Foreign Perspectives

Frankly I figured that the relabelling of “unemployment offices” in the UK some years ago as “job centres” as just a PR gimmic by the government but it would appear that there’s a little more behind it than I’d thought.

As y’all know I’m technically between jobs at the moment. However, I hadn’t really thought about myself as being unemployed until Wendy pointed out that I should probably be off claiming some sort of unemployment benefit. These days, of course, it’s called jobseekers allowance to distance it both from unemployment and benefits but ’tis still the old unemployment benefit office that you go to if you want to claim it, so off we went last week.

That relabelling brought with it a lot of other changes. For instance, in the “unemployment office” you now find two separate groups of people that deal with you. First, there’s the people who handle the benefit payments who are basically the same group as have always been there and who are interested in seeing that you’ve made the appropriate social security payments to entitle you to the benefit. Separately from them are the employment people who are there to do what they can to help you back into work and who will prod you into getting up and looking for work if needbe. Formerlly the two were quite separate and in buildings separated by several miles so there wasn’t the sense that there is now of the payment being there just to help you along whilst you’re off looking for work.

One side-effect for me is that there’s what’s almost a trick question on the form: are you currently studying? I am in that I’m doing a child development course but seeing as it’s not a full-time one that means that I’m actually available for work which is what the question is really asking.

Full marks though for that relabelling and the reorganisation that happened almost behind the scenes. Although, in theory, I have a job waiting (sort-of), it has prompted me to have a look around anyway.

Clearly there are topics that are largely of interest to males and those that are largely of interest to females but which is which isn’t always as clear ahead of signing up for a course as you might expect.

For instance, languages are usually very much seen as a female thing. However, the mix of the sexes on my courses was generally around 75/25 in favour of males. Even on the English language course that I did last year (generally taken as part of an English Language & Literature degree) there were quite a number of us guys on it.

Although the current Child Development course is basically filling in a slot of a psychology degree, considering children is generally seen as womens’ work (yeah, I know, a stereotypical sexist generalisation but still largely true these days), what really struck me was that it looks like it’s something like 90/10 in favour of females. To be fair a lot of them are coming to the course from the perspective of being teachers or otherwise looking after kids professionally but if anything it’s a course that the guys could do with going on.

Despite us having to go through all kinds of hoops to try and register Wendy with a doctor, it’s been surprisingly easy to get a European Health Card issued.

In fact, all we had to do was to quote a name and address for them to post it to. They took our National Insurance numbers because we had them to hand but didn’t need them.

That’s pretty odd when you think about it as it means we can bill expenses from abroad for Wendy to the very health system that won’t register her to be treated locally!

Although we’ve been quite busy trying to get settled back into life in the UK in the last month or so we’ve not been able to say much about it thanks to a lack of broadband access until today so there’s a heap of catching up to be done on the blog!

One of the more taxing aspects has proved to be the business of getting us back into the health system.

We figured that this would be really simple as we already had national health numbers and were going to be signing up with the same doctor as we’d had five years ago but it wasn’t quite so simple as that as it turned out and we’ve still not quite completed the formalities even after a month of trying!

Getting treated is very easy and we’ve been catching up with missed vaccinations for the kids and suchlike over the last month. However, the business of actually registering with the doctor was where the problems started. To begin with we started off with the normal forms for re-registering all of us except John who was born in France and therefore hadn’t been registered here before. It turns out that in fact since we’d all been living overseas we all had to fill in the form we’d initially put him on and also to provide birth certificates for everyone as well which is fair enough in some ways as an ID requirement.

Completing the “from overseas” forms wasn’t quite so simple though. For one thing, if you’re not currently paying National Insurance contributions (which we aren’t) then you need to be claiming Job Seekers Allowance so that in turn meant a trip to the local Job Seekers office to sign on for that. One complication with that is that I don’t think I’m entitled to Job Seekers Allowance as I’m on a career break but I’ll see about that when I finally get the interview for it this Friday.

