Big Brother? Highly unlikely.

Paranoid about the government knowing everything about you? Fear not. Bits of government might know bits about you, but I doubt that anyone will ever be able to stitch it all together. Departments hate nothing more than having to share with each other, as it can represent a loss of power and prestige - or just plain work, and who wants to work if you don't have to.

We are entitled to a measly child care allowance - it's not even enough to buy a packet of fags a fortnight. However, we like to claim it in order to feel that we are dipping into the great bucket of "middle class welfare", whatever that might be. To me, it sounds like paying about 10 times more in taxes than what you get back, but it makes you feel better.

Right.

The thing though is that you don't get your fag money if the little monkey doesn't have his needles up to date. I was going to say "immunisations", but I doubt I can spell it properly. If he has been jabbed a sufficient amount of times, the tit gets removed.

When he gets his jabs and has a howl, the quack is supposed to inform Medicare. They then inform the mob that hand out the dole - Social Security or whatever they are called this week. They then inform our local council, who pays out the cash. Or the rebate. Or whatever. The welfare.

So you see the problem - you need to have two federal departments talking to each other, and then one of them talks to a local government body. Conspiracy theorists would say that all government systems are joined up and "they" know everything about us.

Well, you can take off your tinfoil hats, because the bludgers couldn't talk to the idiot in the next cubicle during their tea break, let alone another dept on the other side of town. We got monkey jabbed before his last shot was due, and the quack filled out the appropriate paperwork and sent it off, and then the tit got removed. Just like that.

After a month or two of phone calls, and promises by various agencies to forward the paperwork and doublecheck that it had been sent and to send us a copy, nothing happened. A letter from Medicare did eventually arrive at home, stating that all the shots were in order, but it appears that Centrelink never got it, or filed it "appropriately".

So J had to traipse down to the local Centrelink office and stand in line with a bunch of smelly, pregnant bludgers in order to get our file stamped the appropriate number of times. It took well over two hours for two pubes to find our file, fiddle with their computer screens, send the file back and forth between the two of them for verification, and then print out a letter for council.

The hilarious thing is that printing the letter, the final step, took 45 minutes. When they had done all the approvals, they advised J to go home and wait a few days for the letter. She asked the obvious question of, "Why don't you just print it and give it to me and save us all some postage and delay" and they looked at her like she had two heads.

Which is probably not an unusual occurence in a Centrelink office, given how many cigarettes their pregnant, drug fucked clients smoke per day.

The thing is, no one in the office knew how to print the bloody letter. I am sure that duty fell to Albert, a CSO1, who happened to be taking a week of flexi time followed by some accumulated RDO's, and then a sickie in order to darn his cardigan. Their duty statements or PDs probably said that only Albert could do the printing. Or something along those lines.

I am certain that the only reason they relented and figured out how to do it is that J was probably the only person they have seen this year that looks like she is gainfully employed, and had places to be and things to do, and would happily rip their arms off if they didn't get the printer working. The regular clients would probably go, "Whatever" and wander outside for a cigarette. Which is probably what Albert was doing.

They actually managed to print the letter correctly, and we are now entitled to a whack of back pay. It's not even enough to buy a carton of cigarettes. It might be enough to buy two cases of Crown Lager, but that's about it. A couple of months worth of middle class welfare.

So much for buying a big, fat, fuck-off TV with it.