Job Centre Experiences

I have had several periods of unemployment. Who hasn't. Going to the Job Centre has to be somewhat daunting, to say the least. When I lived in Bedford the Job Centre had several locations. It used to be in the centre of the town, not far from the bus station in Allhallows. The unit in which it was situated is now a Nationwide Building Society branch. It was then moved to Zurich House, in Goldington Road, which is on what amounts to a large roundabout when the traffic system was introduced several years ago. Then it moved to Ashburnham Road, in a building hidden from the street by flats and approached through a rather forbidding entrance. Then, years later, the Government decided to merge the D.H.S. with the Department of Work and Pensions (which was a separate building in Bromham Road at another rather forbidding building called Wyvern House.) In the early days you would have to sign on at the Job Centre and then get an appointment at Wyvern House, and if you needed Housing Benefit you had to make another appointment at the Town Hall. All of these take time and effort on your behalf and it took a great deal of walking between each to get from one to the other. If you managed to get the initial form from the Job Centre and you then managed to wade through this, filling in each section and then returning it (having managed to make an appointment with the Job Centre) and going through your application with a member of their staff and then making a separate appointment at Wyvern House and THEN going to the Town Hall to do an application for Housing Benefit (meanwhile, gathering together the various documents such as bank statements, proof of employment etc etc, as well as your National Insurance number etc. As the Job Centre and D.H.S. were eventually merged under one roof this to-ing and fro-ing was cut to a minimum. In more recent times you had to ring a telephone number in order to get the initial application moving, and they rang you back and some of the application was done over the phone (this might sound an improvement but if you don't have a phone you are in a difficult situation. It is quite difficult to do this using a mobile phone, as I can attest.) At that time they set up an appointment at the Job Centre, which is usually around a week ahead. Not that easy if you have a hearing impairment or if the mobile connection gets cut off or it's just a poor connection. Why can't you just go in and collect a form from the Job Centre? It would have made life a good deal easier, although I suppose if it's done partially before you go for the Job Centre interview and application, it might be said to be a little easier.

Nowadays you are expected to be 'actively looking for employment' when you claim what is now called 'Jobseekers' Allowance' (formerly known as 'Unemployment Benefit.') You have to show that you are actively looking for work and have to take paperwork to prove you are looking for a job. This is all part of your application and you have to sign the documentation to this effect.

After several months you had to have what is called a 'Restart Interview.' I think it was to find out how you are doing as regarding finding work. A good idea in a way as it means that you can't expect to stay on 'Jobseekers' indefinitely. I got a letter to that effect and went along to the office in Ashburnham Road. I think, if memory serves, at about 12.45 on the particular day, but don't recall the date. The woman who was due to do the interview wasn't in the office so I had to wait. I had bought the relevant documents with me as required and more forms filled in. Then the interview started. I have to say this woman wasn't very good at her job, or so I thought. She never once gave me eye contact. It was as if I wasn't there and she wasn't very interested in me. It seemed as if I was merely another number, another person on her list of other interviewees for the day and she went through the motions of the interview as if she was just ticking off a list of objectives on a list she had in order to fulfill certain targets. I don't know, but as far as I was concerned it was rather a lack lustre job she did and after all the efforts I had made to be at this interview I wasn't very impressed. Maybe I was the last person on her list and she was desperate to get to her lunch break. To say I was annoyed would be untrue as I was, so, once I got home I wrote a letter of complaint to the manager of the Job Centre. I did receive a reply and as far as I know this woman was disciplined. I don't suppose you want to get letter of complaint from your customers, or clients as I expect you'd be called or perhaps 'end-user' which is a term I detest.

My flat was in a block of flats in Beauchamp Court, in Greyfriars, Bedford. I was owned and rented from Pilgrims Housing Association. When I eventually got to a position whereby I wanted to leave the house I was in which was in Rutland Road, Bedford (owned by Louis Fussell. See earlier post.) I was very surprised when, one day, I discovered that someone (no doubt from Pilgrims Housing Association) had left a key for me to the flat in Beauchamp Court, on the hall stand in Louis's front hall at 35 Rutland Road. Amazing, as it had the flat number and everything on a label. It could easily have been taken by anyone and it makes me wonder why they didn't give me the key personally to prevent it being taken by anyone but me. But no, it wasn't. I eventually moved in and was then told by Pilgrims that I could paint the flat any colour I wanted. They would provide me with an allowance of so much so that I could buy paint. I think I could have tokens to a certain value which I think could be exchanged in Wilkinson's store in Bedford High Street. Unfortunately, by the time I got to the point where I wanted to buy the paint I wanted they informed me that the allowance scheme had ended and if I wanted I could buy the paint myself. A bit mean of them I thought. I didn't actually paint the flat in the end, in all the four years I lived there.

