No country for EU citizens - an update
30. 8. 2019 / Tomasz Oryński
An update for Tomasz Oryński's article No country for EU citizens Update on this. Today I received a letter saying that I won't ...22. 8. 2019 / Tomasz Oryński
If you are a regular Britské Listy reader, you might have noticed that over last year my weekly column on Poland has become quite irregular and erratic. This is a story about what happened in my life and how I became entangled in the absurdities of British health and welfare system.
Unfortunately, before I had a chance to do so, he
charged at me with a huge bit of wood, aiming at my
head. Initially I did not feel anything, so I managed
to disarm and restrain him until help arrived.
On that day I was feeling
fine and went home knowing very little how this event
will change my life over next year. As it turned out,
it set me on the collision course with British health
service, legal world and welfare institutions.
Photo: A picture of the assault weapon:
Chapter one: the
Scottish Health Service
It was only the next day,
when I felt the consequences of that blow. I had a blackout when
driving and nearly went off the road. I called my boss who came and
drove me to the hospital near my home. I was examined
there, and found to suffer from concussion and advised to go to a bigger
hospital, as the doctor thought that I should get an
MRI scan and be thoughtfully examined. I was asked if
I was able to organize my own transport, or if I wanted
them to call me a taxi. I felt terrible and did not want to travel on
my own, so I called a friend who came to pick me up and
accompanied me for the rest of the day.
In the bigger hospital after a short wait I was given a
brief examination (not much more than being asked to
follow doctor's finger with my eyes and to stand on
one leg) and it was confirmed that I have concussion. I was
then sent home and advised to see my GP. Of course they advised me
to take the world-famous British panacea: Paracetamol. The doctor told me that I
should be OK in a couple of weeks.
Alas, over next couple of weeks my condition only got
worse. Despite being
prescribed strong painkillers and anti-nausea pills, I was unable to do pretty
much anything and when I try to remember the
period of the next few weeks, it is just one blurred
vision of lying on the sofa and being barely able to
move. That worried my doctor and
I was advised to go to
the hospital again and demand an MRI scan, as something
obviously was not right. But also on this occasion I was sent home after just
a brief examination.
Luckily, after a couple of months my condition
improved enough to be able to get back behind the
wheel. I even managed to go for a
long planned road trip to Tuscany in August, after
which I came back to work. Unfortunately soon I developed terrible insomnia, I also
started to have balance issues and terrible migraines. My GP immediately banned
me from driving altogether – just about time, as over
next weeks I again became unable to do much apart
from lying on the sofa – imagine the worst hangover
you had in your life that lasts for weeks without a
break and you'll have a faint idea how my life looked
back then.
British rules do not allow a family doctor to
recommend someone for an MRI scan, so some time
earlier he referred me to a neurologist. But as the waiting time
was initially estimated to be in the range of 12 to 15
weeks, my doctor said I should not be waiting and
advised me to go privately. Since my finances were
already too tight to be able to afford private
treatment in Scotland, I decided to fly to Poland,
where I had my MRI scan and had a specialist
consultation. My scan was showing something, but
so far it was
inconclusive, as I never had any scan after being
injured, they had nothing to compare it to. I was
put on some specialist medication and told to do
another scan in 3 to 6 months.
Back in Britain my wait for
the neurologist turned to be longer than expected, and
while I was referred in November, I only managed to
see the specialist on 12 July – more than a year after my
initial injury. The whole visit was just a waste of
time. The doctor's first question, after looking into
my files, was “so you have a concussion, what do you
want from me?”
I pulled out my MRI scan from Poland
and while she was hopelessly trying to see anything in
the files that were opening on her computer in a size
similar to that of a postal stamp, I tried to tell her
what medication was prescribed to me in Poland and
about that my doctor in Poland wanted me to get
another scan soon. She interrupted me to say “oh, this
is not how it works in this country”. I was pretty
annoyed already, so my answer was “so I've noticed”.
She instantly stopped looking into her computer screen
and angrily asked me what I meant by
that. I told her that “apparently, if one wants to
have a proper medical help, one has to travel abroad”.
That made her very angry,
but she probably realised that I am in fact right, so she said “OK, OK, I will give you that MRI
of yours”. She clicked few things on her computer,
murmuring to herself “and another visit in three
months” then simply left the room without a single
word to me.
I sat there for a while, confused,
unsure if she is to come back to me or not, as I had a
lot of questions about my medication, but it came
clear to me that she was not coming back, so I gathered
my belongings and left. I saw her on the corridor,
chatting with some nurse, so I approached her, hoping
to get some answers, but she just waved her hand at me
saying “I see you in three months, go now”.
