I like to think of myself as a normal sort of person (despite my warped sense of humour) I recycle as much stuff as I reasonably can, and like most parents I run around the house after the rest of the family closing doors and turning lights off. I hate seeing food go to waste and will happily eat stuff well past it's best before date rather than throw it in the bin. As long as it is roughly the same colour as it's meant to be, doesn't smell too bad and isn't growing larger than it ought to be with a fur coat then it's edible. I save old bits of scrap wood and metal, in case they come in handy. I have solar panels on my roof to make my own electric and I have a water butt in the garden to collect rainwater for the garden. I think I do my bit.
I refuse therefore to be bullied into caring for the planet. So far as I can tell it's much bigger and older than me, and it has survived pretty well on it's own.
Charities however think differently. Greenpeace keep sending me emails begging for money. According to Greenpeace evil corporations are exploiting our planet drilling for oil in the polar regions and doing massive environmental damage. This is killing polar bears and melting the ice caps. Apparently.
Greenpeace beleive they can save the polar caps from melting if I pay them enough money. They will save the lives of many cute polar bears.
Well let's just think about this shall we. I don't buy the cute polar bear image - they are vicious bastards who kill for fun. And they are all left handed, which is just sinister. Had they said penguins they might have been in with a chance. Any animal that evolves to such a degree that it can only survive in a specialist environment just wasn't thinking about survival when it evolved. So polar bears have what's coming to them. Or do they? By my reckoning, they have 50,000 years in which to evolve into something that likes it warmer and with less snow. And then they'll have to evolve back again.
Secondly, if I pay Greenpeace money, they will drive in cars to an airport, then fly out to somewhere near the polar regions before getting on diesel burning boats to go and disrupt oil drilling operations which they say are responsible for the melting ice caps. But surely their flights will contribute to the global warming they say man is causing, thus further weakening the fragile planet? And I hardly think that setting up a protest camp outside the doors of BP, Shell and Mobil will have any real effect. The oilmen will go fully prepared for the elements, knowing they have a tough job to do. The sandal wearing hippy hypocrites will have to do the same, burning lots of fossil fuel to keep themselves warm. And they won't be able to do what the Inuits do and wear seal skin and polar bear fur, because that's cruel to the nice animals.
Thirdly,let's look at the science of it all. The earth has a wobble in it's axis, this is what gives us winter and summer. We now know that the earth is on a tilting elliptical spiralling orbit, gravitational pulls from other orbiting bodies affect our orbit to a greater or lesser degree each time we meet. This maximizes, or minimizes the wobbling tilt of the earth, and when these forces are multiplied as two or more of the orbiting masses co-incide we get an ice age. That ice will then gradually melt until weather cycles, and the above forces shove us into another cycle of ice age. Global warming is not caused by mankind, it is a naturally occurring event, and nothing Greenpeace or anyone else can do will avert it. We are due another ice age in around 50,000 years time. Greenpeace really need to start thinking about how we are going to survive that, and start working with the global corporations and scientists not thwarting them as they try to make the best of the limited resources our planet has.
So on this issue at least, don;t give to Greenpeace, save your money, spend it on a big block Chevy and burn as much fossil fuel as you like, because you only have one lifetime to enjoy it. And 49,930 years or so after you've gone you won't need to worry about global warming, the ice caps or polar bears.
FOOTNOTE: Did I mention, by the way that just two of the fleet of four North sea Ferries operating from Hull put put out more CO2 pollution each year than every car in the UK combined? I'm still going to Amsterdam on my holidays on the ferry though. It's too wet to drive. Bloody global warming.
Wednesday, 24 April 2013
Saturday, 13 April 2013
Difficulty making both ends meat
There has been much in the media in recent weeks about the presence of horse meat in our burgers, mince and other processed foods. This does not concern me unduly. The French have always eaten horsemeat, and other than smelling of garlic is doesn't seem to have done them any harm.
On it's heels comes the news that ASDA SmartPrice corned beef might contain vets drugs.
This doesn't concern me either, as I rarely eat corned beef, and if I do it just means I'll get a decent nights sleep for a change. Probably.
