Tag Archives: lawyers

Here We Go Again

11 Replies

Nasturtiums Wilford Mencap Gardens

A few days ago I told you that the solicitor wanted more documents. Well, today she excelled herself. After the 18 day delay, she now leapt into action within hours, to deny that she had ever had copies of my bank statements. I, of course, have no proof one way or the other, though I do know that if the boot were on the other foot there are laws to say when a communication is delivered, even when it hasn’t. This is part of the unlevel playing field on which we operate. What she can’t deny is that she received the other email I sent that day, and that email mentioned the statements being sent. Why she then left it for 18 days when she knows we are on a deadline, I don’t know. You would have thought she would have followed up a lot sooner. As it was, I had to prompt her.

Maple Leaves

However, even better, having had my bank statements, which show exactly what she said she wanted to see, she now needs more information. It seems that she finds the presence of a regular, monthly, modest payment to need explanation.

I get a regular payment every four weeks too. That one is provided by an organisation that is known to sell arms to dictators, isn’t keen on freedom of speech, and is headed up by a lawyer with a love of free gifts. (Do you remember that I had to sign a form to show I wasn’t likely to be taking bribes?) One of the previous heads was even worse. But it seems it’s OK for me to take my pension off the government. It’s my work pension that appears suspicious. Because that’s what it is – past retirement age + regular modest monthly payments = pension to me, you and most people. To a lawyer, it seems suspicious. Of course, if you were looking to increase your billable minutes on this job, you’d find everything suspicious.

OFuchsias

Well, I can’t show her up-to-date pension documents as they are all lost in a box somewhere. I’m not exactly sure where. She can see the 2023 letters, as they were still in Julia’s filing cabinet. The current ones are in a folder, in a box, in a pile, in a bungalow, in a city far, far away . . .

Let’s see what tomorrow brings.

I looked for pictures of vampires and leeches but had to make do with these..

New Experience

16 Replies

Tea in Stoke on Trent

I really don’t like lawyers. This stems from a number of causes but I will cite one that I find irksome before I go on to discuss the main topic. In the coin trade, you usually run into lawyers when they are getting valuations for probate. At hat point they want you to use your years of experience to put a value on things for them. They will be charging their client approximately £200 an hour for doing this and they want to pay us nothing. I have said many times that we should either charge or refuse top do the work but the owner always takes the view we might be able to buy the stuff later. However, we could probably still do that, and don’t need to sell ourselves cheap.

My solicitor, passed on by my sister, is charging me over £1,000 to do the conveyancing. I know someone who did conveyancing for a solicitor when he was a 16-year-old school leaver. It’s not difficult, but the mystique that surrounds the legal profession means we gladly pay them huge amounts of money for simple jobs, then thank them for making our eyes water with their scale of fees. When looking up average fees I find they suggest my job should cost £400-800. Someone else is advertising low cost conveyancing for £199. That will really be about £249 as they are probably quoting without the VAT.

Mooring ring

I note from the email sent to me today that the solicitor I thought was my solicitor is being supervised by someone else, but has, in any case, just passed me on to a new member of staff , who only works part time. They may not even be a solicitor. This feels a little like going into an operating theatre and watching one of the catering staff sharpen a big knife while reading “Brain Surgery for Dummies“.

Anyway, today we had the big identity kerfuffle. Having already provided six months bank statements and answered a number of intrusive questions about my finances, then filled in a form to say I was not corrupt and various other bits and pieces, I now have to prove I am who I say I am. Bear in mind I’m buying half a house off my sister. We were executors (for which we had to prove our identity) and we were residuary legatees, for which we had to prove our identities. This was all with the same solicitor so they know who I am, but they still (they claim) need to charge me for checking again.

A Pensioner

And that was how I had the novel experience of downloading an “app”. They all the rage these days, though they are anathema to a man like me who believes that the easiest way of avoiding internet fraud is to avoid doing financial and identity related things on the internet. However, we are anxious to get the sale completed so I went ahead with it.

If you leave out the discussion of why I have to prove my identity again, why I’m not allowed to spend my own money without restriction (remember that it has all gone through a bank account where I had to go through all this nonsense just to be able to give a bank my money to look after), the system was still ludicrous – three examples – it couldn’t “see” my driving license photo, it offered a bank statement as an example of acceptable documentation (but didn’t have it as a category later in the process) and some of the drop-down menus obscured things I needed to see. To make it worse, it also manages to adopt a patronising tone, and I don’t believe that these measures would defeat anyone but the stupidest of criminals. I could very easily have two bank accounts and, by just using one, pass all their tests. I could also run a nail bar or barber’s shop, as these are both popular ways to launder money, I’m told.

