If you claim benefits, chances are that you will have untold numbers of bureaucrats from the Jobcentre, Housing Benefit etc. trying to poke their noses into your business. This article concentrates on those that will visit you if you’re claiming Job Seekers Allowance, although most of what is said will apply to all visitors from the Benefit Agency.
If you make a claim from a new address they will automatically pay a visit to your home to check you live there. They will let you know when they’re coming; usually by letter along with a list of the things they want you to produce to validate your claim. First of all, you do not have to let them in; you can show them what they need to see on the doorstep. This is also true of most visits from benefit related government bodies such as those that deal with housing benefit. Often they will pay unsolicited visits to the address of your claim with some spurious reason; they probably want a bit of a nose around and to get some identification from you. Don’t panic! If you don’t live there make sure that anyone likely to answer the door is clued up enough to not talk to them about you. They usually imply that they have a right to enter and they may even say so, this is generally bollocks. If you are unsure and don’t want them to come in, deny them access and check it out with your local Citizen’s Advice Bureau or if you have one, your local unemployment support group. If they are allowed to come in (not likely), you don’t have to let them in right then, you can arrange a time that suits you, this allows you to make any preparations that you may need to make. The absolute worst that will happen is your benefits will be suspended until they can gain entry to your home.
If you are making a fraudulent claim you may decide it is best to play ball rather than draw attention to yourself. Regardless of how genuine your claim is, you may just not want them to enter, after all why should you?
There is a third option, which we consider to be the best. Let them in and have some fun with them. The Benefits Agency works on the basis of intimidation. They want claimants to be scared and looking over their shoulders. This is the reason they visit you at your home. These scumbags have the audacity to manipulate you into thinking they have the right to come into your house and then proceed to make you feel like a criminal for having the nerve to claim what is rightfully yours! This has got to stop and we think it’s time the shoe was on the other foot.
There’s many ways you can play this one, we know people who have let them in, but arranged to have all their friends round getting pissed and made the snooper sit on the floor with their dogs jumping all over them whilst they struggled to fill in their forms.
We also know people who whilst wearing balaclavas have taken photos of snoopers when they’ve paid a visit. In their line of work you can imagine how unnerving this is – these particular snoopers ran off down the road!
Your imagination is the only limit to your fun! Display the initiative they’d expect you to show to prospective employers:
Perhaps you could invite them in and walk them into a room filled with all your mates dressed in camouflage and balaclavas, with an Irish flag on the wall. Or perhaps, under the current climate a few Shemaghs and sheets painted with Arabic symbols wouldn’t go amiss! To add to their confusion/dismay you could get another friend to walk in pretending to be Dom Joly or Jeremy Beadle.
Answer the door naked, have porn lying everywhere whilst a filthy movie provides some background ambience.
Do your pad out like a serial killer’s. Perhaps you could have road kill hanging from the ceiling. Hammers decorated with red gloss paint and a few hairs make the perfect paraphernalia for such occasions. Heck, why not have one of your friends lie behind the sofa with their feet poking out!
Give them a fucking slap, they deserve it. Just remember there’ll be consequences to your actions!
These situations could become the next big social trend. We envisage people handing out invitations to ‘SS Snooper Piss Taking’ parties. It certainly beats hanging out in the park with your alcoholic mates (this is not intended as a slur against benefit claimants – just those within Norwich Anarchists).
The main thing to remember is that this is your home (or at least as far as they’re concerned it is!), these people spend all day everyday trying to intimidate people. They want us to be passive and for us to say how high when they say jump. It is time to show them that we can make a stand and start to make their work a misery. By this time next year we hope for SS snoopers to have the highest suicide rate in any field of work within Great Britain. Be confident and have fun!