Wednesday 28 February 2018

Let It Snow

Well this is nice , I had planned a big clean today , but theyre all stuck at home so doubtless it will be make a thousand cuppas and feed the five thousand ..lol
Mr Bah Humbug is grumping over his disability , he remembers the days of towing the kids down the lane on a car bonnet , fun with tractors etc etc now he darent set foot out of the door ..lol
Penny Cat is glued to a window watching snow fall , shes fascinated but horrified when you open the window and she realises its cold and wet out there .
I just keeping looking at the light quality and thinking should i dig out some cross stitch or other embroidery for a few hours , just because its so bright and white out there .
We are nearly out of bread so I guess we had better go and mug a pensioner they seemed to be gathering it all up in armfuls yesterday in Tesco . I didnt bother there was only the weird stuff left on the shelves , so I will set the munchkin on later for a batch of bread rolls and some of his favourite current buns .
Tesco tip off , theyre having a bit of a frozen food sale at the moment , it may not be in every branch as Tesco sales can be a bit that way . But it does appear that theyre selling off lots of their everyday value items , burgers fish fingers etc anyone know of a child that looks at a fishfinger and says im sorry its not Birdseye im not eating it ? Does this mean theyre doing away with them? theyre not great but if your skint its food and its filling . Ive made meatballs for bolognese with the cheap burgers the last few months , nobody noticed . There probably wont be a requiem if the sausages are going  theyve all complained about them.unless they came attached to a hunk of yorkshire pudding and onion gravy ..lol .... Cheesecakes and christmas buffet stuff , plus other big brand items really cheap . Theres lots of the veggie quorn and linda mcartney stuff half price as well . Im partial to Linda Mccartney veggie sausage rolls and nobody noticed the difference between cheap burgers and veggie burgers once theyre in a bun with chutney onion rings and whatever yellow label posh cheese ive lathered on them   All great freezer fillers for those of us who dont have the luxury of choice.
Sadly im still struggling to get my head round being able to shop and having choice , maybe i should sue the DWP for damaging my mental health?
The winds building up and its snowing like the clappers here ive not heard a single vehicle in the last hour and earlier there was only one or two , we may lose the electric shortly so its off to go and do the bread rolls , we have a big camping gas stove for just such occasions , living in the country is such fun.......byeee

Saturday 24 February 2018

Spend Spend Spend

Still buying oranges , It sounds very wartime Britain doesnt it ?

What did you miss most during the famine sir ?

Fruit when theres frost on the ground and a good pork chop!

So im building my store cupboards back up ...gradually ..though a trip to the butcher who will do what i like at Grimsby has helped , a seller of dreadful chicken but willing to go in the back and drag out half a cow to cut me some nice fatty stew beef , he just laughs and shakes his head , but im not sure how anyone makes good stew with that dreadful lean stuff they have in the supermarkets . he also did me a deal on a mountain of rump steak  and a huge pile of mangled lamb chops that also go into stew , then it was off to another butchers for the sausages we like and a couple of tiny pork joints , plus a gammon for Easter . Once upon a time there were pork butchers , poultry butchers and cow and sheep butchers but you didnt do lots of different meats till the war , so back in the day there was little cross contamination within the food chain , convenience always seems to muck things up .

 This weeks highlights have included The Jack Monroe spat with the local conservatives over using her as an example of living and feeding a child on £10 a week , I must admit that i would be a bit peeved as well . She documented a period in her life when due to bureaucratic incompetence she and her child nearly starved to death and this is what the Tories think is what we should aspire to?

https://cookingonabootstrap.com/2018/02/17/my-ready-meal-is-none-of-your-fucking-business/ 

On the what is society coming to front , yesterday I was in Cleethorpes first thing just to find two police cars and 3 police officers having a wee chat with 3 homeless folks sat on a bench in the high street , it looked as if one had slept there all night and they wanted him gone , they were giving him the long lecture about arresting him for begging , that he was intimidating people passing by etc etc . they looked as bored as i think the young man involved was . But a woman from one of the nearby shops was ranting on, then  the coppers got there blues on and went to do some real policing .
I was just popping to the cafe so asked him if he wanted a coffee , bear in mind he had frost on his blankets and was blue and shaking . Come back with the coffee and had a wee chat .
It seems he can stay there so long as hes on his own and doesnt speak to anyone . Me talking to him and giving him a coffee was being photographed by the woman from the shop , like i give a monkeys

He seemed a nice enough lad polite but with drug problems . He then asked if i could spare 2 quid
my reply
Nope chuck , because £2 X 5 is enough to buy a wrap isnt it
He just laughed and said
For an old bird you know how its done

