Well it turns out that my sister had been overpaid Tax Credits in 2003-4 and 2004-5. Somehow HMRC understood that she was receiving the highest rate of the care component of Disability Living Allowance and so was entitled to the ‘severe disability’ element of Tax Credits.

Fortunately, she’s not disabled enough to receive the highest care component of DLA, merely the middle rate. However, this means she was only entitled to the ‘ordinary disability’ element of Tax Credits. So it seems fair enough that HMRC should want the severe disability element back.

Indeed, when I reread her TC award letters for 2003-4 and 2004-5, I saw that HMRC had said ‘We’re paying you the severe disability amount – please check to see if you still qualify.’ No-one did, and I missed it when I first looked into this situation in January 2006.

However, nothing to do with Tax Credits is ever as simple as it should be. The amount HMRC asked to be repaid in the phone conversation is over £100 less than what they said was overpaid at the end of 2005 and 39p less than the amount for which they sent demand notices in early 2006.

So, after a fairly strenuous* weekend back in Worcester during which I verified I had copies of all of my sister’s TC, DLA and other documentation and checked that she had received the amounts HMRC claimed she had, a letter saying ‘I now understand why I have to repay you: please tell me in writing how much and please confirm this will eradicate all overpayment for 2003-4 and 2004-5’ is on the way to HMRC by recorded delivery.
*I also backed up and reinstalled my dad’s PC from scratch, sorted a problem with my mum’s mac and extricated my G4 ‘quicksilver/wind-tunnel*’ mac from my parents’ loft so it could come north. It’s now nestling in my hostess’ desk-unit, blowing raspberries at her PC.
**The quicksilver G4s were noisy to begin with. Adding in two extra hard disks and a zip drive hasn’t made Freddie any quieter.

So far, I haven’t had to delve into 2005-6. That year’s TC may be marred by the now-overturned dismissal and the subsequent cessation of TC payments. Until about halfway through this year, TC was paid via employers. My sister has kept all her wage-slips and it’s easy to see how much TC she received this way. However, TC is now paid direct to the recipients’ bank accounts. My sister has a passbook bank account. When money is paid into it, the passbook entry simply says ‘BGC £23·99’ or similar. The bank claims that they can’t trace where such payments come from. I can’t understand this and have challenged them about it several times but they have stuck to this story.

So there appears to be no way of telling which deposits are wages, which are Tax Credits, etc, without a very laborious trawl through every entry in the book, comparing entries agains wage-slips, DLA documents and the like. Also for 2005-6, there is no TC award letter at the beginning of the year saying ‘this is what and how we intend to pay you for this year – we’ll square up at the end of the year.’ (They start by assuming a recipients’ wages will be the same as the previous year. When the recipient’s earnings for the tax year are known, this is declared on an annual review form. HMRC then use this information to calculate the initial payments for the year that’s just started and make any payments owing for the year that’s just finished.)

So without this initial award letter, I haven’t a hope of checking that my sister has received what HMRC say she should have. I’m so relieved I don’t need to – yet!

2006-7 and 2007-8 are OK – I’ve been involved with every step and I’m confident that my sister has received what HMRC say she should.

I’m concerned for the many folk in my sister’s situation who don’t have someone numerate and with a reasonable understanding of HMRC-english to help them. I’m also a bit embarrassed I didn’t appreciate this side of my sister’s needs before a year or so ago.

On a positive note, some of the ‘babies‘ are blooming. The gerania, in particular, have beautiful pinky-red foliage that gladdens my heart. Pix to follow as and when…

You may recall that my sister was in some distress at the beginning of 2006 because HMRC were trying to get back over £1000 of Tax Credits from her. Their reason was that she hadn’t replied to a letter asking her to prove that she was still disabled. This entry gives more detail.

I thought we had seen this off while I was in India. However, on Friday HMRC phoned our parents’ house, asking to speak with my sister. She was at work and HMRC, understandably, wouldn’t talk to our parents about my sister’s affairs. Instead, they left a number and asked her to call them later.

She did so on Monday, with our father listening in. He described the conversation as follows:

This [conversation] was to inform Sue that the appeal for Tax Years 2003-4 & 2004-5 had failed & that she owes £1,646.03. The bod said that the reason for failure was not stated in his notes, just that the appeal had failed.
In response to me stating that this was not satisfactory he said that Sue should contact the Tax Credit Office to obtain further information & also to discuss details of repayment.

According to HMRC’s website

The Appeals Service will give or send you a copy of the tribunal decision notice as soon as possible after the appeal hearing. This briefly explains the appeal tribunal’s decision. They will also send a copy to us.

