I wasn’t involved in any new year celebrations. I didn’t have the money — and neither could I justify celebrating while people around me were suffering benefits sanctions.

I was walking past Ashton under Lyne jobcentre on New Year’s Eve and two people stopped me, both with the same story: “They stopped my money at Christmas and I had nothing. I’ve tried to get an explanation from them but they won’t tell me why I’m being sanctioned.”

This isn’t unusual — nearly every day someone tells me about their sanctioning stories. And when reasons for sanctioning are given, the most common one is that the claimant didn’t attend an appointment. Why? Because they never received the letter informing them of the appointment in the first place.

Imagine this. You have a full-time job. You lose you job because they no longer need you — not because you did anything wrong.

You go to the jobcentre to sign on and are told that you are being forced onto universal credit. That’s bad enough. But, even worse, you have to be looking for work on the universal job match website for 35 hours a week — a website that is failing and has been proven to fail. This prevents you looking for real jobs and real work.

Then by no fault of your own you become homeless. You are placed in temporary accommodation. You inform the jobcentre of your new address. They ignore this and continue sending out letters to the old address. You miss an appointment that you never even knew about. The result is a six-month sanction, and you only survive on hardship payments.

Far too many letters are going missing from jobcentres up and down the country. I suspect that many simply aren’t sent out at all. Insisting that a claimant didn’t respond to a letter is a simple way to achieve your sanction target. It’s too easy and it’s happening too often.

I hope that we find all these missing letters. I’ve never known so many letters to go missing from one government organisation. It’s all a bit strange, isn’t it?

I didn’t make new year’s resolutions, but in light of all this sanctioning and suffering, I feel that this government should make some:

• The abolition of the cruel sanctioning system, which aims to demoralise and punish the poor for being poor. Too many people are suffering and dying as a result.
• The abolition of the cruel and heartless bedroom tax for everyone.
• The abolition of the council tax supplement, which prescribes a life of poverty and deprivation for anyone now shouldering these extra costs. No wonder people just cannot afford to pay their council tax.
• The abolition of the so-called fitness tests that are conducted for the DWP by unscrupulous privateers such as Atos. No-one should be persecuted for being ill.
• An immediate end to the privatisation of the NHS.
• The abolition of any plans to frack our gorgeous countryside.

The list could go on forever. We need to bring back caring for each other, helping each other and knowing that we have the ability to stand up to this government and any future government.

A version of this article first appeared on The Poor Side of Life