More Wigan and Leigh Housing blunders

Man with Cystic Fibrosis, degenerating quickly, wants to move over to Ashton to be closer to his mother. Not just for the lovely family aspect, his mother is his primary caretaker.

He was put in band 4 (or the same band that Mr. Me and I would be,) then band 2 and now the highest priority, band 1. The latter only happened after the local paper intervened.

Mrs Ackers said Wigan and Leigh Housing contacted her after the Evening Post's intervention.

And they confirm that Mr Ackers' housing application has now been moved to band one category as a "medical and welfare" emergency.

A Metro spokesman said: "It is clear that Mr Ackers has considerable health issues. We have increased his priority for rehousing."

What I find the most interesting about this is the comments section of the article.

John LP seems to back up everything I said last week after finding out about Terry O'Mara's gossip.

What a disgrace !! Poor Colin has enough to deal with without all this, I just hope its sorted favourably towards him soon.

I have only ever had the misfortune to deal with the unprofessional, incompetent staff at Wigan and Leigh Housing 3 times so consider myself lucky as each time it was on behalf of some poor individuals who I knew personally and was trying, as a gesture of goodwill, to support them legally etc.

I can happily state from experience that the managers right up to the Chief Exec (who doesn't want to get involved at all) portray themselves as being bigger and better than 'Joe Public'.

Its about time the relevant governing body audited this department and the council officials took notice of what was happening in their borough to some of the most needy and deserving individuals instead of concentrating on petty, needless money wasting schemes !!

At least it isn't just us. I guess. It's still awful they can't work with the people who need it the most.

Terminally ill man fights for housing

Edit: It's worth mentioning, less than week ago a pregnant 19 year old was said to become homeless thanks to.... Wigan and Leigh Housing.

An insight into the girls at conventions world.

For the love of...

Some background for those blissfully unaware.

Some group of jackasses decided that women should feel 'comfortable enough with their bodies' to have their tits touched. Sexually liberated and all! I mean, I've been obviously brainwashed by The Man to value my personal space and body to the point of NOT wanting creepy con guys to touch me.

So, they created the Open Source Boob Project (gag, gag, I know.) Basically, they wander up to women and ask if they can touch their boobs. They even created badges. There's a whole giant BS philosophy that goes behind this, but it boils down to them wanting permission to grope strangers at conventions.

I think you can tell how I feel about this.

(Side note: I never thought these assholes needed permission, seems to me they try and do it anyway!)

My first thought about this, as a response to these creepy motherfuckers if they ever approached me was to say 'sure, if you let me kick you in the balls first!'

Well, someone got around to writing that up.

What's really making me go WTF is the amount of people in the comments of that post who don't understand why random groping is a violation. Hell, even the question implies disrespect. 'You're so beautiful, can I fondle your tits?' That's a little scary.

I'm carrying mace with me at US conventions like forever now.

Edit: On thinking about this a little more, the implication that women go to gaming/comic/anime conventions for the attention of some Pauly Shore looking motherfucker and his band of pretentious lecherous saddos is really pissing me off. We can't go to a con just to enjoy the content, can we? It's all about the other half.

(Taken from )

Why I hate Wigan and Leigh Housing

I arrived home last night around 7:00pm, after a rather hellish day on the trains. Yes, more thieves ran off with signalling cable outside of Atherton. Damn the price of scrap copper! Damn people who don't commute! As a result of this 'vandalism' we were re-routed to Wigan via Bolton, the day I'd left my phone at home.

Good all around then.

Finally arrived home to find Stairsailor singing about Daddy's eyes etc, etc. Our new downstairs neighbors like to listen to music at top volume it seems.

This is only about the third time it's happened, but due to our previous issues with our neighbors (For the click phobic read: alleged prostitution, alleged drug dealing, verified fighting in the streets, loud music, police calls as recently as a few weeks ago!) we're less than tolerant.

A bit of background, it took us from August of 2001 to February of 2007 to get anything done about our next door neighbor. It took a letter to the Chief Executive and quoting DEFRA guidelines to get him a good behavior agreement. Know how many complaints we've had against us? 2. One because I left a note on the former downstairs neighbor's car asking her to park a little more considerately. (Harassment apparently.) And another shortly after the most recent complaint in January of 2007 against Michael Gaskell (the black out drunk that liked to listen to very loud music) about my husband and I arguing.

So, Mr. Me wandered downstairs to see if he could get them to turn it down a bit. We don't need to hear the lyrics to their music, you know? What ensued was a horrendous argument in between the four of us. The girl threatened me (my response 'You're actually threatening me because we asked you to turn down your stereo?' her after some umming and ahhing 'yes.' What do you say to that, really?) We got things sorted out eventually and filled them in on the neighborhood gossip. They seemed pretty surprised. Mr. Me saw them this morning and apparently it was all smiles.

Come to find out that Terry O'Mara our estate manager told them we were serial complainers and not to take anything from us. How amazingly professional is that? Remember though, to get anything done about our abusive alcoholic loud music listening neighbor, we had to go over his head. He refused to do anything constructive besides have little chats with him. And have we mentioned anything to him since that was resolved besides me admitting to causing a disturbance upon finding out our picnic table was stolen? No. We did contact him about our concerns regarding our convicted neighbor rapist and he spoke to my husband, but not me.

Deeply unprofessional.

I did complain about his behavior to Wigan and Leigh Housing via e-mail yesterday. I'm seriously stunned that anyone would behave so inappropriately. But in my dealings with them, I'm not terribly surprised. With the exception of serious violations, they've been deeply incompetent from the beginning. Including losing our paperwork from 2001-2003 (I think.) They're always in the news for screwing up as well.

I'm aware of the irony of complaining about being called serial complainers but I'm furious. Michael Gaskell made our lives hell for 5.5 years and they offered no support or solutions, even though they were obliged to. We'll see what, if anything, they do about it. I'm betting on nothing.