Vine Leaves in October

As usual, criminals prosper and honest citizens are made to suffer. A bit like Government Tax Policy – multi-nationals escape paying taxes, rich people employ expensive lawyers to avoid tax, politicians take gifts with an embarrassing lack of dignity. Meanwhile, pensioners have had their winter fuel allowance scrapped, which is actually more cunning than it sounds. Cut the heating, kill the pensioner. That way you save on paying pensions and financing care for the elderly too.

Photos for today are just pot luck – I was going to search for pictures of leeches, vampires an grave robbers but in the end I have done 750 words and I need to get on.

Whitby graveyard OK, it’s a vampire reference – I couldn’t resist.

Childhood Reading and Other Stories

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A brief surge of activity and some hasty rewriting sees me with nine poems to send off. They were almost ready, they just needed editing and the haiku/tanka adding. That takes me as long, or longer, than writing and editing the prose sections. Haiku, as I have said before, are slippery and elusive. Tanka are easier as they have more words and fewer rules. Here’s another link – to Haibun this time.

In the last post I forgot to mention two things. One was the yell of raucous laughter that escaped me when a serious, rotund and shiny youth (a trainee lawyer) spoke about a class action he was initiating against landlords. Julia thought I was in pain, but I was merely laughing at his description of allowing landlords to do certain things in relation to insuring flats. He described the situation as like putting Dracula in charge of a blood bank. Vivid and amusing in itself, but doubly so when uttered by a well-fed, junior lawyer who clearly lacks self-awareness and does not realise how the general public views lawyers and their bills.

As Burns said:

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!

I’ll leave you to translate that for yourselves.

You may also like to look up this man, who was also a Scottish poet and is probably the second best writer to come from Langholm. This man is, of course, the best.

I said “two things” a few lines back, but I’ve forgotten the second one. This sort of thing happens all the time.

Ah! The books. I found them when I was clearing out. They are surplus to my requirements. I won’t read them again, they aren’t in collectable condition and, although they are part of the foundations of my reading, I am not particularly fond of them. I also found a number of Biggles books and a set of the Chronicles of Narnia. Those, I will keep.

Same Old . . .

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I’ve been looking into all this security and stuff that goes on these days when you try to give some of your own money to your children.

First, Number One Son was told he was on a list of people with suspected terrorist links. This was  bit of surprise as he couldn’t remember any terrorist links. However, it wasn’t a problem, as all he needed to do was write and sign a note saying that it wasn’t him, just someone with the same name. That’s a really robust anti-terrorist system isn’t it? I said that when the solicitor submits the bill he should send it back with a note saying it wasn’t him.

Now I have been sorted out by the use of technology. I’m told I appear on  register of bankruptcies and need to address this problem. I have asked why I need to do anything, as it clearly isn’t me, just a coincidence of a couple of parts of my name with that of someone else. I’ve already covered that. Just to keep things going, I have signed the obligatory letter saying it isn’t me, though it did take three attempts for them to send me the correct link. I actually hate myself for doing it, but I have better things to do with my time. Roughing out an official letter of complaint for one thing.

It’s a heaven-sent opportunity for lawyers – some vague guidance from government and the liberty to make things up as they go along. There is clearly no law enforcement benefit involved, (as the “it isn’t me” letters show) just a whole new industry for lawyers, which involves creating work for me, ticking a few boxes and submitting a bill.

The Power of the Lawyer is in the Uncertainty of the Law.

Jeremy Bentham.

Henry VI, Part 2.

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It’s soup made from tinned tomatoes tonight, my new go-to soup.  Quick, cheap and tasty, what more could you want? After a lunch of junk food it seemed the sensible thing to do. Julia’s teeth are now positively gleaming and her eyes are 100% tested so she’s good for another year. And me, I’m almost porous. I have so many holes in my arms I could almost be a colander.

I would tell you about everything I’ve done this afternoon, but I didn’t really do anything.  Several TV programmes and some snoring doesn’t constitute activity.

