Nice people thread part 3- Nice as pie

Davesnave

silvercar wrote: »

Did the buyers of the main house positively not want this land? Or was this a price negotiating tactic?

They wouldn't have been able to buy at all if we'd included it. This was 2008. We took a £35k hit and they took a dive of £30k on theirs to get the chain going....but we kept the land. There'd been a fence there for years, separating the production bit of our plant nursery from the main garden, so we just extended it and added a gate or two.

They also agreed to supply our bit with free water indefinitely. Shows what nice, trustworthy people we are!:rotfl: (I'm cutting that off soon, honest. :A )

lostinrates

LydiaJ wrote: »

If it's the support staff who are striking rather than the academics, then invigilators aren't what's needed. The problem will be health and safety rules that say you can't open the buildings without xyz support staff in place.

Gotcha, but more than that I was impressed with PN's support of students and her worry about their disruption when she didn't get those opportunities herself. I think that's pretty kind of her.

lostinrates

chewmylegoff wrote: »

cleaning e.g. an office is a bit different though, because you only have to travel there and back once, and can do a proper shift when you get there.

c.f. domestic cleaner, who might get paid £20 to do an hour or so but then has to travel to the next place, and (i) does not get paid whilst they are travelling (ii) may have to pay an incremental cost over and above the 'single commute' to get there.

plus you probably have to work harder for your money as a domestic cleaner. if the office cleaner doesn't bother to hoover into the corners, they aren't going to get the push - but if you employ someone to do your house and they do a shoddy job, you probably won't ask them back.

i regularly see our office cleaners at work, and most of their efforts seem to revolve around shouting at each other, having telephone conversations with their mates and generally avoiding doing any cleaning as much as possible. mind you, if i was only getting £6 an hour to do my job, i would probably put in even less effort than they do. i suppose you get what you pay for!

edit: i also wouldn't be surprised if all the cleaners on £6 an hour are actually agency temps who get no paid holiday and sick leave. as i understand it, the agency often advertises a headline rate, and then withholds some of your pay to build up a fund to pay you for holidays - i.e. you don't really get paid holiday!

Yeah, I should think you do work harder often as a domestic cleaner, and don't often get rights observed...sick pay, holiday pay. And domestic cleaners often go through agencies too, losing a chunk of the money. I wonder what the proportion agencies get for each is.

Davesnave

I was an agency cleaner in London in 1969, so probably not relevant now, but if you wanted me, you had to pay for 4 hours. It didn't matter if it was only a hallway of a block of flats + a yard, which might take me an hour; it was 4 hours or nothing.

In those days, regular agency staff often built up nice little rounds like that.

And yes, foreign students did the work too in those days. I know, because I remember being greeted with words like, "Oh, thank God, you've got long hair, so you must speak English!" :rotfl:

silvercar

Davesnave wrote: »

They wouldn't have been able to buy at all if we'd included it. This was 2008. We took a £35k hit and they took a dive of £30k on theirs to get the chain going....but we kept the land. There'd been a fence there for years, separating the production bit of our plant nursery from the main garden, so we just extended it and added a gate or two.

They also agreed to supply our bit with free water indefinitely. Shows what nice, trustworthy people we are!:rotfl: (I'm cutting that off soon, honest. :A )

So you dropped 35k but kept 10k's worth of land. Clever. Why not hold on to it for another few years and see if prices rise. You could tell the neighbours that you will keep it if the offer isn't decent.

Is the supply of water written into the deeds?

silvercar

The acers will be seedlings I'd guess, not grafted plants, but they could still be OK. Parsley is biennial, and if it is flowering, it will taste bitter. You could collect the seeds, but meanwhile, you might want to get another plant to use.

Go on then, you know you want to...what's the difference between a seedling and a grafted plant?

The parsley came from a herb tub in Tesco fruit and veg section. Reduced to half price as near its best before date. So I used some and stuck the rest in the garden to see what happened. Same thing with mint. They are sharing a tub on the patio and both are flourishing.

lostinrates

silvercar wrote: »

They are sharing a tub on the patio and both are flourishing.

those are the best plants!

My fav plant of the year is a very, very sick rose my mother had given up on. (and she rarely gives up). By the time I had cut all the disease of I had a four inch stick on roots. Its about one and a half feet now, and with lots of healthy growth and shoots.

tomterm8

For a tree like an acer, I'd guess the advantage of a grafted tree are that by controlling the root stock you can control the height of the tree. So you don't end up with one too tall for your garden.

chewmylegoff

lostinrates wrote: »

Yeah, I should think you do work harder often as a domestic cleaner, and don't often get rights observed...sick pay, holiday pay. And domestic cleaners often go through agencies too, losing a chunk of the money. I wonder what the proportion agencies get for each is

We pay £22/hour for paralegals and the agency keeps about £6 of that I think.

PasturesNew

chewmylegoff wrote: »

We pay £22/hour for paralegals and the agency keeps about £6 of that I think.

For High Street agency temps, doing admin work, agencies charge about £12 and keep £5 of it.

Agencies always win.