Why I went AWOL

I still haven’t said why I disappeared for so long!  Here goes.  I’m putting the technical problems down to a Uranus transit to natal Mars, because the dates fit so nicely.  My printer died, then my computer broke down, as I wrote earlier.  When the techies had a look inside, they realised that the motherboard was fried – capacitors had corroded all over the place.  So what started out as a complete rebuild became a PC funeral.  The motherboard couldn’t be replaced because it was so old, they don’t make that type any more. 

My dad – bless him – decided to buy me a new computer.  While he was getting quotes and putting in orders, the third disaster occurred.  My TV broke down.  The repairer took over three weeks to fix it.  And it was expensive!  Anyway, there’s my technology woes catalogued. 

I’d barely loaded my programs onto the new computer and dealt with over nine hundred emails that had accumulated over six weeks of mostly blissful offline-ity, when the Centrelink letter came.  I rediscovered one of my old weight-loss secrets.  A sufficiently intense state of fear will make one mildly nauseous for as long as the anxiety lasts.  Silver lining: in the last ten days I have lost two kilos!  Stay tuned for more anorexic weight loss secrets. 

I finally updated my details with Centrelink today.  Yes, they may audit my bank accounts.  Yes, they may complain that I didn’t report gifts or tax refunds I received – even though they don’t affect my payment and are therefore, in my opinion, none of their damn business.  And they will try to tell me that the financial help I received from my family is considered income, and that I now owe them money.  But I have now read vast tracts of the Social Security Act of 1991, and I know it’s simply not so. 

So it’s time to relax a little, before going to the doctor and hoping he’ll fill in the medical review form in such a way as gets my pension renewed.  Gawd.  Does it ever stop? 

The fact that social security payments are reduced according to your income, means that Centrelink basically feels the right to pry into every area of your financial life.  Furthermore, they presume that that the onus is on you to prove that you are NOT defrauding Centrelink, and thus that you have to disclose financial dealings that have nothing to do with Centrelink, just to be transparent.  For instance, if your friend gave you $20 for your birthday, Centrelink would expect you to ring them up and report that.  Even though it doesn’t affect your payment. 

You see the kind of invasion of privacy going on here?  And this happens not only to those the government considers unworthy – like the unemployed and single parents – but to people like disability and age pensioners who are there through no fault of their own, and have nowhere else to go. 

On top of this, the pension is nowhere near enough to live on, which is probably why there’s so much fraud going on in the first place.  People gotta eat!  Legally or illegally.  In my opinion, rather ironic for a country founded as a prison colony incarcerating – in large part – victims of poverty who had turned, of necessity, to petty crime in order to survive. 

*getting off her soapbox now*

Anyway, I will get round to catching up on all your diaries in the near future.