(Photograph: Simon from London, United Kingdom, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons) Sounds like a long-lost B&W episode of The Avengers doesn’t it? (the real1960s UK TV version, not the US cinema crap.) If, like me, you don’t watch TV or take any newspapers (thanks Covid), you might still get your fix of what’s […]
The March of the Gentrifiers Read More »
State-sanctioned ‘theft’ from the deceased takes many creative forms: Inheritance Tax, intestacy rules, not honouring ‘in perpetuity’ freehold burial plot deeds, and sneakily it seems even pinching their Premium Bonds (PBs)! Living PB holders may lose out by not using other investment vehicles, but these lack the monthly thrill of imagining a big £5,000 to
My Word Is My Bond Read More »
Do you know at what age you’ll finally get some state supplied weekly lucre? (WASPIs please don’t answer!) N.b. some sources say retirees will be written to, inviting a claim; others say it’s entirely up to the would-be retiree to instigate their claim. Similarly, do you know how many (qualifying) years of National Insurance payments
The State Pension Maze Read More »
When I was a kid in the 60s, the only tattoos I was aware of were those on bonafide sailors, usually anchors, even in my children’s picture books and on TV’s Captain Pugwash. Also lowlife types often had ‘blue birds’ on their necks or ‘love’ and ‘hate’ on their knuckles or ‘mild’ and ‘bitter’ over
To Tattoo or Not to Tattoo? Read More »
They say ‘It’s never dull in Hull’. Whoever ‘they’ are, clearly haven’t yet clocked the dreadful weather that this east coast city is routinely prone to (yes, the Humber Estuary is part of the English Coast, so Kingston upon Hull is actually firmly on the English coast, albeit with no beaches but lots of lovely
Never Dull in Hull Read More »
Keen-eyed readers may have noticed my absence of late – nothing more serious than taking a chill pill (actually a long holiday). I have finally stopped reading any of the other sceptical sites (except I’m still obviously reading TNC as it isn’t so predictable, and has a spark of humour and originality) and am generally
The Insurance Racket Read More »
How incredibly helpful of the Government, even in its dying days, to have nipped the trans/schools issue in the bud by providing ‘Non-Statutory Guidance for schools and colleges in England over Gender Questioning Children’. Let’s first set aside these three telling facts: 1 That we have, in name only apparently, a UK government who feel
Non-Statutory Guidance Read More »
People with nothing better to do or think about, and with a penchant for triviality, seem obsessed with every aspect of the British Royal Family. And (if the Daily Mail is to be believed), also with the seemingly ever expanding number of foreign, but mainly European, royals and even dispossessed royals on their various social
OK readers, you can already guess where this diatribe is heading. I agree that to ‘our’ 650 hangers-on, £1million is the sort of loose change found down the back of their John Lewis expense account sofas. To the rest of us though, here in normal-land, it’s still a good premium bond or lottery windfall. What
I’ve just been into Asda for a few bits and pieces. As usual, I chose to join a queue for a real checkout person (the automated checkouts persistently go wrong whenever I attempt to use them, and notwithstanding the unwanted intrusion of them now photographing the customer, they don’t yet seem to recognise that a
A Taste of the Future Read More »