As far as I’m currently aware, there has been no such written communication. Bah!

Everything you ever needed to know appears to be in this wiki

On Friday, my hostess and I, along with friends Ian, Jane and Wilma, went to Murrayfield Stadium for Party on the Pitch. I had been somewhat apprehensive about tribute bands anyway and Murrayfield’s failure to deliver our tickets had only served to deepen this apprehension. In the end, my hostess had to go to Murrayfield Stadium on the day of the event, trog more than three-quarters of the way around the stadium to the ice-rink ticket-office and yibble at the ticket-sellers there. They were quite calm and offered her more tickets than we’d paid for. However, our chances of touting them were minimal.

We gathered at the Mill in the early afternoon and headed over in the cold afternoon air to the stadium to find that there was no sign of where we were meant to queue to go in. Still, more walking round the stadium could only have been good for us. Inside the stadium were a few early-birds but the audience were few and far between, as you can see here. So many people were saved from hearing the utter ghastliness of Led Astray. I walked out when the guitarist strapped on a double-necked guitar – covers of Stairway to Heaven give me the pure boke.

I rejoined my companions after the sacrilege was over and the perps had been taken back to the cubes in which they could fondly imagine that anyone at all would want to listen to them. After a interval marred by two gibbering clowns from Radio Reykjavik South Central or some other to-be-avoided-at-all-costs station, a mob called Killer Queen took the stage. Despite the obvious wigs and “Freddie” ‘s painted-on mustache, they were good at what they did, the general mood livened and a few people started to dance in the stands. Even your curmudgeonly reporter enjoyed himself and shook such of his stuff that hadn’t been frozen off or dissolved in the plastic cup of used bath-water he had been sold in place of beer.

I didn’t see much of The Bootleg Beatles, mostly because I was queueing for hot drinks (the beer-queue had become surprisingly long, considering the venue was less than a third full) and fly-agaric doughnuts. However, what I heard and later saw showed that these lads knew how to do a show and I felt sorry for them and the other bands (Led Astray excepted) that this venue was so noticeably empty. I can’t comment on how good they are at recreating the Beatles’ songs because I am pushed to name a Beatles song I like. However, my companions passed very favourable comments on them, so I am happy to pass on their recommendation that you see them if you want, ideally in a smaller, warmer and above all fuller venue. I found great amusement in the serruptitious scousers’ performance of All you need is love while uncontrolled children knocked lumps out of each other with inflatable guitars.

The highlight of the evening came in http://www.bjornagain.com/‘s set. They had performed some Abba songs to a pleasing standard and the girls had snuck off-stage for a costume change when “Björn”‘s darker side was revealed in a crowd-pleasing version of Rocking all over the World. Encores were Dancing Queen and the la-de-da-de-dum song.

Overall, a good, fun afternoon and evening: my attitude is marred by the absence of a dear friend at this event. More pictures are here.

Speak To Me/Breathe – Pink Floyd

While some of the outdoor plants my hostess and I installed last Sunday are not doing so well, most thrive and the bulbs are beginning to push their shoots above the soil. I attribute the thriving to her enthusiasm and talking to them. I don’t think my attempts to communicate telepathically with them while visiting the balcony for my own nefarious purposes have had any effect.

Meanwhile the indoor basil and oregano are germinating nicely. We have babies! The basil’s in the front left of the picture and the oregano’s, er, not very visible in the back right.

OK, now I know I’m over 40. My host and I spend bank-holiday Monday buying flowering plants and planting them out in boxes on her balcony and I really enjoyed it.

There are 4 Geraniums, big Geraniums, a Passion Flower, a Delphinium, a Contoneäster, a Fuchsia, a Scented Pink and 20 Dutch Irises (just the bulbs so far). Indoors we have planted seeds for yellow sweet peppers, oregano, sweet basil and red chillis.

The outdoor stuff looks like this.

Not sure that I want beer to replace other relaxants but if you do, this is the kit you need.

EDIT This entry has been hanging around for a while but only today (11th May) could the ghastly truth be revealed.

This entry is probably of no interest to anyone apart from me but this is my blog about my life and you are welcome to read and/or comment if you wish.

I had promised myself that I wouldn’t be late on my final day, despite having many things to do that morning, needing to go shopping at Costorphine’s Tesco Extra and being congenitally almost incapable of work-punctuality. So leaving the flat after 3pm was only being true to myself and the zeroth law.*
*There are two sorts of data: that which is backed up and that which is not lost yet. (I’m not sure of the true name of this law but I saw it on an IBM bag once and it has been engraved on my cyber-heart ever since.)

