Nice people thread part 3- Nice as pie

PasturesNew

The way I work now is daily ... and each day I like to fool myself into thinking I'm doing well. I do this by multiplying a day's income by 365 and thinking "Boy, that's worth £x/year". But I only do this Mon-Fri. Sat-Sun the income's down.... and on those days I do the sums and then fool myself by thinking "But it's the weekend, of course the figures are down".

Mentally I can therefore hang onto the nicer days ... and forget the badduns.

This means I can often have an illusion of doing very nicely thank you ... forgetting the days when I pull just £20

But June's shaping up lovely

But then I look at it as "household income" and realise no matter how well I actually do, I can still really only reach half of national household income average.... which sucks. Hence my never-ending quest to plug on and try to find the 2-3 magic items that will add new lumps of income into the pot. But everything changes all the time - and you find one great thing and they change the rules. They change the rules so that people like me that were doing well now don't do so well.... and the quest starts again.

And they're all at it.... they all change the rules. But I keep writing

Today I've written two articles, one blog post (containing a table of data), added 3-4 new items into my big directory and made a settings change in one of my income streams.

If I keep following the little crumbs, I might discover the whole cheese....

Davesnave

PasturesNew wrote: »

I'm in the wrong town! They'd get minimum wage here.

There has to be an incentive element, and we live in the sticks too, so the first hour is to pay the train fare. These are also trained fitters, not schoolkids.

PasturesNew

Davesnave wrote: »

There has to be an incentive element, and we live in the sticks too, so the first hour is to pay the train fare. These are also trained fitters, not schoolkids.

I didn't know there was such a thing as a trained fitter.
Blimey ... I just go in, spot some shoes I like - try them on. If they don't hurt I'll have them.

John_Pierpoint

LydiaJ wrote: »

On RM at the moment:

This house which is being sold by an agent with two employees who disagree about what the listing should say, I think. :rotfl:

Or what about these? 3 houses, all identical unextended 1960s-70s houses, on the same street. Can anyone see a reason why this one is £370k, this one is £345k and this one is £330k? Just some sellers being more or less serious about selling, or something that makes the more expensive house actually more valuable?

Also, what on earth is going on with the "available - sstc - available - etc" oscillation of this house?

And has anyone heard of the sort of thing that's going on with this one? It's being sold by Oxford City Council, who want the purchasers to pay their seller's fees.

I have just spent an hour of my life looking at local prices round here. :mad::D There is an estate of houses I have always used as a "bell whether" for identifying local detached home price trends and they are all over the place, with a range of up to 50K.
Some of then have acquired extensions over the last 45 years BUT never buy the most expensive house in the road, with no potential and flexibility (ie all the permitted development used up).
I think there are some sellers who have not realised that, selling a house should be just as much hard work as buying one.
They get suckered in by an estate agent, who needs property on his books, and of course they don't sell. Eventually they agree to cut the price.
Have you got property bee on your browser?

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-29567101.html

One thing I have noticed is the premium for having a detached house with no neighbours, appears to be widening - hell is other people?
No wonder the NIMBY factor is so strong.

Has Oxford come up with another scam for raising money - like charging 30 - 40 quid for sending out the second Council Tax reminder, even when there has been a paperwork mess up?
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/769401
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3312720
I was involved in one of my children buying a repossession - the details said something like "don't bother to ask us - Halifax - any questions about this property, at least you have viewed it and now know what it looks like" but at least they did not say "and give us a 7 - 8K bung" - How can their "legal" costs be anything like that? I looks like the buyer is paying for the estate agent and heavens know what else.
It is probably an accountants trick for dodging between the current and capital accounts in the council - a bit like the Private Finance Initiative (borrowing from our kids) and the Feed in Tariff (Robin Hood in reverse) without putting the money through the books.

John_Pierpoint

PasturesNew wrote: »

Mentally I can therefore hang onto the nicer days ... and forget the badduns.

.

I think we all tend to do this it is a human trait (and the citizens of USA tend to suppress their recessive gene that goes the other way), that is why they hare having such a nasty dose of reality at the moment.

Cheer your self up, you are still making at least 10 times the world average income:T
Here is the "Right Move" choice for a fair chunk of our 7,000,000,000 fellow citizens:

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidonville#Situation_actuelle

(I could not put it better myself in English).

