CSAhell.com has just posted this inforgraphic about how the CSA works. It’s pretty dark, especially the section on the number of suicides caused by the CSA. Makes for interesting reading though.
Courtesy of CSAhell.com
Category Archives: CSA
CSA worker steals money from parents
This story, just posted on CSAhell.com, made me physically sick. A CSA case worker named Clair Jones has just been jailed for ONLY 12 weeks after she systematically stole money from parents (PWCs and NRPs) to fund her own lifestyle. This hideous woman stole almost £7,000 in a period between 2009 and 2011 to pay off loan sharks – and complained that she had bills to pay, her child benefit had been stopped and she’d had car trouble.
What is worse is that this disgusting woman was only caught after the CSA investigated why a father hadn’t received a £400 refund he was due, only to find she’d paid it into her own account. The defending solicitor is even going to appeal the disgraceful 12 week sentence, and claimed she intended to ‘pay it back’.
What utter crap. This stain on society had no intention of paying anything back at all. The magistrate who sent her down for this pitiful sentence even said the thefts only stopped when she was caught. I hope she never works again, though I imagine she’ll go straight back into employment at the CSA as she seems a typical employee from what I’ve seen – she could even be employee of the month for this.
CSA Calculator WordPress Plugin
If you remember a while ago I posted about a CSA Calculator over at CSAhell.com. The calculator attempts to make sense of the way the CSA works out how much money it wants NRPs to pay. Well, when I say it attempts to make sense – it calculates the total based on their calculations, and it does it correctly, but whether that actually makes sense or not is another matter.
Anyhow – if you run your own website in WordPress there is now a CSAhell.com CSA Calculator WordPress Plugin you can use. You can download the WP Plugin from here and install it on your WordPress website, and offer your website’s visitors the calculator so they too can see just how much the CSA is trying to screw them over.
Isn’t that nice?
CSA Calculator
Scourge of the CSA and all round comical complaints website CSAhell.com has just added a CSA calculator to their site. Using the incredibly complicated rules laid down by the CSA (rules even they don’t seem to understand) the calculator provides an accurate idea of what you can be expected to pay when the CSA comes calling. You can also use it to check that the CSA is in fact asking for the correct amount from you.
Go here and use the calculator, or fill in the form below for an instant quote on what the CSA should be asking you for.
Security leak at the CSA, or intelligence leak at the source?
One of the many websites that I administer is the very popular (or unpopular, depending on your stance) advice website CSAhelll.com. The website features daily stories from parents, both mothers and fathers, who are tearing their hair out due to the incompetencies, errors and bullying tactics at the hands of the Child Support Agency.
One post the site had recently was particularly funny because the woman who posted it came back a few days later, after receiving advice and comments to her post, wondering how her story had wound up on the website in the first place. This woman’s story (which I won’t link to) was sent in to the website by the aforementioned woman using the contact form on the website, yet she was dumbfounded as to how we received her information and were able to post it.
Had there been some sort of security leak at the CSA itself, you may ask? This wouldn’t have been uncommon, seeing as their data is hardly secure anyway. They once posted a woman’s bank details to me by mistake, after printing them out and leaving them on the printer for some idiot to pick up and shove in a letter bound for my address. They have also famously lost data, and had staff sacked for accessing adult websites and material online using supposedly secure computers; their information security is basically a mess, something which I personally told their head of security, Bernard Devaney, when I last spoke to him in reference to the CSA staff member who tried to coerce fathers into killing themselves via Facebook. He agreed, although couldn’t go into detail.
However, this time the error wasn’t the agency’s, not that they couldn’t do without recruiting a few more people to information security jobs anyway. No, this error was the fault of the woman who rather stupidly pasted her entire story into the CSAhell.com website thinking she was contacting the CSA and, even when she returned to the website to retrieve her feedback didn’t remember being there in the first place.
No wonder her life’s in a mess.
BBC Radio York asks me to speak about the CSA
I recently appeared on the radio again speaking about the government’s latest plans to shake up the Child Support Agency. While plans to force parents to pay to use the CSA may lead to more people making private arrangements, the fact that the CSA is answerable to nobody, and is driven by the single goal of ‘collecting more money’, means that the CSA can and will disregard any private arrangements whenever it wants to and force the non-resident parent to pay again.