Lol ...Young Baldrick taught me a lot


Monday 19 February 2018

Party On

Sorry for the absence , we were in the Caribbean on a cruise , we just popped down the tattoo shop for Mr to have a full back tattoo of Theresa Mays face with thank you and a halo above it then we started smoking, got drunk    did some drugs and bought a takeaway...the shop that is !!
Have you guessed im kidding yet or are you friends with my mother? ..lol
Please try not to laugh at this sorry DWP story that I couldnt make up . Now the day after my last post Mr Bah Humbug was doing his endless checking of his bank account he checks it at least 4 times a day its a symptom of the mental health problems he has . Now hes on the internet as the clock turns midnight because hes in agony and isnt sleeping well at all . Next think I know hes gasping and trying to reach his spray as im reaching for the phone to dial 999 , yep a big angina attack a two sprayer as he charmingly calls them .
Dont phone he manages to gasp out , theyve been in my bank account again . Of course i assumed theyd took a load out from the back  PIP money hed been paid .
I calmed him down his heart rate settles , hes asking for a cuppa because his spray tastes awful and im telling him it doesnt matter weve survived this long etc etc etc .
He turns his puter round and says take a look , I look and nearly fell through my knicker leg , they had dropped every penny of the year long ESA refusal into his bank account on the stroke of midnight with no warning , no letter no anything .
He then chimes up with ....well at least you would have had the money to pay for my funeral !! with a beaming grin on his face.
Have we partied ? nope we have had oranges 2 weeks on the trot though ...lol ...plus we dont have to worry about the fuel for his endless hospital trips , he bought himself some bulbs for a radio he wants to do up  and a cross stitch for me ive been after for ages .
Our caseworker is horrified , she says we have survivor guilt and shouldnt just sit here , but at the moment i just feel totally numb .....

Friday 9 February 2018

We won , well sort of

Today im feeling mostly surreal , the dystopian fantasy land of being a Benefit Scrounger has got even stranger . Legal daughter managed to sort out the Great Housing Benefit scandal of 2017 .  The vast (to us) amount that has appeared in the Housing account with no explanation  is all ours . So in the space of 14 days weve gone from facing eviction to loaded, well sort of .

It would seem that the DWP has informed them that they shouldnt have ceased our Housing Benefit since June of last year , they  tried to evict us, then decided not to because they had no disabled adapted properties to rehouse us into  ( to those overseas ...yes they do evict you from State Housing for non payment of rent , but if youre vulnerable or disabled tenants they then have to rehouse you in equivalent property elsewhere ,due to DUTY of Care regulations , if youre not disabled its usually to B&B or hostel accomodation ) 

 They  gave us a half payment of the rent through Discretionary Housing Benefit , despite us then having income of £30 a week , if you have no income you have to pay the rent WTF , so we once again amassed enough arrears for them to start the eviction process for the third time in six months .
 It would seem that everyone has now accepted the fact that we live on next to nothing have had no income of any sort since December etc etc etc . They now accept that we have been telling the truth for over a year about our finances my partners illness etc etc. If  family, friends , you lot and the church had not supported us through this time I dont know where we would have ended up .

 Our caseworker at P3 has been solid gold and has been like a dog with a bone dealing with the DWP , she deserves a medal for the hours she has spent on our case , even she says its the worst shes ever handled. 

Now let me explain another Benefits anomaly that leaves me baffled ,  because there is a separate budget for Discretionary Housing Benefit which is a well kept secret that Local Councils dont tell you about unless you ask. If they pay it to your rent account they cant pay it back to themselves if they then find that Central Government has then granted ordinary everyday Housing Benefit , so it just sits in your rent account , Ive tried to give it them back they cant take it !!
Theyve sent me a form to request it into my bank account !!  But its not mine and I dont want it !! we had a whole argument with them about this . So my plan is to leave it sat there because lets face it , this year we have Armageddon Universal Credit to look forward to , so once again we would amass a minimum of six weeks of rent arrears and i cant believe it will go that smoothly being us . Nobody is happy with me about this decision, but to me it makes sense. Despite being a scrounger , I would like to pay for what we have , this is not a lifestyle we have chosen , illness has caused it .
Still got the Carers and the backdated ESA battles to fight, but at least now we have a small regular payment  coming in to cover the bills.

Take a deep breath , rant over..................for now

Wednesday 7 February 2018

TA De Da

Well nothing has changed...lol DWP wars still ongoing theyre still arguing that they shouldnt backdate any payments , we should just suck up the fact they got it very wrong ...dont think so !!
Today is attempt to sort out the Housing Benefit Day after they added incest and killing family members to the calculations its now got so bad that Legal daughter has taken the day off to try and sort this out . We got from owing them thousands in the space of 14 days to thousands appearing in our rent account overnight , this clearly isnt our money and although its tempting to ask for the overpayment and do a runner , it needs sorting , ive tried to talk to them and all i get is the usual you are guilty of benefit fraud speech , we havent notified them of changes etc etc etc . To me it just looks like total incompetence because we have informed them of all the changes and given them all the income proof they have asked for , we just get the you cant have lived on that amount you must be hiding income somewhere speech . So I wish my daughter luck ...much luck..lol
Trip to Lincoln to pick up the Ipad i killed and opticians later and Mr Bah Humbug has said if im feeling brave we could have lunch at Morrisons , see were squandering again.
Being Benefit Beggars, im sad to say we havent ordered our Sky , huge telly or got a few tattoos   , but Mr is looking as Spazzy Chariots as he so charmingly puts it , hes getting to that stage but its the price of the wretched things, plus i have to be able to lift it etc etc , told him he should save up for one once were rich , he pointed out if he saved hed be dead before he got one , but i think he just wants to feel useful and take the munchkin to school and potter round the village a bit , plus he could trundle down to see grandad a bit more , he rarely goes  out except for hospital and doctors and the view through the window is pretty boring after a few months