I have been bullied and manhandled by my local authority contractors

RobertoMoir

tandraig wrote: »

scuse me - but am i the only one who has noticed that this debt was council tax? which would have gone to court - and resulted in either imprisonment or a court order on his wages? since when did councils send in bailiffs?
something wrong here - either with the OP, he is not telling the truth about the debt.
or he has been through court process and the court sent in the bailiffs! cos he refused to pay.

I just want to say at this point that while there are several things the OP probably wishes now that they had done differently in the entire way they approached this thing, one other thing is clear.

You obviously know absolutely nothing about how council tax recovery works.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Meromanche wrote: »

The £1,500 I gave to the thugs today were the very last part of our savings, extorted money on a debt that I should not have paid in the first place due to our very little income.
It seems that thuggish behaviour by bailiffs is encouraged by local authorities and tolerated by the police. Welcome to Great Britain! This is the country that I have been calling my home and paid vast amount of taxes in for over twenty years. Do I really want to stay here and contribute further?

Rubbish, isn't it? But you are liable until they have dealt with the claim to establish that you're not liable. And you didn't bother dealing with the problem until the court and bailiffs were involved.

With what you tell us is the equivalent of 3 months' income at present sitting in the bank, you should have paid the bill - which carries a threat of imprisonment for non payment. Nobody ever got sent to prison for being cold, after all.

So, unfair though it feels, you have brought this upon yourself. Many people believe that a life on benefits is easy. As you have unfortunately found, it isn't as there is very little sympathy or flexibility in the system. And half the population seems to think that needing some form of help makes a person less worthy.

Oh, and if you had savings, you wouldn't have been entitled to benefits until they had been used up in paying essential bills - like Council Tax and rent. Even then, I think there is 6 months to wait after the first payment before being able to apply for a budgeting loan.

So by all means, try and get into the benefits system. After a few months of missed payments, mistakes, threatening letters, pointless interviews and the like, you'll be keen to end your dependence upon them as soon as possible.

No matter how provoked, if you end up reacting to anyone official in a similar way again (so keep it calm in the dole office when they leave you without a penny for months on end because they have lost a form, or want to know how you have survived for so long without signing on), you could find yourself in a whole lot more trouble. Which would not help your wife, whether she weighs 100 kilos or 45kg.

Finally, dragging up the concept of an entitlement because someone else was forced to fight a war with UK/USA/France/NZ on one side and Germany/Italy/Japan on the other is a bit silly, don't you think? Perhaps using that logic, you should have a 50% reduction because you are married to someone whose grandparents were on the losing side?

Just pay the bills next time - don't hide and hope that they will all go away.

Norfolk_Jim

woody01 wrote: »

Sorry but you are almost as naive as the OP.
The bloke didn't pay his council tax but had savings........are you one of these 'bill dodgers' aswell?

And there you have it!

Is it lonely up there on your pedastal?

inca_2

Norfolk_Jim wrote: »

Is it lonely up there on your pedastal?

Seriously? ok so someone owes you money for a service you provided and they keep failing to pay you for it because they can't afford it. Might miff you a but but you would perhaps have some sympathy especially with the current climate etc. However, you then find out that they have £1500 in savings which now means that they do in fact have the money to pay you but they are just prioritising what they owe you below many things that haven't actually happened and don't need paying for yet because they are at the moment only 'what if' scenarios (boiler breaking down etc) can you honestly say that you'd still be ok with that?

There are always things we would rather spend our savings on of course but that's not how life works. I have an emergency savings pot, if I didn't have the income to pay a mortgage payment/council tax bill etc that to me would constitute an emergency and the money would be out of there to pay it in a flash. That's the whole point of it being there, as a back up if the s*** hits the fan somewhere.

Ivory_Tinkler

Norfolk_Jim wrote: »

Is it lonely up there on your pedastal?

Did you copy and paste that from another thread? Yawn

Norfolk_Jim

People do all kinds of stupid things when they are under pressure. Its easy to take the moral high ground and be all high and mighty but the point of this site is to help people, not provide a platform for feeling morally superior - Hence - I directed this poster to a board where people might help him get his priorities right and get on his feet again - Its obvious from his posting that he's under pressure but some of you are more interested in scoring smug points than in giving help.
inca the two points are seperate issues - yes, the OP should have got his priorities right and could have avoided this - But - He didn't.
Now if you have a tardis then the OP could spin back in time and do it right, but back in the real world you have to deal with real people and how it is.
How it is, is that this OP needs to sort himself out, is under pressure and needs to get himself accross to the debt free wannabe board where people will give helpful advice instead of justified but utterly pointless criticism

Ivory_Tinkler

Norfolk_Jim wrote: »

People do all kinds of stupid things when they are under pressure. Its easy to take the moral high ground and be all high and mighty but the point of this site is to help people, not provide a platform for feeling morally superior - Hence - I directed this poster to a board where people might help him get his priorities right and get on his feet again - Its obvious from his posting that he's under pressure but some of you are more interested in scoring smug points than in giving help.
inca the two points are seperate issues - yes, the OP should have got his priorities right and could have avoided this - But - He didn't.
Now if you have a tardis then the OP could spin back in time and do it right, but back in the real world you have to deal with real people and how it is.
How it is, is that this OP needs to sort himself out, is under pressure and needs to get himself accross to the debt free wannabe board where people will give helpful advice instead of justified but utterly pointless criticism

Just because people have a differing view to yours, doesn't give you licence to accuse them of taking the moral high ground, being smug or giving utterly pointless criticism. I criticised the OP because I am on a low income like him, have used my savings to pay my bills and didn't think it was acceptable to have the means to pay but choose not to. So I feel my criticism is entirely justified actually. Anyway, it's not so much criticism, more disbelief.

On another note I hope the OP does sort out his financial affairs and some good advice from people who are qualified to do so would maybe help him get his priorities in order for the future.

Norfolk_Jim

Fair enough tinkler but if you look again you'll see that I thought the criticism was justified, but pointless. How does it help the OP now? In any case, he seems to have gone away now leaving us to squabble between ourselves.

auntiesue

I'm confused (not hard). The OP said this all came about due to council tax he owed. I don't know much about CT benefit but how can it be determined that he shouldn't have paid tax last year as he hadn't earnt enough? I thought you were only eligable once you handed forms in. He said he was in the process of filling these forms in. Can you get it backdated like that as he says that he should be getting some money back now?

RadoJo

Unfortunately OP, I think your initial posting was based on your knee-jerk reaction to the situation, (which is entirely understandable) but because of your choice of boards and tone of your OP (again understandable, but loses a lot when written rather than spoken) you gave the impression that you thought you were justified in your actions and wanted to vent about the perceived unfairness of the situation. This encouraged the reaction you got from people pointing out how your actions contributed to the situation, and whilst this may seem harsh, I hope that you understand that this is just the cut and thrust of these boards, and not an attempt to kick you when you're down.

I don't think anyone could argue with your subsequent posts where you have admitted that you made a mistake in prioritising savings over bills and failing to address the situation sooner - we can all look back at decisions we've made and see the flaws in our reasoning, but that doesn't make the consequences of these decisions any easier to live with.

I hope that you don't take the comments on here to heart - although some of them have been worded robustly, the advice is sound and I'm sure if you directly ask for help on here or another board you will get loads of useful tips and suggestions to help you avoid anything similar happening in the future.
Good luck and please don't be put off asking for help here!