MY BRAIN HURTS

My toy boy reached the age of 65 last October. Recently his new Tax Coding Notification arrived but the IR had calculated that he had received state pension for 12 months instead of 6 months.

As he never taxes (geddit?) his brains with such trivia I ‘phoned the tax office, handed him the ‘phone to give his permission and to answer a couple of security questions, including his address, so that I could speak on his behalf.

The call centre operative was very efficient and assured me that this error would be corrected immediately, and I thanked her. That was easy.

“Before you go, can I check his address again please?” I repeated our address to her.
“That isn’t the address that I have on the screen”
“What address do you have on the screen?”
“I’m sorry, I am not able to tell you that”
“Sorry? But I don’t understand, all his correspondence from you comes to this address, how can you have a different address on the screen?”
“I’m sorry, I am not able to discuss that with you”
“Will you discuss it with my husband then?”
“No I’m not able to discuss it with him either”
“So, you have a different address that you are not allowed to divulge to us, but all his mail is coming to this address”
“Yes, but I will alter the address on the screen now”
“But that doesn’t make sense, how is the mail coming here if this isn’t the address you have?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t tell you”

I woke up this morning thinking, this just isn't right. They must be breaking some sort of data protection law by not divulging this information. Should I ring up and demand they give me the information or do I do what I increasingly seem to be doing nowadays – just go WHATEVER and start screaming at breakfast TV again! I decide to go the “whatever” route. So the bastards have won again. I feel a Deja-Vu stress headache coming on!

While this was going on my husband received a call from the Radiologist to say that his kidneys could not tolerate the chemo, so we should expect a call from the surgeon to arrange a consultation within the week. Excuse me, fuck, fuck, fuck. Sorry about that. Now I guess we have more weeks to wait for an operation date.

On a lighter note I received a long, long email from my lovely loony friend entitled:

ECONOMIC MODELS EXPLAINED WITH COWS - 2008 UPDATE

SOCIALISM
You have 2 cows. You give one to your neighbour.

COMMUNISM
You have 2 cows. The State takes both and gives you some milk

FASCISM
You have 2 cows. The State takes both and sells you some milk.

NAZISM
You have 2 cows. The State takes both and shoots you

BUREAUCRATISM
You have 2 cows. The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and then throws the milk away... (note from me - doesn't that sound scarily familiar?)


TO BE CONTINUED....................