50/52 2017

Week 50
11 - 17 December

The first day of proper snow, Jamie hated it, largely because it was still falling and getting in his face. On the second day, he was adamant that he Did Not Want to go out.

So, my PA offered a Plan. She would go outside and play right in front of the window and attract his attention. I would wait for him to get interested and then wrestle the snowsuit onto him. Then she would open the door and he'd be able to simultaneously break free from me and get a better look at what she was doing and wouldn't realise he'd gone out in the snow until he was out in the snow.



It worked like a charm and he had a great time.

Bonus video footage:

49/52 2017

Week 49
04 - 10 December



Back in the window for this week's picture. The day this photo was taken was the first time Jamie had seen snow, for all it was at the "light dusting of icing sugar" level. He's beginning to draw connections with various books but he's quite fascinated by the way his familiar window views have changed over the last couple of months.

I got him the festive window gels. We don't have much of a tree going on this year - no space to put it! - but we've got decorations on the walls and shelves, and when I saw these window accessories I knew he'd love them. He doesn't like to touch them with his own fingers but he carefully shows me where to place each one, and if one comes off he wants it right back where it was. For £2.50/pack they're surviving much better than I expected.

Keeping Warm

I just got my blog stats and found that a lot of people have been turning up here looking for information about help with heating bills.

So, I thought I'd do a recap with information and useful links double-checked for 2010.

There are two types of help with winter heating. One is the Winter Fuel Allowance, the other is the Cold Weather Payment.

The Winter Fuel Allowance is a one-off tax free payment of between £250 and £400 per household. It is paid to everybody over the age of 60 who is normally resident in the UK. It is not means-tested and payment is automatic (Peter Stringfellow got some cheap headlines by offering to give his back). Recipients don't even have to be living in the UK during the winter - it will still be paid automatically even if the recipient is a millionaire who decides to go on an extended holiday in warmer climes for the next few months.

Winter Fuel Allowance is NOT paid to anybody under the age of 60 in any circumstances.

The Cold Weather Payment is a bit more complicated. It is a payment of £25 paid out to eligible people if there is a "period of very cold weather", which is defined as when the local temperature is recorded as below 0 degrees Celsius for seven consecutive days.

If there are six days where the temperature is below freezing, and then one day where it creeps up to one or two degrees above, and then another six days of freezing - no payment will be made. People do not need extra heating in this circumstance as this is not considered by the government to be a period of very cold weather.

You can find out whether the government thinks your local weather has been Very Cold by using this handy DirectGov tool. Just type in your postcode and then click on the orange "Submit" button that is down and to the right.

My postcode is deemed to have had one period of Very Cold Weather during November. However I'm not eligible for any payment. You see, eligibility is rather more complicated as well.

The over-60s on pension credit get it, on top of their Winter Fuel Allowance. From there on in, it's breadline only. People on Income Support or Income-based Jobseeker's Allowance may be eligible if they also have a disability or pension premium, a disabled child, or a child under five years old. It is also available to most disabled people on Income-based Employment Support Allowance.

It is NOT paid to people on contributions-based benefits, nor is it paid to people on benefits like Disability Living Allowance or Working Tax Credits of any kind, unless they are also on those named income-based benefits and they meet the additional conditions described above.

Both types of payment are automatic - if you are eligible for it, it will be paid. The unfortunate news is that unless you're over 60, you're probably not eligible for anything.

Winter Heating

As some of you may have noticed, it's been rather chilly in the UK lately. At the risk of stating the obvious, this has an impact on people who can't keep themselves warm properly. There are all sorts of reasons why a person might have trouble keeping warm, but the main ones are connected to age or illness. For instance, there are conditions and medications that play havoc with your 'internal thermostat', there's the issue of poor circulation, there's the issue of being unable to move about enough to adequately boost your circulation, and of course there's the issue of poverty, which disproportionately affects elderly and disabled people.

Never fear, the BBC reassured us:

... the government said it would be making cold winter payments because temperatures had been low enough for vulnerable people to qualify... ...Minister Helen Goodman said: "The payments are automatic so everyone entitled will get them and should not worry about turning up their heating."

But who is entitled?

Well, there's two different payments. The first is the Winter Fuel Allowance. This is for all UK residents over the age of 60 and is made every winter. It is automatically paid for anyone on a state pension or pension credit, other people who are old enough can apply for it separately regardless of wealth. The payment is between £125 and £400 per person depending on your exact age and how many people are in your household, and has an effective minimum of £250 per household.

The second is the Cold Weather Payment. This is more complicated. More people can get it. There's the pensioners (again, and on top of the Winter Fuel Allowance already recieved). Then there's people on Income Support, Jobseekers' Allowance or ESA who also have a child under five, or a pension or disability premium added to their basic eligibility.

However instead of being paid every winter, it is only paid when there has been a "period of extreme cold weather", defined as seven consecutive days on which the average daily temperature at your postcode's weather station was zero or below. If this happens, a payment of £25 is added to your benefit for each seven-day period.

