Newspapers can be useful......

In my house, newspapers have many uses which their electronic e-versions could never hope to match. Amongst other things, they are used to:

• Provide a removable and disposable lining for the chicken coops
• Dry out wet wellies and shoes
• Light the fire in winter
• (this may strike some of you as a bit odd) Act as a conduit for the news and opinions of the day i.e. they are read.

Today, I found another use for them. At least, I found a potential use for the local version of a newspaper, one of which around these parts is called the Medway Messenger. If you have seen my Twit feed (@phil_woods), you may have noticed a few cryptic references to the Medway Messenger which, to save myself from RSI, I shall henceforth refer to as the MM. They will feature a bit later.

You may also recall an earlier blog post in which I speculated about whether there were people who might want to apply their skills and / or knowledge to help others who were encountering difficulties with public services. Within a day of that post, I met someone in need of just that kind of help.

Allow me to leave you in suspense for a few minutes longer and tell you a story. It is a story so breathtakingly daft that it defies belief, but I can assure you that it is true. I shall refer to the main character as S to preserve her anonymity for the time being.

S is a single mother of two, one child being of school age, the other still firmly in the pre-school stage. She is registered partially sighted and, as a consequence, cannot persuade the DVLA (for my non UK readers, this is the bunch of bureaucrats who give, or take away, driving licences. They are based in Walesland, a semi-autnomous principality somewhere in the West) to let her apply for a licence to drive a motor vehicle.

S used to have a job, to my mind and those of many others, a very important and skilled job, in which she has qualifications. She was part of a small and very select team of people who look after every whim of some very, very important guests. In short, she worked at the stable yard my horse lives in. Unfortunately, when she broke up with her husband, who used to drive her to and from work, she had to leave the job as there is no direct public transport from her younger son's childcare to the stables. She cycles, but it is an 11 mile trip with two HUGE hills inbetween; there is no way she could make it to work on time, or have the energy to work once she got there.

Being resourceful and determined that she should not languish on state benefits, S applied for something called the Access to Work Grant. This is a discretionary benefit to help people with disabilities get into, or back into, work. Great idea...............unfortunately not matched by reality.

Without boring you with the details, all that was needed was a taxi from the place she drops her younger child at 07:30 to work, which starts at 08:00, and the same in reverse at 16:30. The (un) civil servant she has been dealing with agreed that the AtoW Grant would be just the thing, but not from childcare to work. His genius solution was that she should walk 2 miles to the nearest station, catch a train to Swanley some 15 miles away, get off and wait, catch a train to Bearsted (15 miles back again) where he would provide the Grant for a taxi for the last 6 miles.  This would get her to work at 10:00 -ish if she is lucky. Bonkers, or what?

I had a brainwave.

There is a by-election in Medway which is a little interesting. It is so contentious that the main political parties are falling over themselves to fill the place with their idea of the Great and Good (the author here dissociates himself from all political parties, all of whom are equally corrupt in his eyes) and to compete wildly with each other over who could be the most benevolent, hardest, nastiest or just plain maddest depending on what they are talking about at the time.

How would all these Islington (a nouveau riche part of London, the equivalent of a bat's cave for politicians) luvvies react if someone put a real person, who is a real victim of their system, right under their noses? How could this be achieved?

Answer: in by-elections, each party, with the possible exception of the Monster Raving Loony Party,  has armies of people combing the local papers looking to see what the strange locals are on about. How about getting S's story into the local paper?

A quick check with S that she was ok with it (she was) and I dropped an email to the MM (remember them?) with a summary of S's story. No response.

Waited patiently (not my style)

A few days went by

Nothing

Sent another email regretting that they were not interested in the story

11 minutes went by

Bingo! Did I think that S would agree to be interviewed? Photographed?  Too d**n right she would!

S and the MM now have each other's contact details. Let's hope that the power of the press can be harnessed, even in this small way, to do some good. I will keep you posted.

And now tonight's song. I heard this band on tv the other day and they blew me away. I hope that you enjoy them as much as I did

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Lif-UZJjxA