I was watching the paint dry.. not so boring. reffee was league one standard and he had VAR but im unsure he knew what that was .. no way a dive form Kane
An unprincipled financial statement yesterday, typical of both parties unfortunately. National Insurance was conceived as being hypothecated for State Pensions and the Health Service. The argument that the old have paid for what they has been a major defence against the whining young who complain provision for the old is too generous and penalises them, albeit that they are fit and able to provide for themselves and their own futures. How then is it possible to cut NI contributions at a time when the NHS is eating money at a phenomenal rate while providing poor services and the State Pension is inadequate to cope with runaway inflation? The cynical might also suggest is that having raised pensions according to the Triple Lock formula, they’ve taken a bit back from pensioners by cutting a tax that isn’t paid by them….. If they’re going to play fast and lose with NI like this, it might as well be rolled up into Income Tax and scrap the bureaucracy that supports it.
The one thing that always amuses me, not in a laugh out loud way though, is the concept that anyone will be x amount better off after a budget. If you get more money you will gain xyz pounds per year. What they always neglect to say is you start with xyz amount and then they tax it at 20p in the pound first and foremost. So that's a fifth gone before you blink. Then the price of everything goes up and you want a plumber. He has increased his charges by £50 jut to get him up in the morning. That's another 20% of £50 gone in VAT. By the time everything on the Planet has increased in price you generally end up with less than the original xyz pounds you got initially. Or is that just me being over cynical.
I don't believe that Joe. Why is it then that if you need one you can't find one anywhere unless you take out a small mortgage. I reckon they are all laying in waiting for inflation to put up their wages a bit more.
How gob smacking can this be ? The United Arab Emirates are planning to use its role as host of the United Nations Climate Talks to make oil and gas deals ???
They are also trying to use their oil wealth to grow a business in renewable energy to replace oil as it gradually dies, so it's not quite as black and white as that. All of the major oil companies are moving in that direction too. If we can get them to make the investments, it's better than the taxpayer having to do it. I agree it's probably a breach of faith for the chairman of the conference to get involved personally but these discussions go on behind the scenes at all such events. It's going to be decades before we can do away with fossil fuels altogether. All that's happened here is that it's an oil state hosting the conference and the enviro-mentals have stirred up a non-story with a gullible press.
OUT OF CONTROL PENSIONER ? An elderly woman has been threatened with a fine for feeding birds in her back garden in a "menacing" letter from the council. Anne Seago. 97, had enjoyed sitting in her conservatory and watching while wild sparrows and robins flocked to a bird table with seeds.....but she has been ordered to stop after a neighbour lodged a complaint that birds circling in her garden were causing a nuisance. The retired music teacher, from Staining, near Blackpool, has received a written warning from Fylde council that she could be handed a "community protection notice" under the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act (2014) if she continued to feed birds. The letter added that ignoring a community notice was a criminal offence carrying a fine of £100 and no further warnings would be issued. The noticed dated Nov 10th...said "the anti-social behaviour is...putting out food for the purpose of attracting wild birds. This is a detriment because...this behaviour is unreasonable and is having a detrimental effect on neighbouring residents. Birds roosting and defacating is a public health nuisance and has the potential to cause disease". Mrs Seago, who has lived in her bungalow for four decades, told the Daily Mail ...."I am stressed out....My blood pressure is up and it was perfect the last time....After all this began....I have started having problems with my hands and legs....I'm not saying all this has caused it but I can't be sure....I want to live to 100". Daily Telegraph....28/11/2023. Don't worry Mrs Seago....you'll never reach a 100....your neighbours will make sure of that. Did check the date.....it isn't April 1st.
OVER KILL. The White House has 98 decorated Christmas trees this year (and they're all pretty big).....and just in case you don't get the message there is an 18ft one in the Blue Room.
There's a lady across the road who feeds the birds, which of course attracts sea gulls. Boy, can they poop.
