T-Bird Anni Rides Again

It’s taht anual tax credt debacle time of year again.  I have obviously blanked out the full glory of last year’s debacle as I don’t remember certain pertinant points as raised by the supercillious prat I spoke to just now.  I don’t, for instance, remember being told that I was breaking the law by not having provided information on who we are both working for although aparently this information was requested and (to quote him) "it looks like the conversation didn’t end well last time either" by which I assume I am on file as being a stroppy cow (coo, even people who don’t know me have worked that one out!)  Although I do remember when Duke was in and out of work, being permenantly on the phone to this most delightful of agencies to update tehm on who was employing him on what salary for that particular week, or not, as the case may be.  I quite distinctly remember having them on speed dial.  I also quite distinctly remember receiving tax credits last year in proportion to our income and thus would assume that therefore they are perfectly capable of processing a claim without these details.

Aparently this year they can’t process my claim without up to date and also fully backdated to the beginning-of-time employment records.  There is no reference to an employer on my current circumstances detail sheet for me to check and confirm or deny the correctness thereof, although if you plow through the copious notes they send it does say taht you need to tell them when you change job.  What they have on file is not any of the employers I can remember him working for over the past several years.  Not that they will tell me what employer they have recorded because that would be breaking the data protection act, neither will they disclose the date that this employment started other than it was longer than 2 years ago.  When I pointed out that under the very same Data Protection Act of which he spoke I had a right to know any details held about me he sounded vaguely surprised taht I would know about such petty details and said I could write requesting a full disclosure of all the data they held.  Funny how he offered that info only after I threw the law back in his face and not when i asked for it politely  so that I could at least sort this out (and I asked in several ways ranging from "oh, right, what details do you hvae then?" to "well, is there any way I can get hold of the information so I can check if it is correct or not then?" all of which were denied.)  In the mean time of course, Duke’s money has gone down from a half decent £22k last year (working 2 jobs) to around £13k this year.  Funnily enough, it was when I mentioned that huge money drop that suddenly it became important that they had employer details, presumably they need to contact them and say "how dare you pay such crap wages and make the government top it up to a livable wage" (shall we gloss over the fact that if they made the national minimum wage a livable wage then they wouldn’t need to? although, naturally, if both of us were good little workers on NMW it would actually be almost livable) or maybe more like "is your employee lying about his income"

But you know, what really pisses me off is that this is part HM Revenue and Customs.  That’s the people who gather our taxs and thus the people who know, to the last penny, how much any person in the UK has earned in the past 12 months.  Not to mention they know who anyone is working for at any one time (assuming the company is above board, not paying cash in hand etc obviously)  So how is it that the information can’t go from one office to another without all this pratting about?  I mean, I can do my car tax on line, they check on a database of insured vehicles and on a database of MOT’ed vehicles instantly and seemingly effortlessly then plunder your bank account (which is, in effect another database for them to access) to take the money for your car tax, how then is is so hard to look on just one database for a person’s income  and top it up accordingly FFS????? 

Can’t access Googlemail!  It’s been down all morning as, it would appear, has Yahoo mail (co-incidence?)  Which is a bit of a pain as I’d planned on checking my mail one last time before dismantling  the desk (thus meaning nowhere to put the PC to use it) ready for Duke to run off with it and put up my temporary one until I can justify getting a decent one again.  He’s been trying to get one like mine for ages but Ikea no longer do it and to be honest, much as I love it to bits, it does sort of dominate the bedroom rather much (and provieds me with far too much space to dump stuff that would get put away if I din’t have anywhere to abandon it!) whereas it would look okay in an "office".  I want one that’s a "corner workstation with doors" sort of arrangement which means £230 and very lovely looking from Ikea or getting very second best fake wood from Argos for £100 and tacking on some sort of doors!  but I’d get free delivery from Argos and wouldn’t end up spending £££ on stuff we can’t possibly live without whist we are there!  Ah, the decisions i have to make

Hlaf way through the RAinbow meeting tonight one of them told me that her brother was ill with a gastric bug and that she had it too but didn’t feel poorly.  Is it me?????  Or is it not considered a ****** stupid thing to do to send your child into a group of other kids when they have something that could make some of them really poorly?????????   If I’m ill at the weekend I will cancel next Wednesday on principle and let them all know it is because one (anonymous) child was sent with a bug and me and Aprilia are still in quarentine.

The really, really anoying bit is that now I don’t know if I can send Aprilia to Brownies on Friday.  She’s supposed to be being tested for a badge but it won’t have been a clear 72 hours and one of the Brownies is on chemo so isn’t well to start with.

But apart from that, it’s been a good day! 

I bought, in good faith, 2 pieces of software over the internet the other day.  the site claims to be selling OEM software to download, I ran it past Duke who said it sounded Kosher so paid and set it downloading.  It’s ripped off software and comes with a "crack" so that it will work.  I am not best pleased.  If I’d wanted ripped off software I would have installed a peer to peer thing and searched for it for free not paid for it.  And yes, even for OEM software it was cheap so I should have known better but it was stuff I couldn’t afford (like Dragon Naturally Speaking) but really really want and now I’m out of pocket with illegal software that I don’t know if I should risk installing incase it’s not just illegal but virus infested or whatever.

in theory anyway!  Today we were at Wombwell for karting and OMG were they being right royal pains!  Even Duke, who most of you know is so laid back as to be perfectly horizontal most of the time, ended up nose to nose with a competitor at one point giving him what looked like a VERY blunt talking to (I was too far away to hear…..) about ignoring yellow flags (stop racing, slow down, be prepared to stop with little or no notice) and overtaking whilst aproaching the accident.  This was after Duke had to firmly lead an irate parent away from an earlier crash after parent had tried to take a swing at the Clerk.  Aparently it was the Clerks fault taht his son had smacked into the barrier because there wasn’t a marshal to haul another kart which had broken in the middle of the track out of the way.  Well, actually his precious son crashed under waved yellows (stop racing etc…) which was why no marshal was stupid enough to be out on the track trying to clear it….. you hit a broken kart, it just breaks some more, you hit a person trying to move it and you break them….. mutter mutter.  Thre is talk of banning the parent from the track.  For life.  We don’t tolerate even pathetic attempts at throwing punches….

