Winning My Appeal Is Sweet.

 

Guillaume Cornelis  van Beverloo 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillaume_Cornelis_van_Beverloo

Yesterday evening a neighbour came to the door with a large envelope for me; it was registered post from the court.

It was the decision about my appeal against the council refusing me the air conditioning.

A combination of not being able to sit well in the shower chair as well as bad lighting  meant that I could not read the letter at all well.

I did scan it is much as I could and I thought it said I had won my appeal, this morning I finally read the whole document.

In which I understood that had I indeed won my court case, I telephoned my friend Anja who had represented me at the court; to read the conclusion of the letter to her.

Anja was very pleased, I thanked her profusely, once she confirmed that I had indeed understood the letter correctly that I had overturned the two previous decisions, I was delighted.

I am so happy that I persevered and did not give up even when it seemed quite hopeless.

Now the council has been told by the courts to go away and reassess the situation in the light of this court case.

I'm so glad that the Council has not been able to get away with it again as they always do.

Whenever somebody applies for something the council always look at the reasons they don't have to give it to them, they never look at this situation in the light of the needs of the person making the application.

In my case they tried to get out of it twice by insisting that my problems with the heat would be solved by blinds in front of the Windows and sun awnings at the front of the house.

Neither of these two solutions are very helpful for me, we have windows which go from floor-to-ceiling, they open inwards so sunblind’s are not workable.

Our landlord does not permit us to place anything on the front of the building, additionally sun awnings and do nothing to lower the air temperature.

Seeing as our apartment faces to the east on one side and to the north on the other side, this means we do not get much sunshine apart from briefly in the early mornings.

 The council also tried to shuffle the responsibility on to my landlord; they were constantly asking whether other people also had the same problems.

I told them several times that my problems with the warm weather were due to my Multiple Sclerosis, as far as I know I am the only person in this building with this progressive disease.

I'm very happy that I've managed to overturn the Amsterdam Councils decision not to grant me the much needed air conditioning.

I did not hold out any hope of winning as I don't have any trust in the justice system, so winning is extra sweet for me.