Panic at the bus-stop when I see that there’s not a 12 (straight-to-Tesco) bus due for at least 12 minutes but a 26 bus (which stops 3 minutes’ run from the store entrance) comes soon enough. Run in, can’t find the aisle in which the items I need should be, ask assistant who provides yet more evidence that my memory is more faulty that I would like, queue at the 10-items-or-less checkout and hurl mental daggers at the people in the queue (a) for taking so long (b) for having the temerity to exist at all.

Run out, thinking evil thoughts about my inability to stick to sane schedules, towards bus-stop. On the way, I spy a taxi with its ‘I’m free’ light on in the queue for the roundabout at the car-park exit but don’t have the nerve to try to hail it. Get to my bus-stop: if the timetable bears any relationship to reality, I’ll just have time to take the next 12 bus, jump off at Lightning Roundabout (at the start of South Gyle Crescent) and immediately jump on a 22 bus to take me to my work’s entrance.

Of course, the 2 minutes I wait for the next 12 bus are filled with fear and self-loathing, the 22 bus doesn’t materialise the way I want but somehow I’m at my work with 30 seconds to spare. Even better, the security guard who has derided my lack of punctuality on days I deserve this, and has now taken to deriding me when I’m on time or early, isn’t on duty and so I’m not forced to wait agonising seconds while the comptrollers of the turnstile and two security doors make me even later. (I’m convinced they do this deliberately.)

At my desk, I find a wee envelope containing a ‘fare-thee-well’ card and a leaving present: a packet of Golden Virginia. I’m so touched. I was only a temp and was in this post for less than 4 months. Work itself is fine: screening bundles of cheques for staples and other extraneous material and keying data that the cheque-sorter can’t read presents no unusual challenges. However, there is a incident that I might have recognised as a harbinger of doom: the PC across from me appears to run very slowly, taking 5 minutes to boot the data-entry and cheque-balancing* software. The staff-member attempting to use this PC force-quits the software and moves to another terminal.
*For cheques received up to 7·30pm, if there is a discrepancy between the sum of the cheques and the associated credit, we have to find and correct any mis-read or mis-keyed data. If all the data is entered correctly, we have to complete a standard letter to the relevant branch telling them that they or the customer had made a mistake. I’ve suggested that the bank uses a standard email to save a lot of paper or time. It shouldn’t be too hard to attach the images of the cheques with which we work, although I’d lay money on the branches then printing these images before doing whatever else they need.)

By 7pm, it’s becoming clear that the deliveries from branches are running late and so we occasionally twiddle our thumbs while waiting for more cheques to screen or data to enter. I feel the anxiety rising in my supervisor, team leader and shift manager that we’ll not have this run complete for its 8·30 deadline. I offer to delay my break until the work is complete and we just make the deadline, or so we think. It appears that when the staff-member using the afore-mentioned recalcitrant PC force-quitted the check-balancing software, the items she had just balanced got stuck in the bank’s cyberspace. My team-leader puts in a call to ask the software engineers to rescue these items, another to the mainframe to say we’ve not quite beaten the deadline and reports the news to our shift supervisor. By now I’m twitching from nicotine-withdrawal, hunger and wrist-cramp so I escape for my break, hoping that the huge delivery of Glaswegian and Edinburgh business that arrives around 9pm is late enough that I don’t leave other collegues in the lurch while I’m munching.

When I return from my break, I find that there’s been yet another IT issue, possibly related to the earlier one. The whole system is down and so we can only screen the cheques. Normally, cheques arrive until just after 10pm, and despite data-entry going on continuously throughout the shift, there’s up to 1000* data-items to enter manually, some wrapping up** and final transmission to the bank’s mainframe left to the back-shift supervisor, team leader and shift manager and the few temps and staff-members who work past 11·30. Today we don’t start data entry until well after 10pm. I dislike the thought of leaving the backlog to colleagues with whom I’ve enjoyed working and there’s no nightshift (who clear cheques for another bank that hires this bank’s services but can also help with any overspill we have) so I offer to stay on to help clear it.
*more on Mondays and many more the day after a bank holiday
**including packaging cheques that have passed though our system and hence been credited to their payees’ accounts for delivery to the payers’ banks and hence debiting from the payers’ accounts. The hand-over occurs in Milton Keynes. I understand that the banks usually act on the numerical and image data we and our counteparts in other banks send to each other after the ‘out-clearing’ processes which have provided my living since early January. I can’t understand why the banks can’t store each other’s cheques and send the physical items to the payers’ banks only if they are needed. The transport of cheques seems a little ecologically-unsound and so I was pleased to note yesterday that Boots (in South Gyle) no longer accepts cheques.

