national insurance

[papillon]

... okay, who's responsible for this broken, useless mess? Where do I address my long, loving nastygrams to complain about this ridiculous system that just doesn't want to LET me give the government money?

*sigh*

[Nutter2000]

Department of SS or DWP or whatever the hell it's called today.

So what's happened then?

[papillon]

Oh, it's just a long ongoing annoyance of them generally refusing to give me an NI number. First it wasn't allowed because I didn't have a Real Job. Then I took a brief temp assignment (only lasted a few days though) and tried again - look, see, employment! Gimme number! But that wasn't good enough for them either. I had to be actually employed at the time of the phone call AND at the time of whatever interview they would assign me. Temp agency not good enough, they said. Must be on actual assignment. (So, it's only okay if you're supposed to be at work and having to take time off to go there? Jerks.)

So I ignored them for a while until finally getting some things sorted out (I hope) with the tax people and them telling me I could sign up for NI as self-employed, since I am that. Okay, great! Call them again, they're vaguely willing to talk to me (after transferring me to 5 different phones) but they want me to wait until *March* before I can come in to have an interview. (And this was arranged sometime LAST month.)

So then they called me this morning out of the blue to ask random questions and generally be confusing. I'm just out of bed (lazy me) and the first questions are simple, but then it's "You will have to provide evidence of self-employment. Like invoices."

"I don't have invoices. People mail me checks."

"Well, we want invoices. On company letterhead."

"I don't HAVE invoices. People mail me checks."

"How do you get paid, then?"

"PEOPLE MAIL ME CHECKS!"

"Oh, I'll have someone else call you back. Bye."

And HANGS UP without even waiting for a response out of me.

This did not start my morning well. Somehow I suspect that whenever I do get to this supposed interview, if it actually happens, I'm still going to end up with no NI number.

Technically I don't even have to make contributions, my earnings are just about at the threshold. But I would like to get the stupid paperwork sorted sometime before I achieve citizenship and move elsewhere.

[princec]

Ah well, now you're in the UK you might as well start calling them "cheques" too then :)

Cas :)

[papillon]

Yeah, but I mail them back to the US, so. :)

Although I did finally manage to get a bank account with HSBC over here with some assistance from family. So on the rare occasion I get something in pounds I have a place for it now.

[kevryan]

Bureaucracy is the same everywhere. Just over a year ago (at the end of 2003) we had to renew our health coverage for our children under the California "Healthy Families" program. We had a pressing need because our son was hospitalized and about to go off to San Francisco for brain surgery. Scroll to the bottom of this page (http://www2.caringbridge.org/ca/aidanryan/history.htm) for an idea of what was medically going on back then.

We called them numerous times and each time got a different answer about what they needed. "Please, just tell exactly what paperwork or statement you need - our son needs surgery right away." I’d fax off what they said they wanted and it turned out to not be what they needed. We would call in and they would tell us to send in something else. In the end we were dropped and got on another insurance program.

The kicker is that I saw a story in the paper last month that said that enrollment in "Healthy Families" had dropped in the last year instead of rising as it had in the past and the officials in charge of the program were trying to figure out why. The story stated that most of the enrollment loss was because people had been dropped at renewal time.

[papillon]

Just a note, not that it matters - National Insurance is the rough equivalent of Social Security, not medical coverage. In the US, my husband was given a SS number/card with absolutely no problem as part of the immigration process. Even though the immigration process itself was a horribly fouled up mess and we ended up getting deported, the SS people were happy to get him on their books so he could give them $$.

The flipside is true here - the UK was happy to let me into the country but won't take my money! Silly government. :)

[Nutter2000]

The flipside is true here - the UK was happy to let me into the country but won't take my money! Silly government. :)
No arguements there. Our bureaucracy is probably the worse in the world, not so much because there's so bloody much of it to get anywhere, but because it's designed to punish the law-abiding average person while promoting the average scum/terrorist. grrrr! :mad:

Anyway back on topic, you could write to your local MP other than that just keep chipping away at them eventually you might get a lucky break.