Currently I am still off work. My therapy has been developed by
my doctor friend in Poland – he is a psychiatrist, who in consultation with
neurologist, came
with a new medication regime for me, that was then
approved by my Scottish GP. I am taking those new meds
for a few weeks now, and while they help me a lot with
my insomnia and headaches, they generate strong side
effects. I am told I simply have to stay on them for a
month or so and those should slowly wear off, and then
maybe I will be able to get back to work.
Since experiencing the
quality of the NHS myself, I can't help but laugh
when I hear Britons saying that NHS is a superior
health system, and the whole Europe is envious of
it… Because my case seems to fill the
pattern described by many of my European friends –
Poles, Czechs, Italians etc.: you better get your help somewhere else, as all you can hope here is some recommendation
for Paracetamol.
Chapter two:
Legal and financial
issues
If
instead of restraining my attacker, I smashed his
face – as I was encouraged to do by witnesses of
our fight, who all cheered for me
because he wasn't the most liked person around – I would now have a
luxury of Legal Aid, as does my attacker, who
initially pledged guilty, but then, as a result of advice from
his lawyer, changed his pledge, so the criminal case
is still on the table.
Unfortunately, such a luxury is available only to
alleged criminals. The victims of crime have to face
dire consequences on their
own. All my friends were
trying to get me some help, with some initial
successes: the editor Jan Čulík for example managed to get the attention
of a Scottish celebrity human rights lawyer, who deals with
the matters of hate crime and discrimination. He
publicly expressed his will to help – but it soon
emerged that I am left to myself. He never answered my
e-mails and it was made it clear to me, that
there is no need for me to call his office, as he is
a very busy man.
Meanwhile my employer officially denies any knowledge of the attacker behaving inappropriately before and claims that I never reported anything, which makes it difficult for me to get compensation as I indeed have nothing in writing (my fault – I only complained verbally, as in such a small company pretty much everything happens in an informal way and I naively thought we are friends).
Witnesses could help, but
apart from one of the other
part time drivers who rushed to my rescue on the
day of the assault, everyone suddenly says that “they did
really see anything” or that “they don't want any
trouble”. And so, as it is now, I only
have one witness and have to work with a regular injury compensation
lawyer who took on my case on the “no-win, no fee”
basis.
So far there is no sight on any compensation
coming – either my claim against the company, or
from the government's victims of the crime
compensation fund. Luckily I had some cash put aside
– I was saving to buy a camper –
as otherwise I would be already in deep financial
trouble: in Britain most of the
workers unable to work due to a health issue get
only Statutory Sick Pay of £94.25, and even if I managed to
get my government-funded crime compensation
approved, it does not cover first 28 weeks of lost
income.
But as you can guess, my savings were not a
bottomless money pot, so the things became a bit
tough. My tax return for the year
2017/2018 shows that my average weekly income from
that driving job only was £430. Multiply this by 30
weeks I've been off work so far, and you
will realise that I suffered a financial blow of
over £10 000 before we even
consider all the translation jobs or writing I could do if
I wasn't unable to do so due to my condition. To top it all, your SSP
(those 94 pounds per week) can
be paid only for 28 weeks, so with the beginning of
this month I received the letter from my company HQ
saying that they woluld no longer pay it, and that I was advised to apply for
Universal Credit – the infamous Tory
invention that is said to be designed in such a way that if it doesn't discourage people from claiming welfare, at
least it humiliates and annoys them.
Chapter three: at
the mercy of British welfare system
After watching “I, Daniel Blake”, a horrifying movie about how inhumane the British welfare system is, I was expected my encounter with the authorities to be a tragedy. To my surprise, it turned out to be more like a farce.
Filling countless forms
online
First you are facing the
on-line computer system, that seems to be designed
to waste as much of your time as possible. You
are spending a lot of time painstakingly filling online
forms and digging through your
archives hoping that you haven't
deleted your airplane
booking confirmation e-mails from last year's
holidays, or that you haven't thrown away some minor documents from 10 years
ago.
You keep wondering why the
government's system cannot be designed in such a
way that it would import information from
another government database – such as the tax office, or
the borders agency. But then you are asked to log in
again, and the whole show starts almost from scratch
– and you are sure that the system is not even able
to refer to itself. Because how else
would one explain the situation where at the top of the
screen the system says “Welcome back, Tomasz
Oryński” and just a few lines below asks you to input
your name and surname again?
Finally I managed to tick all the boxes, and had only
one position left on my “to-do list”:
to provide a note from my doctor. The only option is to
provide the original – either by post or in person.
Since I might need the original for my compensation
claim, I decided to visit a Job Centre –it is within a walking
distance from my home. I was met there with a
surprised question “why haven't I booked an appointment?”. The system said
nothing about that, but a nice lady booked me
swiftly for a visit there a few days later.
