My dear family & friends
Lucia has her new spouse visa to remain in the UK, and a Schengen visa so that we can go to Portugal this xmas. But what a tale of woe – of a lack of understanding and missed opportunity.
In November 2007 we engaged a migration agent, by the name of Wessel Ludewig from Global Migrations SA in Cape Town, to help us with Lucia’s application. Lucia was duly granted her spouse visa with the following endorsement in her passport: “SETTLEMENT SPOUSE/CP(KOL REQ) L.I.Jones 29/08/66”
We asked Wessel what “KOL REQ” meant. He said it meant “Collection Required” which, in turn, meant that I would either have to be with Lucia, or at least be in the country whenever she entered the UK. Some of you may even remember us telling you this. We thought: “Wow, that’s harsh, they really are trying to keep people out of this country.” But what we have now found out was that Wessel Ludewig was talking shit. He didn’t know the answer and simply bullshitted us to make it look like he knew what he was doing, and to get a cheque out of us.
“KOL REQ” actually means “Knowledge Of Language and Life Required.” This is the test that all foreigners who want to settle in the UK permanently must pass. But you see Lucia was granted this type of visa because we had been married for longer than five years when we applied for the settlement visa. This essentially gives her the immediate right to permanent residence so long as she passed her “Knowledge of Life” when she arrived in the country. That’s was KOL REQ means and that’s what we didn’t know because some bastard lied to us. We didn’t even think of investigating it further because Ludewig’s bullshit sounded sort of reasonable and he was the alleged expert. Right? Why do people do that? What skin would it have been off his nose to say, “I don’t know.” Then I would have gone and found out.
But we only found this out when we went to the Border Agency office in Solihull last week when we applied for Lucia’s “Further Leave to Remain – Marriage”, FLR(M).
This wasn’t the first failure in Global Migration SA’s woeful service to us. Lucia was nearly refused entry when we first entered on the spouse visa because she didn’t have a recent chest Xray with her. Those are the rules: people from certain areas have to present Xrays to show that they are free of TB when they first enter on residence visa. Wessel Ludewig didn’t tell us this because he didn’t know as he admitted when I made an angry telephone call to him from Heathrow.
I wrote to Wessel and every other email address at Global Migration SA to demand reimbursement for the extra £665 we had to shell out for the extension to Lucia’s visa: “We contracted with you to provide a service of expert knowledge. You didn’t, and I want my money back. Please send me a cheque for the £665 we are out of pocket.”
The managing director of the company, Leon Isaacson, wrote back to say that Ludewig no longer worked for the company and, essentially, refusing to pay out. He said he would check my file and get back to me, but he hasn’t. I’ll write to him once more, but after that I’m sending my complaint to every journalist I ever worked with in SA along with a couple of other concerns I think should be addressed.
So to my South African friends: if you hear of someone looking for professional assistance with migration to the UK, or Australia, or the States, please advise them very strongly to stay away from Global Migration SA, Wessel Ludewig and Leon Isaacson. Spread the word: they don’t have a clue.
That’s not the only grief I’ve had over the past couple of weeks. I had to fight to get the correct version of Windows7 sent to me which I bought for the entertainment computer attached to our TV in the living room. I eventually emailed the CEO of Hewlett-Packard as well as the MD of HP’s call centre in Cape Town. I got what I ordered and installed Windows7. I don’t like it. So I essentially wiped my hard drive clean and reinstalled Vista from the factory image. But, for the life of me, I just couldn’t get the computer back to the original state. For some reason the nVidia graphics drivers aren’t behaving the way they did before. So I installed Windows7 again, and then back to Vista, and back to Windows7 again over a couple of days. No joy. I’m going to be emailing those CEO’s expressing my disappointment again.
You may also remember from my last letter that I bought some really cheap printer ink cartridges over the internet. Well, wasn’t that a bad idea. I think the ink was possibly a bit too cheap, because it screwed up my printer in a day. It took me ages to get the printer working properly again.
On the home front, you may also remember that Edgar had caught a stomach bug. He eventually got better after a trip to the vet, but as soon as he was better Hazel caught kennel cough (tracheobronchitis), which is a highly contagious canine illness. Then as soon as she got better, he got the tummy thing again. They appear to be well and healthy now, which is just as well because they are off to the kennels for our holiday tomorrow.