It might concern me if my children were likely to eat drug contaminated meat, although this is as likely as an honest politician. The girl child appears top have turned into a vegetarian. I don't know why, but I suppose i have to live with it. The boy child is much more frustrating. He will eat processed chicken nuggets, made from reconstituted chicken and mechanically recovered crap pressed into loose chunks with bits of pork, fat and the lips and tongues etc, then covered in breadcrumbs so it looks nice. But he resolutely refuses to eat fresh chicken breast.
Even more frustrating is his stance over sausages. These are loosely speaking made of meat, the origin of which is debatable, breadcrumbs, spices and in some cases wood shavings. He will happily eat the middle of the sausages, but will not eat the ends. I have explained that the ends are exactly the same as the middle but to no avail. I have explained that the ends are entirely arbitrary, in that up until someone (or these days a machine) twists the sausages into separate links, that part of the sausage is exactly the same as the rest of the sausage. Does he understand this? Yes. Does he agree this is the case? No. Would it matter then if the people at Walls and Richmond filled the ends with wood pulp? After all, in the current recession they must be finding it as hard of the rest of us in making both ends meat.
On it's heels comes the news that ASDA SmartPrice corned beef might contain vets drugs.
This doesn't concern me either, as I rarely eat corned beef, and if I do it just means I'll get a decent nights sleep for a change. Probably.
It might concern me if my children were likely to eat drug contaminated meat, although this is as likely as an honest politician. The girl child appears top have turned into a vegetarian. I don't know why, but I suppose i have to live with it. The boy child is much more frustrating. He will eat processed chicken nuggets, made from reconstituted chicken and mechanically recovered crap pressed into loose chunks with bits of pork, fat and the lips and tongues etc, then covered in breadcrumbs so it looks nice. But he resolutely refuses to eat fresh chicken breast.
Even more frustrating is his stance over sausages. These are loosely speaking made of meat, the origin of which is debatable, breadcrumbs, spices and in some cases wood shavings. He will happily eat the middle of the sausages, but will not eat the ends. I have explained that the ends are exactly the same as the middle but to no avail. I have explained that the ends are entirely arbitrary, in that up until someone (or these days a machine) twists the sausages into separate links, that part of the sausage is exactly the same as the rest of the sausage. Does he understand this? Yes. Does he agree this is the case? No. Would it matter then if the people at Walls and Richmond filled the ends with wood pulp? After all, in the current recession they must be finding it as hard of the rest of us in making both ends meat.
Tuesday, 26 March 2013
You couldn't make it up.
It really is beyond belief. The BBC news last night reported the story of a school which has banned it's dinner ladies from selling triangular shaped flapjack after a child had to be sent home when another child threw a slice of flapjack at his eye causing him an injury. Well actually he probably just threw it in his general direction, I doubt he would have ballistic accuracy with a slice of flapjack, whatever it's shape. I will point out at this point that the child made a full recovery. In other words he was just a bit upset.
I would consider this a freak accident, and would not rearrange the menu simply to prevent the highly unlikely event being repeated. But just look a the probabilities. A triangle has three points and three sides. The chances of being struck by a point are equal to the chances of being struck by a side. The school has been told to serve only square or rectangular pieces of flapjack. These have four corners and four sides. So whilst the chances of being hit by a corner remain the same at 50/50, the chances of being hit by a corner are 33% higher when compared with a triangle. And I would doubt the ballistic accuracy of a square of flapjack is any worse than that if a triangular piece.
Of course what the school has failed to take into account is the devious nature of school children. What will prevent them, left with their cutlery, from cutting the square of flapjack diagonally across and thus arming them with not one, but two triangular pieces of lethal flapjack? The consequences are unthinkable.
And if triangular flapjack is such a safety hazard within the school canteen, then surely wedges of quiche and slices of all sorts of pie should be outlawed too?
You really couldn't make this up. It's Health and Safety gone mad etc etc........
