My work at the Citizens Advice Bureau

So this week I was finally allowed to answer the phones at the Citizens Advice Bureau. It doesn't sound that great but it's nice to finally be given a bit more independence, after having to sit and listen to other people taking the calls. Although the only downside was that the first person I had calling was a polish person, so it was hard to spell her name correctly, especially as the telephone line isn't great!

Nevertheless, no matter how limited my independence there has been, I've still found it very interesting. Obviously I'm learning lots about law but it's teaching me a lot about society, and the injustices still present in society, and it's making me question the way some things are in the English legal system. Most of what the office of the Citizens Advice Bureau that I work in deals with is employment, debt, and housing issues, but it varies with each office of the CAB because it really depends on the issues that are more predominant in the town/region where the CAB office operates.

The enquiries that are most complicated to deal with, are enquiries relating to employment, because whether their employer is in the right or the wrong depends largely on the contract that they are under, and so we often have to give them an appointment so that someone can review their employment contract and work out whether they have a valid claim.

What I have found so far by working at the CAB is that quite a few of the people who come to the office with problems, have often gotten themselves into the particular problem because they haven't done some of the simplest things. For instance, the first call I ever listened to was from a woman who was facing a repossession order because she lived/lives in social housing and she hadn't kept up with her rent payments. The reason that she hadn't kept up with these payments was in fact because she had become a self-employed worker, and so she could no longer afford her rent payments but in reality all she needed to do was ring up the authorities and tell them that she had become self-employed and then she would have received more housing benefit to help her with her rent payments.

Another case that I still remember very clearly, is the case of a woman who had lent her friend a large sum of money, which the friend was refusing to give back. The background to the story was that her husband had had a stroke and she became friends with this woman after this had happened because the woman's husband had worked in the same business as her husband, and after her husband had the stroke, the woman did lots of things to help her such as picking her grandson up from school, etc. But then one day this friend said that she needed financial help, and so she lent her all or the majority of her life savings (£10,000). But when she started asking her for the money back the friend would not reply to her in any way or form, and she appeared to have used this "emergency" money to buy a house. She tried to get her lawyer and the police involved because it was essentially a case of theft at this point but because she had no proof that she had even given this friend the money, apart from the friend confessing that she had borrowed this money from her, there was nothing they could do and she couldn't take it to a small claims court because they don't deal with claims that exceed £5,000. I don't know whether she gave the friend the money in cash or as a cheque, but it's crazy to think that she wouldn't have even had this problem, if she'd just made out a cheque and spent 5/10p photocopying it, and perhaps made the friend sign a written agreement that she would pay back the money.

The other case that has contributed to this point of view was the case of this woman, whose husband had lost his job. She called us because they were trying to just pay for everything by living off their savings and the money was beginning to run out, and they had quite a lot to pay for because they had a mortgage and some loans/credit card debts. But they could have solved this problem by taking simple steps because what her husband should have done was signed up for Job Seeker's Allowance and what they should have done was call the bank, and credit card/loan companies they had debts with to explain that they had less income coming in and would have to pay less money back to them each month.

Fullfilment

So, I'm currently in the middle of watching Letters to Juliet but I'm watching it on Megavideo, and as I've just watched 62 minutes of it, I have to wait 54 minutes to see the rest of it, so I just thought I'd write a blog update while I was at it.

This blog has been partly inspired by this film because Letters to Juliet is about a girl who goes on holiday with her boyfriend to Italy. However, because her boyfriend is using this holiday as a business trip to help set up his restaurant, he doesn't have very much time for her, and so her options as to where she can go in Italy are somewhat limited. But she can still explore Verona (the place where she's staying), so inevitably she does and she discovers a wall in which people having all sorts of problems with their love life write to the Juliet of Romeo & Juliet and post them on to a wall, and at the end of each day Juliet's secretaries come to get the letters they have received and write back to them in order to help them with their problems. As a prospective journalist, Sophie decides to spend a few days with them to discover more about their work, and one day when they go to collect the letters Juliet finds a very old letter stuck in the wall, dated from 1956, from a woman who left a boy behind, despite the fact that she really loved him, and doesn't know what to do. In spite of the fact that this is a very old letter, Sophie decides to reply and rather unexpectedly the woman is very grateful and follows her advice, I won't tell you what happens next but it's a very good film.

Although one of the reasons that I'm talking about this film is because I enjoyed it, the other reason I'm talking about it is because I feel like Juliet. Because I like Juliet want to travel, I don't necessarily want to go to Italy, don't get me wrong it's a beautiful country and I would at some point like to go there but there are many places that I'd like to go to in Europe. But to want isn't enough because I just don't have the money to go to these places.

I'm glad I didn't go to Hull and I don't think I'll ever regret my decision to decline the offer but being stuck in the Dorset countryside (as much as a love the breath-taking views) whilst my friends and my sister are at university just isn't very exciting. In the past few weeks I've been looking at photos of travel photographers and travel blogs and thinking of how nice it would be to explore.

At the moment I'd really like to go to Brussels, one of the things that attracts me to it is Le Musée Hergé (the museum about Tintin), another thing that I like about it is its architecture but also because I went on a holiday to Bruges when I was 12 and I really enjoyed it, and so I'd like to see some more of Belgium, and since I'm a supporter of the EU, I might even end up working there.


But since I'll have to compromise on this dream of exploring more of Europe, I'll have to just settle for interesting places to visit in the UK, and since I'm planning on doing some work experience in the courts in London this should be possible. So I'm thinking of going back to the V&A (I went there this summer but because there's so much of it to see, I didn't get to see all of it), going to Dr Johnson's Museum, Covent Garden and other interesting museums in London, I'm also interested in going to the Jane Austen Museum in Bath, since I really like Jane Austen's literature.


I'm also really interested in going to Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, Scandinavia, Italy and Poland. This is one of the downsides to doing an A-level in your gap year though, you can't go and live abroad and get a job in order to facilitate this desire but make no mistake, I'm still enjoying learning Latin  but if you're thinking of taking a gap year then take note!


But since I haven't got the money to travel, I have instead taken up the considerably cheaper habit of watching a lot of films. So far in the past week I've watched the Time Traveller's Wife, Wild Child and as you know I'm currently watching  Letter's to Juliet. I've also been watching a lot of trailers for french films, I'd forgotten how unique they were, so I've bought Après Vous but I'm also interested in buying Lemon Tree, Paris and My Best Friend. 


This is another problem with gap years, the boredom induced can empty your pockets. I've been so bored I've already done the majority of my Christmas shopping, I've spent £40 on a pair of pyjamas and I've been buying loads of books and music.