It’s been getting much colder as one might expect in December in the UK. We’ve had our first frosts which means we have to de-ice the cars in the morning. What I still don’t quite understand is how we get a thick layer of ice on the inside of the windscreen. I usually go outside after breakfast (in my pyjamas) and turn both cars on with the demisters going full blast, and then dash back inside and watch them from the warmth of the lounge. Tigger, our Burmese cat, has taken to sleeping on top of computers – which isn’t really good for the computers as they soon start to overheat. I think I have finally persuaded him that it’s not a good idea. Strange looking “flowers” are also appearing down our road as neighbours begin to wrap their sensitive plants a polythene coat to protect them from the frost.
In terms of adventures, we went to Bourton-on-the-water in the Cotswolds a couple of weekends ago because it looked cute on a television programme I saw. And it is, but after a while Cotswolds towns become more-or-less indistinguishable from one another. See the pictures in the usual place at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones. We drove home via Burford and Banbury as night set in (four o’clock in the afternoon) and it began to rain. Somewhere between Burford and Banbury we were following a driver whom I would label as a “slow coach” when up braked sharply as a deer appeared in his headlights. Just as I was thinking that it was a fluke that he hadn’t hit the deer, the deer’s mate came charging across the road in front of me. I now know that my ABS braking works.
It reminded of the first or second time that Lucia and I drove from Cape Town to George together. I was driving Lucia’s Mercedes at around 150/160 km/h at night just outside Caledon when a really large buck sprang into the road in front of us. I hit the brakes, went down through the gears and eased gently over the road. We missed it. Lucia was really impressed with my skill, but I must confess, it was probably blind luck.
What else?
I was walking the dogs in Northumberland Road a few evenings ago when a little Corsa with three “heavy dudes” pulled up to the sidewalk and hooted. A young lass, who had been leaning up against a wall nearby, walked to the passenger window and gave the occupant some money. He, in turn, gave her a small plastic bag with some white powder in it. I was absolutely aghast that they could be so open about it. I mean, this might be regarded as normal on a sink estate, but this was on Northumberland Road, possibly the poshest address in Leamington Spa.
In another vein, I’ve been to McDonald’s and KFC a few times recently and have noted that nearly all the staff are foreigners – mostly Indians and East Europeans. Given the unemployment rate in the UK, this tends to indicate how many British people prefer the dole to a low-paid job. And then they complain that foreigners are taking their jobs. Hmm?
Which reminds of a line from comedian Al Murray’s latest DVD referring to the children of the lower classes: “Children!” he says, “Those aren’t children. They’re a Benefits based pyramid scheme.”
He also describes the establishment of the modern Olympic Games thus: “After the War, the First War, the English and the French got together, and the English said to the French: You know the way you lot like to run away from the sound of gunfire? Well, this is what we’ll do: We’ll fire a gun and then you lot run towards that white flag. And that’s how the Olympics started.”
Another one: “There’s no German word for sorry, but fourteen words for attack.”
I have created new Hotmail and Yahoo! email addresses for myself. The spam on my Gmail account is getting annoying. Googlemail is really good in how it isolates spam and junk mail and stores it somewhere else. But it still clutters up your inbox “allowance” and you have to go and physically delete it. I just don’t want it. It offends my sense of order and sets me off dreaming of medieval punishments for the perpetrators of this blight on the Internet order. The easiest thing to do seems to be to start again somewhere else with a clean account and abandon the Gmail account. Most of the spam I get is for dodgy internet pharmacies offering fake medicines and a few others some porn. The usual rule is never to use the UNSUBSCRIBE link on these emails because that just confirms your email address. But this site http://www.wikihow.com/Unsubscribe-from-Spam makes an interesting point: Look for the patterns; then choose five or ten emails that clearly come from the same sponsor and UNSUBSCRIBE. You’ve got nothing to lose if you were going to abandon the account anyway. So, I’m going to try it; I’ll let you know how I get on.
That’s it for now; we’re off to Portugal at the crack of dawn on Friday.
Love, light & peace
Llewellyn
