Pumpkin's Rant of the Day - Local Council

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Good day to you all. I haven't had a good rant for a while so here I am We have recently had new neighbours. Did I tell you about the previous one? Well, sadly, he passed away in November. We took his cat in so we now have two cats (Crackers and India). As we live in flats owned by our local council, we knew it wouldn't be long before someone new came along. I had a message from the daughter of a friend (well, the daughter (I'll call her H) is my friend as well I suppose) saying she'd been offered a place and her mum had said she thought it was near to me. Anyway, turns out that it was the exact flat underneath that had become vacant after its tenant's passing; They moved in - H and her partner and their two young children. Everything has been fine. We've done what we can to help her, and she's been a very good neighbour. No issues between us whatsoever. H has a leak in her ceiling which could be coming from our floor. There had been an occasional leak before but we hadn't thought anything of it as it had only happened a couple of times and was forgotten. The council (being the landlord) sent a plumber to have a look at her ceiling and our floor - not a problem at all. What was a problem was they turned up without notice, didn't offer any identification when my husband answered the door. One was rude and condescending towards my husband (unfortunately, I was on a work phone call at the time so I couldn't do anything). He took photos without permission (my husband didn't realise that wasn't allowed) which he then shared with H - along with gossip and vitriol, telling her that my husband 'obviously had mobility problems', wasn't capable of taking care of the cats and that the cat litter boxes hadn't been cleaned for 5 years (the cat litter gets changed regularly, we haven't even had one of the cats for that long, and my husband hasn't lived here that long). He told H to contact Environmental Health to tell them to tell us we had to get rid of the cats. Again, he had no right to do any of this. If he had concerns, the right thing to do would have been to voice them to ourselves and to contact Environmental Health himself. When my husband showed him the wet patch in the toilet - which would be where the leak came from if it was coming from us - the plumber completely ignored him and said that there definitely wasn't a leak coming from there. Well, there wasn't a leak coming from there at the time because we had fixed it, although we hadn't cleared up all wet yet.. This plumber had decided the leak was definitely because of the cats, crystalised cat wee in the floor boards (surely, if it's crystalised, it's not going to be leaking?? The photos he took were of a few silverfish around the cat litter tray. India likes to splash about in her water bowl so it could easily be damp around there from that (which would attract silverfish). Anyway, we cleared up what we could. H told us what the plumber had said - I guess it wouldn't have occurred to the plumber that people might be friends with their neighbours and we'd each share exactly what was said and done. H was absolutely disgusted at the plumber's attitude and that he hadn't fixed our toilet (our fix was only temporary and is quite likely to break again). I then got a call from the Housing Officer - a woman I'd never met or heard of before. I knew our previous HO hadn't worked for the council for a while but that was more by co-incidence. Anyway, this new person called and she sounded quite pleasant (which is unusual for our local council - I work for another local council (the neighbouring one to where I live) and many of the people in certain departments there are rather unpleasant too!). HO said she would come out with another person. She gave a time and date (the minimum amount of notice they're supposed to give but at least she did that). She mentioned what the plumber had said. I told her that the plumber seemed to think the leak was because of 5 years' worth of built-up cat wee. Then I politely informed her that a) we hadn't even had both cats for that long and b) we had cleaned up where the toilet had leaked and - as if by magic - the neighbour has not had a problem since. She was OK about that - I couldn't tell if the HO was surprised or not. Some of those council people would have tried to argue with me but she didn't so I wonder if that plumber has been reported before or if the HO has just not been with the council long enough to become awful. On a positive note, though, the HO is to visit us next week to see if we might need any of our floor boards replacing. Saying that, we've got repairs that have needed doing since I moved in in 2014. Our council is very much full of people who would sooner find fault with their tenants than actually fix a problem. We hadn't had any trouble from the council for a while, although I'm sure they were looking for a reason to get rid of us right since the day we moved in. I think that all settled as we reached the 'settled' status, or whatever they call it, of being here for 5 years with no issues. While I won't go into detail of previous issues, let's just say that the council have been as entirely unhelpful as they possibly could have been. Hopefully, we'll get repairs done that need doing. I am a little worried, though, that they'll try and tell us that things are our fault. They will always look for any excuse not to do anything. We're certainly going to make a complaint about the plumber. I wonder if he's an awful person all the time or if he was condescending to my husband because he's disabled. From what my husband said, it seems the plumber quite possible assumed that disabled equals stupid. That's all of my rant for now. If I remember to do so, I will keep you updated.