John.

- You are such a pessimist.

- No I'm not, I am such a realist.

LydiaJ

Davesnave wrote: »

House 1 has the best photographer and is probably more up to date than house 3, but not £40k more modern. House 3 has a part-alpine garden, which isn't family friendly.

Personally I'm amazed none of them appears to have a utility room, despite having integral garages, and a double depth one in the case of the first house.

All the garages are the same double depth. The fact that you can't tell that about house 3 says something not very complimentary about the quality of its floor plans, although I think you can tell it from house 2's floor plan.

michaels wrote: »

Lydia (or anyone else) I found my DD1 (rising 7) watching a fairly unsuitable Rihanna song on youtube (good song tho) and realised I need to put in place internet controls now. Have you investigated the best way to achieve this as your DKs are a little older?

I just have the standard windows parental controls. It seems to work reasonably well for normal web content, but youtube is a nightmare. There's all sorts of stuff on there with no indication of what's suitable and what isn't, no ratings, nothing. If anyone has any ideas about filtering youtube, I'd love to hear them.

Davesnave

PasturesNew wrote: »

I didn't know there was such a thing as a trained fitter.
Blimey ... I just go in, spot some shoes I like - try them on. If they don't hurt I'll have them.

That's how it operates for most adults, but children are a different matter.

The problem is, a fitter will get it right and, many times, the parent will protest that they want more 'growing room.' When this happens, a fitter should only agree to sell the larger size on the basis of self-fit. 'SF' is added to the info on the invoice.

Then, when parent & uncomfortable child re-appear in a week or so's time, claiming the shoes don't fit, no refund is applicable. Of course, people being as they are, they'll often pop up in a different branch, but it makes no difference.

Cue argument.....;) accusations...:mad: general wobblies...:eek: tears! ...threats

Fitters should probably be on danger money.

michaels

We find our kids shoes all buckle with velco which gets 'dirty' fuzed up and stops sticking before the shoes are worn out or too small - seems like a design flaw but if I were suspicious I would call it built in obsolescence.

Davesnave

michaels wrote: »

We find our kids shoes all buckle with velco which gets 'dirty' fuzed up and stops sticking before the shoes are worn out or too small - seems like a design flaw but if I were suspicious I would call it built in obsolescence.

I've got a pair with the same feature, but they're fine, and they're around ten years old.

I think the key is what's done with them. They do pick up a lot of burrs and dead grass etc if used for country walks.

Velcro fastening is popular with parents and schools, who don't like the hassle with laces.

vivatifosi

LydiaJ wrote: »

I just have the standard windows parental controls. It seems to work reasonably well for normal web content, but youtube is a nightmare. There's all sorts of stuff on there with no indication of what's suitable and what isn't, no ratings, nothing. If anyone has any ideas about filtering youtube, I'd love to hear them.

AIUI in the library we have to block a lot of programs on the children's PCs. That means no YouTube, no Facebook, no social networking sites aimed at adults. If children want to look at, how can I put it not adult sites per se but sites designed for an older audience then their parents have to log onto the site and show them.

Personally I hadn't given much thought to song lyrics until relatively recently. I just knew if they had lots of bleeps or words blanked out (generally rap) then they were rude. It's a good 30 years since I had to write down and learn the lyrics to everything! Then I heard the Rihanna song, along with ones by Scherzinger and Gaga. All great songs but crikey I wouldn't want to explain the set of lyrics to an enquiring young mind. Let's see how much get's past the MSE filters:

Rihanna:

The affliction of the feeling leaves me wanting more (Oh oh oh oh oh)

'Cause I may be bad, but I'm perfectly good at it
Sex in the air, I don't care, I love the smell of it
Sticks and stones may break my bones
But chains and whips excite me

Scherzinger:

Boy, you want my body
Wanna ride it like a Harley
Once or twice around the block
I bet I'll have you saying whoa, whoa!

Gaga:

Let's have some fun,
This beat is sick
I wanna take a ride on your disco stick....

....I'm on a mission,
And it involves some heavy touchin' yeah.
You've indicated your interest,
I'm educated in sex yes.
And now I want it bad,
Want it bad.

Still, looking on the bright side, as a kid I'd sing along to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and it took a good twenty more years to know what it was about and I've never taken LSD.