “whip” encouragement though).

If it helps Tempy im working full time and still going into my overdraft every month by about a hundred quid. Vicious cycle.

Job economy, especially at the moment, is utter shit.

Made an absolute cunt of something in work and finding myself getting terribly upset about it.

Sent for a patient. McFarlane to XR. I arrive at the ward, check the board of patients and find her. Tell the nurses. We need to slide her from the bed to the XR trolley. She's got a broken hip so she's in agony doing that, screaming in pain. We go to XR. It's the wrong McFarlane. The right one was in the bed next to her. So I have to break it to her and take her back up and do that procedure again to get her back into bed. More deafening screams. The problem for me is, on the way down as a means to help her, I make the parallels between her hip and my mum going through the same. And we're always told as a means to help us be more sympathetic towards patients "just imagine it was your mum in that bed/chair/trolley" etc, and I caused all that needless moving and pain and screaming. I feel absolutely horrible about it. And the more I'm told to be calm about it, I can't. And when I'm annoyed at something I can't control, I get emotional, loud, tears, and now my colleagues have seen that. Fuck sake today is a doozy.

Ah that sucks mate. Still, it was a mistake that anyone could have made. Putting patients with identical surnames in beds next to each other strikes me as a recipe for disaster tbh.

In better news.. A fortnight ago I saw that the estates department in the hospital were looking for a new Maintenance Assistant. Most of the guys that work in there are getting on a bit now, and I think they all have some kind of 'trade' behind them, be it spark or plumbing etc, so I thought I'd be out of the running.

Turns out you don't have to have one to apply as you'll get training, so I threw my hat into the ring. It's a fair bit more on the salary, and, there's "call out" shifts where if you are called out, it's decent dosh on top. Mostly though, it gets me out of portering. There's constant bitching and the majority of people I work with, I just can't stand if I'm honest. I get a real sense of fulfilment helping patients but the people in there grind me down more often than not. Not to say there's no bitching in Estates, but I feel I can manage it more in with them. All big football men, tbh. I'll settle in.

So I got an email there inviting me to an interview next week. Will be cornering the guys I regularly Stop And Chat with for tips. Anyone on the forum with experience of these departments? Anyway, buzzing.