Anxious times

I'm not sure who of us is in a worse state of anxiety, PD or me. We both face medicals for our benefits. His is tomorrow for his Incapacity Benefit; mine is next week for my Disability Living Allowance.

PD sees his problem lies in the fact that his main reason for being unable to work is his mental health, the sort of thing someone not trained in that field can so easily not notice, or at least not realise the devastating effect it can have on your working capability. Or even worse they think you should just buck up. We try to reassure him that he's passed in the past, & now he also has physical problems which can only help his case. But, like me, he reads the news & wonders how many people are going to be told that they can perfectly well work when they can't, just to save the government money. He's becoming a wreck. At least his CPN (Community Psychiatric Nurse) is giving him a letter, confirming his inability to work, to hand over at the medical. He also has a letter giving him a hospital appointment soon for his physical problems.

Our efforts to support PD are a bit half-hearted due to my own anxiety over my medical. I fear my benefits are going to be reduced, again not because I don't think I'm not entitled to them. I dread the fight to get them reinstated but fear it will have to be undertaken. For all the Fox tries to tell me I shouldn't have any problem, especially as my health has only deteriorated, I'm not convinced. I'm not really convinced he believes it himself.

In fact that's the real iniquity of the situation. Both of us wish we could be well enough to work, to earn a living, not to have to depend upon the state to have enough to live on. But, unfortunately wishing & making it a reality are not the same thing.

In both cases the sheer pressure involved is not doing either of our health much good. There must surely be a better way of validating applications than this regular ordeal.

The situation wasn't helped yesterday when the Fox & I heard one of our investments had gone belly up. Admittedly we hadn't expected to make much on it but we had hoped it would at least do some good. It was an ISA invested in some farms in Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world. We'd hoped we could have the satisfaction of feeling we'd helped to provide a source of income & food to improve the lives of many people. Now we hear the company has gone bankrupt. We are told we will get all our capital back eventually, but it won't be until 2015 & there will be just that capital. That means that probably, due to inflation, by 2015 the buying power will be less. And what is more those families will continue to starve.