IFAB - the International Football Association Board - meets today and on the agenda are potential changes to VAR. It isn't the only problem in refereeing but it's certainly become one of biggest, creating a widening gulf between refs on the one hand and the teams and the fans on the other. As someone wrote in the paper the other day, VAR is destroying the flow and spontaneity of the game and making it more like rugby, with constant stoppages, some of them lengthy, and restarts. Handballs need only consist of the slightest of unintentional brushes to result in a penalty. Penalties are still being given for clear dives and not given for blatant assaults. Offsides can depend on the relative length of toe-nails rather than a clear advantage being gained. The technology isn't being to used to penalise dives and simulation, which probably undermine the credibility of the game more than anything else. Personally, I think we're seeing far worse decisions not better ones and I'd scrap it and go back to the rule book we learnt during wet weather PE lessons at school. But failing that, it all needs a fundamental rethink. PS on the wet PE lesson thing, the school I went to had recently invested a lot of money in a big all-weather area, which was various used for hockey, tennis etc at all times and football when the grass pitches were too wet. Or so we thought On the first really wet PE lesson, we expected to go up on the AWP only to be told it was too wet to use it. Did we laugh? We most certainly did. In fact it went down in school folk-lore.
Not a chance against the Canada Geese that have taken over a park near here....the mums with their toddlers use to picnic there in the summer months...not anymore....even the Ice Cream Van doesn't frequent the park anymore....cutting the grass there is a bit of an hazard if your walking by....disgusting creatures....its as if they have permanent diarrhoea.
Just sorted through the advertising that came through the letter box whilst we where out earlier in the day. One seemed thicker then the rest.....looking further I discovered that it had written on the front....The Phone Book....92 pages thick.....pages and pages of advertising....oh and of course local telephone numbers of residents....which only started at page 40 ? Years back this would have been a book more than two inches thick with hundreds of pages....and of course we also received a similar size book called yellow pages. This book of 92 pages covered the whole of Bromley & Orpington....a population of 330,379 ?
Article in the Daily Telegraph today about the Armada Way "midnight massacre" of over a hundred trees. it seems the plan is to take up six of the remaining trees....root ball and all....and relocate them somewhere else. This will make way for an urban drain system to help stop flooding.....these six trees being removed will also make room for the proposed cycle and pedestrian route. I expect you know more locally of what is going on with Tudor Evans and his Plymouth City Council.
I did see on the news recent (this morning?) that the council intends as to plant a small forest around the city. Easy to scoff but id delivered upon, including after care, defence against rabbits etc. it’s a good thing. There’s a stat out there somewhere about home many trees survive being planted by well meaning bodies. It’s not a lot because of poor after care There are other things going on: Babcock have orders to maintain the next generation of submarines and there’s to be a £750m investment in enlarging the dry docks to take them. The council can’t take credit for that of course. Building the drop-in medical diagnostic centre on Armada Way seems to be back on. Just as well as they’d already demolished the old buildings when the money was withdrawn. There was a drawing of it last week so obviously if it’s been drawn, it will come. The refurbishment of the old South West Region railway office block over the station is complete. They covered it in plastic for 12 months and kept the lights on at night as if they were working. Now they’ve taken the plastic off and it looks as pig ugly as it did before. Good railway news is that Cornwall now has traffic light style signalling in place of the rope operated lever things that Brunel put up but the sea wall at Dawlish has fallen apart again. I can see just one lonely tower crane from our back bedroom window. That’s well down on the forest of them that was there last year from the Millbay development to the University and somewhere down towards the Hoe or the Barbican. They say that’s the measure of a city - how many cranes can you see.
Of course, it wouldn't be Plymouth without a council crisis: https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/plymouth-news/plymouth-city-council-accounts-not-8689229
Blimey tower cranes as you travel up to Waterloo you can in hundreds from the train.....so what does that mean for London....of course all will be foreign investment and foreign owned.....like most of this country.
And what's wrong with foreign investment creating jobs, often well paid jobs, in this country and paying the relevant taxes here? Looking at it the other way, BA Systems is on of the top 6 defence contractors in the USA. Other notable UK companies with big interests abroad include Diagio, GSK, Unilever, HSBC........ This isn't up to date but it gives you a flavour... The UK is one of the top locations in the world for investment by overseas-based corporates and attracted $62 billion of new investment in 2012 – the highest level in Europe (source: Unctad World Investment Report). The 45,000 businesses this investment has created employ three million people, accounting for more than 13 per cent of the country's workforce, and contribute at least 36 per cent of the total turnover in the UK (source: ONS). In total, the Inward Investment Track 50 companies paid at least £2bn in employers NICs, according to estimates by accountants and business advisers BDO for this research, and the companies collected a further £1.8bn from their employees on behalf of the Treasury. Pre Brexit of course, Brexit has damaged Britain's attractiveness for inward investment, so as time goes by we may live to regret we don't have more foreign businesses coming here. Certainly it's put the kibosh on our huge financial services sector ever getting unfettered access to Europe.
