Jackqui Smith Down

that's for four people, so about £100 a week each (I'm including
lunches bought whilst at work for 2 of us, though not including after
work/weekend restaurant/pub costs).

I don't think it's particularly excessive.

 

"Between careers". I was a "senior chap" (but not chapero - word for the
day) - but senior programmer doesn't mean a lot.

I actually left my job because the cash was piling up and I didn't need
all that money. Sitting in that office listening to the arse-lickers and
suchlike was just too much. That and the blatant ageism which the
Americans had inflicted on the company. I offered to take a 50% pay-cut
for an extra day off per week, but was flatly turned down.

Now I'm going to train to be a translator. I don't know how people stay
in one career for so long. Life's too short.

 

He was probably a thoroughly honest & genuine chap until he got in with
the wrong crowd. Happens all the time.

--
Krusty

'03 Tiger 955i
'02 MV Senna (for sale) '96 Tiger (for sale)
'79 Fantic Hiro 250 (for sale) '81 Corvette (for sale)

 

The two fundemantals of a tax system are:

Practical to collect
Cheap to collect

It failed on both counts.

 

I suggested that it should be around 150k. 200 in Cabinet and 500 for
the PM. But the real issue is you need people in there who are not in
it for the "job" or the money. You need *issue* people who care and are
going in for a reason.

 

Haha do want to resurrect my "it takes 100k a year to be comfortable"
thread with Ben

 

HFM? I got the same thing - with a difference cover - for £1.99 in a garden
centre a couple of years ago.

 

Start them on 35k then pay them a whopping great bonus & decent rise,
based on their change of majority from the previous election[1], if
they get re-elected.

[1] So the ones in safe seats aren't guaranteed to rake it in no matter
what they do.

--
Krusty

'03 Tiger 955i
'02 MV Senna (for sale) '96 Tiger (for sale)
'79 Fantic Hiro 250 (for sale) '81 Corvette (for sale)

 

Only 97%? <thinks> Is your council tax over £1100/yr?

 

A bit like a dustman couldn't ever have the skills to work in IT?

 

Parliament sits around 35 weeks a year and even then only a few turn
up for that judging by the empty chamber visible on the TV. Then
there's the pairing arrangements so an MP can agree with an opposition
member that they both don't show. Then again there's those holding
second jobs, doesn't look to me like a full time occupation at the
moment.

Not saying it shouldn't be full time, just the current evidence
suggests it's not.

 

OK, with things like electricity, clothes, bottles of champagne, you
have a choice as to how much (if any) you buy, and for some, what
quality you buy. If you're poor, you buy less.

With things like road sweeping, policing, education, you have no
choice in quantity, and the level of quality is a political, not
economic issue.

Some (many?) poor people would, given the choice, perhaps decide not
to pay for road sweeping, etc. This would be a bad thing. Because
they have no choice (it's a mandatory service, which they must take),
it's considered fairer to base the price on ability to pay.

Most people [1] have no problem with "ability to pay" being used as
the basis for paying for national expenditure (armed forces, NHS,
building motorways, etc), so why should local expenditure be any
different?

[1] Hog is excused here

 

<puzzled>

No - I live alone.

 

No - 96 quid a month for 10 months.

Actually, I've just done the thing again, remembered to add in my
voluntary pension contribs, and it's still only 95%! Some people have
obviously just got big pay rises!

 

By whom? That's the way the system works, but there are many people
who don't consider it fair.

I think you'd need to excuse a vast swathe of britich society as well.
Most of the people whose higher earnings are used to subsidise the
system do indeed have a problem with the concept, at least as far as
it applies to them individually.

 

we was robbed!

 

Everyone repudiating my point has omitted the concept of change of
time.

Sure you can grow up in poverty, work in a manual job, etc and then
later progress to a job of serious responsibility or technical
content. But if you can just jump from one to the other, you were
over-skilled to the manual job in the first place, and would ask why
you were doing it in the first place.

 

So what was the point of the phrase "starvation rations"?

 

Yeah, I know. I just wondered whether you'd filled in the details as
if you didn't, or whether you earn less than I thought you did.

Or whether I CBA to look at the site again to see where 97% puts you.

 

Mmmm. I wonder why?