So after phoning to ask my hostess if she minds me coming in even later than usual (it’s a small flat and I fear disturbing her), we say goodnight to the collegues who finish at 11·30 (and there are many friendly partings for me), two staff-members, a supervisor, our team leader and our shift manager settle into keying data. There’s over 6000 items to key. Foul vending-machine tea and occasional whoops from me as we clear individual runs keep us going until 1·05 am when I key my last datum (£2·56) and it’s all done. We don’t have to prepare cheques for transport so I chat briefly with my team-leader. We discover, thanks to my Aussie Floyd t-shirt, a mutual love of Pink Floyd and then it’s time to go.

The one colleague who is leaving now goes nowhere near my current domicile so I start walking. I leave the bank at 1·23am and get to Lightning Roundabout just in time to miss a night-bus. Nothing daunted, I follow the route of the N22 along Broomhouse Drive. Some of the denizens are sat on a wall across the road from me but doing nothing anti-social, not even drinking. A little further on, a police-car pulls up to me and the police-person asks me whether I’m OK. A little un-nerved, I tell him I’m fine and prepare to tell him that I’m on my way home after working late but he tells me that he’s received a report of someone on this road being covered in blood. ‘Obviously that’s not you,’ he concludes. I wish him luck and he drives away. A little further on, I pass a bus-shelter which has had its perspex crazed and shattered but there’s no sign of blood and I walk on.

Just as I reach Stenhouse Drive (around 2am), I hear a night-bus approaching behind me. I run back towards the bus-stop I’ve just passed, flagging the driver. He stops just by me and the penultimate part of my journey (to the junction of Westfield Road and West Approach Road) takes about 5 minutes and costs me £1·50. I walk past the brooding hulk of Murrayfield Stadium to the flat and wind down with LJ and a can of Irn Bru. I’m sad to miss my many pleasant colleagues, happy that I’ve been useful despite nearly jamming a lift, pleased that several of my colleagues asked me to come back if I can and a little nervous about the future.

The next 4 months are sorted, so long as I do nothing stupid, but after that? Up to me to work hard, widen my skill-set and then rely on there being enough demand for what I offer to the Scottish publishing world. I know I don’t really want to return to the traditional 9-to-5, that I love the variety of moving from challenge to challenge and the relatively unscheduled existence and perpetual emotional roller-coaster that freelancing will entail but I’m not sure whether I can rely on it to provide income and enough stability for me, let alone anyone else who might tread in my life.

Enough! Huge thanks to

• Antonio, Eshwara, Jim, Jennifer, Kalpanna, Martin, Michael, Reagan, Stephen, Santosh, Shri and Venkatesh (my fellow temps)
• Ann of the wicked sense of humour (I’m sorry I took so long to see it for what it was), Beverley, Carolyn (for inadvertently reminding me that I’m not all that bad), ‘wee’ Elaine, ‘tall’ Elaine, ‘runner’ Elizabeth, ‘west-coast’ Elizabeth, Jean, Joan, Kelly H, Kelly of the interesting lanyard, Laura, Lesley, Liz, Lorraine, Lynne, Madhavi, Margaret, Maureen, Rosalind, Rose, ‘early’ Sandra, ‘late’ Sandra and Sheila (staff members: hope I’ve not forgotten anyone)
• Lesley, Kathleen, and Sheila (supervisors)
• Kevin and Ian (team leader and shift manager)

for putting up with my sense of numour, lift incidents, occasional trolley-crashes and lapses in screening and keying. Look out May – here I come!

EDIT For all the extra work that night, I took home an extra £4·31!

Got home from my last day at the bank just after 2am. Slightly sad to go but it’s time to move on.

You may ask why I got home so late: I’ll tell you in the next post. Now time to finish my can of Irn Bru and then sleep.

(Feel free to improve the latin if you want.)

With thanks to for turning me on to this…

78% GeekMingle2.com – Free Online Dating

Don’t believe the hype!

Back to what vaguely passes for real life:

• I have only two more days left at the bank. I’ve been training my replacements the last two weeks. One will do well. Not sure about the other. I’ll miss my colleagues there: all (apart from one who seems always too busy slagging off everyone else, resting her hands on the desk instead of on the keyboard and complaining she has too much to do to actually do much work) have been pleasant and fun to work with.
• My brother’s going on another tour in Iraq ‘as part of the advance party on Saturday’. He’s been twice before, and was in Gulf War 1. Random swearing is almost certain to ensue.

Other than that, all is rosy.