Of course those of a certain age will know of the real danger in school canteens - chocolate crunch with pink custard. This stuff really was dangerous. If Teflon is the slipperiest substance known to man then chocolate crunch is definitely the hardest. If the local council could only get hold of the recipe they could solve the pothole problem in an instance. Attempting to eat this stuff was nigh on impossible. An entire generation of dentists were able to retire early as a result of the inclusion of chocolate crunch onto the school meals menu. Hitting it with the sharp edge of a spoon would, when around 3 1/2 tonnes of pressure per square inch had been applied, result in the stuff shattering, with pieces flying everywhere. Many a child would go home with shrapnel wounds when chocolate crunch had been on the menu. People born in the mid sixties proudly show off their scars. Soaking the stuff in the accompanying pink custard after turning it upside down helped a little but not much. All that happened then was that the stricken child would go home with a simulated gunshot wound with unsightly creamy white stains around it, because the pink was a mere illusion, it always dried creamy white. It was a different time of course, before Yogurt and Lettuce were invented, but it was part of what out the backbone in British kids. So, let them eat triangular flapjack. Otherwise they will all grow up without the nerve to ever try a Vindaloo, or a late night Kebab. And the world will be a darker place without that.
I would consider this a freak accident, and would not rearrange the menu simply to prevent the highly unlikely event being repeated. But just look a the probabilities. A triangle has three points and three sides. The chances of being struck by a point are equal to the chances of being struck by a side. The school has been told to serve only square or rectangular pieces of flapjack. These have four corners and four sides. So whilst the chances of being hit by a corner remain the same at 50/50, the chances of being hit by a corner are 33% higher when compared with a triangle. And I would doubt the ballistic accuracy of a square of flapjack is any worse than that if a triangular piece.
Of course what the school has failed to take into account is the devious nature of school children. What will prevent them, left with their cutlery, from cutting the square of flapjack diagonally across and thus arming them with not one, but two triangular pieces of lethal flapjack? The consequences are unthinkable.
And if triangular flapjack is such a safety hazard within the school canteen, then surely wedges of quiche and slices of all sorts of pie should be outlawed too?
You really couldn't make this up. It's Health and Safety gone mad etc etc........
Of course those of a certain age will know of the real danger in school canteens - chocolate crunch with pink custard. This stuff really was dangerous. If Teflon is the slipperiest substance known to man then chocolate crunch is definitely the hardest. If the local council could only get hold of the recipe they could solve the pothole problem in an instance. Attempting to eat this stuff was nigh on impossible. An entire generation of dentists were able to retire early as a result of the inclusion of chocolate crunch onto the school meals menu. Hitting it with the sharp edge of a spoon would, when around 3 1/2 tonnes of pressure per square inch had been applied, result in the stuff shattering, with pieces flying everywhere. Many a child would go home with shrapnel wounds when chocolate crunch had been on the menu. People born in the mid sixties proudly show off their scars. Soaking the stuff in the accompanying pink custard after turning it upside down helped a little but not much. All that happened then was that the stricken child would go home with a simulated gunshot wound with unsightly creamy white stains around it, because the pink was a mere illusion, it always dried creamy white. It was a different time of course, before Yogurt and Lettuce were invented, but it was part of what out the backbone in British kids. So, let them eat triangular flapjack. Otherwise they will all grow up without the nerve to ever try a Vindaloo, or a late night Kebab. And the world will be a darker place without that.
Thursday, 21 March 2013
Now I really don't understand money - budget review.
As I admitted in my previous post, I don't understand money. And I sure as hell don't understand the budget.
We have had three years of austerity, with pay freezes in the public sector, redundancies, cost efficiency measures, pay cuts, tax rises, pension benefits reduced and we will all have to work longer. But this, we are told is for the greater good, as we will bounce out of recession in no time and be richer in wealth and experience. However despite all the savings the Government still borrowed £21 billion last year and £20 billion the year before (in rough terms - give or take a million, and when you're talking in billions what does a million here or there matter? Ask the CPS) Even with all those savings and all that money borrowed growth is at a standstill and inflation is rising.
Despite being in debt, and in a recession we continue to give away millions in foreign aid. This is so that African clan leaders and warloads can buy more guns and new Mercedes, and spend a very small percentage of what we send on buying a well, or building a school out of corrugated tin. It wouldn't be so bad if they spent the money on British guns, but they don't, they buy Chinese copies of the excellent Russian AK-47. So UK Plc doesn;t benefit at all from this, other than we get a nice warm glow from helping save ungrateful nations from their own stupidity in order that they can grow up and become terrorists to fight against us. But I digress.