In between it all I did get more study done though!  and spend a while gossiping with the girlie flag marshal.  So not all carnage!

sturdy but softly padded strapping to secure child to bed in the hopes of keeping her in it long enough for sleep to catch up with her.

What gives????  Someone has just posted up on a US based Yahoo list some jingo-istic cr*p about some black guy who is from Hawaii and just happens to be Muslim running for presidency.  and Muslims (all of them, naturally, not just the militant minority who use their faith as an excuse) are out to destroy the US from the inside.  And it says in the text taht it’s true becuase they have already checked on Snopes….. and of course, if you get sent something that has already been through several million PCs already you are going to take it htat the idiot who sent it in the first place rreally did check on Snopes aren’t you…. U-huh… so you just forward it on because everyone is scared whitless that every single person who is not a white, middle class chap who understands how to keep his religion out of his real life is out to corrupt your country. 

Sigh…. 

I was talking to one of teh Rainbow mums earlier and she was lamenting that she wasn’t quick enough to get a DS for her daughter at normal price so had had to pay £200 (she could have got black for £180 but it needed to be pink.)  It seems that they go up a little in price at this time of year - what kind of society do we live in where second hand DSs are for sale for almost twice what I paid last month and new ones are  £200?  I mean, why on earth would you pay double just so Little Jonnie, or in this case, Little Missie can have something on Christmas day taht will be back to £95 by January?  Come on people, if you vote with your feet and DON’T BUY STUFF AT THAT PRICE they will stop doing it FFS!!!!  Or am I missing something?

Following on from Jax blogging about the plans the Conservatives ahve to introduce reading tests at 6 (or was it 7?) is this in the Independent

So, are the Tories asking too much of our pupils and teachers?

Yes…

* Between five and 10 per cent of children won’t be able to read by the end of Year One. The new test will make them feel failures.

* Teachers need time to master the new method.

* His plan is political gamesmanship, positioning the Conservatives as dynamic and Labour as slow to change.

No…

* Phonics is the most effective way of teaching children to read quickly, so a test will ensure it is happening in the classroom.

* Teachers are dragging their feet in introducing the phonics reforms. These proposals will force them to get a move on.

* It will prepare young children for life at secondary school.

Obviously I have little to say about the "yes" points… (except perhaps that  they almost seem to have been offered as Aunt Sallys)

As to the No points….

Glossing over the fact that the intention is to test a full year earlier than the current Literacy element of SATs is tested, thus giving children less time to "get it" before stamping them as thick….. 

Phonics may well be a good way to learn to read for most children.  For some it may be the ONLY way to learn to read, for some it JUST WON’T WORK!  As for teaching them to read qucikly, what’s the rush exactly?  What does it prove if they can decode the vast majority of the English Language if they don’t have any clues as to how to extract the meaning from any of it?  I can "read" Italian reletively fluently (it uses a system of phonics very similar to Spanish, and being a Latin language is actually phonically regular), I’ve no idea what I’ve just read though!

A test of a child will ensure that the teacher is doing his or her job?  No pressure then hey? Non on the kids to "do well for Mrs Teacher" or to "be ill" on the day of the test (as a boy on our street was invited to be on SATs week as the poor lad is really struggling with reading and the teacher felt it would be better not to put him under the additional pressure of performing)  Non on the teacher to prematurely implement a system they may be totally new to and would prefer to actually get a grip on before fouling it up totally for the kids. 

And of course, we NEED to test the kids to ensure teacher compliance.  Not that we don’t beleive that if a teacher records that the whole day was spent in the manner recorded in their endless paperwork then that is what actually happened?  We need to test the kids to see the teachers are being good girls and boys and doing what they are told.

Forcing the kids to take a test will force the teachers to "get a move on" and introduce these old, er, I mean new, ideas.  Oh gee, that would make me feel SO valued if I was a teacher (NOT!!) 

And the icing on the whole cake…. it will help our 6 and 7 year olds to be ready for secondary school.  Because of course, they need to do this a good 3 or 4 years before they get there don’t they?  I mean, really, if they haven’t sorted out who are the successes and who are the failures by the time they finish Year 1 then how on earth will they know their place when they get to Big School? 

You know, this is almost angry enough to be banished to the ranty blog….. but it’s relevent so it can stay! 

you know the other day (well a full 7 days ago anyway) I appealed publically to my household appliances to stop breaking?  Well the ************ cooker has now decided to throw its hand in.  Hob works fine, grill works fine, igniter still throws out a half hearted spark (which is all it’s ever done) but oven doesn’t get hot, not even a bit.  Would be okay to incubate yogurt or maybe proove bread in but not to cook the Sunday Roast that was all ready to go in when I discovered this issue.

So, I am throwing myself on the mercy of the Cosmic Supply Company (aka Freecycle) and hoping for a replacement as I really, really, REALLY don’t want to have to buy a new one!

Oh, and any recipes for meals that don’t need the oven gratefully accepted.  We do have a microwave but I’ve never tried cooking properly in it….