my weblog

A great day on friday up at the London motor show at Excel - I took sprog1 and my dad up and had an excellent (if rather tiring!) day. Jake was pleased that apart from the Veyron (they had a couple but kept them locked up upstairs where you had to pay 100 quid to go!) he managed to see *all* of his favourite top trump super car! He managed to touch a koenigsegg, a spyker and a zonda thanks to Broughtons and I thought he was going to die when he realised that they were actually going to race some of the supercars including the only Ford Avro mirage in existance around a circuit barely wide enough and made of concrete blocks. Impressive sight - even more impressive sound!

Also got a go on the new landrover experience “The mountain”. I’ve been on these before and they are always impressive but there is still something impressive about driving down a 10m high ramp and letting the car control the descent - no brakes needed, it all just “works” For anyone who has never been to a motorshow this gives a good view of what to expect. Well worth a visit if you get a chance.

Jake was also impressed to find the Top Gear stand who had all three of the recent police cars on display and finally, he got a chance to be driven in a permanent powerslide by a mad man highly skilled driver in the westfield drifting demo. They got through an amazing number of tyres! They also give you the chance to buy a dvd about Westfield that has your drive tagged onto the end. Here is Jakes - he has only just stopped grinning

Off to London to visit HP and see what SAN shinys we can’t afford Also, plenty plenty of train time to play with the new wordpress iphone app - will it make me blog more? Will it just eat my battery at a scary rate? Time will tell (don’t hold your breath!)

just a quick update (as people keep asking me)

One of dads insurance companies has now paid out \o/. Still waiting to hear from the other.

In other news, he got a random phonecall from the pension credit people telling him they thought he was probably entitled to pension credit and did he want to apply. He pointed out that he had applied and was about to ring them to ask why he hadn’t heard anything in the 10 working days that they promised…

Seems that his application hasn’t got anywhere - and they seemed surprised to hear that they had had all of his payslips etc and had posted them back to him a fortnight ago…

They are now saying it could take 6 weeks for a decision! Good job he isn’t desperate for the cash - this has been going on for months already!

Sigh…

Had the morning off today for an asthma clinic appointment which meant I missed the departmental fun day (the half-day-no-fun-fun-day). I turned up at work in time to get the departmental lunch….except hospitality had screwed up and not actually delivered enough food so I had a bag of chedders…

Back to the office where I find my new chair has arrived at last (my old one has been condemned by elf and safety twice in the last 18 months as it keeps collapsing randomly). All seems good until I unwrap it only to find that it doesn’t actually work. Whereas my old one had a habit of going down all on it’s own the new one is just permanently down. Sigh. Justine did come over to check as she didn’t believe me that it was broken. To quote her “you probably need a woman to help you get it up, we are good at that”. Couldn’t argue with that logic… unfortunately, she couldn’t get it up either so an engineer will be visiting to mend it in the next 10 working days. I’m beginning to think it might just be easier to have surgery to make my legs shorter.

Then I check my email.

Subject: tank hire

Darren,

So I can get things in motion please could you complete and return by fax 01594 xxxxxx or email the attached credit forms.

The first invoice will be paid by credit card, will advise total amount

Will forward quotation shortly.

Regards

Melanie
Hire Controller

Wierd. As much as I’d like to hire a tank I suspect this isn’t of the interesting tracked variety. Then, I get another from a completely different company:

Subject: Tanker Rental

Darren

You did not come back to me as expected. Do I assume that you have put the requirement on ice. If so, no problem at this end but the Workshops will rent out vehicle elsewhere.

Brian

Finally, I get and offer of an interview:

Subject: Performance Officer - interview

Dear Mr Chapman

Please see the attached information. I should be grateful if you could please confirm safe receipt. Many thanks and I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards

Senior Recruitment Co-ordinator
Corporate Recruitment Unit
Corporate HR Unit, Town Clerk’s Department
City of London Corporation
PO Box 270 Guildhall, London EC2P 2EJ

I did give them a ring but apparantly the job doesn’t pay enough. Interestingly, them email also included the guys address so please Mr Chapman of flat 3 in Chislehurst STOP USING MY EMAIL ADDRESS!

Finally a get home to find a letter from the nationwide about my request for a new pin for their online banking system:

Thankyou for your application to register for Nationwide’s On-line banking service. Unfortunately, we are unable to accept your application at present, as your date of birth details have changed.

Please inform you visit your local branch with a form of primary identification showing this change (for example, passport of driving licence).

I’m pretty sure I’ve not changed my date of birth recently… I give up.

Hurrah! Dad has had a phonecall from the council - he is entitled to council tax credit. He will be able to get help towards the 130 quid a month council tax bill to the tune of 38 pence a week. Wow, that’s really going to be great help.

After he had finished swearing at them thanking them for their help, he enquired as to what the hell the point of a rebate that just about covers a stamp was. Seems that the council have based this decision on his last 6 months pay slips - the payslips that show him being paid 70% of his salary. They seem to have missed the letter from the employer saying his sick pay was finished (they didn’t ask for it originally, we took it in) so when this was all explained to them (again) they now want to see the letter (again).