Another incident comes to mind whilst living at this flat. One afternoon a couple of my friends came to visit. Part-way through the visit one of them went to use the toilet in the bathroom. There was suddenly a crash, and it turned out that, when he'd gone to flush the toilet (which was one of those old fashioned toilets with a cistern high up on the wall over the toilet bowl.) the chain had broken off and the plastic cistern had broken. Pilgrims had  a telephone number you had to ring in emergency, a helpline if you had a maintenance issue with your property, so I rang this number. It was called a 24-hour helpline, but when I rang there was no human to answer, just a recorded message saying 'please ring back during office hours, Monday to Friday.' So, why was it called a '24-hour helpline' and why even a 'helpline.'? I was then stuck with a toilet that wouldn't flush and I couldn't do anything to repair it until Monday morning after 9, when the Pilgrims office opened again. When I did eventually get through they told me to just flush the toilet with a bucket each time I used it.

That flat was really bad as regards damp. Some of the walls had terrible damp in them, in particular the bathroom. Pilgrims eventually dealt with it by installing an electric extractor fan, but instead of putting it in the bathroom so any steam and condensation would be taken out by the fan, for some unaccountable reason they put it in the kitchen, which didn't suffer with damp half as much as the bathroom. Then there was the issue of quite a lot of moisture running down the wall near the front door of the flat. It got so bad that the door itself began to bow out, to such an extent that the bottom rail of the door fell out and they had to come out and replace the door, but I they never actually dealt with the moisture running down the walls. There was a lot of black mould on the walls and I begin to wonder whether it wasn't that which lead to me having my heart attack. The flat was on the top floor of that block of flats and the damp must have been caused by the fact that it had a flat roof. Apparently each flat had a communal television arial, and at one point, when the roof had been refelted and the workmen had used hot tar as part of the refelting process, the cable for the television ariel had got burnt. I learnt this when someone had come to my flat to tell me that they were going to replace all the cable to each flat and it was then that I learnt that I could then get Freeview digital television in my flat and I eventually bought the required equipment to receive these digital channels at around the time the entire country was going over to digital television. Why I mention all this is that the damp in the flat may have been a direct cause of the refelting of the roof of the block of flats, but I'm not entirely sure about this.

After I had my heart attack in May 2006 I had to sign on for benefits. But, not being in a fit position to get myself out to the D.H.S. office in Bromham Road (about a 5-minute walk from my flat in Beauchamp Court, incidentally.) someone else had to get the relevant forms for me, a member of Rutland Road Church. If he hadn't helped me then I would have been without any income for the period I was ill. I think I was put on sick pay from the agency I worked for when the heart attack happened, which was for something like 27 weeks, although I don't know how they arrive at that period to receive sick pay. I don't think, looking back, I got any income support or anything. The joke of it was that I couldn't have free prescriptions for the medication I was on (around 6 items which worked out at around £30-£40 a month.) Doesn't make sense, as you get free prescriptions if you are on any sort of benefit, Job Seeker's Allowance, Income Support. Considering that I needed that medication to control my heart condition, to prevent another heart attack happening, this seems ridiculous. When I left hospital I was given all the medication I would need for around a month, but I had to go back to the hospital pharmacy as the hospital sent me an invoice for the prescription. I remember being in Milton Keynes Hospital a few years ago and when I left they gave me the medications and I was not expected to pay. Fortunately now, being over 60, I do not have to pay for my repeat prescription. At around £8.20 per item that would work out to around £50 a month!

