my OH claimed on the DPS after a tenant threw a glass of red wine over the middle of a brand new cream carpet and then left it to sink in / stain. At checkout this was raised with the tenant who then hired a carpet cleaning machine and tried to do a “diy” clean that resulted in the whole carpet being stained a dark grey colour because the machine was dirty.

After a lot of back and forwards the DPS would only allow the cost of 1m2 of carpet to be withheld so my OH had to pony up the cost of an entirely new carpet.

All of which assumes that people only contribute as taxpayers, and overlooks the value they add as workers, which at the lower end of the pay scale is massively more.

And this assumes that there isn’t someone already here with the capacity and capability to do it. We don’t need to import cheap unskilled labour when there’s plenty of it here – what we do need to do is sort out the ridiculous merry go round of low wages, tax credits, enormous administrative costs and a portion of the able-bodied society who have no intention of working.

I’m not surprised that the DWP “blocked” the request for data on the number of claimants who died within 6 weeks of their benefits being blocked as anyone with half a brain can quite quickly see the administrative nightmare that would be created in coming up with data that was even halfway usable.

just5minutes- Migration Watch are a biased group who are happy to pump out “facts” with numbers tweaked to suit their anti-migrant agenda. The Observatory is the only genuinely non-biased credible source of information on this and they say migrants increase the UK’s income.

Maybe the BBC would be a better source for you unless you believe they are biased too? Their analysis in 2010/2011 showed average government spending of £22K per family. Add on a few years and the £28K for personal taxable income is entirely in line with that even though it fails to reflect the additional higher costs of housing, translators etc. for many migrants.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13633966

The BBC analysis shows that people don’t make a net contribution as tax payers until their earnings reach a similar level cited by MigrationWatch – the telegraph put the figure even higher for the break even point at £38K:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/10638611/Benefits-Britain-how-much-do-you-pay-in-and-how-much-do-you-get.html

“Migrants bring in vast amounts of money to this country. Vast. Remove migration from the equation and the UK’s debt would go up.”

Whilst this is technically correct the reality is somewhat different. The last research on this by Migration Watch suggested that once you strip out the net contributions of a very small number of high net worth individuals who reside here for tax purposes the vast majority of economic migrants fail to make a net contribution.

I can’t find the exact figure but I think it was something like each Migrant would need to find employment paying a minimum of £28K before they became a net contributor to the UK – much more if they moved with families etc.

For some migrants with skills we need e.g. Healthcare, Engineering, Science etc. the “financial” contribution must be weighed with their broader contributions but the reality is that a majority of migrants do not work using these scarce skills or earn £28K – allowing even more people here without some kind of points system is just more of the same and overall serves to increase public spending and requires a proportionate increase in tax contributions from existing UK residents.

On radio 4 this morning they were interviewing migrants in Calais and asking them why they were so desperate to reach the UK and not interested in staying in Italy or France or other countries they passed through on their journey. The main theme seemed to be (verbatim) “free house, free money, free food”.

I rather suspect this won’t be the reality for many given the numbers sleeping rough in Parks etc. but for at least some of those who had reached the UK and were also being interviewed it didn’t seem too far off the mark.

Vodafone is great for calls and texting but if you plan on trying to use the data bit then forget about Vodafone – it’s got the smallest and slowest data network and as a result consistently comes last in most nation wide tests of data availability and speed. It also now has the highest level of coverage related customer complaints out of the main operators.

these

http://www.wiggle.co.uk/gore-bike-wear-alp-x-pro-2in1-shorts/

The Telegraph is reporting Evans has been offered the same fee offered to Hammond and May – £4.6m which works out around £255,000 an episode, or just short of double for each 1 hour episode what our Prime Minister gets paid for leading a whole country for a whole year. Lord Hall is crackers and has just advanced the case for the early demise of the license fee.

“throwing money at something that has the potential to continue to rake in much more money sounds pretty sensible to me.”

