Settled status problems and unsettled weather problems.

Here’s another of those Settled Status rejection stories:

“A 95-year-old Italian man who has been in the UK for 68 years has been asked to prove he is resident in the country by the Home Office in order to remain after Brexit, despite receiving the state pension for the past 32 years.

Antonio Finelli came to the country in 1952 when he answered an appeal for immigrant labour as part of the reconstruction effort after the second world war ended. He was welcomed with one week’s advance wages and a sandwich when he arrived at Folkestone harbour, but almost 70 years later says he has been forced to supply 80 pages of bank statements to prove his right to stay in the UK.

He was asked for proof that he had been in the country for five consecutive years when he applied for the EU settlement scheme, but the Home Office app said it could not find any record of him.” 

Fortunately he had someone to sort it out for him but it strikes me that there is something wrong with a system that can’t identify someone who has been receiving a state pension for so many years!

It used to be I found those stories only on Facebook But now I am finding them in mainstream news media as well.

I was out and about with my daughter earlier, taking advantage of Marks and Spencer giving me 20% off clothing. Just about every store seems to offer special discounts almost all the time. No wonder some of the stores struggle if they keep offering such discounts!

The wind has been bitter today but the threatened rain did not appear until later and it seems to have been short-lived. When I went put in the early evening to put out the correct bins for the refuse collectors - this week: paper and cardboard and the kitchen compostable caddy - the young man from next door, whose parents reckon he does not smoke, was sitting on their front doorstep smoking some interesting substance. Personally, if I were him, I would give it a miss on a cold night like this.

Despite my comments on how cold and blustery this evening is, once again I marvel at the fact that we seem to have escaped the worst of the weather. Many parts of the country are still on flood alert. However some places are apparently avoiding flooding because beavers have returned, or have been reintroduced, to their rivers.

Another natural solution that might work in other places.