A Very English Affair:Why does not having National Insurance Card Matter
July 23, 2018 6:40 PM Subscribe
My wife and I were watching "A Very English Affair" and a thread that keeps coming up is that Norman, in times of need, calls Jeremy Thorpe demanding help getting A National Insurance Card.
In the beginning it is explained that he lost his after leaving it at the home of his former employer. He regularly claims he needs to get it through Jeremy because he was his previous employer. However, when I look up National Insurance Numbers and National Insurnace Cards (Wikipedia, which is of course, not authoritative) it seems that an NIN is something assigned to you at birth. So what WAS a National Insurance Card and why did it need to be gained through a former employer? If it was a government document why couldn't he just apply to obtain a new NIC? He was a citizen of Great Britian, and would have already had an NIN.
In the beginning it is explained that he lost his after leaving it at the home of his former employer. He regularly claims he needs to get it through Jeremy because he was his previous employer. However, when I look up National Insurance Numbers and National Insurnace Cards (Wikipedia, which is of course, not authoritative) it seems that an NIN is something assigned to you at birth. So what WAS a National Insurance Card and why did it need to be gained through a former employer? If it was a government document why couldn't he just apply to obtain a new NIC? He was a citizen of Great Britian, and would have already had an NIN.
Response by poster: lol cardinal sin. Apologies.
posted by ArthurBarnhouse at 7:03 PM on July 23, 2018
posted by ArthurBarnhouse at 7:03 PM on July 23, 2018
Iām the OP of the original question, and I was so curious about this I read the book that the tv series was based on. Lots of good info on the insurance card in the book - will post an update in the next day or two, under my original question.
posted by daikon at 9:53 PM on July 23, 2018
posted by daikon at 9:53 PM on July 23, 2018
As a Brit, my take on this is that the insurance card was not actually an important issue - it was a MacGuffin on the part of Norman Scott that let him maintain his dialogue with Thorpe - and it was the actual triviality of the issue which made Scott regard it an effective thing to push for - far too low level (and potentially incriminating) for somebody as lofty as Thorpe to be likely to want to deal with.
posted by rongorongo at 2:42 AM on July 24, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by rongorongo at 2:42 AM on July 24, 2018 [1 favorite]
My reading of the NI card thing was that was due to Norman's issues with authority, paperwork, and bureaucracy. It was just not that hard to get another NI card, but it might be harder for Norman because:
a) he may not have had his other identity documents such as a birth certificate or mail sent regularly to a fixed address which would make it easier to prove his entitlement.
b) it didn't seem like he was great at dealing with the machinery of state
In fact, he did get a replacement card in 1962 which he claims Jeremy Thorpe kept. Why on earth he would keep such a thing is unclear, I think it's much more likely that it was simply lost. In any case, while whatever the DWP was called back then would get irritated if you kept asking for new ones after losing them, with enough persistence there's no reason why he couldn't have got another one.
In those days, the physical card was important because it would be stamped by his employer and then exchanged annually so losing it might mean losing his NI credits for the months worked since the last exchange (unless he could get his previous employer to use their records - which seems unlikely given the circumstances under which he left his job as a groom). However, that could only have been a maximum of a year or so worth of credits.
To get a full state pension for someone born at his age, he would need to be able to prove that he had worked (or claimed credits while unemployed) for 44 qualifying years. Assuming that he started work at 18 he would have reached that number of credits when he was 62 and the earliest he could have claimed his state pension was 65. Therefore, he wasn't actually out anything due to the loss of a year's worth of credits.
posted by atrazine at 3:08 AM on July 24, 2018
a) he may not have had his other identity documents such as a birth certificate or mail sent regularly to a fixed address which would make it easier to prove his entitlement.
b) it didn't seem like he was great at dealing with the machinery of state
In fact, he did get a replacement card in 1962 which he claims Jeremy Thorpe kept. Why on earth he would keep such a thing is unclear, I think it's much more likely that it was simply lost. In any case, while whatever the DWP was called back then would get irritated if you kept asking for new ones after losing them, with enough persistence there's no reason why he couldn't have got another one.
In those days, the physical card was important because it would be stamped by his employer and then exchanged annually so losing it might mean losing his NI credits for the months worked since the last exchange (unless he could get his previous employer to use their records - which seems unlikely given the circumstances under which he left his job as a groom). However, that could only have been a maximum of a year or so worth of credits.
To get a full state pension for someone born at his age, he would need to be able to prove that he had worked (or claimed credits while unemployed) for 44 qualifying years. Assuming that he started work at 18 he would have reached that number of credits when he was 62 and the earliest he could have claimed his state pension was 65. Therefore, he wasn't actually out anything due to the loss of a year's worth of credits.
posted by atrazine at 3:08 AM on July 24, 2018
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by octothorpe at 6:43 PM on July 23, 2018