My husband died almost 3 years ago and while his life insurance paid off the mortgage, I was left with many thousands of pounds of debt and had no option but to sell his shop in order to pay these off. The rest of the money I have been living off and spent some fixing up my house - the bathroom and kitchen were damaged, the carpets were the ones already in the house when we moved in in 1994, it hadn't been decorated in 15 years and some of my furniture was damaged and needed to be replaced. During this time I have also been searching for a job, but to no avail as yet. I am 43, with no recent experience apart from helping my husband in the shop. As I was only 40 when he died I also was too young to qualify for a widows pension, so I currently have no income. When I had little bit money left I made a claim for job seekers allowance knowing that it could take a few weeks to process, that was on 15th August. I now have nothing left and I'm living on my overdraft, and the Department for Work and Pensions still hasn't completed my claim. They say I have too much capitol even though I have already provided them with bank statements and proof of what the money was spent on. It seems that they have used old bank statements I sent them back in April, NOT the ones I provided when I made the claim in August. Can they not read dates on statements? I have tried to apply for a crisis loan but they tell me the same thing - I have too much money. I now have to go through the whole thing again, providing bank statements and receipts, my overdraft will only go so far, and I'm seriously worried that pretty soon I will have no food, no heat, no electricity, and they still won't have processed it. I am sick with worry, I can't sleep, I'm applying for many jobs each day, and I'm getting no help from anyone. Does anyone know if there is anything else I can do? Is there any legal action that can be taken? I've spoken to the DWP several times and nobody seems to care, even though they're cock-ups are putting me in this situation. I'm at my wit's end.

For a small monthly payment of one these I can keep it available as a download ... ok, I guess I'm pushing my luck a bit now. I'll get me coat.

'Tis done. It can now be found here. I accept flowers, chocolate and red wine as payment.

That's because you're pulling up a cached page from your PC, hon. I'll upload the spreadsheet somewhere and post a link here. Can't hurt to have more than one source.

Well, I've just recently joined so only just found this thread. Hope it's not died - though me and Celicaman are both booked up for 28th & 29th July now.

Sorry!

Grrrrrrr!

It helps when you're in different towns. He was at work, though he's just informed me he's on his way home. I bet you had visions of us sitting at either end of the settee asking each other if we want a cuppa via email ... LOL

They are scanned pages that are embedded as images in the pdf document, so not 'selectable'. I probably shouldn't have replied, should I ... you were joking of course ...

... or even sleeping in the bath ...

There you go dear, make yourself look daft. Wolfy's ok, but it's not abbreviated in the same way that yours is, is it? Perhaps I should have said "if you make my name into an acronym like CM ..."

You're welcome, but if you ever abbreviate my name the way you have Celica's, I may never forgive you. Think about it.

Sorry, Celicaman just told me my reply was in Swahili so here is the translation: "You can't".

Ok, pdf is a proprietory format belonging to Adobe. This means that while there are many free viewers out there enabling you to read them, you must buy the relevant software (or pay a license fee to use the software if it's distributed as shareware) in order to adjust pdf documents. There is a workaround if you write your own in the form of a plugin (one of the best being CutePDF which installs as a ghost printer driver) meaning you can create your document in any word processing or DTP package and write it to PDF, but you can't edit an existing pdf. Even if there are applications out there that will edit a pdf I doubt if it will be both legal and free. Sorry, I think Freaky's answer is the best. Biros are cheaper.

Sheesh, no expense spared there, then.