Yes but that’s not the point of the BBC is it? If they want to make commercial programming they should raise their own finance and not rely on a mandatory tax on the public for working capital.

Awesome. He’s got a net worth in excess of £100m, owns a car worth £12m, gets paid close to £3/4m a year or £1000 an HOUR for radio 2, and has now picked up another £mm contract paid for by the license tax fee.

We’re absolute mugs and the BBC is far to quick to throw money at already grossly overpaid “talent”.

haven’t had a Z3 but have used a Z1 on and off for about 18 months and it’s a great phone – amazing battery life and really good for taking photos and video underwater. You need to make sure the rubber ports are firmly closed so not sure if that’s why some people have had problems – camera and audio quality are also good and by all accounts the Z3 is at least as good on all these fronts.

We had this problem – solicitors and “party wall surveyors” trawl the planning applications and then write to the neighbours impacted.

Our neighbour isn’t terrible worldly wise so just signed and returned the letter she got offering her free advice to protect her property and the first we knew of it was when we got a letter saying she had instructed the firm.

As a starter they required:

Payment of an initial fee estimate of £6500 + VAT
Mileage at £1.35 per mile + VAT for the 45 mile round trip from their office to our neighbours house
Soil samples and other geotechnics (estimate – another £5K) before they would give permission to proceed.

It was a complete ball ache and interesting to see that at least in some cases “regulated professions” are actually operating using borderline fraud and intimidation in order to generate fees. The party wall act doesn’t help because the way the legislation works is that you have no choice but to pay any professional operating on behalf of your neighbour, and there’s no test of “reasonableness” when it comes to fees.

you want some of this stuff – works really well

Net-Trol

the Conservatives are proposing to abolish the 1998 European Human Rights Act, not abolish Human Rights per se – the European Declaration of Human Rights 1948 will continue to be enshrined in British Law.

What few people / no-one can seems very willing to answer is:

1. What problem did the eHRA actually solve in 1998?
2. Was the UK at the heart of human rights abuses prior to 1998?
3. What did the eHRA give us that is missing from the 1948 act?
4. Has the eHRA been abused or given rise to judgements that are way out of line with how politicians at the time saw it being used in the future?
5. What do judges (some of whom have very limited legal training) in Strasbourg offer that our own highly experienced / qualified judges in our Supreme Court cannot?
6. Why is it that many of the Labour cheerleaders from the time and who brought in the act say that it needs reforming?

Google “Andrew Care Opticians” – they do mail order and offer 15% off the price of oakley prescription lenses / glasses as standard and last year were nearly £100 less than David Clulow for lenses.

sale of goods act still applies as does the 6 year rule – so even though the manufacturers own warranty may not stand, the goods still need to be fit for purpose based on the cost / original claims for quality.

If there’s a general problem with x-fusion and the goods were supplied by wiggle it’s up to them to fix them. If they won’t and charge you just pay up and take them to the small claims court – it’s highly unlikely they will want to bother turning up for the sake of £80 and chances are they’ll just refund you.

Specialized Flux Expert – 100+ lumen and can be had for £50 or so if you shop round

http://cyclingtips.com.au/2015/03/specialized-flux-lights-review/

Good to see man of the people Andy Burnham is the latest MP to be caught in the dubious expenses list –

Andy Burnham rents out his own flat in London for profit and puts the other fly in London he lives in on expenses:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11627101/Andy-Burnham-claims-17000-a-year-on-expenses-for-London-flat.html

Dumped Virgin after the broadband was **** 9 months in a 12 months period. Been with Bt for 2 years now and not had any downtime – reliable as a Casio watch.

