denyerec.co.uk

I’ve been toying with the idea of re-writing the Amazon Media Manager wordpress plugin thing, so I went to have a bit of a read about how best to integrate with Amazon’s services.

After reading through a few seemingly old tutorials it appears that if you use any particular “Talk to amazon with their permission” system, you have to register to become an Amazon Web Services (AWS) developer. This is free, but it did make me stop and wonder whether the general WordPress using audience would bother, or whether having to register with AWS would put them off using the new version of the plugin.

Come to think of it, after looking through the AWS centre I’m not even sure if the SOAP approach in the old tutorials is going to work. Won’t be able to say anything about that until I’ve tried it.

If anyone’s interested or has an opinion on this, mail me or comment here.

I really need to move to WordPress 1.5 and redesign.
*sigh*

On a slightly jollier note for today, I’d just like to express my congratulations to the Crewe Amateur Operatic Society for their performance of Anything Goes at the weekend. Coley and I dashed back to my hometown to see it and it was well worth the trip, so much so that they might want to drop the ‘A’ out of CAOS. (In case you’re wondering, because am-dram isn’t something I’d normally seek out, I have rather strong ties of the biological kind to Public Enemy Number 13…)

Well done to them all for a highly entertaining evening, usually your parents make you cringe when they do something publically, instead this time I got to applaude him for it !

Ok, here’s the current update on our immigration tale of strife and woe…

Last week we contacted a lawyer in Leicester ( several, actually) to get advice about our appeal. Every single one of them mentioned the fact that it was strange Coley had been granted the right to appeal. You see if your work permit is still valid when they (They being the Home Office) reach a decision (Or just rubberstamp you with rejection without opening the envelope…) you do not have grounds for appeal. What this means is that if we’d hired the lawyer (For just shy of 1,500 UK pounds) and gone to appeal it was very likely we would have gotten to the hearing and been told “I am sorry, but you do not have legal grounds for appeal.”

Bosh splat. £1,500 down the pipes and no comeback. It seems they don’t often do no-win no-fee in these cases and I don’t wonder why.

Anyway, the course of action available to us now is to make a new application for leave to remain in the UK. This has to be done pretty sharpish as Coley’s VISA expires on Thursday but that’s OK as under UK Immigration law if you have an application for leave in progress then your existing visa is extended until a decision is made.

So what now? We send our life off in a special delivery jiffy bag tomorrow morning, it arrives on the 23rd. They then process the application as normal which will, knowing the facist tarts at Immigration, involve emptying our envelope into a return envelope without reading anything and stuffing in a default rejection letter with her name on. We get the rejection back and THEN take it to appeal if we can afford to. Ironically the legal aid is going to cost as much as the flights back to Australia if the appeal fails. Not good.

There is one major pitfall that presents itself and that lies with the efficiency of the Home Office. If they manage to process the application within 2 days, she will not have a legal right to appeal as her existing visa will have been valid at the time of refusal. If this happens then we’re sailing down shit creek in a barbed wire canoe with oars made from cheese. Given that the original application took over 2 months to process, we’re hoping we’ll be OK, but you can apparrently never udnerestimate the lengths that the callous bastards at the HO will go to in order to wreck someone’s life.

Just a minor update… The footer for all the Home Office documents reads:

BUILDING A SAFE, JUST AND TOLERANT SOCIETY

Safe? My GF couldn’t hurt a fly, despite some shockingly contradictory photographic evidence 😉
Just? Deporting a tax-paying, defacto-married partner of a British Citizen?
Tolerant? Not prepared to overlook a 3 month gap in bank statements caused by THE BANK ITSELF.

Don’t make me laugh. Their tagline should read “Building a mockery of a sham of a sham of a mockery of a shame we like to call a society”

Well, the Home Office appears to be less sympathetic to legal hardworking migrants than Adolph Hitler was to people called Goldstein.
We’ve been calling around like mad for the last working day (Convenient how they send rejections on Friday, then promptly close their offices for 48 hours) and are making a little progress here and there. Aparrently if we take it to appeal it can take an age to come to a hearing, by which time we’ll have the bank statements they so ravenously lust after.

