Anyone know a good lawyer?

 

Computers have had it in for me this last year. Computers in various government departments that is.

In the last twelve months I have been in turns: terminated, ended, miscoded, unrecognised, deleted, spat out and generally trampled upon by mega bytes and hard drives wielding their wireless muscle.

So it was no surprise to discover the Student Finance letter waiting for me on the table that had informed The Teenager: “Amount for your tuition fees: £0. Amount for your maintenance grant: £0.

I rang them up.

I gave them my code.

I went through their security checklist of questions.

Finally, she would speak to me.

“Hello,” she chirped brightly.

I’d explained how we’d previously been sent a letter from them saying that they could not do their sums because the financial information from someone called, ‘Sponsor Two’ was missing; and how on that occasion, when I had phoned to enquire, I’d discovered that ‘Sponsor Two’ was in fact code for ‘Me’.

I left out how I had twitched uncomfortably when I realised that women were being demoted to this second subservient slot, instead I repeated what had been said on that occasion. How I was told, “Don’t worry,” by a bored operative, after I’d explained that I had already sent in everything, and that all my paperwork had in fact already been returned together with an acknowledgement slip from them.

“All your paperwork will have been scanned but it will take two weeks for our computer to get it onto the system.”

“Is there anything else I need to do?” I’d asked at the time, whilst anxiously whilst visualising this computer. It was probably one of those early models: one that took up the space of ten rooms and worked using steam and valves; one no doubt likely powered by a depressed and dismal donkey yoked to a treadmill, whilst a bespectacled white-coated man peered at its flickering dials from time to time as he wrote something down on a clipboard. Yes, I could imagine this computer all right, and I knew then that all my paperwork would somehow get lost in its complex systems.

“Is there anything else I need to do?” I’d asked anxiously.

“No, just wait.” I was told.

“So how can I help?” this new more chirpier operative now asks.

I first enquired about my paperwork. “Is it all on the system?”

I’m expecting a ‘no’. I’m expecting to learn that I will have to send it all back again. That I'm right back at square one.

“Yes,” she says, surprising me. “It’s all here.” She cheerily tells me all that she can see. “I’m looking at your payslips and your building society details right now.”

I wince feeling terribly vulnerable and exposed.

“So what's caused the problem?” I ask.

“Ah,” she says, as if she has just peered into some mystic portal. “It’s Sponsor Two.”

But I'm wise to this jargon, “That's me," I declare. Foolishly, imagining with just a few clicks everything can now be put right.

“Ah,” she says, with a Mystic Meg voice. She then runs through a whole new series of questions, ending with, “We need evidence.”

“For what?”

“That you are single.”

“Single?”

“Yes.”

“Single?”

“Yes.”

I wonder how I can provide such evidence. I think of our two toothbrushes: the Teenager’s and mine side-by-side in the bathroom and wonder if that would do.

“Would you like to visit?” I offer.

“Oh no,” she laughs. “Nothing like that. We just need a letter from a lawyer to say you are single.”

“A lawyer?”

I’m gasping now.

“Or a council tax letter stating single person occupancy for the year 2008 to 2009.”

My heart sinks. I know I have recently gone through all my paperwork whilst trying to sort out a previous bureaucratic muddle and that I will have in all likelihood burnt it. I tell her.

“Then you’ll need a letter from a lawyer,” she sings happily.

“And would I have been told me this if I hadn’t telephoned?” I ask. “This is the first I’ve heard about having to prove that I am single in order to get student finance for The Teenager.”

“You should have been told when you last telephoned,” she trills merrily.

I think back to that time.

Yes, that would have been well before my funeral pyre of old ‘useless’ out of date papers: far too easy.

“You’ll need a lawyer,” she trills, in an impatient ‘is that all’ sort of voice.

I wonder how lawyers set about such work and why their word should have more weight than mine. How do they investigate such claims?

“And then you’ll need to send in a covering letter too,” she throws in as an afterthought; leaving me to wonder if such a requirement is just something that relates specifically to me and no one else. Something dreamt up by a web of computer systems to torment me even further.

I put the phone down.

I ferret once again through all my papers. Most of my documents are stapled and date-stamped by all the different government departments who have already scrutinised them this year.

And yes, of course the paper I need is missing!

I’m going to have to find a lawyer!

I try one last wildcard idea. I ring the county council.

The woman I speak to is already half-machine. I’m not allowed to finish a sentence before I get:

“You are not entitled to…”

or

“Your son is over nineteen, you’ll have to pay….”

“You are now in a multiple occupancy…”

I re-explain again. Then I try a second attempt and I begin again. It is when I patiently try again a third time that she actually begins to listen. All I want is a copy of my 2008-2009 Council Tax demand bill, surely your computer still has a record of it.

But I still can’t get through to her. She can not understand what I want. She can not understand why I want it. I’m obviously the first to ask. She falls back on her learnt mantra:

“You are not entitled to…”

“Your son is over nineteen, you have to pay….”

“You are now in multiple occupancy…”

Then as if some glimmer of her humanness resurfaces there is a breakthrough “2009 -2010?” she offers.

“No,” I reply amazed at this glimmer of hope, “The previous year, 2008-2009.”

“Okay,” she says. “I’ll send that to you.”

It’s as if there is a brief moment of enlightenment and understanding. I’m elated.

But will she? Will a computer actually help me? Will she be allowed to? Or will some overseer stop her by saying, “You can’t print that!”

Or even more likely will that computer suddenly decide, if it does manage to send me such a letter, that I now once again owe pounds for that year plus interest?

Watch this space.

Anyone know a good lawyer?