We fell into this recession, if memory serves, because a bunch of greedy Americans loaned money to people to buy houses who had no hope of ever paying the money back. This caused soem American banks to collapse, which in turn, for reasons I am not able to fully grasp, caused Northern Rock, a UK bank to also collapse. And then caused lots of other financial institutions to have collywobbles of their own until suddenly it was my problem, even though I don't own a bank. I am in the happy position where whilst I have very little money, I owe very little money too, so I could manage reasonably well without a bank at all. So, in a nutshell, lending money to people who can't pay it back is not a good idea. Obviously you should only loan money to rich people, who can pay it back. But then, they don't need to borrow it because they are rich.
Anyhow, it would seem that the Chancellors plan to get the economy moving is that he will borrow £21 billion again this year. He will then use this to help people who can't afford the deposit to buy a house, to buy a house. This will be in the form of some sort of loan, which if they can't afford a mortgage, they will have no hope of paying back. Sound familiar?
Elsewhere in the budget, a political master stroke, Mr Osbourne announces he will not increase the duty in fuel that he had planned for the Autumn. We are supposed to be grateful for this. 'I am cancelling this September's fuel duty increase altogether,' said Osborne. 'Fuel is now 13p cheaper than it would have been,' he claimed. Well there's a convenient conversion back to imperial measures for a start. Yes it's 13p a gallon cheaper, but only 3p a litre which is what it is sold in. 3p doesn't sound as impressive as 13 p though does it?And don't forget that's not 3p a litre coming OFF the price, that's the removal of a 3p per litre increase he had previously threatened. So, If I threaten to punch him in the face, but then say I've changed my mind, does that make it all okay?
The only other striking bit of news in the budget was a reduction in the price of a pint of beer by 1p. Wow! With beer costing on average £3 a pint in pubs that is really something to drink to. Actually he missed a trick there, becasue had he converted it to litres it's more than twice as much at 2.1 pence per litre. So, for example, if you are a raging alcoholic and drink 10 pints of beer every day, that will save you £36.50 a year, enough to buy another 12 pints, and one for yourself darling. If on the other hand, like me, you enjoy a nice glass of red wine at home you save nothing. Or if you have the occasional pint after walking 30 miles in the beautiful rural North Yorkshire moors, at a nice country pub, assuming it hasn't closed down because of the recession, it will save you only about 5 pence a year. Which is more than the 3p a litre you'll have not saved on the reduction in the fuel duty that never was in the first place.
The final bit of budget news I caught was that we will now be able to earn £10000 before paying any tax at all. Unless you are a mulitnational company in which case it will remain as it was £100,000 million.
Of course what George should have done is gone down to "Cash for Gold" with the nations gold reserves and flogged them - but too late, seems like the preceding Labour Government already did that.
We have had three years of austerity, with pay freezes in the public sector, redundancies, cost efficiency measures, pay cuts, tax rises, pension benefits reduced and we will all have to work longer. But this, we are told is for the greater good, as we will bounce out of recession in no time and be richer in wealth and experience. However despite all the savings the Government still borrowed £21 billion last year and £20 billion the year before (in rough terms - give or take a million, and when you're talking in billions what does a million here or there matter? Ask the CPS) Even with all those savings and all that money borrowed growth is at a standstill and inflation is rising.
Despite being in debt, and in a recession we continue to give away millions in foreign aid. This is so that African clan leaders and warloads can buy more guns and new Mercedes, and spend a very small percentage of what we send on buying a well, or building a school out of corrugated tin. It wouldn't be so bad if they spent the money on British guns, but they don't, they buy Chinese copies of the excellent Russian AK-47. So UK Plc doesn;t benefit at all from this, other than we get a nice warm glow from helping save ungrateful nations from their own stupidity in order that they can grow up and become terrorists to fight against us. But I digress.
We fell into this recession, if memory serves, because a bunch of greedy Americans loaned money to people to buy houses who had no hope of ever paying the money back. This caused soem American banks to collapse, which in turn, for reasons I am not able to fully grasp, caused Northern Rock, a UK bank to also collapse. And then caused lots of other financial institutions to have collywobbles of their own until suddenly it was my problem, even though I don't own a bank. I am in the happy position where whilst I have very little money, I owe very little money too, so I could manage reasonably well without a bank at all. So, in a nutshell, lending money to people who can't pay it back is not a good idea. Obviously you should only loan money to rich people, who can pay it back. But then, they don't need to borrow it because they are rich.