If there are six days where the temperature is below freezing, and then one day where it creeps up to one or two degrees above, and then another six days of freezing - no payment. You do not need extra heating in this circumstance.

If your child over five is sent home from school, and you have to heat the house during the day for their sake - no payment. You do not need extra heating in this circumstance.

If you are disabled in a way that affects your body's ability to keep warm, but instead of being at home and claiming benefit, you are working from home (either permanently, or because you cannot get into your workplace in the snow) - no payment. You do not need extra heating in this circumstance.

Today Helen Goodman, the Minister for Work and Pensions, was supposed to answer questions in a No 10 webchat. This was keenly followed over on Ouch! and Twitter and unsurprisingly we were all left disappointed. Polite, well-typed and specific policy questions like "What is the specific reason for Winter Fuel Payments not being available to the most vulnerable disabled people as well as pensioners, please?" were ignored in favour of the type of questions that are already very easily answered with a quick search of DirectGov, the type of questions that allowed the Minister to promote the Warm Front Scheme, or questions about individual circumstances such as this gem:

melita:
hi this Cold Weather Payment is it for everyone as on the directgov web page its as if u have kids under 5 in witch i have 2 kids under 5 so would that mean i get the Cold Weather Payment x

Helen replies:
Melita,
If you are on Income Support and you have a child under 5 years old, you will get a Cold Weather Payment. The same applies if you are on income based Jobseekers Allowance, with a child under 5.

Quite how people like "melita" have the capacity to find out about, submit questions to, and watch a government webcast, yet were unable to contact their local Jobcentres to check their specific eligibility, is beyond me.

Disabled people were told that they already get Disability Living Allowance (DLA) to pay for increased heating costs. It's quite astounding the amount of shortfall that DLA is meant to cover. As Lisy put it:

We're only granted DLA for "care" and "mobility". There's no "heating component" of DLA or an "any other costs" component of DLA. Please explain how we're supposed to pay for heating if all our Mobility component is taken by Motability and all our care component is taken by Social Services?

Another question there that, unsurprisingly, the Minister chose to not answer.

Keeping warm

So, I'm at home all day now, more or less every day. The thing I currently miss most about work is that it was warm. The weather has turned quite chilly - as one might reasonably expect, what with it being nearly December - and so it's a good time for those of us who maybe can't quite move around enough to keep ourselves warm to remind ourselves of the current advice in the form of the Keep Warm Keep Well campaign.

Okay, so as usual there's ample opportunity to snigger at the naivety of those who wrote it, for example the way they think that despite the level of poverty with which many elderly and disabled people live, we'll all have central heating with a thermostat that works. It's also very easy to get angry about the failings of the Warm Front grants.

Nevertheless there's a lot of good tips and advice in there but some of it does seem a bit... mutually exclusive. For instance:

"Fit draught-proofing to seal any gaps around windows and doors."
"Remember to close curtains and shut doors to keep heat in the rooms you use most."
does seem to clash a bit with:
"If you use a fire or heater in your bedroom at night, always keep a window and door open."
"Keep your home well ventilated."

Am I meant to be sealing myself in, or trying to get a breeze coming through? I'm just not sure any more.

On balance I've opted for sealing myself in - it's warmer that way, and there are worse ways to go than carbon monoxide poisoning*, where from what I understand you feel drunk and then you fall asleep, which is a reasonable summary of my day to day life anyway.

It's a good tip about keeping the blinds or curtains closed, and it makes a noticeable difference. However when you're stuck alone in the house all day, even if you don't have depression or SAD, it's all too easy for your mood to plummet, so I'm making a point of spending at least a couple of hours sitting by the window with the blinds open trying to enjoy what natural light there is.

It's also a good tip about having plenty of hot drinks, although again, not without drawbacks. I know I'm not the only disabled person who, when having a painful day, doesn't drink as much as she should, in order to minimise the number of excruciating climbs up and down Mount Staircase just to pay a visit.

So I've formulated my own advice. Ready?

If you can, spend as much time as possible out of the house and in a place where someone else pays the heating bill.

This slightly contradicts the official advice about not going out unless absolutely necessary, depending on whether you read it as "don't leave the house" or merely "don't spend time hanging around outdoors". And of course for many of us it's impossible - or at the very least, the cost of taxis would outweigh the cost of properly heating our homes. But if it's in any way an option, my inexpert advice would be to do it. Spend an afternoon in the library, sitting by a window on the sunnier side of the building. Go to a shopping mall and sit under the skylight watching the world go by. If possible, find some volunteer work, then there's free tea and coffee too. Join in with a free course at the Community Centre even if it's a topic that doesn't raise your interest. See people, get sunlight, get your money's worth from your council tax, because there are few more frustrating ways of spending a day than cooped up indoors with the curtains closed, shivering.

* I am a very fortunate disabled person who lives in a centrally heated house with reasonably-sized rooms. I am not sealing myself into a tiny bedsit flat with a gas fire, so please do not worry - or at least, not about me...

