Bloody bureaucracy...

I am exceedingly pissed off right now.

Yesterday I received a letter informing me that I am not entitled to any Jobseekers allowance because the benefits agency have decided that Kris and I are "living together as a married couple"

Now, Kris and I may joke about being like an old married couple. We may shag occasionally. But as far as our actual relationship goes, it's friends and housemates. More to the point, not only are the benefits agency not allowed to base a decision on a relationship, sexual or otherwise (or indeed sexual orientation of anyone involved) they're not even allowed to ask about these things. And at the interview they didn't.

All of the questions were about how we handled money, property, bills etc. So I quite happily explained that every single item in the house was owned by one or the other of us, nothing at all being jointly owned; that we both have seperate rooms, and that I in fact pay slightly more rent as the third bedroom is exclusively mine as my office so we take that into account; that we both buy our own food, clothes etc out of our own incomes; and that we split all utility bills equally apart from the itemised phone bill, where we each pay our own calls. I made clear that we have never supported each other financially, nor ever intend to. I also pointed out that the reason we are currently in rented property is that this is a temporary arrangement until either of us can afford to buy (or indeed find someone special we want to move in with AS a couple).

Exactly as in any house I've ever shared, in other words.

Then I get the letter. Sorry. We're not giving you money. He has to. Or... whatever.

So I phoned up the decision making people, in a barely controlled seethe, to ask exactly HOW they had reached this conclusion. I was told it was because "there's so much stuff you share". So of course I asked what ~exactly~ we share, seeing as how (as I said before) we have seperate rooms, shop independantly for food and other goods, and hold no money or posessions in common, and consider this a temporary living arrangement until we can comfortably move on to our own places.

First I was told it was because we split utility bills 50-50. So therefore we share them. Now, if one of us paid some bills and the other the rest, I can understand this being couple-ish, as that means one person is taking responsibility for a joint bill. But splitting 50-50? How else are two independant adults meant to split a utility bill? When I put this question to the guy on the phone, he added "well, then there's stuff like the TV in the lounge. That's shared." Me: "But it's ~my~ TV. I own it." Him: "But you both watch it." So there you go. Apparently housemates that are not living as a couple find a fair way to deal with bills that doesn't involve splitting them 50-50, and have two TV's in the lounge, which they watch independantly.

In an attempt to find out how other people work this magic, I asked exactly how they do define housemates. He replied "Well, we don't really." He then went on to point out that maybe it would be ok if I'd only be here a month or so, but as it was longer I realy should have been able to find a way to move out by now. So obviously having a housemate that you get on with, meaning that you have lower rent and bills, is not a good thing in the eyes of the government. At least, not if that housemate is male.

And this is what makes the whole situation all the more annoying - it only applies if the people sharing a house are of opposite sexes. So, if I was sharing a house with a girl, I'd be fine. Or to put it another way, if I was in exactly the same situation right now but was male, I'd be receiving benefits. Now, someone explain to me how that's NOT sexual discrimination?

I'm appealing against the decision, but I think it's just one of those sweeping things that on the surface stamps out the possibility of fraud and... Oops! incidentally lowers the figures of those unemployed and claiming benefits. Which is nice!

Now, half of me is currently fuming, and mentally composing letters to my local councilor, MP, and MEP while planning just exactly how my solicitor will be damning the entire system in the climactic court case. And part of this is, I'm socially indignant. Personally, I don't have to be scared - I know I have highly supportive family behind me that will help me if I really need it, so I won't starve or be kicked out in the street. But there's got to be lots of people in my position, that share a house with a friend because they can't afford to live alone, that don't have this back-up. So they end up taking minimum-wage jobs, which are usually the big-call-centre kind that are classed as temporary so they can be kicked out whenever they're not financially profitable to their employers, and the whole cycle starts again. So I'm furious, and wanting to find something or someone to make pay.

But the sensible part of me is thinking that means there must be many people campaigning about this kind of thing already, and it will be far more productive to find a way to give some kind of support to these campaigns than to try to make some kind of pseudo-heroic stand of my own. And to sort my situation out myself.

So instead of seeing this as a setback, I'm seeing it as a kick to finally try to get the freelancing on some kind of sound financial footing, even if it's a very modest one, while I'm trying to find something full-time. If I can make more in a week than the meagre amount I would have from jobseekers, I'll consider myself to have won. (And yes, I'm sure that's the response they're hoping for when they take away benefits from people. But fuck that. This is for me.)

Of course, if anyone wants to give me a graphic designers job in the very near future... ;-)