Tyranny

[blacksailedtraders]

The council goons haven't bothered to send a DHP ( Discretionary Housing Payment) form to me this year. it has usually arrived automatically in february, giving enough time for me to fill it in send it back and for it to be processed. I only realised yesterday when I noticed some paperwork. Paperwork that had been left out over a year ago to explicitly remind me of this bureaucratic nightmare. I forget everything.

I can think of a couple of reasons for the form not being sent;

- The council (Tory) aren't going to cover the bedroom tax charge this year and make me pay. (£600-£700 from my soon to be reassesssed ESA, DLA)

-The council have moved the priority away from DHPs for bedroom tax to HB or the mess the government has imposed on local authorities with some slight of hand chicanery with something called LHA (Local Housing Allowance) which is all meaningless to me.

They could also be about to charge me with a percentage of HB. I'll find out in the days to come.

I hate the council. They used to help me. Now they're pulling the rug from under me bit by bit.

First the wardens were sacked as the council dropped supported housing. Then I have to pay for a new support element which is nowhere near as good as it was. Now hanging over my head is the prospect of shelling out for a poxy tiny room that I use as a physio n storage room. (my gym ball burst). It has never been used as a bedroom but they don't care. And no one else will give a damn about, a new & harder approach to death-by-austerity for the disabled because the distraction, the government friendly right wing media has employed, with IDS v Cameron v EU etc. is taking the lime light.

I have to mount my scooter now and travel 200 yards to the community room and pick up my laundry. My index finger smells of garlic. Not sure why. I live inside my mind. My mind is a bit broken. i mostly live in constant worry, anxiety and fear since the Tory gov imposed all this fascist cruelty in 2010...., Even though to talk to I must seem quite composed or calm, if not a little flakey and spaced out/forgetful. Tim nice but dim ?

end

[Elenor3]

What a terrible worry for you. Unfortunately this is happening all over the country. If you haven't already done so, go along to see your local councillor at one of their surgeries , and maybe citizens advice as well? Good luck x

[blacksailedtraders in reply to Elenor3]

I spoke with CAB a few years ago and will have to contact them again soon.

[fuzzyhead]

I live inside my mind too...any interaction with people outside of my world is fleeting, and they stop existing as soon as my back is turned! Grasp of reality is not consistent...sometimes I (perhaps melodramatically) imagine living this way is how being put into isolation in prison must feel!

Now, I've recovered from my injury miraculously over the past 25 years and I have a family and a career and most of the stuff 'normal' people have, but I think my experience of those things is completely different to non-injured folk...each one is in its own compartmentalised section of my brain and when I'm dealing with one thing, everything else is forgotten. And sometimes I feel a surreal sort of disconnect from the people and events going on around me.

Does that make sense to you?

[blacksailedtraders in reply to fuzzyhead]

[" when I'm dealing with one thing, everything else is forgotten."]

Although my mind is constantly flitting from one thing to another, even when trying to concentrate, only one thing at a time can be dealt with. And yes as you say, everything else will be forgotten.

Also when dealing with people 'outside of my world' is quickly forgotten. Although over the years I've found there are no hard and fast rules to how my mind operates with memories. Only that my memory can not be trusted to erm, remember, and forgetting short-term or working-memory stuff is guaranteed. But not all the time.

That reads like the ramblings of someone who forgets what their writing while simultaneously contradicting them self. Excellent. My cunning plan.........nope, I was about to pen something witty and amusing but it's gone, bzzzt.

I've often thought of my life since brain injury as having been sent to solitary confinement with a life sentence.

I've been in another room peeking at next doors bird table. A fat pigeon was gorging itself until it clocked me and did a runner.

A neuro psychologist once said "The rest of your life will be a form of rehabilitation." or words to that effect said in a non official, conversational capacity. I think coffee was involved.

["I feel a surreal sort of disconnect from the people and events going on around me.

Does that make sense to you?"]

Yes, and it can make me feel so very isolated from everyone and everything else.

[Elenor3 in reply to fuzzyhead]

I'm afraid so makes perfect sense. Grasshopper mind is not something I was familiar with until recently. So now a million jobs get started ar once and none get finished. Now that I've been out socially a couple of times, I realise I'm not like everyone else, not part of 'the gang' so to speak. But maybe I never was....either way it's very different indeed.