Silver Britannia coin

My copy birth certificate came through yesterday – it was a bit of a shock, as it came in an official brown envelope with a red/pink covering letter. For a moment, it looked very threatening. I need it for proof of my ID when claiming my private pension.  It’s not a very onerous form of identification as it’s a available to anyone who wants it. Fortunately, I don’t suppose their are many people looking for a moderate pension. It’s a nice surprise for someone who wasn’t expecting much, but it’s not going to keep a fraudster supplied with much more than a few groceries.

I’ve also fixed up help with proving my identity for the solicitors involved in Number One Son’s house purchase. It seems that because I have chosen to give a member of my own family some money to help with a house deposit I have yo have my morals checked. Yes, they want to check that I haven’t made my money from crime or terrorism and check that I’m moral enough to give some of my own money to my own son. Part of this is proving my identity. It’s not enough that I have a phot driving license with my name and address on it, I have to have further proof of my address. I’ve been on the electoral register here for the last thirty four years and have  voted at every election but that isn’t enough either. I have to have my ID signed and verified by one of a number of people, including a medical professional, a financial adviser or a minister of religion.

So, if Dr Crippen, Harold Shipman or Josef Mengele was available, hey could vouch for me. So could a financial adviser, if they were to take time off from embezzlement and advising on how to avoid tax and launder money. There is no note on which religions qualify to sign – passport  regulations stipulate “recognised religion, including Scientology” for their needs but the solicitor, who has clearly formed this list with little thought, seems happy to accept the Universal Life Church and Jedi.

Silver Britannia coin

In other words, the ID requirements are a mockery and unlikely to cause problems to any half-intelligent criminal. The fact that they do seem technically demanding to a solicitor merely reinforces my long-standing prejudice against the legal profession. You have to have a degree to become a qualified legal professional, a move they took some years ago, but this merely cuts out the lower classes, and does not prove that the holder of the degree is able to think, merely to remember a mass of facts, which they then trot out at some appropriate time. The judge, who, to be fair, is usually a lawyer of great intellect, then sorts the facts out and renders a verdict.

In my next post I will continue with this theme. I have enough material for at least another 500 words.

Is the title making sense yet? Henry VI, Part 2.

“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers”

Silver Britannia coin

Day131

6 Replies

Somebody just won the £184,000,000 lottery prize I was hoping for. I hope they will be very happy. I know I would be. Yes, there will be problems with being so rich, but I’m sure most of us would be happy to put up with them.

Most of the problems could be solved by having an accountant and a butler, and with that sort of money you should have no problem recruiting staff.

I just searched for a link to that to check my facts and see that Adidas had an advert for a sports bra banned because it shows pictures of naked breasts. I had to search for an example of the advert because most of the stories seem afraid to use it in an unblurred fashion. This blogging stuff is hard work, but I am prepared to do it for my readers.

As a result, I am able to report that I don’t find the  poster objectifies women, causes me any offence, or makes me want to buy a sports bra. It does make me think that while I have been frittering my time away, I have missed out on a worthwhile career.

On the other hand, despite frittering my life away, it could have been worse. I could have been an advertising executive, or I could have been a lawyer. With recent high profile legal cases like the Johnny Depp defamation case and the Rebekah Vardy social media case, I have a new found feeling of contempt for lawyers, and celebrities, and social media.

Remember that reporting of these cases is making the front pages where the UK’s declaration of support for Sweden and Finland, the war in Ukraine and the shooting of a reporter in Palestine.

There must be a whole academic area to be researched around this subject. What weighting do we give the antics of worthless celebrities compared to the lives of people slaughtered by occupying military forces? How do we feel about a poster full of bare breasts compared to illegal military occupations? And, would you rather your kids grew up to be lawyers, celebrities or ruthless war criminals?

I think I may christen the new academic discipline The Index of Worthlessness and try to get myself a PhD in why most celebrities would do more good for the environment if we composted them instead of giving them airtime.

Featured image is honesty – I’ll let you add your own tag line.

 

 

Fuchs, McMahon and Buddle

11 Replies

Sound like a form of lawyers, don’t they? Well, they would have done before the days of allowing ambulance chasers to advertise. These days lawyers are called Accident Solicitors Direst and Injury Lawyers 4U. I blame the Americans…

The answer to yesterday’s question is that the have all had a genus of flower named after them – Fuchsia, Mahonia and Buddleia.