Off Topic Grumpy Old Farts Corner

Given the makeup of posters here, I thought a thread in which you could vent frustrations with daily life would allow us to lower our blood pressure and entertain (or annoy) other board attendees.

The more trivial and unreasonable your grumbles are, the better.

I’ll start with something that frequently has me shouting at the TV. Train stations. We don’t have train stations in the UK, we have railway stations. If you want a train station, go to the United States. BBC news presenters please note. You should know better.

 

Just received a letter from Homeserve offering me extra home insurance cover.

I thought the coverage that they have been offering for years now was quite comprehensive.....covering....gas, electric, plumbing,. drainage etc...indoors/outdoors up to the road.

They're offering me coverage for broken immersion heater...(haven't got one).....faulty electric vehicle charging point (haven't got one)...failed circuits (surely already covered)....faulty fuse box (surely already covered).

All for £1 a month for the first year....then £7.93 a month afterwards......all these extras are for electrics only.....does this mean I might get offers in due course for extra coverage on gas, plumbing, drainage etc .

Sucking the customer dry through the small print omissions maybe....that you haven't noticed has change from last year.

 

This makes me grumpy and annoyed....Mrs Plym is now at that age when her toenails could just about be on another planet in regard her being able to cut them.

I have offered many times to do them and I am convinced that I could do a good job.....but no she will not let me near them.

So I take her to the Chiropodist....who cuts them no better than I could any way....and of course charges her £50 for less than 20 minutes work...it's enough to make you spit blood.

 

That’s women for you. I’m not allowed to say that now am I? Mind you, we don’t seem quite clear what a “woman” is, do we?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/67336536

 

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Why oh why do queuing drivers leave oversized gaps between themselves and the car in front these days? It’s often big enough for a whole extra car.

Multiplied by dozens, that means people at the back of the queue trying to cross the main road or join it or leave it, are being forced to wait behind empty space because the queue is much longer than it needs to be.

It’s unnecessary and inconsiderate and I have no idea who started it.

 

Why are queueing drivers at traffic lights.... never ready when the lights turn green....only thinking about moving forward as the car in front disappears twenty yards down the road.

This calls an unnecessary tail back....and of course who is the wally who gets caught when the lights turn red again ?..... when if they where on the ball maybe another five cars could have got across the lights.....no consideration for the driver behind.

 

Not having too much luck booking Covid/Flu jabs.

Last week I had booked up for the above jabs......a community nurse who was popping in well before the time I needed to go....didn't show up.....so cancelled on-line 45 minutes before appointment.

Today I was booked in for 2pm.....arranged my day around this appointment time....and was rather pleased how it was going.....turned up at the Pharmacy to be told that they had not received there daily delivery this morning....and had no Covid jabs....no apology given........so delivery normally 8.30am....I received a reminder mid-day of my 2pm appointment time....checked on-line when I returned home that i hadn't been sent a cancellation....no I hadn't......so i've got to start all over again and find another window that I can fit it in.

 

I think you two will be on page 100 before we know it.

 

Peculiar dress codes at football games. What’s all that about? As we go into winter we get the woolly bobble hat, team scarf, club fleece and….. cotton shorts. Cotton shorts? In November? Why in the name of all that’s holy?

 

Over here you can make a right on a red light ( a left in your case) only when its safe to do so..
Plus on a red light it goes straight to green..no yellow..
Our freeways (motorways) have a 100kmphr max. (60 mph)
And yes we do have roundabouts. not too many though.

 

Until sensible is well enough to grab this website for his own.....I will share one more concern.

One of Mrs Plym's regular medications which you can get only on prescription and is a restricted drug....always for years came in a capsule coloured green and yellow.....then through another maker came just in yellow.....recently another maker supplies it in white ?

You wouldn't want to take this capsule by mistake...it doesn't have any writing or numbering on it to give you a clue.

Why isn't it produced in only one colour whoever makes it....so that you will recognise what it is straight away ?

 

This an anti-grumpy post: a rare bit of good news.

After being hunted to near extinction in the area, blue whales have returned to the warm Indian Ocean waters around the Seychelles after a ban excluded Russian whaling ships

Mind you, most of us could do with a bit of the warm Indian Ocean waters around the Seychelles so that is slightly grump inducing.

 

One Autumn Statement grump from me is Inheritance tax.

The main £325,000 allowance (per person so double for a couple) has not risen since 2009.

The value in property in the south east makes this threshold very easily obtained by many pensioners who like myself took out a mortgage in the 1960's.

Our first property cost £4,300 and with a 20% deposit required in those days we needed a mortgage for £3,440.......59 years later that has turned into a home valued over £700,000....ok that sounds a great investment......but it is not cash in the hand.....unless your going to sell up and live in a tent somewhere.

