The LNER Encyclopedia

Over the last 25 years or so I've had a number of transport related articles published in various small circulation locally published magazines produced by voluntary organisations (one of which is also a registered charity).

The scope of these magazines is very broad and by no means restricted to transport. The only restriction is that the topic must be local.

Taking the last 18 months as typical there've been articles about local church architecture, the history of a local specialist sports car manufacturer, an interview with a local thatcher (one of the few still plying his trade) and an article about a nearby quarry as well as some of my railway or bus stuff.

A while back I received a letter from the Department for Work and Pensions asking me to ring them and make an appointment for one of their benefit fraud investigators to visit me. This surprised me but anyway I made an appointment.

When he turned up DWP's man said they'd received a tip off that I was running my own business as a freelance journalist whilst fraudulently claiming benefits. I was outraged.

Nobody gets paid anything for contributing to the magazines I'd written for, not even expenses (and with trips to The National Archives in Kew costing about £20 a time, and paid for out of my meagre benefits, I'd been making great sacrifices for the magazine's benefit).

Obviously some nasty minded individual had seen something in a public library that I'd written and cooked up an evil scheme simply to cause trouble by claiming I was getting paid for writing these things and defrauding DWP.

The hurtfulness of that allegation is difficult to convey because it just leaves me speechless. I hadn't been incurring irrecoverable out of pocket expenses to be treated like that.

Not only was the malevolent individual behind this trying to use third parties to mount an unjustified attack on me (I bet they did it using one of the proliferating anonymous grass everyone up websites which seem to be appearing) they were trying to prevent other people learning more about the area's history.

I'm considering very seriously whether I should research and write anything further for any magazine in future if people are going to abuse the altruism that involves in this way.

G'day Mr Bunt
Don't stop because some narrow-minded individual has nothing better to do than make trouble for others.
I always reason that these people who complain about others are jealous, because they can't do something similiar.
I do a lot of family research, which I circulate to my cousins etc, I'm half expecting some busy-body to say I must be getting paid for it, otherwise I wouldn't make trips to research centres as it costs money. These people who complain can't understand how somebody does something for the love of it. The people at a Local Studies group have helped me a great deal and asked me for nothing in return. They were so pleased when I presented them with a wartime article containing details of the formation of the LDV (Dad's Army) in their area.
Keep your chin up
Earlswood Nob

Ay up, Mr Bunt!

It ain't just you. There's a chap up the street who's been trying to get the local scrapman prosecuted for years on this basis, even though he's never claimed a penny benefit in his life.

The assumption is - "He's been published, must have been paid. I haven't and haven't. I'll have him!" Jealousy is behind it, Mr B.

The mistake you have made Mr. Bunt is that you are not a multi millionaire, taxmen don't bother them!

Mr Blunt,
don't be put off by some narrow minded bigot. You obviously get a lot of pleasure from writing your articles and I am sure lots of people get a lot of pleasure reading them.I have MS,but can still drive a car and therefore I do VOLUNTARY Work as a driver for Guide Dogs for the Blind. Its great,I feel useful and the people I help are so pleased its truly satisfying. It's VOLUNTARY but it did not stop some busy body interegating me to find out how much I got paid !!!. In the end I just asked him if he knew what VOLUNTARY meant and that an Oxford Dictionary was a useful thing to have.
Don't let the B******* grind you down.
Kindest Regards,60129.

Don't let the b******s grind you down, Mr Bunt.

Sadly in these days of cctv cameras and spying internet companies, it seems that we are going to have to get used to people poking their ignorant noses into other peoples' private lives.

60129 GUY MANNERING wrote:I do VOLUNTARY Work as a driver for Guide Dogs for the Blind. Its great,I feel useful and the people I help are so pleased its truly satisfying. It's VOLUNTARY but it did not stop some busy body interegating me to find out how much I got paid !!!. In the end I just asked him if he knew what VOLUNTARY meant and that an Oxford Dictionary was a useful thing to have.
Don't let the B******* grind you down.
Kindest Regards,60129.

Your story is even more horrifying than mine. Why don't these people get a life and do something useful for the community instead of trying to stir up trouble?

Ay up!

That's the problem, Mr Bunt. They think they are doing the world a service.

Assholes!!!

Sadly, we live in an age of greed where the idea that someone would do something without being paid is totally incomprehensible to an ever growing proportion of the population.

strang steel wrote:Don't let the b******s grind you down, Mr Bunt.

Sadly in these days of cctv cameras and spying internet companies, it seems that we are going to have to get used to people poking their ignorant noses into other peoples' private lives.

The proliferation of "shop a neighbour anonymously" websites set up by, among others, DWP, local authorities, the RSPCA et al is what I find worrying.