Anyhow, it would seem that the Chancellors plan to get the economy moving is that he will borrow £21 billion again this year. He will then use this to help people who can't afford the deposit to buy a house, to buy a house. This will be in the form of some sort of loan, which if they can't afford a mortgage, they will have no hope of paying back. Sound familiar?
Elsewhere in the budget, a political master stroke, Mr Osbourne announces he will not increase the duty in fuel that he had planned for the Autumn. We are supposed to be grateful for this. 'I am cancelling this September's fuel duty increase altogether,' said Osborne. 'Fuel is now 13p cheaper than it would have been,' he claimed. Well there's a convenient conversion back to imperial measures for a start. Yes it's 13p a gallon cheaper, but only 3p a litre which is what it is sold in. 3p doesn't sound as impressive as 13 p though does it?And don't forget that's not 3p a litre coming OFF the price, that's the removal of a 3p per litre increase he had previously threatened. So, If I threaten to punch him in the face, but then say I've changed my mind, does that make it all okay?
The only other striking bit of news in the budget was a reduction in the price of a pint of beer by 1p. Wow! With beer costing on average £3 a pint in pubs that is really something to drink to. Actually he missed a trick there, becasue had he converted it to litres it's more than twice as much at 2.1 pence per litre. So, for example, if you are a raging alcoholic and drink 10 pints of beer every day, that will save you £36.50 a year, enough to buy another 12 pints, and one for yourself darling. If on the other hand, like me, you enjoy a nice glass of red wine at home you save nothing. Or if you have the occasional pint after walking 30 miles in the beautiful rural North Yorkshire moors, at a nice country pub, assuming it hasn't closed down because of the recession, it will save you only about 5 pence a year. Which is more than the 3p a litre you'll have not saved on the reduction in the fuel duty that never was in the first place.
The final bit of budget news I caught was that we will now be able to earn £10000 before paying any tax at all. Unless you are a mulitnational company in which case it will remain as it was £100,000 million.
Of course what George should have done is gone down to "Cash for Gold" with the nations gold reserves and flogged them - but too late, seems like the preceding Labour Government already did that.
Thursday, 28 February 2013
I don't understand money, but I've worked out how to fund war heroes care.
I don't understand money, possibly because I have never had enough of it to be on close terms. I know money only as a fleeting acquaintance. For example a recent £3000 endowment policy matured, and remained within my bank account for about an hour before it paid off my credit card balance and for some urgent repairs on my car. They say money talks, but mine barely has time to learn the local dialect before it is saying goodbye.
I follow the basics of finance, in that there are 100 pennies to the pound, and six zeros behind a million, and 9 behind a billion (unless you are American, they seem to follow their own rules)
I can even follow basic interest rates in that 2% interest means you get £102 a year back for every £100 invested. What I can't quite follow is negative interest, the idea that the bank would charge me to look after my money, so that for every £100 I invest I get £98 back. A financial dumb dumb I may be, but at that point shoving it under the mattress seems a better option. Particularly as I have a safe built into the house which I could throw the mattress on top of. Of course having cash around the house is not a good idea in these dark times. Anything over a couple of hundred quid and you are likely to mistaken for a drugs baron money laundering his ill gotten gains, because we live pretty much in a cashless society otherwise. I rarely have more than £30 in my wallet, and being a working married man it is usually less than that.
What I can't comprehend however is other peoples attitude to money.
Hitting the headlines today is the story of two senior employees with the Crown Prosecution Service. They are apparently being investigated in a fraud case for up to £1 million expenses claimed for taxi fares. This is a staggering amount. I would assume that this has accrued over a number of years, but how? Has nobody noticed this? 1/2 a million each in taxi fares couldn't go unnoticed even over five years. And surely the accountants do an annual review, the Inland Revenue must look at the figures, and Mr CPS Limited can;t have failed to notice the money leeching from the public funds. Lets' say then that this must have happened with the last financial year to have gone unnoticed at the last review. Allowing these guys two weeks leave there are 50 working weeks to keep things simple. £1/2 a million over 50 weeks is £10,000 a week. Excuse me? I bought a 4 year old Vauxhall Vectra a few years back for less than half of that, and can run it for a year on a couple of grand including insurance. That allows one hell of a parking budget and still gives change out of £10000. I could pay a chauffeur a handsome £30000 a year to drive me around and still only spend £40000 a year. So in one month I could have bought a decent car paid for it's running costs. In two or three months I could have bought and paid for a brand new executive car and been chauffeur driven whilst a private masseur attended to my every need. Yet these guys were claiming that much for black cabs and nobody noticed? I can only assume they were being driven by his holiness The Stig in a gold plated special edition Bugatti Veyron.