Easter Bank Holiday Monday: Walking The Dogs At Salcey Forest

Today was Easter Monday Bank Holiday, Carol's last day of the Easter Holiday. We had considered going for a swim at the gym this morning, but in the end we decided that the dogs would appreciate being taken for a walk. We haven't taken them out for quite a while, due mainly because of the weather. It was foggy when I looked out of the window and actually quite nippy. If we were going to take the dogs anywhere in the car we would need to take the cage for Alfie which was in the house and it was necessary to get it out without him seeing as he gets particularly overwrought (to say the least. He becomes like the Tasmanian Devil when he knows we're planning a walk.) I got the dogs in the bedroom and closed the door on them and managed to get out to the car with the cage and inside the back without Alfie knowing. But as soon as the dogs were eventually let out of the bedroom Alfie seemed to have some idea of what we were planning and started charging around the house, barking noisily. We wanted to take the digital camera and had purchased new batteries to put it it, but, during the recent cleaning, which we did prior to the house inspection, these batteries got mislaid. After some searching we found them and I managed to put them into the camera. It is absolutely no use having a digital camera with flat batteries. We have had rechargeable batteries for our three cameras, but they are not virtually useless and don't seem to hold a charge. I suppose they do have a limited life and being at least six years old I imagine they are at the end of their lives. I'm not sure how many times they have been recharged but that's not bad if that is how old they are, so buying a set of batteries that aren't rechargeable seemed rather a waste of money but we just wanted a set to allow us to use the Fuji camera. Carol suggested I keep Alfie while she got Poppy into her harness in the kitchen and it took me some effort to keep hold of him and he managed to scratch me with his claws as he was getting more and more excited, barking and making a lot of noise. Poppy is generally no problem to sort out with her harness, but Alfie . . .

We got him into the car and had next to get some change as the carpark at Salcey Forest isn't free and you need change to feed the meter there, as we discovered some while ago and this seems to be the norm at several of the places we take the dogs for walks, particularly Rushmere and the nearby     Park near Leighton Buzzard. We drove towards the A5 and went to get a coffee at the new drive-in Starbucks which meant we would have sufficient change for parking once we got to Salcey.

The sun was struggling to make an appearance and as it was now around 9 a.m. we thought that the fog would soon clear.

When we got to Salcey Forest the carpark was virtually empty. It seemed that our early start to the day had paid off. Being a Bank Holiday we had taken into consideration that everyone else would be out and about, particularly as it was a warm and sunny day.

Then we found that it was going to cost £3 to park the car for more than three hours. I went into the cafe which is near the carpark. Generally very good as we've been there in the winter months when it it open and have very nice soup on cold and frosty days. I had a £5-note and bought a packet of Polo mints and took it to the till to pay. The girl who was on the till said 'do you have anything less?' to which I replied that I hadn't and the change was for the carpark. Then another woman who worked in the cafe said 'we don't give change for the carpark.' Which seemed a rather stupid thing to say, because if they wanted customers, then they would need people to come in a car and if they couldn't provide change for parking, then people would drive off and not park and take their money elsewhere. I'm not bothered about paying for parking provided the money is used to keep the facilities maintained. The toilets at the site were closed for maintenance, and were replaced by temporary toilets, so I imagine money made from car parking went towards the cost of that, also, keeping the surface of the roads within the forest and the actual carpark in top condition. They can be very bad, and during one occasion when we went we got the car stuck in a very muddy puddle.

Anyway, we went for a very enjoyable walk with the dogs, and by the time we got back with them to the car the place had filled up with more cars and people, and lots of other dogs which our two made friends with.

Cleaning The House For Inspection

We spent the entire day yesterday cleaning the house ready for the inspection on Thursday afternoon. When Sam left several months ago he left a load of his stuff behind in the smaller of the three bedrooms so Carol spent her time clearing out what was in there. It was so crammed with stuff you could barely open the door. We sorted most of it out and took a load of it to the tidy tip. We were going to the tip at Bleak Hall, having put some petrol in the car at the Shell station on the way. We had a second load to take later in the day but when we went back to the tidy tip in Bleak Hall we found a long queue of cars and decided to drive over to the other tidy tip at Bradwell.  We have today (Wednesday) to complete cleaning the house and having it ready for the inspection tomorrow. It's surprising how much stuff we have disposed of in the tidy tip. A real feeling of a job well done, although as I write this it's not complete. By the time of the inspection (that is, whether they actually turn up, as on two previous occasions, having cleaned the house thoroughly, nobody bothered to turn up) there really will be no cause for concern and the place will be spotless.