Still nothing from the pension credit people… We do have a letter from the incapacity benefit people saying that to continue receiving credit (*continue* ?????? start would be good) he now has to get a questionnaire filled in by his doctor (the useless GP) and attend a consultation with an occupational health nurse (who is blatently more qualifyed to diagnose parkinsons that Dr Barnes, head neurologist at Kings) . Amusingly, this form needs to be completed in with the doctor within a couple of weeks or the money stops. Doctor has no appointments for 3 weeks…

Apparantly this was quickly resolved by dad turning up the surgery and parking himself there until the doctor “found an appointment”. Seems they can see you within 48 hours if they have to…

When dad got the letter from work saying that his sick pay had run out, mum rang “Job centre+” as you are meant to. They confirmed that incapacity benefit shouldn’t be a problem but would only pay 70ish quid a week and that they would need to top this up with income support or, given his age being just over 60 that he might be able to get pension credit instead. As the pension credit setup is supposedly easier than sorting income support they advised mum to contact the pension credit people.

This she did only to get “Oh no, if he is under 65 he will need to claim income support not pension credit. Don’t know why they told you to ring us”….

So we head into the job centre+ pit of dispair and fill in the paperwork, supply tweltymillion forms of id etc etc and off go the applications. The woman in there explained how if income support was granted, things like council tax benefit etc would come automatically - and if income support wasn’t granted how we would have to apply for each and every extra benefit individually.

Strangely, while we waited for the paperwork to come back (again) a letter from the council arrives asking for a load of proof (that we don’t have as it’s in ramsgate with social services) and a copy of the letter with the results of the income support claim. The letter we don’t have. Odd, we haven’t contacted the council at all yet (was advised not to by the jobcentre people…).

Next day, a letter and claim form from the pension credit people asking for the same papers again (nope, they are still missing somewhere in action). Odd, they told us he couldn’t claim pension credits until he was 65.

Today was the deadline for the social services to get back to mum and dad with the results of the income support claim. Predictably, nothing arrived in the post so mum rang them. “it’s in the post. It was sent to you days ago you should have it now”. Great…

After a bit more digging they finally come out with “yes, you have been granted incapacity benefit but you haven’t got income support as you should apply for pension credits instead as he is over 60″….

Mr Arse meet Mr Elbow. It feels like we are stuck in some godawful 80s text adventure game (only with a 10 day wait between each move).

In other news, both Norwich Union and Legal and General have agreed to “consider a claim” on dads critical illness policies. May take 3 months for a decision (eh? how??). Must be a bugger if you are suffering from a critical illness that gives you a couple of months to live.

Good news: Dads critical illness insurance covers parkinsons as a payable illness

Less good news: It only pays out if you are under 60 years old….Dad turned 60 at the end of March so has potentially missed out by a few weeks :-/

Seems the prudential Norwich Union are being helpful and are actively trying to workout a way they can pay out as although the diagnosis was only made on June 3rd he had been visiting the Drs with the symptoms since Dec 2006

Fingers crossed…

Spent a manic day in London up at Kings hospital today with my dad to collect the results of his DAT scan. It confirms the theory that he is suffering from Parkinsons.

Still, hopefully this is good news in many ways - at last he knows what the problem is and the consultant is now pescribing some drugs that may help. Fingers crossed… mind you, he is being prescribed dopamine agonists which the consultant had to warn us have now been shown to have interesting side effects and that we should remove all credit cards and shared accounts from him! No more night dog racing I feel…

Be good to get back to work tomorrow - I feel like I’ve hardly been in recently (week up in london for a Sun Cluster course, home for a day before a day back up there with the kids at the natural history museum (I’m sure it used to be bigger:)), a bank holiday, two days in work and then a couple of days off…)

As a result of this we then spent the afternoon in the Job centre plus in Ashford. God, what a depressing place. 4 burly security guards watching over random chavs comparing the size of their hoop earings…

Claiming incapacity benefit seems simple enough - but that won’t pay the mortgage. Unfortunately, it seems that despite my folks having an interest only mortgage and using an ISA/PEP to (in theory) pay it off the ISA is classed as savings so wipes out any chance of them getting income support! This seems a bit shit (it would be fine if it was an endowment, you know, like the things the governement told them to cash in a while back as they wouldn’t pay enough) and the woman in jobcentre plus agreed and has put forward a special case - no idea if it’ll work….should hear in 11 working days (11? How the hell does that work??). Good job they aren’t desperate for cash to eat or anything - it’s already been over 3 weeks…

Ho hum.

Today our generator turned up at work. This is pretty much the last component of a complete refurb that we have been doing of our main machine room (people who knew the old one will not recognise a thing now!). The genny was a tad larger than we thought!

I’m interested to see how quiet it is when we fire it up next week - it’s supposedly “incredibly quiet”…
I’ll attempt to stick some photos of the inside of the room up next week when we get it completely handed back to us by the contractors.

-0.85 \o/ (or, for whinging gits^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HJibbler, -0.85)