+1 thanks dandasbike … also now have one ordered

“Missed” appointments cost our local multi-Partner GP surgery so much that:

– their automated service for cancelling an appointment in advance has been broken for more than a year
– on Saturdays you can’t even speak to a receptionist to tell them in advance you’re late / can’t make it because “we don’t open the phones on Saturdays”
– even though it’s nigh on impossible to pro actively cancel an appointment they will text you and write to you to tell you missed it

The whole system is set up to introduce waste at every possible opportunity.

what website? hut.com doesn’t seem to be a retailer..

if someone was hovering a drone around / over my house I’d just chuck a rock at it, catch it then give it in to the police as “lost property”. It’s no different to someone prowling round the garden with a digital SLR and a zoom lens and should be treated as such.

is the prosecution threshold for 70 still 10% plus 2mph?

if it’s being spread round the family you probably need to tighten up on a couple of things:

1. proper hand washing with hot water after every toilet use
2. wipe the toilet with a sponge / bleach after every use (and wash hands properly afterwards)
3. Clean door handles with bleach regularly – particularly the bathroom and if possible give kitchen drawer / cupboard handles the once over as well
4. use separate towels for drying hands (or better still kitchen roll and then throw it away)
5. Wash all cutlery and plates in scolding hot water after use
6. Enforce quarantine – family members need to stay in their bedroom until the symptoms stop and enforce all of the above rules
7. No-one with any symptoms allowed in food prep areas / kitchen cupboards

Bits came out a while ago with the jetrosexual pieces in the tabloids but there’s more.

Transport and infrastructure like power, telecommunications and so on are all essential, and shouldn’t have people pocketing the profits, they should be reinvested.

Shame on those profit making companies who despite being greedy money obsessed corrupt organisations have still managed to:

Give us the cheapest mobile costs in Europe

Give the widest access to superfast broadband in Europe[/url]

Give us broadband speeds faster than the EU average[/url]

Re-invest billions into network modernisation – fancy that![/url]

By contrast, many of these conditions are not present where deregulation has been limited by government inertia. So we can have the above, or choose to have more expensive and worse services where profit gets reinvested.

1. Demand is rising faster than inflation due to an ageing obese alcoholic population

And this can’t be changed? It’s not inevitable that people will continue to eat sh*t and drink lots. It’s all connected. Obesity and drug dependence are closely related to poverty, income levels, class and education. Reduce poverty, and you’ll see the health services demand reduce.

It can be changed but only if we / society are ready for change, and it’s fair to say that we’re not. The link between alcohol misuse and income is not consistent – many of those drinking the most are not in deprived wards, they are people in the 50s and 60s with good incomes drinking several bottles of wine a week. Obesity appears to be spread across all levels of society with the highest growth in the young. Income and extent of obesity is also not directly linked – it’s perfectly possible (and in many cases cheaper) to eat food prepared at home that processed rubbish from the high street.

it’s noticeable that in the “good” / “carp” lists above, the programmes in the latter list are almost all the ones with big budgets and big casts i.e. the TV that is actually valued is cheaper to produce. So there’s a saving right there… scrap Casualty and Eastenders (£40m a year) and use the money to create a load of new interesting programmes that can be produced at lower cost.

NHS should be protected, by law – it’s budget set and increased inline with inflation and removed from the control of the Commons – yes that could mean it loses some over-sight, but the greater good is removing it as a political pawn. Dentistry should return to the NHS.

This sounds good but would actually be a complete disaster on three counts:

1. Demand is rising faster than inflation due to an ageing obese alcoholic population
2. A guaranteed inflationary rise would undermine the conditions that need to be present in order for the NHS to continuously improve – most organisations manage 2-3% efficiency improvements year on year… contrast that with the 10 years of falling productivity in the NHS in the 2000s when money was being poured in faster than the NHS could spend it
3. Something that costs more than any other public service and around 20% of the entire budget can’t be separated from political reality, not least as politicians will always be seen to be accountable for the levels of income tax required to fund it.

