Redacted to protect the innocent, correspondence arriving via notification in the form of email, which advises me to open an online case file relating to Universal Credit (not sufficiently universal however to stretch to correspondence abroad).
With my legal hat on, I would query the lack of date... something every child is taught to begin a letter with whilst at primary school (beside the punctuation in the opening line). Interestingly though it's digital communication so as to reduce headcount, which in turn increased the potential for fraud, the parlay is somewhat one-way. The journal itself that comprise the case file is closed for communication, as are email and text message.
There is the opportunity to phone (by yesterday's deadline), or to post a letter within the UK, a place that has effectively closed to its own citizens who find themselves in a proscribed country on its pandemic 'red-list'. Alternatively there is the facility to make a conventional international phone call, cost of which they won't be refunding.
They are however in error, and despite the threats and insinuations I am altogether in a position to defend myself in court. The last (and only) time I had reason to a query a decision of this kind involved a tribunal at a court in Liverpool on a date when I was otherwise disposed: having flown from there to Tokyo at my expense in pursuit of a job. Naturally on the occasion I lost the case, but bear in mind you and I are paying for these people in wigs to sit in judgement upon farce of this kind.
Although most people are intimidated by court surroundings, I'd relish the chance to expose the theatre of the absurd that is a DWP fashioned in public schoolboys' image, not least that of Dominic Cummings (one time adviser to fellow public schoolboys in the shape of the PM and Michael Gove). On the few days I was sick from school, I'd sit in bed watching episodes of Crown Court and hoping one day to be a barrister.
I never got to those Inns of Court, but I have won the only two cases I've been involved with, beside supplying witness testimony against a couple of repeat offenders I'd seen walk away from a building site with a power tool. Had I known the foreman couldn't give a fuck either, however, I wish I hadn't bothered. Actually I don't, it being an education in itself.
Plus a mess ~ read Fake Law by the anonymous barrister in London. The one thing that amazed me beside the realisation that the CPS were effectively failed lawyers, was how the people you were about to accuse in court on behalf of the prosecution were sat there opposite me in the ante-room. Not like I'd been raped even, but merely suffered damage to my Vauxhall Cavalier.
The case file as I peruse it is peppered with procedural and factual errors, and I look forward to donning my own powdered wig and entering court with a flourish and one of ethos rolled up folios with a red ribbon. I'm disputatious, contentious, floating like a butterfly around the dock and stinging like a witty bee.
And you're all invited. I shall bring the drone as exhibit Number One and upon which I have spent £18,000 in the last year alone, and sit back twiddling that silly black tie as those arraigning me endeavour to prove that I'm a n'ere-do-well without any intention in life beside defrauding HM government... as if the banks themselves and politicians were incapable.
News this same day that Afghans fleeing the monumental fuck-up the establishment made of that country (and any other not aligned with our morally-superior beliefs and lifestyles) are entitled to welfare. Born in the UK and married ten years to a Turk, ironic that she is not entitled to any form of welfare whilst the pittance afforded me they hope to reclaim.
All claimants though must use my approved communication means of communication.
Carrier pigeon.
