Nice people thread part 3- Nice as pie

michaels

Normally we have the fullest bins on the street but as we didn't get a xmas collection schedule leaflet I managed to find one online. It said small recycling bin collection was suspended for 1 week due to the weather but also said we could put out both main bins for first collection after Christmas (lucky as ours were both full) and what day that collection would be (Tuesday after normal Thursday) other residents did not know day or that they would also take the black bin so whilst our bins were emptied and were just normally refilled, everyone else's black bins sat at the roadside all weekend looking like 'Birmingham' by this Monday when they did the next black bin collection.

vivatifosi wrote: »

While we're having a talk about LAs can I tell you what my District Council did over Christmas? They sent out a leaflet saying that bins were going to be collected on a different day. Here we get all our waste collection on the same day, so they'll collect the bins (green or general) alternate weeks and the same day collect the recyclables. We get a similar leaflet every year and it worked a treat.

So everyone put out their bins as required, and the recyclables didn't get picked up. They'd decided to leave the recyclables collection as was, but didn't tell anyone. We just thought it was something to do with the weather, but no, it was the local council expecting its residents to use ESP to work out when collections were due. If you went to their website, it did actually say with an "oops we messed up" type note of apology. The result has been that the bottle banks and recyclable banks have been bursting at the seams. Totally bonkers.

Anyhow, sorry, wanted to get that off my chest.

LAs have a duty to be effective as well as cost-efficient.

michaels

Don't think you live here so I guess ours was not the only particularly short-sighted council. I guess this is another example of why we should not necessarily expect the councils to be that efficient when making cuts - they don't necessarily have the skills.

Edit: I haven't read the Manchester thread but I wonder if we are duplicating what is being discussed there?

tomterm8 wrote: »

Fairly crap. Not the worst I have heard. My council decided to put tens of millions into Iceland banks just after the credit rating agencies downgraded them, when a blind hamster could have seen they were in trouble.

I'm not arguing all councils are brilliant... why would I? I just don't believe that if they are as incompetent at spending public money as some people believe, that they will be any more competent at managing spending cuts.

PasturesNew

Thanks for all being thoroughly dull this morning

I know nothing about councils/obligations except they spend a lot of money talking about things at great expense and producing leaflets.

So, I've got 90% of my tax return done now... and finally I know the answer to "so what did you earn in 09-10?" ... it seems, not a bl00dy lot. £11k's looking like the figure. So, I think I am officially poor aren't I :0

If I'd guessed, I'd have thought £14-18k, maybe £20k as I did a spot of temping, but it's not until you do the actual figures that you know. I seem to blot out the costs and forget the bad days.... I look at the good income days, annualise those and think I'm on more than I am

silvercar

@PN, I've just completed my tax return.:p

(Meant as encouragement for you to complete yours!)

tomterm8

What we're discussing can't be any worse that doing tax returns

PasturesNew

tomterm8 wrote: »

What we're discussing can't be any worse that doing tax returns

It is!!

I've still got a long way to go... but now it's just down to gathering the evidence (receipts) and double checking all my figures and putting it all into a nice orderly pile, then actually filling it out online before finally filing it in a plastic wallet and slipping it inside my tax returns document box, lined up with the returns from 08-09, 07-08 and 06-07. It's nice when it goes in there. All done and neat.

I just get petrified of being wrong by £1 and having 100 tax officers on the doorstep demanding to know about the £1 and why I lied :O

Just doing a Hard Disk search for last year's to check I've not missed/forgotten anything... and to check what the figures were, I'm sure it was a bit more last year.

Should be getting tax back as I've paid the two amounts up front and that was quite a lot I recall.

lostinrates

I'll be doing one next year I guess.:) Oh, and so will dh.

instead this morning I've go the ghastly light fiting in the sitting room cleaned and a third coat of paint o my cabinets. Brush stroke phobes would despair.

Personally, I like abrush stroke or two. I don't know why. What I hate is poorly alligned wallpaper.

I didn't use dulux.

PasturesNew

lostinrates wrote: »

I'll be doing one next year I guess.:) Oh, and so will dh.

Top tip: Leave it until the very last minute - it adds to the excitement!

tomterm8

Is anyone else surprised at the number of different versions of whites there are? There are millions. And they all look exactly the same. Except when you touch up a wall, and discover after it's dried that it isn't exactly the right version of white, and for some reason you can tell that its wrong.

Why can't they just sell one version of white?

PasturesNew wrote: »

Top tip: Leave it until the very last minute - it adds to the excitement!

Extra bonus points are awarded if you miss the first deadline, and so have to calculate the return yourself. Of course, the government will still calculate it, but if you guess wrong by more than £1 you will get a masivvvve fine that will leave you eating cornflakes for the next year.

vivatifosi

PasturesNew wrote: »

Top tip: Leave it until the very last minute - it adds to the excitement!

I haven't done mine yet:eek:

Tbf I didn't know until this week that I had to. They sent me a letter last year saying as I was employed I didn't have to, then this week I got reminder.