MoT, Swimming and House Inspection

As mentioned in my last post, the car had to go for it's MoT last Wednesday. It wasn't quite so straightforward in order for it to pass as the garage (D and A Autos in Mount Farm), rang during Wednesday to tell us that it had failed on one or two minor points, one being that it would need a couple of new tyres. I have mentioned the rather strange running of the car's engine, the times it has cut out and the juddering we have experienced as we'd driven along in it. They told us it would need to stay in their workshop overnight to have the work completed, and the total bill would cost around £400. A bit of a shock, to say the least, but we had some idea that it was going to need quite a bit of work done in order for it to pass it's MoT. Also, the car needed it's Road Fund Licence and we weren't going to get this done without an MoT certificate and the licence had run out on 31st March. As Carol was on Easter holiday we were planning to go back to collect the car on Thursday evening after the garage telephoned to tell us it was ready to collect.  We said we'd collect the car on Friday morning as the garage would be closed at around 5.30 when they rang. The next morning at around 8.30 I rang for a taxi on my mobile and we soon got our lift over to Mount Farm. The taxi company has a 'text-back' system, provided you phone them from your mobile, which tells you the registration number and time the taxi will arrive, quite  good idea if you are unsure which is the right vehicle coming to give you a lift to wherever, particularly for late night taxi rides. An added security for all concerned. The taxi was very quick to arrive and we soon got to the garage in Mount Farm. Having paid the bill for the work on the car we then had to drive to Swinton's office in Bletchley to get the replacement insurance certificate (having looked in vain for this document in our usual places for such documents and not finding it.) We had rung on Thursday to say that they would be able to print off a copy for us to collect. Having managed to collect the insurance document we then went into the Central Post Office in Milton Keynes (it has moved from it's original place in the Central Shopping Centre to the Theatre District recently, meaning we could park the car nearby in a free parking space. We were then told that we wouldn't need the insurance certificate after all, so all that running about was actually for nothing. We got the licence disc and managed to fix it to the car windscreen. Apparently you will no longer need to buy a licence disc as the Government has said that this is no longer a necessity. So, if that is the case, how will the Police be able to check which cars are licenced or not? Presumably using some sort of check on car registration numbers or something, and no doubt using number recognition software. No doubt they will have a list of car's registration numbers which aren't licences or at least, up to date with their licence payments. Perhaps it's a good thing as it will mean less paperwork, but I have to say it will be odd not having that little disc of paper stuck to the inside of the car's windscreen. Although it will be great not having to run about from pillar to post whenever it runs out. Although we have bought the licence on-line and it makes me wonder how they check the documentation, although it is done from data stored somewhere 'in the cloud.' Another area of technology which I just don't actually understand but I have to say, having paid for this on-line, it is the most efficient and easiest way to buy this.

Yesterday, early,Monday morning. Carol has a further week off for Easter. We haven't been for a swim for a couple of weeks so we decided to go to D.W. early. We were there a little before 8 and it was great that the place was virtually empty except for a couple of people. One of the jacuzzis was ou of action for repair but apart from that it was really relaxing and I did around 25 lengths of the pool. We were in there for a good hour and a half. It was strange coming out and it was sunny and bright as we usually go in the evening which means we come out when it is quite dark outside. We had to go to Sainsbury's as Carol had a repeat prescription which needed collecting and at the same time we needed some shopping for the evening's meal. We noticed that in Sainsbury's they have been altering the homewards department and so we had a look around before buying things for our meal as well as picking up the prescription.

I have mentioned the creative writing course at Milton Keynes Art Centre I did in November and that I had been signed up to do a ten-week course which was cancelled when the lady who was leading was taken ill. I am somewhat disappointed as I was really looking forward to this and still await it being re-sheduled but at the moment there seems that this isn't going to happen. I have been looking around to find something elsewhere but with no success but I have now signed up to an on-line daily writing email which sends me a daily 'prompt' so that I can do a ten-minute writing exercise. This I have been doing for around the past three weeks. The idea is that you get the 'prompt' by email each morning and you have to use that for a piece of writing which you mustn't spend too much time thinking about and not stop writing until the ten minutes is up. I now have quite a few of these ten-minute pieces, some good and some not so good but it does at least mean I get into the habit of writing something, very much in the same way writing this blog is a writing exercise.

