A collection of odds and ends

[annwfyn]

I remember last night talking to someone (unless I was hallucinating) about Typhoid Mary.

Well, I've found the wikipedia entry about her, which also has quite a good explanation on disease carriers - those who can be infected with a disease without showing any symptoms.

I'm also pondering something I've read in various places, which is that most people in the UK are only two pay cheques away from being homeless. I've discussed this with pierot and ksirafai in the past, and they've disagreed with me. Jez, in particular, feels that you'd have to be quite uninformed about your rights for that to happen to you. While I can see the truth in this, going through my own current financial situation I think I can see that losing two pay cheques might not cause outright homelessness straight out, but it must make it so much easier in the long run to wind up homeless or in trouble, as you delay paying bills, maybe fall into arrears with your rent which you then can't afford to pay back even if you do get a new job/salary, mess about with your credit rating, which then makes it harder to get any loans or anything which could get you back on track.

I'm nowhere near that state - I'm just realising that in putting off bills, having to use my credit card due to lack of income etc, for the time period where pierot was starting a new job, I've now got a slighly uncomfortable backlog of bills that I didn't have before. Considering how comfortable I was at the start of July of this year, that's slightly scary, and it's made me feel rather more sympathetic to those who do get themselves into a real state.

Comments

Re: Jez [...] feels that you'd have to be quite uninformed about your rights

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

The thing jez has said today, when I mentioned this thread to him, is that he does agree that there are a lot of people in the world who would be completely screwed by losing two month's pay cheque. What he disagrees with is the premise that one can go from reasonable financial stability to homeless in two months. And, to be fair, in the time I've known him he's had his pay cheques stop suddenly twice - once when he got pneumonia and HSBC decided they would only pay him SSP and he wasn't elligible for housing benefit, and once when Person2Person went bust.

Both times he was with me, I guess, so had some financial back up from someone else, and what happened both times is that he mostly maxed out his credit card and ate up the savings he had, and was very poor for three-four months on both occasions.

So, I guess a better representation of jez's views is that the statement 'everyone is two pay cheques away from homeless' is wrong.

I think he is also of the opinion that there are more options available than people realise, which I won't cite examples of, coz I know he's dead and not thinking, and I don't really know enough about it.

Re: Jez [...] feels that you'd have to be quite uninformed about your rights

[reindeerflotila.livejournal.com]

i shall take this opportunity to express my sadness at your combined illage.

Re: Jez [...] feels that you'd have to be quite uninformed about your rights

[adze.livejournal.com]

Ah, ok. But, I don't count myself as financially stable.

Maybe in the same way that spinning tops are stable...