Also, to those who repeatedly suggest we get married, we have been told on good authority that now her application has been rejected if we get married she’ll be deported so fast she won’t need a plane ticket, much more a pair of teflon pants to ease her landing when her kicked-arse screetches to a halt somewhere in Melbourne.

We’ve written to our MP. We’re seeking legal advice. Well, we WOULD be seeking advice, but get this… The Leicester Immigration Advice service is only open 9:30-12:30. No, not daily. Just on a Monday. HOLY WTF BATMAN. Then when I called the Leicester Law Centre, they close early too, so we have to wait until tomorrow to get ourselves a local lawyer. I spoke to a lovely guy in London who’s an immigration specialist, but at 100 notes just to chat to the guy I guess he can afford to be nice to everyone.
If we can’t find anyone local we’ll have to cough up, getting this sorted is more important than money, and we’ll no doubt find it somewhere.

One white male backside, no previous owners, appearing on an internet auction site near you soon…

For those who didn’t know, the lady in most of the photographs on my site is my partner of what is getting on to be 5 years. As anyone who’s met us in person will attest, we may as well have been married for those 5 years too. Except we don’t argue as much.

My partner has been over here for probably 2 and a half years, maybe a little longer if you add it all up, on a 2 year working visa and holidays besides that (She’s Australian, and the first part of our relationship was long distance.) I’ve been over to Australia far too many times for someone who is terrified of flying.

During most of her time working in the UK she’s been dealing with young offenders. You know, the under-16 street scum who threaten old ladies, stab people and claim benefits without intending to do an honest days work in their lives. Benefits that get paid for by taxpayers. Like my girlfriend. She pays taxes so UK doley’s can buy beer and fags. The same doleys she used to help every single day. She’s put back more to the Leicestershire community than most people I can think of, but this counts for nothing to Immigration. Oh no.

Now her 2 year visa has come to and end and she has applied for leave to remain with her unmarried partner, that being me.

It was refused.

Why? Because we don’t have enough “formal documentation” to prove we’ve been living together for 2 years. We have 5 years worth of passport stamps, photos, memorabillia, friends, witnesses… You name it, we have it. Except… I never bothered to put her name on the gas bill.

The fucking gas bill.

They are throwing my partner of 5 years out of the UK, because unless we can find something that has both out names on, we OBVIOUSLY are a sham partnership and she’s OBVIOUSLY trying to illegally extend her stay and we OBVIOUSLY don’t want to live together forever.

UK Immigration are taking the piss. Just how, just HOW IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS HOLY does having 2 names on a gass bill prove anything. I could call up Powergen today and add Mahatma Gandhi to the statement and no-one would blink. 2 years down the line, I could probably get him a visa as an unmarried partner too. I just cannot understand why an anonymous 3rd party who can add names to statements at the drop of a hat can prove anything. Much less prove that we are a happy, loving couple who intend to live out our lives together.

But no. Because I never bothered adding my partners name to a bill she didn’t pay and because we didn’t keep the jiffy bags from parcels that were sent to us, they’re throwing her out. See, 5 years of life isn’t proof. They want Powergen to say we’re a couple.

The most sickening part of this is that we never get to see, or talk to, the people that are ruining our lives. Of course this is to stop me leaping across the table and strangling them on sight, but that’s what bulletproof glass and handcuffs are for. To think that the UK Immigration Board is splitting up two people who are more man and wife than 99% of married couples and the victims (That’s me and Coley) never even get to SEE the bastards or even know their goddamn names. It’s disgusting.

We are of course appealing, then we’ll take it to court if necessary and if we can afford to. If that fails then they’re not only deporting an Australian, but they are also deporting a British Citizen. If they think I’m going to stay put whilst they take away the only thing thats important to me they can piss right off. Someone should tear apart their families and see how they like it.

So much for a “Just and Tolerable Society”. There is no justice for anyone but the wealthy.