When I attended Working Links last week for my appointment it felt like I was surrounded on all sides. The consultants are grouped together and as I was talking to a consultant I was aware that behind me another consultant was talking to a client and opposite me on both sides the same was going on. This makes a private conversation impossible. What more concerns me is the information regarding Universal Credit. When it starts we are going to be paid our benefits in one lump sum once a month. I know from experience that sometimes I have had to last out a few days on little food until my benefit was due and the thought of receiving benefit once a month could leave us all in a terrible situation if an emergency occurs and we have to dip into the little cash we have for other things. Every fortnight most of us go to the cashpoint and see £142 had been paid in. When Universal Credit starts and we see double that for a four week month that will be £284. As it seems we are going to be given the rent to pay the landlord instead of at present in my case it goes straight to the Council as my landlord this will put the best part of £300 onto my cashpoint total. So instead of facing a total of £142 I will be looking at a cashpoint total of £584 and that doesn't include any allowance for council tax. For people who have never had any money it will be like a small fortune and of course if the rent is a high one then a person could be looking at the best part of a thousand pound. It's all well and good to think that it will help people budget better but if a person is unemployed and wants to work then a bit of depression will kick in and the temptation to spend some of that money to take away a bit of that depression for a little while will be great. I suspect the government will have to eventually pay the rent for many thousands of people directly because wealthy people who have never had to worry aout money don't appreciate how depressing being unemployed is and when all you can see is more of the same then the thought of just going on a spending spree with the rent is very tempting. Some people might decide to dip into a little bit of the rent money and hope to top it up next month and find that playing catch up is not possible. I hope this government pays us the council tax and doesn't try to con the poor by allowing the councils to decide if they should give us a full discount or not. Could be a way to bring in Mrs Thatchers poll tax by blaming councils.