Thursday, August 27, 2009

GRrrrr

I'm seriously stressed over a few things at the moment, not least of all Bromley Council's Housing Benefit department.

We moved in here around 25th May, and only this week did we get a "temporary" award. They have mucked around with our earning figure. We don't earn enough to need an accountant, but the Council wouldn't accept our submission to the Inland Revenue - apparently it may be sufficient for the tax man but not for Bromley. Today we had no less that 6 letters through the door at the same time, dated between 22nd and 25th of August, some contained 4 duplicated pages, another one wasn't even on headed paper but we'd obviously been sent the blank file copy... incompetent doesn't begin to describe it.

The breakdown of our figures that they put in the letter shows us as having "capital" which consists of the balances of two accounts. Now one account contains this month's money for bills, and the other contains next month's rent that we set aside as we go. So we rang to ask them to not include this as "capital". The woman on the phone was very rude saying "we don't include that sort of [low] figure as capital" and when Roarke said "but the letter here includes the figure" she kept saying "you're not listening to me - we don't include it" with Roarke saying "you're not listening to me - I'm asking why then it is in the letter!". It would be laughable if it wasn't so sickeningly important.

Needless to say this award doesn't include our DLA which we submitted to them last week (we've just got the middle award for care and lower for mobility for William).

Other frustrations are too irritating to go into or bore you with!

On a more positive note, Josh is happy because his laptop has been fixed, thanks to a wonderful friend, so he's back online properly. Samuel has started blogging again which is really cool - do stop by his blog and encourage him if you can. I think it's awesome to see how good his spelling is now and I'm not correcting it like I did before. That's all down to autonomous education: up until about 5 months ago I'd say his spelling was poor and certainly not "up to his age expected standard". We do no formal academic learning and nothing has changed. His spends his day playing on the computer, on Star Wars, Club Penguin, Binweevil and others, whilst listening to music on Youtube. Somehow this has led to him learning to spell!

Jonathan has stopped limping finally and seems to be walking properly which is a relief. His speech is really advancing quickly and is something that most people comment on. To all intents and purposes, he is talking "properly" and fully now (at 26 months) because he can express himself fully and in quite complicated sentances. "Mummy, I hurt my foot on toy", "Josh, pick up me", "Daddy, bounce bounce [trampoline] in garden with me please". On top of all that, he has a wicked sense of humour which we are all enjoying. At the dinner table the other day the boys were calling Roarke Winnie the Pooh (or something) and Jonathan piped up "no, Daddy is Minnie Mouse!" and then burst out laughing.

The best thing is that he has started coming up to us independently, giving people a hug, and saying "I love you" :0)

Our tomatoes are cropping regularly and heavily and we've had some lovely meals as a result, including a roasted cherry tomato soup. We are still getting several courgettes a week too.

1 comment:

MLA said...

just skimmed through this post but do ensure you claim for carer allowance. You may not get any money as you maybe above the limit. But what you will get is underlaying entitlement which mean premiums of nearly £30 per week are adding to any benefit entitlement. So it is well worth claiming.