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Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

theguardian.com

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Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#141

Post by ajross »

swells34 wrote: post #132
ajross wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like, "some people try to commit fraud, so banks are required to implement AML/KYC processes to make the attack more difficult". Repeatedly asserting one is not dead is, if you think about it, more or less analogous to the documentation requirements for managing a large account at an investment bank. Is it the best solution? Likely not. But the problem is real and does demand a solution of some form.

This is a stupid take. Partly because of the use of acronyms for key terms, but also from the "constantly bothering a person is okay because it makes good security easier for us". There are plenty of good solutions that don't require you to heckle old ladies, and regular queries are generally bad security policy anyways. Regular boilerplate check-ins just breed complacency, after the 30th one do you think the person…

> This is a stupid take. Partly because of the use of acronyms for key terms

I thought that was clear enough in context. But: "Anti-Money Laundering" and "Know your Customer". They come up a lot in discussions here. Also, FWIW: if you're unclear about what someone meant, calling them stupid is a really terrible way to educate yourself.

Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#142

Post by creer »

toast0 wrote: post #130
samus wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about a public registry of deaths that can notify parties with justified interest (pension providers, maybe insurances and banks) about such events? That should work for domestic cases at least. Tracking deaths for people living abroad in their retirement is more tricky I admit. Maybe such a registry doesn't exist in the UK to begin with? Since it also doesn't have a residence registry. Edit: my bad, it actually…

The usefulness of a death register depends on how well people are identified. In the US, the pervasiveness of social security numbers as id makes the social security death register very useful. Sure, there may be some deaths unreported, and some reported under the wrong SSN for various reasons, but most of the time it works. I don't think the UK has a similar enumeration of people, and then you've got data problems.…

And "most of the time" is not a problem?

Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#143

Post by CapstanRoller »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #123
Snow_Falls wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also a blatant lie, the system is broken and the government allows social services to be so bad because it wants to spend as little money on them as possible.

Not just that. The benefits system has been designed to be hostile and abusive to most claimants. The UK is the country that forces its chronically ill and physically incapable into suicide or death by starvation. These people are "economically unproductive", so the logic of eugenics suggests they should die. https://deathsbywelfare.org/list-view/

>The UK is the country that forces its chronically ill and physically incapable into suicide or death by starvation.

The USA, also, except here it's often done in tents on the street with fentanyl or deaths of despair elsewhere.

Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#144

Post by creer »

crote wrote: post #105
derivative7 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it so terrible to do a very simple procedure once a year to avoid fraud?

Is it so terrible to just have the government keep track of its citizens properly, so that there is a single source of truth one can actually rely on?

The problem is not the single source. The problem is that this single source is incompetent and refuses to properly provide for mistakes.

Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#145

Post by dotancohen »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #123
Snow_Falls wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also a blatant lie, the system is broken and the government allows social services to be so bad because it wants to spend as little money on them as possible.

Not just that. The benefits system has been designed to be hostile and abusive to most claimants. The UK is the country that forces its chronically ill and physically incapable into suicide or death by starvation. These people are "economically unproductive", so the logic of eugenics suggests they should die. https://deathsbywelfare.org/list-view/

  > forces its chronically ill and physically incapable into suicide
What should I be reading to learn more?

Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#146

Post by dotancohen »

withinboredom wrote: post #90
derivative7 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it so terrible to do a very simple procedure once a year to avoid fraud?

There's still a million ways it can fail. The person can be on vacation, the address could be a P.O. Box, the person could be in a hospital, their phone could be dead, etc. Handling all the edge cases would make such a simple system immediately complex.

  > Handling all the edge cases would make such a simple system immediately complex.
That's the difference between a Proof of Concept and a production system. I'm hard pressed to think of anything I've ever developed that did not have this property.

Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#147

Post by goodSteveramos »

Snow_Falls wrote: post #72
mrmanner wrote: post #12

> letters make no mention of a deadline or the fact that their payments will cease if they do not respond within 28 days. A spokesperson said this was “to avoid causing upset” This is the most stereotypically British thing I’ve heard this year

It's also a blatant lie, the system is broken and the government allows social services to be so bad because it wants to spend as little money on them as possible.

> Blatant lie disguised as over politeness

Yup. Thats about the most British way to speak.

Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#148

Post by jpc0 »

crimbles wrote: post #96
jpc0 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hopefully they fired the moron who kicked off the process too. God forbit you make such a grave mistake as reading a number off a piece of paper and typing it into a system incorrectly. It's almost asif the interaction between the systems is the problem and not the human on the end... It may even have been some sort of "AI" that happened to recognise a letter incorrectly. It's quick to call for people tp be fired,…

It’s not a simple mistake. It’s a critically damaging mistake to someone. Any process around such an event requires considerably more competence than what was demonstrated. In this case their investigation said that the date of birth and last name were matched but the first names were not. This was flagged through by someone who didn’t do their job. Thats just negligence of duty. I would expect to be minimally fired…

Note to Crimbles employer.

Please be sure to fire them should they mistake one word when reading hundreds of documents a day, they have hereby agreed this is valid cause.

Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#149

Post by candiodari »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #125
mucle6 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes all deaths are logged. There are strong financial incentives for relatives to hide a death from the government if it means getting a check every month

It's quite hard to hide a death in the UK. In hospital all deaths are certified, outside of hospital you have the interesting problem of how to deal with the corpse. And in addition to the death register there are also tax filings (including Council Tax, which is a hefty sum and paid monthly), utilities, and other services that require ID. The media do print occasional Capitalist Gothic stories of people who kept a c…

Governments hate spending money on people.

The government loves spending money on themselves.

So the government thinks it's perfectly reasonable to have 50 FTE spend 5 years on preventing a single false claim. Ideally through the commisioner's brother's company, not directly. This is a necessity!

Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

#150

Post by candiodari »

Almondsetat wrote: post #77
derivative7 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it so terrible to do a very simple procedure once a year to avoid fraud?

what happens if they become incapacitated?

Then the government pays less by violating the law.

Why would they consider this to be a problem? They defunded the courts, especially for cases like this. And even if convicted, it won't affect anyone personally. Except of course through promotion if they can make it happen as often as possible.

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