For starters, an end to:
– stupid glib policy pledges that aren’t thought through and for which the sole aim to is to hoodwink gullible voters – the mansion tax, end of non dom status and energy price fixes being just three
– a clear message on the importance of enterprise in funding good public services
– a clear mea culpa that much of the extra spending under Labour wasn’t “invested’ but was wasted
– honesty that the NHS must transform in order to provide good healthcare free at point of use but critically, where the mindset is focussed on the patient and that not all of the answers will come from within i.e. it can and should learn from best practice worldwide
– MPs that have no experience outside law / journalism / politics – I read that only around 7% of Labour candidates at the most recent election had any job experience in the private sector
– an end to the constant and divisive class war i.e. people are not automatically evil just because of their wealth status or vice versa
– wanting to improve the lot of yourself / your family always can only be achieved at the expense of others

The problem is that judges in the UK AND judges in Europe are misinterpreting the spirit and intention of Human Rights laws with the result that our society not properly protected from those who wish us to do harm, and those that do harm do not face the proper consequences.

It needs sorting out on a number of levels – there’s a selection of cases below but if it was our family members that had come to harm would we see the rulings in these cases as fair “justice”?

http://tinyurl.com/is-this-justice

+1 for the dyson handheld ones – on normal power they run for 20 mins which is pretty much enough to clean the whole place, let alone just the stairs

as they say in Tower Hamlets “vote early and vote frequently”

Choosing Chuka Umunna to be leader of the opposition would be a mistake by Labour. He repeats the mould of privately educated millionnaire metropolitan elite with little real experience outside of a couple of years working in Law.

The Labour party is crammed with people like this. His narrative on economic / business matters has been vacuous to date and reveals a complete lack of understanding of how things really work in the public or private sectors.

Andy Burnham’s not much better. He’s spent months scaremongering about privatisation of the NHS but himself was part of a government that saddled the NHS with £300B of PFI debt, and as Health Secretary spent years refusing to set up an inquiry into Mid Staffs or meet any of the families that were complaining about the terrible treatment of their loved ones – had he listened earlier lives may well have been saved.

how TF do you get out of deep deep shit by spending more money?

Isn’t it obvious? It’s called investment.. perhaps you’re not qualified to make economic judgements..?

FFS this is ridiculous. Labour created literally hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs that weren’t there 5 years before and then granted massive year on year pay rises. The country was no more successful on education, crime or healthcare than before but £640Bn was borrowed to do this.

Take GPs as an example. Their pay doubled and their working hours dropped. Their incomes rose so much that many started to work reduced hours and now many are retiring early and despite 10 years less service are on track to get pensions 50% higher than they would otherwise have been – our current “GP crisis” is precisely due to the “investment” that was made 12 years ago and the decisions in 2009 to reduce training places for medics.

An investment is something that normally gives you a net positive return. Paying more to receive the same thing or less is absolute madness and the fact people can’t see it for what it really is is pretty shocking. The fact that borrowing has continued to rise under the current government is no different to a wonga loan – the borrowing was never affordable and throw in a bit of world crisis and uptick in unemployment and the whole lot just expands exponentially.

I’d say your banks will re-locate anyway if it suits them. Holding the nation to ransom is like your playground bully. Let them go. Something less parasitical could take their place.

They are OUR banks. They lend us money for mortgages to buy homes and to businesses to grow the economy. BUT, the majority of the their business is overseas, not in the UK, so their choice of domiciled location for corporation tax is very much a valid one.

They aren’t holding the country to ransom either – they are just saying that if tax is too high they will relocate in order to protect shareholders. This is actually a fiduciary duty of company directors not that this fact will get in the way of the usual left wing reality distortion field – we should also remember that the “let them go” argument simply results in everyone paying a lot more income tax to make up the shortfall and what normally happens is that those who cheerlead for this sort of thing are also the ones who very rarely if ever imagine they will personally have to pay it.

Wonder how many people will be voting Tory because of the vast crossover between politics and the media

And how many will recall that Tony Blair went to Rupert and Wendi’s wedding, is godfather to their most recent child, frequently holidayed with them and according to the Economist reportedly had a “special relationship” over and above that?

https://www.moneyclaim.gov.uk/web/mcol/welcome