It beggers belief that public money can be squandered unnoticed by other public officials in this way and yet we force our war heroes to sell their homes to pay for their care in their twilight years. Because the other news that caught my eye this week was the story of a WW2 RAF fighter pilot, who was decorated for many deeds of bravery and had an enviable 19 kills to his score sheet during the hostilities with Germany, is being forced to sell his medals to raise the estimated £120,000 he needs to pay for his care home. This is an absolute disgrace. We owe our lives and freedom to "the few" and those who battled in the theater of war so that we might enjoy those freedoms. The medals we present them with are mere bits of stamped metal but their rarity and what they stand for makes them value able beyond words to the recipients and their fallen comrades, their families and those who understand what they went through. That they can be sold to the highest bidder, some faceless collector who doesn't deserve them is abhorrent That the ex serviceman should have to consider that option in his twilight years is a national disgrace.
So how about this for a suggestion. We currently have 2.5 million unemployed in receipt of benefits. This week we should deduct £1 from each of their benefit payments and fund the care of this war hero and others like him. £2.5 million could be raised just like that. A proportion of those 2.5 million, the genuinely unemployed minority would, I am sure, willingly donate a pound. The remainder are being funded by the workers and have their rights and freedoms funded by the surviving war heroes and others who gave their lives and endured hardships so they wouldn't have to, so a pound is the least they can give. And if, next week another war hero finds himself in the same position, we should do the same again. Because I'd be happier with a pound of my taxes supporting the genuinely needy than some drug taking alcoholic fat lazy scumbag on a council estate. And heroes should be buried with their medals, or pass them on to their families - lest we forget.
In essence it would seem we can spend public money on taxis for able bodied bureaucrats without anyone worrying, but we can't pay for a care home for retired disabled ex-servicemen.
I follow the basics of finance, in that there are 100 pennies to the pound, and six zeros behind a million, and 9 behind a billion (unless you are American, they seem to follow their own rules)
I can even follow basic interest rates in that 2% interest means you get £102 a year back for every £100 invested. What I can't quite follow is negative interest, the idea that the bank would charge me to look after my money, so that for every £100 I invest I get £98 back. A financial dumb dumb I may be, but at that point shoving it under the mattress seems a better option. Particularly as I have a safe built into the house which I could throw the mattress on top of. Of course having cash around the house is not a good idea in these dark times. Anything over a couple of hundred quid and you are likely to mistaken for a drugs baron money laundering his ill gotten gains, because we live pretty much in a cashless society otherwise. I rarely have more than £30 in my wallet, and being a working married man it is usually less than that.
What I can't comprehend however is other peoples attitude to money.
Hitting the headlines today is the story of two senior employees with the Crown Prosecution Service. They are apparently being investigated in a fraud case for up to £1 million expenses claimed for taxi fares. This is a staggering amount. I would assume that this has accrued over a number of years, but how? Has nobody noticed this? 1/2 a million each in taxi fares couldn't go unnoticed even over five years. And surely the accountants do an annual review, the Inland Revenue must look at the figures, and Mr CPS Limited can;t have failed to notice the money leeching from the public funds. Lets' say then that this must have happened with the last financial year to have gone unnoticed at the last review. Allowing these guys two weeks leave there are 50 working weeks to keep things simple. £1/2 a million over 50 weeks is £10,000 a week. Excuse me? I bought a 4 year old Vauxhall Vectra a few years back for less than half of that, and can run it for a year on a couple of grand including insurance. That allows one hell of a parking budget and still gives change out of £10000. I could pay a chauffeur a handsome £30000 a year to drive me around and still only spend £40000 a year. So in one month I could have bought a decent car paid for it's running costs. In two or three months I could have bought and paid for a brand new executive car and been chauffeur driven whilst a private masseur attended to my every need. Yet these guys were claiming that much for black cabs and nobody noticed? I can only assume they were being driven by his holiness The Stig in a gold plated special edition Bugatti Veyron.
