So, two follow-ups on previously-mentioned matters:
- The good one first: Croydon Rape Crisis is no longer having all its funding removed. There's been a cut, which was somewhat inevitable given the national climate, but the pressure has made a difference.
After thinking about racism and benefit claims, I asked the Department of Work and Pensions, that deals with many of the more discretionary benefits, for top-line figures on acceptance, appeal and rejection rates for various benefit types, broken down by race and gender.
I wasn't expecting there to be sufficiently many aggressively racist DWP employees that there was a significant difference in the breakdowns, but it seemed worth checking. The DWP doesn't share that opinion: their systems don't collect this information in the first place, so it's not possible to know whether there's any large-scale racial bias.
