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Whitey Grandad

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  1. Whitey Grandad

    I hate

    What poor tax would that be?
  2. Summit fever gets some of them. There was one guy who got to the summit late in the day and telephoned his wife from there. He was too late to get back down. This is interesting about K2: http://www.mensjournal.com/k2 Apparently it's worse than Everest. As of October 2008 "3,679 climbers have summited Everest, while 210 have died. For all the righteous critiques of Everest and its commercial cattle drive, that mountain is actually getting safer. Only two climbers were lost in the 2008 season. The odds on K2 are much worse: Just 299 people have reached the top, and 77 have perished".
  3. Just one word of warning. We were in Bermuda in September talking on the beach to an american couple. She had won $3000 dollars in Vegas on her last pull on a slot machine. She had to pay tax on her winnings of 30%.
  4. I was there for a few days in the early 80s for a TV studio equipment exhibition but it's all been pulled down and rebuilt since then. We did do a day trip to the Grand Canyon though. Two of us got up at 4:00, taxi to the airport to pick up a hire car, 6 hours driving to the south rim, 4 hours there, then 6 hours back to Vegas for about 11:00 pm. We had time for lunch and to walk down the Bright Angel Trail for 60 minutes, then back up for 85 minutes, just to give us some sense of the place. Well worth the effort but it is about 360 miles each way. All this after going to bed at 2:00 am after a company dinner. My wife was pretty p!ssed when I called her after midnight to tell her where I'd been. She was in the garden cutting the grass.
  5. The bigger polls are just as pointless. All those not affected or unlikely to be affected by the removal of child benefit are going to think it's a wonderful idea.
  6. I would too.
  7. The Star Wars figures mught still be worth something. I've got a selection of early microprocessor integrated circuits from the early seventies. I haven't collected them, I used them professionally at the time and I just haven't thrown them away. Now I see that there are people who collect them and the whole lot are probably worth a few thousand dollars. The dilemma is, do I sell them now or wait another 10 years or so?
  8. Do you work in an old people's home, by any chance?
  9. I thought of that but there's a snag. All the water in Switzerland will drain down into the Mediterranean.
  10. That's a possibility, of course, but if the new proposals are as badly thought out as this one there will be ructions.
  11. That would have ben the sensible move. I can't help feeling that there's a lot more pain to come in a couple of weeks time, though.
  12. How about the £8billion overseas aid money, some of which goes to China?
  13. We have a lot to learn from other countries.
  14. If I steal £20 off you and then give you £2 back, is that a gift? There are some people who have never paid any tax. They are the ones on handouts.
  15. Not if they pay far more in tax than they receive in 'benefits'. Call it 'child allowance' instead and you'll see what I mean.
  16. Yes, that was (and still could be) the big problem. They were taking risks with effectively our money.
  17. The government is only giving back a small portion of what it has taken away, so it's not a handout. That term is reserved for those who don't pay any tax at all.
  18. Sumptuous football, the best that I have seen for a very long time. Chaplow was a vast improvement on Schneiderlin, tidied up well and kept the passes simple. There was only one team in it and we should really have had a couple more goals. Guly was a revelation, lovely touches on the ball and a strong physical presence. Looking forward to the next win!
  19. Rewarding risk-taking was an important factor in causing the crisis, but by no means the only one. It's people like Fred Goodwin getting enormous rewards for totally wrecking RBS that I can't stand.
  20. Well said, btf! It is wrong to call it child benefit. It used to be called child allowance and all parents were entitled to it, just the same as personal allowances, annual capital gains exemptions and all the others. It is all a part of the overall tax system balance and the anomalies that have been raised are so severe that these proposals are bound to be modified before 2013.
  21. I sometimes think that I'm all that's left!
  22. That seems to be a very selective list. How about India, China? New Zealand, Australia, Canada have come out almost unscathed. Closer to home, Germany has done ok.
  23. Neatly put, Joensuu, but there is absolutely nothing 'fair' about a progressive tax system. And as for 'cutting the Budget', we would not need to cut so much if the government had not overspent.
  24. Other countries have weathered the financial storms much better than we have.
  25. But as the saying goes, 'if I were you I wouldn't start from here'.
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