It beggers belief that public money can be squandered unnoticed by other public officials in this way and yet we force our war heroes to sell their homes to pay for their care in their twilight years. Because the other news that caught my eye this week was the story of a WW2 RAF fighter pilot, who was decorated for many deeds of bravery and had an enviable 19 kills to his score sheet during the hostilities with Germany, is being forced to sell his medals to raise the estimated £120,000 he needs to pay for his care home. This is an absolute disgrace. We owe our lives and freedom to "the few" and those who battled in the theater of war so that we might enjoy those freedoms. The medals we present them with are mere bits of stamped metal but their rarity and what they stand for makes them value able beyond words to the recipients and their fallen comrades, their families and those who understand what they went through. That they can be sold to the highest bidder, some faceless collector who doesn't deserve them is abhorrent That the ex serviceman should have to consider that option in his twilight years is a national disgrace.
So how about this for a suggestion. We currently have 2.5 million unemployed in receipt of benefits. This week we should deduct £1 from each of their benefit payments and fund the care of this war hero and others like him. £2.5 million could be raised just like that. A proportion of those 2.5 million, the genuinely unemployed minority would, I am sure, willingly donate a pound. The remainder are being funded by the workers and have their rights and freedoms funded by the surviving war heroes and others who gave their lives and endured hardships so they wouldn't have to, so a pound is the least they can give. And if, next week another war hero finds himself in the same position, we should do the same again. Because I'd be happier with a pound of my taxes supporting the genuinely needy than some drug taking alcoholic fat lazy scumbag on a council estate. And heroes should be buried with their medals, or pass them on to their families - lest we forget.
In essence it would seem we can spend public money on taxis for able bodied bureaucrats without anyone worrying, but we can't pay for a care home for retired disabled ex-servicemen.
Thursday, 7 February 2013
Work harder to earn less.
As a kid I was encouraged to work hard to get on in life. My dad wasn't bothered what career I went into, whether it was emptying the bins or something more lowly, like an MP. Actually, he'd have probably disowned me if I had become an MP. The point was though, that hard work earned success, and success lead to a better lifestyle, and higher income.
However, the austerity measures have left me increasingly doubtful of Dads wisdom. Casual overtime used to be paid at time and a half, now it is time and a third. Working on a day off used to be double time, but now it's time and a half. So, work harder and you can still earn more, but less than you could.
So far so good. But today I got my tax code notice. Bad news is always buried in the good, and if something looks too good to be true it usually is. Too bloody true. On the face of it I can now earn an extra £1330 without paying tax. However, the tax bandings have been revised, which takes back a good proportion of that, meaning that I now pay 40% tax on the £530 basic pay that goes over the threshold. Following this so far? Basically I pay no tax on more money, the same amount of tax on just as much money but more tax on less money.
And then there is the question of overtime. If I have understood this correctly any overtime I work now will be taxed at the 40% rate which means that I will be earning £3.50 an hour LESS on overtime than I am on standard time. This wouldn't be so bad if mine was a job where overtime can be avoided, but it isn't. It's often an operational necessity to work overtime.
So, basically the harder I work, the more tax I pay and the less I earn. Meanwhile, some people don't work at all and had their benefits increased last year. Go figure!
However, the austerity measures have left me increasingly doubtful of Dads wisdom. Casual overtime used to be paid at time and a half, now it is time and a third. Working on a day off used to be double time, but now it's time and a half. So, work harder and you can still earn more, but less than you could.
So far so good. But today I got my tax code notice. Bad news is always buried in the good, and if something looks too good to be true it usually is. Too bloody true. On the face of it I can now earn an extra £1330 without paying tax. However, the tax bandings have been revised, which takes back a good proportion of that, meaning that I now pay 40% tax on the £530 basic pay that goes over the threshold. Following this so far? Basically I pay no tax on more money, the same amount of tax on just as much money but more tax on less money.
And then there is the question of overtime. If I have understood this correctly any overtime I work now will be taxed at the 40% rate which means that I will be earning £3.50 an hour LESS on overtime than I am on standard time. This wouldn't be so bad if mine was a job where overtime can be avoided, but it isn't. It's often an operational necessity to work overtime.
So, basically the harder I work, the more tax I pay and the less I earn. Meanwhile, some people don't work at all and had their benefits increased last year. Go figure!
