This is a continuation of my last week’s blog on welfare benefits. ( You can see all the posts on this subject by clicking on “Welfare Benefits “ in the Tag Cloud )
If ever there was a time when you need easy, crystal clear, help and asssistance, it must be when you have lost a loved one. So I am sure I have got this advice from the Government website on benefits wrong. But I read the information on Bereavement Allowance and this is what I understood it to say :-
- To qualify you have to be married before 1917.
- By my reckoning, if you were 20 years old when you married, you would now be 122.
- And to limit the runaway expenditure of all those deaths in World War 1, war widows would not qualify if they remarried.
- Although, the War Widow’s Pension in 1917 would only have been about two and sixpence a week, mind you that mounts up by the time you reach 122 😋
Oops! Now I have found my mistake it does not say 1917, it is 2017. Apologies to the Department of Works and Pensions.
Perhaps if you hadn’t written 5772 pages of information I would not have been so tired and befuddled.
FOOTNOTE – Please note, I hasten to add that I am no expert and anyone reading this should not take my observations or figures as fact. Hopefully before I finish this series of blogs, I will have raised awareness of some of the issues in the welfare benefits system. If you’re intending to make a claim, you should go to one of the trusted agencies like Age UK or Citizens Advice Bureau.
GrumbleSmiles 
By gad sir? you have rattled my cage, and I do not know whether to submit, or bluster??
Among your blog notes, my mind has had trouble coming to terms with the actual information? and I need time to ruminate!!!
I note the quoted marriage dates with correction : however I am perplexed should we read married once, twice, thrice or more, and what do we think of our spouse/partner in 2017? Are we metaphorically becoming the /that black widow spider, who after mating consumes the partner??
I say that’s a bit rich? or is it? we now or I come back to your blogs of earlier pages, and euthanasia, and then maybe the government is proposing a policy of doing away with us married folk, regardless of age??
I must read and consult the 5775? pages of government information, and come to a reasonable conclusion, or is it my senses; or what is left of them??
Is 2017 a red letter date to fear or remember??? I wonder???
well sir! like a good chap, I have ruminated, and visited the Gov.uk site on benefits and I am slightly confused? There are many help pages and Prorforma’s to consult. I became aware of the many questions asked, and answers one could give. I note it can all be done electronically on the web!
I still at my age prefer the one to one human conversation of interaction and to gauge the integrity of the interviewer, rather than a form electronically bounced around the ‘cyber space’ with may an eye watching and learning of my personal information.
My demise at the touch of the ‘Black widow spider’ I will leave the reader to digest such information, as to whether it is correct or not??