There must be many pensioners like us that can be seen as property rich and cash poor.

There was a period 20 years back or so when the allowance was a lot lower and we needed to take out insurance to cover the risk of us dying and our children getting clobbered for inheritance tax.....but that changed in 2009 when the rate went up to £325,000 per person.....and insurance was not necessary then to have.

So a pity that the rumours of doing away with the tax all together had my ears perking up....only to be dashed in yesterdays statement.....we are both in our 80's so the reality of not living forever is now more relevant.....and our children and even more so our grandchildren will have large mortgages or might be in a position where they will never be able to afford a mortgage.

So passing on the value of your property in full does become your dying wish......and our youngest grandson has taken on the extra debt of Uni having started at Durham this autumn (maths & extra Maths).....ok with a good degree behind him he will be able to earn in the city wages that I can only dream of.

 

I find it hard to sympathise with the South East area for very much to be honest. They dip in a lot with a number of things that you never hear them moan about. The wages a generally higher for a start. Then there is the London Waiting Allowance which is an excuse to increase income due to "the cost of living". Well apart from accommodation costs where is the extra expense? I lived in Uxbridge some years back in the 70's. You could buy a devon swede on Uxbridge High Street for less than you could buy it in Devon. Electricity costs no more and nor does gas. Water well maybe but that's down to the crap Company that runs it. I worked with a bloke who had come from Surrey when his whole family, Mum, Dad and brother moved to Devon. They sold a terraced house in Surrey somewhere and bought a detatched farmhouse with a 2 acre garden and 7 bedrooms and then banked the residue. Why are prices so high for properties in this neck of the woods? Because people sell their houses in your neck of the woods for rediculous amounts and move here. So your now £700k is worth something and you wouldn't have to live in a tent. You could buy a decent bungalow for half that and bank the other half. The locals however in the main can't compete with any of that so it's not really that much of a bug bear to South Easteners is it.

Don't get me worng though, I don't go along with inheritance tax either. You pay tax on your income all of your working life only for the Government to nick some more after you die. Unless you are very rich of course where you hire an Accountant and Lawyer and get away with most of it.

 

I agree with you Plym.

Firstly, Inheritance Tax is an abomination, full stop. While you're alive, they tax your earnings then charge you VAT and duties when you spend what's left. They tax the income on any savings you manage to accrue. Then, believe it or not, they tax what's left when you die.

But a house is a house and if you live in the South East it's still just a house even if it costs several times what it does elsewhere. OK, it's a bit of a windfall if your kids are now living outside the south east but I imagine most people born in the south east stay there.

But the whole thing should be scrapped. As is often said, it's a pretty small amount (£6 billion) compared to income Tax (£750 billion) and VAT (£180 billion net). But it's iniquitous.

We watch property programmes from time to time, including Homes Under The Hammer. My better half has a thing for Dion Dublin.... One guy bought a one bedroom ground-floor flat just off the Fulham Road - an expensive area to be fair. It was ****hole. The living room opened right onto the lane outside and was smaller than our box bedroom. There was a very narrow corridor without natural light leading to a pokey bedroom and tiny bathroom. The kitchen was so narrow that the sink unit was recessed into the wall on one side, I kid you not.

He paid £550k. Yes, half a million pounds. I will say he did it up very nicely, converting the corridor into a walk-through kitchen but it doesn't alter the fact that if you sat in the living area watching TV, you'd have to be damn sure to breathe through your nose or you'd steam the screen up you were so close to it. Final value after refurbishment? £1m plus, thank you very much.

 

I had a friend who moved to Leicester...hated the place...it was so multicultural that he would turn his head in surprise if he ever heard someone else speaking English.....tried to move back south but couldn't afford anything for what he could pay for.......and at his age a mortgage was out of his range....and years later he probably now couldn't afford a lock up garage let alone a house.

You might be able to get a good deal moving north....but trying to reverse the process and you just can't do it if you haven't got a pot of money stashed away.

 

My other half worked in Leicester although we lived over the border in Derbyshire. The Asian community there are the lifeblood of the town and Diwali is the highlight of the year - literally. Never had a problem with it.

And it's a gross exaggeration to say English speakers are in the minority in the city as a whole.

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sounds nice .. i had a flat in Totenham hale years ago paid small money for it and it was not great as in a converted house. sold that about 10 years ago and they were quing to buy it . 375K paid less that 100K had to pay some tax but now it would probably be worth double. but thats life i dint want it any more and it helped out with the buying of a noice home

 

More than one racist on the Planet then........... Take all them Punka Wallahs out of the country and some areas would hardly have a Doctor or Surgeon left. Whatever next.