I personally would love to have a private arrangement rather than go through the CSA, but I have seen evidence of the CSA coming back to fathers after many months have passed and insisting they haven’t paid, even when they have evidence of payments. I know they would do that to me, so I could never have a private arrangement myself – I would end up paying twice and the only people you can appeal to is, yep – you’ve guessed it, the Child Support Agency.
The interview was featured over at CSAhell.com, and you can listen to the full interview from BBC Radio York here.
CSA riled by CSAhell.com
Sometimes I just have to laugh at the Child Support Agency. When I first encountered them, like most people, I was staggered by the lack of understanding, their indifference, their incompetence and, yes, their lies. I thought I must be really unlucky. Of course, four years on I realise that I wasn’t unlucky, I wasn’t cursed, I wasn’t being singled out – the CSA really is that bad… to everyone.
The website CSAhell.com (which is being mentioned in the Sunday Telegraph this weekend) receives dozens of emails every day from people pouring their heart out about how the CSA has failed them, is persecuting them or just isn’t listening to them; and no, it’s not just fathers – it’s an equal split between mothers and fathers. The CSA is useless on every level.
We have documented proof of their having lied, their having sent documents to the wrong addresses, breached the Data Protection Act and, most worryingly, of them having attempted to goad fathers into suicide. This isn’t rhetoric, this has all happened and has all been reported on the website CSAhell.com. These are facts.
Now however it seems that the Child Support Agency isn’t happy with the website and, in particular, its Facebook page. It seems that the CSA is unhappy that members of the Facebook page have been posting links to profile pages of people who have listed the CSA as their employer.
This news story chronicles the complaint from the CSA, and reports how they’re intent on shutting the website down. Here’s a quick quote from the piece, where Dave Richards, the PCS DWP Group Assistant Secretary, boasted:
“Staff in CSA do an important job collecting record amounts of maintenance and helping lift children out of poverty. They should have the right to do so free from harassment and threats of violence.”
“I am pleased to report that CSA and the Security Management Team are taking the matter very serious and are having successes in closing the site and/or having the worst elements removed.”
“It’s important that any staff with a Facebook account make sure it’s locked and they remove their employment details from their pages. This will stop such anti CSA sites from getting easy access to your details and putting you on their name and shame list”.
I find it hilarious that the CSA is looking to close the site down, and that they’re upset over how our members have been posting links to the profiles of their staff. However, here’s some advice for the CSA…
If you don’t want your staff to be plastered all over the Internet, how about you:
- Don’t post on websites such as Facebook that you work for the CSA
- Don’t post up photos of yourself, next to the aforementioned information that you work for the CSA
- Don’t set your profile to ‘public’
- Don’t post on websites such as CSAhell.com and the CSAhell.com Facebook page abusing people
These simple ideas aside, here’s one for the CSA itself. Rather than investing so much time (and public money, our money) trying to cover up the mistakes, incompetence, lies and general abuse of power by trying to shut down sites like CSAhell.com, and trying to gag people from speaking about their cases online (yes, we’ve heard about them too) why not just tackle the route of the problem and do your jobs properly in the first place? We, the public, have had enough of the corruption, the lies, the feathering of nests, the hatred and the lack of empathy from the CSA – we’re not going to go away quietly, we’re not going to stop what we’re doing, we’re not going to give in to your demands.
Throw your worst at us. We’ve already taken more than most would believe humanly possible by the very fact they we deal with the CSA. That in itself is more than any threats could afford.
We await your next move.
MrDaz appears on Radio Five Live with Gabby Logan
I was approached this week via the website CSAhell.com to offer my opinion on the new paternity testing kits that are being made available across the UK by Boots. The kits will cost £29.99 to buy, and a further £129 to send off to the lab, and will prove (or disprove) the paternity of a child.
The idea of paternity testing kits being so readily available on the high street, much like pregnancy testing kits, is a significant worry for families as, through CSAhell.com, we have seen countless family units broken up over disputed parentage.
I gave my views on the subject on BBC Radio One’s Newsbeat, which you can read here, and appeared on Gabby Logan’s show on Radio Five Live yesterday. Here a short extract from the radio show where I explain my concerns to Gabby.
Darren Jamieson on Radio Five Live with Gabby Logan [ 1:44 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (9732)