Immigration Antipathy

Some insights into why the Brits hate immigrants: see I'm not paranoid, they are out to get me. Well some of them are. Some of them are very polite and being quite super about the whole thing.

The Council Pay My Rent

The Council pay my rent – else I’d be living on the street I suppose. But recently they thought up a new way to cut their benefit budget. Rightly, they assess what a reasonable amount of rent is in this fair city, and limit what they pay out so that no one is treated to a better class of accommodation than a bludger should be able to afford. Though I have lived in the same house for seven years and become accustomed to it.

Recently in a daring of sleight of accounting they redefined the assessment area to include vast tracks of farm land and small villages up to an hour’s train ride away. The median rent across this area is, surprise, quite a lot lower than the city itself, so if you pay rent in the city and claim for housing benefit your are 100% unlikely to be fully covered.

So when I informed them – as the large red lettering on their written communications with me tell me I must – that my modest rent had gone up by a modest £3 or 4% I got a letter saying that my benefit was going down by £12!

'You have the right to appeal' said the lovely Ms G when I called the council to ask 'what the fuck is going on?” but she made it clear that there is no leeway they have to pay you what it says on the scale. And then explained the new system. I called my MP, who, worst luck is a Liberal Democrat – although I gather he doesn’t claim for commuting to London and therefore still has a modicum of credibility. I wrote to my City Councillor, I wrote to the newspapers... I did not sleep.

As it happens I was given the wrong information. The Council have been over-paying me for a year. At hearing this I wept uncontrollably on the desk of my advisor at the Council. But we're not going to ask for it back, she said. (I didn't know until a day or two later about a recent court ruling which says that they cannot ask for money back if the overpayment was their incompetence). So I'm still down about £15 a week. Ouch.

None of this was helped by the poorly set out and ambiguously worded letter from my landlord - actually from the property department of the trust which administers the place. It took quite a lot of jumping up and down to get them to understand that a table of figures would make my life a lot easier than hiding them away in a novella.

The good news is that hidden away in the jumble and garble were some claimables that the council, as there was an ambiguity, had simply ignored when calculating my entitlement. So I may well be better off than I feared. Taking the new information in today - but of course a decision takes 4 - 6 weeks!

I've been really stressed this past couple of months - not sleeping much. Hopefully this will put the matter to rest for another year. Now all I have to worry about is the fact that I submitted my IB50 in June and haven't heard back from the Govt.

Can't Listen to the News Anymore

Some of you may have noticed that there's a bit of a fracas recently over some bad investments – when you have no money it’s hard to keep paying attention while the news is about millions,billions and even trillions. I’m hazy on the details but the greed of a few has certainly had an unintended consequence. It seems that we poor people, especially we invalids (i.e. not valids) are somehow right at the top of the list of targets for those people seeking revenge. Somewhat surprisingly it is politicians - also in the news recently for stealing from the public purse and nowbeing unwilling to pay back what they stole – who're amongst those who are gunning for us.* How dare I take £8k a year in benefits (including housing, income support, and incapacity) just because I can't work? Somehow I seem to have lost perspective... so sorry... is it true that it costs £20k per year to keep someone in prison?

Absolutely dependent on the state as I am at present I find I can no longer listen to BBC Radio 4 news because of the anxiety I feel when everyday some rich and powerful bastard says he or she is dreaming up some new way to get back at me for getting ill. It’s frankly terrifying to think that I’m hanging by a thread and someone who earns more in a week than I receive in a year wants to cut that thread. They only do it to attract the popular appeal that comes from being a cunt to people who are less fortunate - which tells you a lot about the shadow of the British.

Foreigners, ever unpopular in Britain, are another popular target on the news - the BNP are only the ugly face of British racism. Lots of less extreme people hate the fact that Britain is part of Europe, hate the fact that many foreigners come here to live, and would love to send them all packing. (But by the same token a jocular slightly racist apostrophe by a member of the Royal family causes outrage for weeks on end in the same papers that decry Europe and immigration... I think they just like being outraged). Being both a foreigner (albeit a white one and therefore not beyond the pale) and a beneficiary I find it all a bit distressing. So now I wait until the News Quiz is on because Sandi and the gang are the only thing that makes it bearable. Gawd bless the New Quiz and Radio 4.

While I'm on this theme I wish they'd leave the bloody BBC alone, and that the bloody BBC would stop tempting fate by using the license fee to compete in the commercial arena. The BBC is one of the great institutions of the world - let's not over-egg the pudding shall we? Stick to our knitting, what? Make sure there's knickers on under the fur coat, if you catch my drift! Don't fuck it up! Life would be immeasurably worse without the BBC doing what it does best.



________________________________

*Did anyone else catch out Leader of the House, Harriet Harmon, last night talking about the "problems caused by the expenses system?" The expenses system did not cause the problem, it was greedy dishonest politicians who caused the problem. It was the subversion and exploitation of the expenses system by the unscrupulous! No wonder Christians pray "lead us not into temptation" - they find it so bloody hard to resist. If there were loopholes why did they not own up and close them? Now these people want to force me out of my legitimate minimal life-support because of mistakes that they made? Let them get by on what I get for a year and see how they cope.