Governemntal Hypocrisy.

The government provides Healthy Start vouchers to the tune of £5 per week for the purchase of fruit and vegetables for my baby (or me and my baby when I am breastfeeding, which I still partly am because he's only six months old.) These vouchers are for anyone who is in receipt of Child Tax Credit only, and is on Jobseekers Allowance or Income Support and has an income of less than £15,000 per year.

I have an income of considerably less than £15,000 per year, but because I work and so receive nominal Working Tax Credit I am apparently not entitled to these vouchers.

If I gave up trying to provide my own income I would suddenly become eligible for the vouchers, even though I currently have a lower income than I would if I was not working.

How can this be ok? I asked the woman on the phone why and she said that the government probably thinks you have an income of more than £15,000 if you're on working tax credit.

Well I wish.

I'm so pissed off. The government spends it's whole time saying it wants people off benefit and then it penalises those who are on the lowest income of all - people like me, part time workers trying to bring up a family on an income of very low wages and working tax credit. I'd be better off on benefit; and I wonder how many millions of us are saying that on a regular basis?

I think I feel a letter coming on.

I've been blogging since 2002, I've amassed a good deal of writing but I've done it quietly and off the the side. I haven't been all big in the blog community and I haven't got a whole heap of regular readers. I haven't really cared about that till now, but recently people I know who've been blogging for a much shorter time than me have been all proactive and involved and now I feel like I've somehow failed myself.

I feel like I should have been twittering and I should have had a RSS feed and I shouldn't have been afraid to go to meets, and I feel like I want to be on the 50 best Brum bloggers list. Which I am currently not. I wish I wasn't so afraid of throwing myself into the middle of things but I am; I think people aren't going to like me and are somehow going to judge me for crap, nefarious reasons, which is an outrageous thing to think about other people, because why would they do that to me anymore than I think those sorts of things about them? (Which I don't, just to make that clear.)

So my New Years resolution is to fix up Olulabelle.com, make a whole new site with links and a feed and a regular section where I post. And I'm going to start off posting about jewellery, the baby and general everyday thoughts. It's a bizarre combination I know, but there you go. At least it will be something.