Nice people thread part 3- Nice as pie

PasturesNew

vivatifosi wrote: »

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.

I think if you're an employee who pays 40% tax, you have to. If you're an employee who doesn't pay 40% tax there's no tax return to be done, except they randomly pick people out to fill one in.

As an employee with no savings and not paying 40% tax, it's just a case of transferring 2-3 figures off your P60 onto the form and signing it. Job done.

The problem comes if you have savings and investments, or other oddities.

My tax return is made up of:
- self employed income, mostly
- employed income, a little
- savings interest, pretty much bugg4h all now
- investments, none
- oddities, none.

lostinrates

tomterm8 wrote: »

I would think, from a practical point of view, that the point of a lot of measures you've mentioned is to speed up traffic. Even cut verges would probably speed up traffic, because it makes it easier to see danger / small children playing.

The lecture and consultations I went to were all about this. How the best ways were to cope with traffic in different zones and applyig them to the setting I was then voluntarily representing...havig been [STRIKE]elected[/STRIKE] dumped on. The thing we were told, was that speed in small villages and rural roads was an issue..but not in the same way as in suburban streets and main roads and that the cheapest way to get people to drive at a safe speed was to do LESS not more.

e.g. verges in a suburban area do need to be cut to clearly show were (presumed inevitable) children are playing, passage of balls etc etc. On rural villages and roads the ideal would be to have people a little trepadatious in approaching where kids may or may not be...to develope an idea that no signs doesn't mean no ''danger'' but rather encourage people to be more observant. Or sommick like that.

Aother bonus is for rural villages hoping to get lots of tv work. The place I was in then had just been in a ''major motion picture' and roads were paid to be de marked and then put up. The stats from that were collected too I believe. Minor things...like wing mirrors being knocked etc, decreased significantly and so did speed in village and approaching and leaving it. There were some problems....one bottle neck (which could have been dealt with by tie zoned parking) but that wasn't relieved when the restrictions wer replaced...jut moved along.

It was really interesting stuff, believe it or not. Its quite interested me ever since with road layout etc.

lostinrates

PasturesNew wrote: »

I think if you're an employee who pays 40% tax, you have to. If you're an employee who doesn't pay 40% tax there's no tax return to be done, except they randomly pick people out to fill one in.

Actually I think its if you earn over 100k you do one if employed, not 40% bracket. Otherwise we'rein trouble!

Oh god, no...now I'm panicking....are we in trouble?

Phew...no, we're not, I was right first time.

lostinrates

tomterm8 wrote: »

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

Because the people like me, with heads up bottoms, would be saved hours of agonisig over the shades of Farrow and BAll white for the exterior windows. Lime white, old white, strong white, new white, old white or clunch.

We've decided on shaded white. Which is sort of....brown.

tomterm8

lostinrates wrote: »

cheapest way to get people to drive at a safe speed was to do LESS not more.
.

I'm quite skeptical of that... basically, what works on a single village might not work so well in an entire country. If you are used to road marking and etc, and you suddenly end up in a region without, you slow down and drive more cautiously.

Get rid of all the road marks through Britain... and, well, I am not sure the same thing would happen.

There's some kind of weird concept in social science where if you turn up with a set of clipboards and start measuring people, they suddenly get better exam results. But this doesn't last. Same kind of logic... if people go into unmarked roads they get 'danger' signals, but it soon wares off.

lostinrates

tomterm8 wrote: »

There's some kind of weird concept in social science where if you turn up with a set of clipboards and start measuring people, they suddenly get better exam results. But this doesn't last. Same kind of logic... if people go into unmarked roads they get 'danger' signals, but it soon wares off.

That is certainly possible.

To be clear though, they were suggesting this for a certain type of rural/village situation...not all over the country. And they were clear they'd never be able to implement it, because people like to see stuff done.

vivatifosi

lostinrates wrote: »

Because the people like me, with heads up bottoms, would be saved hours of agonisig over the shades of Farrow and BAll white for the exterior windows. Lime white, old white, strong white, new white, old white or clunch.

We've decided on shaded white. Which is sort of....brown.

All that white stuff really annoys me. I really like pale grey, so my living room walls are pale grey. But are they called grey? No they are marble white. Upstairs my little bedroom is a pastel blue, but is it called that? No its cornflower white.

And what the heck is the different between barley white and what we'd call cream?

tomterm8

Have been playing a game called cityville. Regret having started, to be honest, it is strangely addictive, and wastes a lot of time which I could be using to do something that I don't really want to be doing.

You can tell I am putting something off, because I am also on the forum.

lostinrates

vivatifosi wrote: »

And what the heck is the different between barley white and what we'd call cream?

A few hundred marketing jobs.:)

treliac

lemonjelly wrote: »

I would argue that a lot of the voluntary sector carries out LA statutory duties on its behalf. For a few years the government has got a lot of public services on the cheap via the voluntary sector.

Lets take the example of a citizens advice bureau. LA's have statutory duties to ensur epeople have access to information & advice on issues like money, benefits, employment, housing, health & education. A lot of CABx exist as LA's saw it as easier & cheaper to support this brand name, than set up their own systems.

Yet these are exactly the type of organisations we will see struggling/cut.

I appreciate I've only focussed on 1 para of yours tomterm8, & I suspect we agree on most issues here. But I feel there is a false economy here.:)

Our LA is cutting by 25% across the board, the same with voluntary organisations. It's not by choice and I guess it's the only fair way to do it. (That's after reviewing every aspect of services and aiming to cut identifiable waste.)

We shouldn't lose sight of why we are in this position in the first place though.