BGF rage

I'd probably be fine at the moment with a bit more fucking around from some gov dept to jump through more hoops, but not from a private one set up specifically to help people with HIV. They've helped me a bloody lot over the years, but on this occasion they fucked up. I'm just too stressed out with all this shit at the moment to have some major hissy fit about it, other than this present blog rave I suppose. After all the bullshit of late trying to jump through hoops that you can't because some gov dept has fucked up, then this happened today at the Bobby Goldsmith Foundation. Which BTW is a private charity even though it recieves gov funding.

The other day when I rang the bloke on the phone about the electricity bill and getting help for it, just said to print out the latest Centrelink income statement and the latest bank account info. OK, that was fine. So I printed out the Centrelink income statement after spending about ten minutes trying to log into Centrelink to do it (long story, forgot my password, answering secret questions, bla..... I mean Centrelink isn't a fascinating site that I regularly log on to). There was a page two of it with info about what Centrelink thought was my income and assets which was two years out of date. I just chucked it as irrelevant. The bank statement I just printed out the last page of transactions with the balance. I expect from what I've been told on the phone that all the paperwork is in order. 

So I go in there today with the requested paperwork. First horror for them is that I don't have page two of the Centrelink income statement! Oh the humanity! Next gasp is that I only have the last page of my bank account and they need two months worth of transactions. WTF? Even Centrelink is fine with a bank machine statement as proof of bank account balances. Now these blokes want an entire two months of transaction history? Oh FFS!

So I'm standing there at the counter feeling very irate. Like it's a hassle but not a problem to produce all this shit from the PC, but why the fuck did they not tell me I needed all of that? Then let me turn up in person only to say what I had wasn't enough? Told the guy behind the counter (as the $guru came out and said hello to me) that this "was like bloody Centrelink! WTF do you have to do to prove you're poor?"

The $guru laughed, probably thought "he hasn't changed", and the counter guy looked frustrated at it all. Who's making up some of these bloody rules then? I have to go in tomorrow for an appt for "intake" even though I've been a client for years.

So I proceeded home via the chemist for 3 prescriptions, and went home to make some kind of sarcastic statement to produce for them tomorrow as proof of both my and David's poverty. A bit of a hissy fit at the never ending bullshit they come out with. The never ending hoops. Luckily the printer had lots of ink. 

I started with the Centrelink Income Statement as a warm up, as it was only two pages and the PDF was still on David's desktop. 

I then proceeded to the next very important thing they asked for; the last two months of transactions on my account. As I've stopped using cash and go around with this magic beeping Paypass card that magically takes the exact money out of my account even for transactions less than $10, there are rather a lot of transactions in the last two months. Eight pages to be exact. Very satisfying. 

I then thought BGF might have some drama about Centrelink's two year old assertion of my wealth, that included my work redundancy of $38,000 (which Centrelink made me live off for a year) and another $17,000 or so that was sitting in the account as the final payment on a debt, taken out of my superannuation after a 9 month bullshit Canberra gov episode to do it. I noticed on the Centrelink income statement that they had me down as having about $60,000 in the bank and getting interest income on it. WTF? After making me live off it? Never the less, it was a major opportunity.

I then printed out the entire history of the ING account I put all that money into. Yes, every single transaction, from the first deposit to the current $1 in it. That one wasn't too printer friendly and I ended up having to nurse it through, but it came out at ten pages. Excellent!

Then I considered that they might have some drama about David's earnings, so I printed out his transactions back to May. Only two pages as he's had no money in there for months now. Not a lot of pages but a welcome addition.

So what's that then? A grand total of 22 fuckin pages of proof. Lovely :)