Wednesday, 6 February 2013
Gale force winds save the economy
For many years gales have been measured using numbers, with Gale Force 10 being the strongest, and Gale Force 1 hardly worth a mention. Gale Force 1, so far as I can tell, is a breeze. Whilst we think of a force 10 as likely to take our roof off.
But has the "Force" scale gone out of fashion? We hardly hear of it on the weather forecast these days. Now we get Amber warnings, and if it gets really bad, I p[resume we will get a red warning. Which is all very nice, but the people with wind turbines will be very disappointed to get months and months of green warnings.
And even when the wind gets up really high, as it has done in the last few days around here, the little arrows on the weather map mean nothing to real people. 13 with a directional arrow? What is that about? Is it mph, kph or something else?
What I need is a windspeed indicator which warns, in no uncertain terms that my fence is about to fall over. A clear indicator that the solar panel is about to be blown off the summerhouse roof. And how this will affect my bank balance.
So, I am pleased to report I have the solution. It is rather localised I'm afraid, but in general terms the wind which blew through last Thursday rated £100 on the damage scale. That's on a DIY basis obviously. If I had a tradesman in to repair the damage it could easily have rated £300 to £400.
This compares favourably with the storm several years ago which rated at a DIY score of £300 and that was sharing the costs with the neighbour. Mind you, the shared fence very nearly took out his front room windows, so it could have been even higher.
The problem with this scale of course is that it can only be applied AFTER the event. Rather like the weather forecast, which spends the first five minutes telling us about the weather that has already happened. I know about the weather that happened, I was in it. Just warn us about the weather to come thanks. Specifically the local weather. the very local weather. The weather that will knock my fence down, block my driveway, burn me, make me wet, or freeze me.
I've just realized that I have turned into the archetypal Brit, talking about the weather because he has nothing else interesting to say. Well, to quote Stan Laurel - "A lot of weather we've been having lately."
Am I alone in thinking that wind is just part of life and to get on with fixing the damage it has caused? It's an act of God, or one of the Gods, that's for sure. But can I claim on my insurance for high winds? People claim for floods, and that is just weather, after all. Perhaps I'm missing out here. Wind certainly makes money for my local fencing supplier. It has probably kept his business going through the austerity measures. Maybe I should get on that gravy train too.
But has the "Force" scale gone out of fashion? We hardly hear of it on the weather forecast these days. Now we get Amber warnings, and if it gets really bad, I p[resume we will get a red warning. Which is all very nice, but the people with wind turbines will be very disappointed to get months and months of green warnings.
And even when the wind gets up really high, as it has done in the last few days around here, the little arrows on the weather map mean nothing to real people. 13 with a directional arrow? What is that about? Is it mph, kph or something else?
What I need is a windspeed indicator which warns, in no uncertain terms that my fence is about to fall over. A clear indicator that the solar panel is about to be blown off the summerhouse roof. And how this will affect my bank balance.
So, I am pleased to report I have the solution. It is rather localised I'm afraid, but in general terms the wind which blew through last Thursday rated £100 on the damage scale. That's on a DIY basis obviously. If I had a tradesman in to repair the damage it could easily have rated £300 to £400.
This compares favourably with the storm several years ago which rated at a DIY score of £300 and that was sharing the costs with the neighbour. Mind you, the shared fence very nearly took out his front room windows, so it could have been even higher.
The problem with this scale of course is that it can only be applied AFTER the event. Rather like the weather forecast, which spends the first five minutes telling us about the weather that has already happened. I know about the weather that happened, I was in it. Just warn us about the weather to come thanks. Specifically the local weather. the very local weather. The weather that will knock my fence down, block my driveway, burn me, make me wet, or freeze me.
I've just realized that I have turned into the archetypal Brit, talking about the weather because he has nothing else interesting to say. Well, to quote Stan Laurel - "A lot of weather we've been having lately."
Am I alone in thinking that wind is just part of life and to get on with fixing the damage it has caused? It's an act of God, or one of the Gods, that's for sure. But can I claim on my insurance for high winds? People claim for floods, and that is just weather, after all. Perhaps I'm missing out here. Wind certainly makes money for my local fencing supplier. It has probably kept his business going through the austerity measures. Maybe I should get on that gravy train too.
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