First appointment
I turned
up on time, and was immediately invited to sit at a
desk. The Job Centre lady was very friendly and was
wading swiftly through all the questions that her
computer told her to ask me. Most of the issues had alredy been covered in my online forms. I had to provide
some documents that she would copy and then scan
them later (apparently, the system does not allow
for having them scanned directly into the electronic
form).
I was informed that I would have my decision around 9th of September and then I would be
likely to receive my payments on 14th, providing that the
system was satisfied that I was legally in the UK. To
do so, I would have to attend another meeting, and my
partner would also have to come for her own meeting as
well. I asked why my partner
needed to come and prove she had the right to stay in the
UK, if it was me, not her, who was trying to get some help,
and what good it would make
for her to skip work in order to
attend the meeting. Apparently I was not the first
one who asked this question, and there was no good
answer to it, as the lady behind the desk just
smiled sadly at me and said “I know, right?”. The only way for my
partner to be able to come without taking a day off
at work was Friday afternoon, and
the first available slot was not until a week later. I was advised that this would delay my
application, and, eventually, my payment for another
week.
Mind you, I have not had ANY income since my Statutory
Sick Pay ended on 2nd of August, and they
estimate my payments to reach me on 21st of
September. What if I had no working partner, what if
I wasn't able to wade through all those formalities
due to poor health, what if I wasn't computer
literate - would I be simply left to
starve?
Second
appointment
The
second appointment required much more detailed
preparation. The computer system kindly provided me
with the list of all documents I needed to bring with
me:
And
yes, I was supposed to bring them all. I asked the lady,
when she said I would need to prove my income by bringing
my payslips and bank statements. She was pretty sure it was
not the case of “this or that”, it had to be “this AND
that”. It took me a good part of the day to prepare my
file – I had to dig for some 10 years-old certificates
and go to my work's office to get most of my recent payslips
that were waiting there for me.
My file turned out to
be pretty thick, I weighed it out of curiosity –
it came up to 325 grams of paper, and I didn't
even manage to get all the documents required
(how on earth is one to get a
copy of the electoral register?).
My second meeting
lasted over 80 minutes. It was a sustained bombardment of questions – some about the
documents I had already provided, some about those
that I brought with me on the day, and some completely
unrelated. I was asked for example to give the exact
amount of money that I brought with myself when I
first came to Britain all those years ago (luckily I remember that
it was 60 pounds). I
was asked about the exact day I arrived
in Britain to settle permanently (I hope I
remembered well that it was the first of July). I was asked if I
brought any of my pets with me (yes, a few years
later I brought a cat that
belonged to my then-partner). I was asked if I
left any pets behind in Poland (yes, a turtle that
I got when I was 10 still lives happily under the
loving care of my mum).
I also asked one question: why all those questions? I was an EU citizen,
so I had the right to work here and I had been
paying taxes here for nearly 15 years, surely if I
was here illegally someone would have noticed by now?
The lady answered that while this was obvious in my
case, it might not be obvious in the cases of others.
Well, I am then happy to know that my tax money is being well spent on a government official grilling
me for over an hour on such important things like the fate of my childhood pet to establish "the
obvious fact". And apparently this is
not only about EU citizens, I have heard of some
British citizens were put through
the same ordeal simply because they happened to live abroad
for few years…
They say that the fate
of EU citizens in the UK is to get worse after
Brexit. I hardly can imagine
how the system can be less friendly towards us,
unless Boris Johnson's government is to approve
hounding us with Dobermann dogs or publicly stoning
people for being citizens of the EU. My partner
has already convinced me that with all Brexit related
issues it might be about time
to leave the British Isles, now we simply
cannot wait to move somewhere else. If we still
had our savings, we would probably live in another
EU country already, but as, thanks to no fault on
our side at all, all we have now is a huge credit
card bill and a heavily overdrawn bank account, and so at the moment we cannot really afford
to move abroad in search of a new life. But it soon might
turn out that we might be without a home
in Scotland anyway…
Chapter four: Choose what you need
more: money to buy food or roof over your head
As I was writing those words, I received a phone call from my landlord who, after some muddled explanation which didn't really shed any light on her reasons, kindly asked if we can simply drop our benefit claim, as otherwise she would be forced to terminate our tenancy. Apparently, despite being valued tenants, who were never late when paying the rent and who keep the flat nice and tidy, on occasion doing even some minor improvements, the moment we apply for benefits, we would need to leave, as otherwise the landlord would “lose control on her flat”.
I researched this topic, but failed to get any definitive answers on why this could be. Sadly, they have right to get rid of us within a three month's notice, and so, as per yesterday, we've been handed one.
(Since the publication of this piece earlier on 22nd August, three minor adjustments have been made to the text of the article on the request of its author.)
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