h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If anyone can explain this, it would be a miracle and genuinely helpful to a lot of people, I'm sure.

it is a complex maze designed to show the world how enlightend the UK is, while at the same time, only paying out the minnimum amount of money to the claimants, because they do not understand the system and are not aware of what benefits they are entitled to

basic dole and red tape

Meaning job seekers, Employment and support allowance, child support, income support, tax credits, SDA, DLA, carers allowance, etc? I'd love to give it a go (though it won't be until the newe year now), although not sure in my head the best way to do it.... some probably need their own entry on a single benifit, but it'd 'benifit' (scuess the pun), from some kind of 'broad' overview, and something describing the way one benifit affects another and visa versa... Plus some of the oddities of the system; E.G., SDA as a benifit doesn't actually exist.... unless your still getting it... then it exists... but no one at job center plus has ever heard of it, even though you can be in recipt of it as a benifit if you were on it already at the poitn they did away with it How about state pension would that be inlcuded? that I think would probably require a seperate entry on its own... *thinks* then maybe one on 'means tested' benifits, and one on 'non means tested', and

It could well be a University project, given the huge array of different benefits.

But if someone really did know enough about them to write it, it would be a superb addition to the Guide.

I'd really like to do it... I know quite* a lot about some of them, to a fair degree of depth (well more than the people I speak to at the job centre know... which isn't exactly difficult), and finding out about those I don't know that* much about ought not be a problem... and it'll give me something to occupy myself in the new year once I'm back after my Crhistmas/new years away I'll try having a good think about it over the Christmas period, and organise it into some kind of structure, then we can see if it'd be sensible to do it as a university project and have differnt people maybe write some of the individual sections/entrys I've already a 'picture' in my head of an entry along the lines of 'overview of the UK benifits system', which would then obviously link off to the other entrys on the individual benifits.... But I'm also thinking in order to make those* entrys just about, say 'income support', or 'job seekers' etc., it'd possibly be worth having some additional 'linking entry's, along the lines of 'relationship of job seekers allowance to X Y or Z', etc., Where you've the system that entitlment to one benifit effects your entitlement and reciept of another benifit

I made a bit of a start... more to get an idea of how big this will be... 'very' is the answer to that question : A60778911

will be like an introductory page, though at the moment I'm just using it to work out all the bits...

I've bookmarked it, and I'll keep an eye on it. Well done for making a start - it's a huge topic!

I've already learnt a couple of new things :- I'd not heard of this 'flexible new deal' before and thus far I've only touched the surface...

How has the festive period got in the way of this, 2legs?

Hoh yus! I'm still at my Dad's at the moment, and I think it'll be easier for me to work on this proper when I'm back home (asides anything I'd already bookmarked a bunch of sources on the PC at home, and I'm not geeky enough to have sinked together the bookmarks on my netbook and PC )
I will*get back to it soon as I'm home... err early new year

Well, would love to help, but it changes so frequently that it would be out of date within 5 mins.

Yes, that's one of the things that struck me first, too. A note to that effect might be worth including, possibly directing people to the CAB or another source of up-to-date advice.

I can't see the point of writing an entry that may well be out of date very quickly, unless the idea is to not write a guide to claiming individual benefits, but a 'rough' guide to how the system itself works.

I think that's all we could ask for, really. Determining eligibility for tax credits and the like can be so complex it's probably getting a bit beyond the scope of an Entry anyway.

How about a guide to how the system works and an acknowledged link to a benefits calculator such as http://www.entitledto.co.uk which is regularly updated when rules change - last time was November 2009. It's run by a charity and approved by the Plain English campaign.

I wasn't thinking about putting in a huge* amount of detail; E.G., defiantely* not including the formular for calculating tax credits in all their various flavours... Some benifits are pretty static even though the exact details about them may change very slightly (E.G., amount paid, eligibility criteria etc.,), So I think it'd be possible to do somethign that woudln't need updating too* often; of course we're likely as not to hav ea new goverhnment at some time later this year, so there may be some changes ahead I'll try and get on to doing more on this soon now I'm back home after the extended christmas/new year break I'll give it a bash and see how far I can get then cry out for help and I think some information on the benifits, plus links to DWP or jobcentre and other pages would be good as it would prevent putting in too* much of the detail (which is the exact bits taht do tend to change)