Tuesday 29 August 2006

Not So Lazy Tuesday

Made a couple of phone calls this morning - sorting out Frodo's start of term at his school. He's repeating his reception year to see if this helps him cope better with school, and gives him a chance to catch up, so we weren't sure of his exact start date, or if he was to attend all day.

Also called the Tax Credits renewal line, to inform them of a couple of changes of circumstance. I knew that we hadn't done this when we should have done, and that any changes to our payments would only be backdated 3 months. The Scottish chap I was speaking to at the call centre started to berate me for not informing them of each change as it happened. That got me off onto a rant about how come the government is spending millions of pounds on computer systems, yet none of them can speak to each other and they rely on the public to act as the communications link between systems? Also I normally carry out these updates online, however the reason that I was calling is that the online system has been taken down because it isn't secure enough.

At this point he started to agree with me (perhaps he was wary of being monitored) and logged the changes. He did admit that it's more difficult for him to alter anything for the previous year (even though this is in the same financial year), as the system fires warning messages at him.

Spot of essential shopping, then I began sorting out the garage.

Will also make a start on the big paperwork sortout later tonight.

A good start I think - except that the whole family appears to be going down with a cold. Everyone is snuffling and sneezing except me, guess I'm next...

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