On being a bear with a sore head

"And the angel clothéd all in white opened the Iron Book, and a fifth rider appeared in a chariot of burning ice, and there was a snapping of laws and a breaking of bonds and the multitude cried "Oh God, we're in trouble now!"
Book Of Om, Prophecies of Tobrun: Chapter 2, verse 7.
From the first edition (since rescinded).*

Oh yes, I am not the bunny who is happy today. I've grouched in the morning and I've grouched in the evening and I daresay I'll grouch at suppertime too for good measure. I am grouchy to the left and grouchy to the right and grouchy everywhere in between. Fear my grouchiness.

The reason for the Grouch is the Pain and the reason for the Pain is the Cold and the Snow. I don't do well with cold and snow. Every muscle is tightened, every joint is throbbing with white-hot pain. Dealing with the pain makes me exhausted and being exhausted makes it more difficult to deal with the pain. Always and in everything this sodding pain as a consistent acid-laced thread and I have had ENOUGH.

During the course of today I have had far too many immediate and disproportionate mental responses to the tiniest of transgressions. Generally it has involved a fervent wish for something extremely uncomfortable to be shoved in a distinctly unpleasant orifice belonging to whichever unfortunate mortal has been foolish enough to cross my path.

I think any minute now I may cross that line between 'being a bit prickly' and 'being a bit of a prick'. So I'm typing up this blogpost to try and avoid doing that in public or to someone who doesn't deserve it.

Thank you for your patience.



* as detailed in Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett.

Let It Snow

... but, if it's going to snow, could it at least have the courtesy to do it properly?

Like many other people with chronic illnesses, my condition is affected by the weather. Snow in particular poses a problem, the combination of low pressure and low temperature giving me a double whammy of Bad.

So when we had an hour or so of snowfall in the late afternoon/early evening of Friday, I was practically a human barometer. I started work feeling my normal self, but at about 4pm I started feeling rotten and shortly after 5pm I was curled up on the floor flinching from the light and trying not to be sick.

Thing is. I would never go so far as to wish it didn't snow. Snow is fun for lots of people and it looks pretty, too. Even if you don't want to go out in it at all, there's a lot of satisfaction to be had in curling up on the sofa with a thick jumper, a hot water bottle and a steaming mug of hot chocolate, gazing out of the window and thinking "ooh, I'm glad I'm not out in that."

That's not what we got on Friday though. We just got big fluffy flakes that melted almost as soon as they'd landed. What's the point in that? Proper snow or none at all, that's what I say. None of these half-measures.

In other news, it's been hard to miss the story about the investment banker David Freud who spent three weeks examining the UK welfare system and published a report which was "highly influential" on new reforms to the system. These reforms have been outlined by James Purnell, a man who has been Work and Pensions secretary for all of a week. Perhaps the reforms are more substantially the work of the previous Work and Pensions secretary... one Mr Peter Hain, who left the position without giving notice, and only did the job part-time anyway, between his other occupations of being the Welsh secretary, and trying to persuade everyone that his failure to disclose donations (for his failed attempt to become deputy leader of the Labour Party) WAS due to incompetence, rather than wilful fraud.

Bearing those track-records in mind, it's hardly surprising that Mr Freud's report contains a disturbing amount of inaccurate information, as well as a certain amount of the 'I don't believe it so it can't possibly be true' philosophy (why is it so unthinkable that at any given point, 500,000 (about 2%) of the 25 million people under 35 in this country are incapacitated in some way?).

I don't want to bang on about this one today - most of my opinion on the demonisation of Incapacity Benefit claimants in the media and their use as a political football can be found in this post - but really, this guy is incredible. Let's just take one example:

"He told the Daily Telegraph it was "ludicrous" medical checks were carried out by a claimant's own GP," because "they're frightened of legal action."

Well, yes, it would be, if this were the case, which it isn't.

A claimant's own GP IS required to fill out a report on a claimant, on the basis that they are likely to be at the centre of a claimant's medical treatment. However, reports are also requested from: the claimant themselves; other medical professionals treating the claimant; and from the "person who knows the claimant best" which could be a carer or friend or relative. An independent medical professional employed by the DWP decides if all the various reports support each other, and quite often, the claimant is then required to travel to another town in order to attend an appointment with an independent DWP doctor who makes yet another report. The whole lot then passes to a panel of bureaucrats who make a decision on whether benefit should be awarded. I cannot spot anywhere in this process which allows for legal action to be taken against the GP unless they were to knowingly provide inaccurate medical information.

If the esteemed *anker has ANY evidence to back up his belief that there are 185,000 claimants working illegally, and a further 1.5 million claiming fraudulently, then he owes it to all of us to pass that information on to the National Benefit Fraud Hotline, either online or by calling 0800 854 440.

Simply making life even more difficult for people trying to cope with a long-term illness is not going to help anybody.

PS, I'm feeling physically rubbish, but in myself, I've perked up a lot in the last couple of days. Not quite as nauseatingly happy as I was a couple of weeks ago, but I'm working on it.