A member of my family was recently the victim of an anonymous false and totally malicious complaint about cruelty to their dog made using

https://www.rspca.org.uk/login?p_p_id=5 ... %2fmyrspca

which resulted in an unwanted and unnecessary visit from an RSPCA Inspector.

To our delight though, the Inspector was bitten by the dog - which was found to be in perfect health - as he examined it!

Quote "Your story is even more horrifying than mine. Why don't these people get a life and do something useful for the community instead of trying to stir up trouble? "Quote

Maybe Mr Bunt, but the point is it has not and will not stop me from being a volunteer as I would suffer and without sounding pompous so would the Blind people I am able to help. Go on writing and ignore these small minded little people.You will still get your pleasure and so will those readers of your work.
Kindest Regards,60129.

That is really petty, but on the other hand it can work in your favour. Many years ago i had a 'second' job for which i was paid the princely sum of £35.00 pw. I also used my car to go to/from locations where i earned this money, as well as paying for a uniform whilst doing it. The taxman told me i should declare it, i asked about 'expenses' incurred and was given the way in which to claim, the Which Tax book is quite good on this, in effect it was TOTAL car costs, bases on a ratio of miles used for business as opposed for 'pleasure' so if i did 10k per year and did 2k of that on business i can claim 20% of that against my 'earnings', and with renewal of kit taken of the earnings 'at source' it worked out quite well in my favour. The best bit was travelling around the country taking video of steam specials,etc (for fun!).One year in the early 90's I had about 2mins of film published and got a free video given as payment (about 19.00), checked with the taxman who told me to add the 19.00 to my income. No problem but i estimated i had travelled over 3k that year videoing!! I did tell him this and felt that he would be paying me a shed load of rebate. He said 'They are the rules.you have to.declare it', IIRC i did 15k that year at a total cost of £3000.so it worked out that i had expenses of £600. at 22% tax that was £132 less the £19, so i did declare and got a very nice cheque from them in the region of £112.00. I felt i would be extracting it if i also claimed for the video cassettes and electricity for charging the battery!!
All this stemmed from a guy in the Railway club i belong to who got shafted by HMRC as he had incorrectly put a few pounds in the wrong column. They took him apart over it. I vowed never to be put in the same position.Yet Starbucks et al get permssion to not pay millions. Still we are all in it together.......Apart from the bloody curtain twitchers. Hope you dont get bothered in the future

Guy Mannering

Do not let these small minded individuals affect your life and how you choose to live it.

It has been my experience that people such as yourself are absolutely vital to some members of our communities, you do not ask for any gratification from anyone and gain satisfaction and pleasure from "Making a Difference"

Unfortunately we now live in a society which is alien in nature given the values that were instilled in us when we were young and in our formative years.

I am of the opinion that these type of people who do such things are indeed jealous of the esteem in which you are undoubtably held by those which you choose to help.

If you can, just ignore them and treat them with the contempt they deserve.

Mr Bunt,

Like the other posters, I'm very sorry to hear about this and could find it easy to say some very 'honest' comments in basic Anglo-Saxon. I would like to say though that it may not be some evil-minded 'third party' - government departments are being pressured to reduce expenditure of all sorts and some have [general investigators] with a roving remit to probe into all sorts of economic activities. It may well have been one of them that came across your name and decided you were 'worth' investigating.

Once that decision has been taken, they are aggressive, in the expectation that if guilty, you'll think they know everything and confess, if innocent, who cares (like the old method of determining if you were guilty by trial by ordeal...) Think about the spam texts/phone calls for PPI/PI claims etc. - if they phrase their words carefully, they will catch the odd one who thinks they know all about 'it' and the others who think "What are they on about?" don't matter.

As to the ethics and morality of such policies, I have nothing to add to the comments of the others - well, I do, but Richard would have to tell me off...

PS - I think that if this forum had 'likes' on it, there's every chance some posts would be setting new records.

KX6465 wrote:Guy Mannering

Do not let these small minded individuals affect your life and how you choose to live it.

It has been my experience that people such as yourself are absolutely vital to some members of our communities, you do not ask for any gratification from anyone and gain satisfaction and pleasure from "Making a Difference"

Unfortunately we now live in a society which is alien in nature given the values that were instilled in us when we were young and in our formative years.

I am of the opinion that these type of people who do such things are indeed jealous of the esteem in which you are undoubtably held by those which you choose to help.

If you can, just ignore them and treat them with the contempt they deserve.

I won't stop because of these people,I am 66 and therefore an O.A.P. so therefore the only authority with any need to check up are the Inland Revenue and Guide Dogs for the Blind accounts department will be able to tell them how much they DON'T pay me.Nothing illegal so no worries,but lots of satisfaction and pleasure.
I very much appreciate how people on this forum have responded,but really I just wanted to persuade Mr Bunt to carry on.
Kind Regards,60129.

Edited for spelling mistake.