Lisa O`Brien

I'm very sad to hear this news. RIP Katherine.

Very sad news. RIP.

Is this your son, cotes? Fab photo.

RIP. Saw her at the Palace Theatre Manchester on the RB's opening night opposite Merle Park. ( Ken McMillan was siting just a few rows away from us as we had complimentary Stalls seats). It was a wonderful production. So happy that I saw it.

I've been having issues with my local Credit Union. Normally they are great. However just today I took all my savings out of my account , bar £50 and transferred it all to my bank account. Not been able to log in to my credit union account for weeks on end. Someone told me last week an IT technician would phone me on Tuesday just gone, to help find out what the problem was. I waited in all day. The phone never rang. Nor the next day. In a few weeks my son will hopefully ( finally) be going to university at the age of 23. We have to pay £2,000 upfront which is half the first year of tuition fees ourselves . Once his Uni give us the word, they will expect the payment asap i'd imagine. Have tried transferring money to my bank account from them in the past; just small amounts. It has taken nearly a week sometimes. I understand a lot of their staff are working from home at the moment, but I need them to be super efficient with my money right now, as my son's place at uni might depend on us getting that money to them when they ask for it. They were falling well short, and I think I did the right thing in moving my savings.

Can anyone provide a link to the news story? Or any link at all? Thanks.

RIP to a true legend.

Thank you Jane. Yes, he will be eligible to apply for a bursary from an organisation called uversity. But the criteria is you have to be at least 23 on 1st January in the year you are applying. He wasn't 23 until 2 February this year. So he will be eligible to apply for it next year. Of course, the irony is, next year he will be entitled to everything . It's this year that he has to get through with no money to live on !!

Yes, Anna, that's what I meant to say.

For the next academic year, Sean will be entitled to everything. Full tuition fee loan, maintenance loan, money to live on etc. But because he has already used up two years of his four year Higher Education funding on a silly HND ( massive mistake), he only has 2 years of HE funding left. This 3 year Liberal Arts with History course is going to be funded; but only for years 2 and 3. He was living at home while studying the HND ( thank God), so he still has the money they will give him to pay for university accommodation untouched. The maintenance loan, to pay for accommodation here in Northern Ireland is £3,630 a year, and just about will pay for him to live in the cheapest uni accommodation ( Belonging to Queen's University Belfast) of £85 PW. I think students in England are given thousands more each year to pay for their accommodation than ones here are.

My sister has said she will help with a few thousand pounds, which is wonderful of her. But right at this minute she can't absolutely commit to this promise. Her husband has just had his 59th birthday. He has been living in a care home for the last 5 months. He is deteriorating rapidly with severe Dementia. My sister wants to hire a solicitor to try and get him to be allowed to come home. She also wants to possibly take Colin to see a private Neurologist for a second opinion and /or to see if he has inhaled any Stachybotrys mould and it is this which is affecting his cognition.

The Student Loans ask for parental income, regardless of the age of the student. It's just a funny quirk of the system. The only way his own financial situation would be taken into account instead of mine would be if he were to declare himself independent. Which of course he's not, as he's living at home with me, and my Housing Benefit would be drastically changed were that to change. Besides, his own credit rating is not much better than mine !

Hello. Yes, he can apply for a bursary next year. The criteria is that the student has to be at least 23 years old by 1st January 2020. He wasn't 23 until 2 February. So he will be eligible to apply for help next year. He is entitled to a loan to pay for his university accommodation in Belfast. We will be able to pay the tuition fee in instalments after giving them a £2,000 deposit in September ( Have just finally got the 2K deposit together last week). But he isn't entitled to a penny in living costs. My sister has said she will help out and he'll have to get a PT job in Belfast to make ends meet. The absolute most I would be able to afford to give him would be about £30 a week to live on.

I'm talking about funding other than the Student Loans Company. I know there is an Irish company called Future Finance, but i've heard they can be extremely risky to go with. My credit rating is appalling, and i've been turned down for a loan, not just with my bank, but with my Credit Union as well. But since then, my situation has changed, and I now literally have the money each month to be able to pay back a loan of up to about eight thousand pounds, within two and a half years plus the interest, but because of my credit history, no-one will touch me with a barge pole. Does anyone know of any reputable company out there who accept people with such poor credit history for such a relatively large sum of money ? Thanks. EDIT. Have explored the prospect of a university scholarship but he won't be eligible to apply until the following academic year.

I cringe whenever I see videos of people doing it. It's just horrible, imo.