A week or so later we received an “interesting” phone call from the Central Services Agency (CSA) who are the people who deal with the back office handling of putting you on the register for the doctor. Despite me writing on the form that Wendy (Australian) didn’t need a visa or work permit because she was entitled to a European Residence Permit, they phoned up asking for the visa and work permit to be sent. Seeing as we don’t need them and can’t get them for her (because we can’t be required to have them) they were a bit put out and had to call us back after checking with their supervisor. That second conversation was even more interesting as it was obvious that they haven’t a clue how they are legally required to assess the right of residence for anyone in even the simplest of cases…

1. If you’re French they register you with no further proof than your passport. Actually, the French (along with all other Europeans except the Irish) need to have a job (or to get one within three months) to gain a right of residence (excluding special cases).
2. If you’re Bulgarian they require all kinds of documents. In fact, as of January 2008 they are required to treat Bulgarians in the same way as other Europeans (except the Irish).
3. If you’re not European they require a visa and work permit. Well, normally that would be the case but seeing as Wendy and I have been together for quite a few years now she’s entitled to a European Residence Permit and had one when we were here last time. With said permit they are required to treat her as though she were British and had always been British and are therefore required to register her for medical care. Actually, since we were last here we found out that although she’s eligible for that permit she’s not required to get it but the authorities are required to treat her as though she did have it.

Why “except the Irish”? Well, the UK and Ireland are in what’s called the Common Travel Area which means that there’s no passport control between the two countries and that citizens of either have the right to move to the other (with or without working). That predates the formation of Europe by many decades and means that Irish citizens must be treated differently than other Europeans in many respects notably the absence of a requirement to have work to enable them to live in the UK.

Slightly separately from that, courtesy of the Good Friday Agreement most Northern Ireland people (it’s defined in a peculiar way but basically means anyone that’s British or Irish and has been born in Northern Ireland) have the right to be treated as British or Irish or both as and when they choose. Apparently the CSA aren’t aware that I can insist on them treating me as Irish exclusively should I wish to do so and for the purposes of Wendy’s eligibility for the European Residence Permit I need to be able to require people to treat me as Irish.

However, the most laughable comments were when I said that she had these rights courtesy of Freedom of Movement legislation… in their mind that was freedom to move around Europe, not actually to stay anywhere. In fact, the whole point of the freedom of movement legislation was to allow people to move around and live anywhere they wanted to in Europe. She then went on to say that European law didn’t apply in Northern Ireland. That was on a day when the farmers were queuing up to claim their European payments which are obviously issued under European law!

We’re still waiting to hear back from them.

There’s been somewhat of a death in posting activity over the past few weeks, not because we’ve not had loads to say but rather because the ADSL line still hasn’t been installed yet (supposedly it’s another week or so away). Anyway, that delay has given me the excuse to buy one of those really neat little mobile broadband gadgets which has always been on the “would love to have but just can’t justify it” list. However, whilst it’s been on said list the prices have been dropping dramatically….

In that my mobile surfing will almost certainly be limited in duration the ideal plan for me is very much T-mobiles daily one. All of £2 a day on those days which I use it which means that the non-use charge is effectively £4 a year as you’ve to use it at least once every six months. Although most of the time such a deal seems sure to be a ripoff in fact you can change the topups on this one to a monthly £20 which is little more than “normal” mobile broadband charges these days and, for me, will be substantially cheaper.

On other fronts, we’re now in a minor battle with the Central Services Agency (CSA) over registering Wendy for healthcare. It appears that they have a rather flakey grasp on how residency rights actually work in Europe so they issue health numbers to any French that arrive when they should be requiring proof that they’re eligible to live here (European citizens generally need a job to gain the right to live in other European countries) and they’ve been insisting on all kinds of documentation from Bulgarians when they’ve been in Europe for about six years now and have the same documentation requirements as would the French. Wendy, as always, is unique as, despite the CSA insisting that she provide a visa and/or residence permit, she doesn’t have to provide anything other than her passport thanks to changes in European freedom of movement legislation over the last five years. Oh, and the CSA think that “freedom of movement” is just that: you can move, not actually live: in fact it’s both!

Anyway, all being well they will reject her application as the current rate of awards for such discrimination is over £20,000.