Having got the car sorted we now have to contend with a house inspection. Smart Move, the rental agency, rang yesterday morning (Monday) to say they wanted to do an inspection on Wednesday. They said they would come at 2, then rang back to say could it be 3, and then rang again to say they'd come on Thursday at 3. I jut hope they do arrive as the landlord was supposed to come for an inspection several weeks ago (more like months) one Saturday but they never turned up, after we'd made a lot of effort cleaning he house and having it ready. So we're going to have to spend the next couple of days cleaning and tidying the place.

Easter Hols

Carol is currently on holiday from Milton Keynes Academy. That doesn't mean she is sitting around drinking cups of coffee and doing nothing much. She has no end of marking to do. I drove over last Friday afternoon in the car to pick her up and she came out with a load of stuff on a trolley which we loaded into the car. Several large printer paper boxes with test papers to be marked. She has been doing this marking every day since and has now, on Wednesday evening, got a few sets still to mark. Those people who think a teacher's life is easy should think again. Yes, they do get quite a lot of holidays, meaning, time away from teaching, but Carol spends a lot of time planning lessons as well as marking and then there's a lot of paperwork to be done, assessments and so on. And having to go to meetings and having observations. Just don't mention the name Michael Gove as he's not the most popular man around any school at the moment (he is Secretary of State for Education.) Not a great deal of time left for other things such as going out, meaning, time away from work.

We had the car booked in for it's MoT, at a garage in Mount Farm, Milton Keynes. We were given the name by Laverne Robb, who is a friend of ours at Milton Keynes Christian Centre. It was he who came to our aid the other Saturday when the car wouldn't start in Tesco's carpark in Kingston. We were ripped off good and proper when we took the car to a rather suspect garage in Bleak Hall and so we were determined not to be treated the same this year. The car had to be at the garage at 8.30. Having dropped it off we phoned using my mobile for a taxi and waited most of the morning to hear the result of the MoT. The car failed, unfortunately. Nothing too much wrong. It needs new tyres and one or two fairly minor things to get it through it's test and they rang to tell me and that they could do the required work on it and it would be ready. So we will await the phone call tomorrow late afternoon and then get another taxi to go and collect it.

Air Pollution from Sahara

Over the past few days we've been experiencing some strange pollution due to the weather, something to do with pollution coming up from the Sahara Desert. Early today it was quite misty in Milton keynes and it seemed to block out a certain amount of light. It wasn't like fog. Quite difficult to explain. We went to Asda early as Carol needed something. It was quite mild as we drove away from the house. They had said on the television news that those who had breathing problems should stay indoors. 

When I went to collect my repeat prescription from Sainsbury's on Tuesday there was a note from the pharmacist that I would need to make an appointment with my G.P. to have my medication reviewed. I was somewhat surprised as I only had a review a few months ago (I must have mentioned it on here so I will need to have a search on earlier posts.) Also, I have had a recurring problem with my ears. I get a build-up of wax and have to have my ears syringed (not exactly something to make too much of on here, but, never the less, an issue which needs to be addressed.) I think I had it done around a year ago. I was told that I would need to see my G.P. as he had to refer me to the nurse who would do the ear-syringing. So I managed to get to the Ashfield Medical Centre in Beanhill at around 7.35 and waited in the car until the surgery doors opened at 8. I was fortunate that I could get an appointment immediately which meant I avoided having to wait for a long time.  Dr Hilmy reviewed my medication. It means that actually he just had to approve my medications and nothing more. I suppose it's because I'm on medication which is long-term and on repeated prescription and to ensure there is no waste. Certainly not as without I wouldn't be alive! He also took my blood pressure which was normal (not sure of the actual reading.) and I was on my way, before making a nurse's appointment for next Tuesday at 4.20 for the ear-syringing. At the moment my hearing is somewhat dulled and I get quite intense headaches. So it will be a relief once this is done. I have to use olive oil drops in my ears daily before the nurse's appointment.