My brother in law in Manchester may or may not have these toxic spores in his brain. He is either 58 or 59. Has been living in a care home since March. He has recently deteriorated even further and is being moved to a different home where they are better able to cope with his needs. He has had MRI and CT scans, which show global atrophy. His last scan was a few moths ago. My sister when she used to visit him, or when she used to speak to him on the phone because of the lockdown, can hear in his voice that he has deteriorated further. He soils himself, and never realises. He cannot string a full sentence together. If he goes to use the landline in the home to speak to someone, he has to have a carer stand next to him, as he doesn't know how to use the receiver. Then when someone tells him to put it to his mouth to speak into, 30 seconds later he forgets again, and tries placing the receiver on his head. He wanders around the home all day incessantly and keeps getting lost. He hallucinates. Sometimes when my sister has been there he suddenly screams, "Get out, they're going to kill us", over and over again at the top of his lungs. Neither his GP, Social Worker, Psychiatrist or whoever has ever called for an investigation to look at WHY a healthy, relatively young man may have become like this over the last 12 to 18 months. They all just say he has early onset dementia and that's that. Which may very well be true. Their flat became damp in the loft. Someone from the council came to look at it, and there was a lot of mould where the water was. It still hasn't been repaired. Then my sister watched a TV programme called Forensic Files. Season 7 Episode 37. Breaking the Mold ( The whole programme is available on You Tube). Or Google Melanie Ballard, Texas. The man of the house developed dementia like symptoms and it transpired their house was full of this Stachybotrys. It's also known as a mico toxin. My sister, rightly or wrongly, thinks this mico toxin might be present in the damp mould that is in their loft. She has mentioned it to the council, and every healthcare professional, saying there is a possibility this could be what is causing her husband's dementia. The healthcare professionals have never even heard of Stachybotrys, and apparently in the US, experts are only just starting to take it seriously. Meanwhile my sister with my help, is trying to do all she can to get people to take her seriously. As she often says herself, if he is tested and there are no mico toxic spores in her husbands brain, and it is simply early onset dementia not caused by any outside factor, then she will shut the hell up about it. Until then, she and I keep trying to do what we can ( Writing to the Center for Disease Control in Austin, Texas, for example. Where it was explained in the tv programme, they first investigated this family's house). As I said, I just wanted to let people know about this potentially deadly mould that lives in damp conditions and can affect people's brains. The Neurologist told me that Stachybotrys it is very very rare indeed and he had to spend an hour reading up on it as he like the others, had never heard of it. Well now people reading this have heard of it too. Knowledge is power, and all that.

Good. !!

Excellent Janite. Used to love Pam Ayers when she was on the telly. Really liked her accent too !!

Hello. I've no idea if the estate agent is acting for a private landlord. I know it is illegal in England, Scotland and Wales not to issue tenants with a refund in certain circumstances. I don't think it applies here though.

He doesn't know yet. Has applied online, so is waiting to hear what he is entitled to.

The leader of a US church has died after injecting himself with disinfectant. Donald Trump is set to be charged with a bleach of the priest.

Thank you Peony. I'll tell him to look.

Thank you for this. Don't know how you managed to find it as it was taken down ages ago. I remembered that there was a list of local landlords with lodgings. However, now this whole page no longer is up I assume they no longer have these landlords on their list? Stranmillis University College , which is the other University College connected to Queen's is stunning, and do have their own accommodation. But it is way too expensive. Students in Northern Ireland are given a maximum accommodation grant of £3,475 a year. In England i think they get five and a half thousand, so can pretty much choose to live wherever they want. There are lovely, new buildings in the centre of Belfast owned by Student Roost. Only foreign students or those paying a substantial amount extra themselves would be able to afford to live there. Arlene Foster, the first minister, has actually been talking about reducing the amount students get here. She thinks they get too much.

The one, major drawback about St. Mary's University College is that it doesn't have its own accommodation. Everything else about it seems wonderful.

The privately rented landlords have said they will keep the deposit if he books now and in September the unis don't go ahead because of Covid-19 being ongoing. Both Uni and private rented accommodations are starting to fill up for September, in anticipation of the unis opening again. The sensible thing is to hold back and wait, and see what the pandemic situation is like nearer the time before committing himself. But in doing that he is in danger of finding nowhere suitable, as all the best places in both sectors might be filled. So do we hand over a £400 deposit now, which is a lot of money for us, and risk unis might not go ahead and we have thrown a lot of money away? Or does he hold out for now and wait; and not hand over any deposit, while all the time places are being filled and there might be nothing left that is within his budget?