new year

Well another year is underway, hopefully a couple of health problems I have will improve or get sorted out this year.  They have been long standing which is very worrying, I am still waiting for the results from a specialist, though not holding out much hope he will do much but I guess you never know.  The weather here is very unseasonally mild, the supermarkets hand shops have winter stuff in them understandably but there is not sign of winter as yet, its the warmest winter so far on record apparently, the weather seems to be topsy tervey, its an interesting stubject really , well not until this year anyway, there has been loads of rain though, I am glad I live up in the hills so to speak as I am away from the floods which have been bad, I saw some sand bags outside some houses today, I guess they are still worried we will get more rain and there is no sign of it ending really I guess.

One of the issues that's gets me down is the benefit trap, 

A welfare trap is a situation in which the income (wages plus government benefits) of an individual on welfare remains the same or actually decreases if that individual starts to earn higher wages but loses some or all of his government benefits.

It has been around along time, its when the person is too worried to come off benefit as they might not get it back if the job does not work out and they could be long term unemployed on a lower benefit.  There are a lot of schemes to help with this but hey are very complicated to get your head around find, the benefit trap is a very depressing situation and very stressful and does what it says, it make the person feel trapped, which in turn lowers confidence and then there is no chance of a job its a viscious circle.