What made you 'Shake your Head' today?

[ChrisJ]

1 hour ago, Escape said:

Was there at least a reason for the speed limit?

Nope - no reason at all. I've never seen a 20mph on a motorway before.

[LotusLeftLotusRight]

Why do News reporters continually yell out at politicians as they come and go from buildings? It’s not like they ever get an answer. Do they think it impresses their employers and justifies their fee for the day? To me they just come across as pointless twats.

[PaulCP]

Probably @LotusLeftLotusRight because these days:

News reporters=Pointless Twats

[pete]

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/home-office-channel-boats-migrants-damages-high-court-england-priti-patel-b1126523.html.     Why are we paying for a barrister to represent these illegal immigrants. 

[Dan E]

So Mr Khan! Honestly this little episode made me realise what this country has become..

Today my son is driving into London, so yesterday I said to save you any hassle I will put your car on my Congestion Charge auto pay account, so you don't ever get caught unawares. 

I log in to my account add his car then think I will check to make sure what cars are on the account, well in there is my wife's BMW i3 which i am pretty sure everyone knows is an electric car, therefore exempt,  and 100% TFL know as they have her number plate. But it says it and i quote, "CC should be paid" confused and being old school i give them a call, you can imagine how painful that process is, after 25 minutes I get through to someone and explain the situation. 

"oh you need to register it for exemption"

"Sorry what?"

"You need to register it for exemption"

"but you know it is an electric car it says it in my auto pay account"

"yes but it hasn't been registered"

"no, I registered it two years ago"

"yes but you need to register it as an electric car"

"but you know it is an electric car" 

So it turns out I have to pay £10 to register it as an electric car, even though they know it is, then find the V5, which i had to upload, now its exempt!

and whilst i am having a moan i have now spent 8 hours on the phone pretending to be my son to get him a UTR number so he can pay HMRC tax we are now entering week 11, when you are on hold it keeps telling you to apply online and you will get your UTR in 10 days. We done that 11 weeks ago. 

Could we not all club together and just buy an island with one pub, some excellent roads and a cafe that serves decent sausages (don't get me on that) 

 

Dan E 

[pete]

My mum always told me never to eat a strangers sausages😁

Customer service is non existent in this country now apart from us self employed. 

[Chillidoggy]

1 hour ago, Dan E said:

So Mr Khan! Honestly this little episode made me realise what this country has become..

Today my son is driving into London, so yesterday I said to save you any hassle I will put your car on my Congestion Charge auto pay account, so you don't ever get caught unawares. 

I log in to my account add his car then think I will check to make sure what cars are on the account, well in there is my wife's BMW i3 which i am pretty sure everyone knows is an electric car, therefore exempt,  and 100% TFL know as they have her number plate. But it says it and i quote, "CC should be paid" confused and being old school i give them a call, you can imagine how painful that process is, after 25 minutes I get through to someone and explain the situation. 

"oh you need to register it for exemption"

"Sorry what?"

"You need to register it for exemption"

"but you know it is an electric car it says it in my auto pay account"

"yes but it hasn't been registered"

"no, I registered it two years ago"

"yes but you need to register it as an electric car"

"but you know it is an electric car" 

So it turns out I have to pay £10 to register it as an electric car, even though they know it is, then find the V5, which i had to upload, now its exempt!

and whilst i am having a moan i have now spent 8 hours on the phone pretending to be my son to get him a UTR number so he can pay HMRC tax we are now entering week 11, when you are on hold it keeps telling you to apply online and you will get your UTR in 10 days. We done that 11 weeks ago. 

Could we not all club together and just buy an island with one pub, some excellent roads and a cafe that serves decent sausages (don't get me on that) 

 

Dan E 

 

Is that 8 hours on the phone consecutively, or cumulatively?

[Dan E]

the later uncle Ian 

[Chillidoggy]

1 minute ago, Dan E said:

the later uncle Ian 

 

I feel your pain. I ended up writing a nice letter to them, as after an hour waiting, I gave up. On several occasions.

[Kevin Wheeler]

4 hours ago, Dan E said:

Could we not all club together and just buy an island with one pub, some excellent roads and a cafe that serves decent sausages

Count me in!

You may have gathered by now that I am an accountant, well the Revenue decided to close their "dedicated" helpline to us for some things this month so that they can deliver better customer service.

Anyone read 1984 recently - Newspeak, was it?

 

[C8RKH]

I'll pay to join the island community too. As long as it has a small cave, an acre of good land, with running spring water, no electricity and no mobile phone or internet. That island would then be my idea of "perfection" - and no doubt many others would be happy I was "off the grid".

I actually had a conversation (a sensible one at that!) with my wife last night. The gist of it was why don't we sell the house and everything we have got. Go and buy one of those of new static caravan holiday homes for £60k (there are some nice ones in stunning countryside near us) and put several hundred thousand into gold sovereigns in safety deposit box at the bank. We can then go off travelling the world without having to worry about our house etc, and whilst we are away we can let out the caravan when we are not there for income. 

We'd have a great lifestyle for 20 years, experiencing everything the world has to offer, without having to pay tax, poll tax, etc etc etc. Just take out a few sovereigns when we need cash, and away we go again.

Best of all, when we come back in 20 years at 80, we'll have no traceable assets and the government will have to pay for our care homes!

She's actually thinking about it! (though I doubt she will agree in the end). However, and I hope this doesn't happen as I truly love my wife, if anything did happen to her and she was no longer around, that is exactly what I'd do.

[Dan E]

@C8RKH you run the figures I will deal with the running of said island. So far i have come up with this 

 

@Bibs Prime Minister,  Police Commissioner and how to have an unruly beard, plus drone shit 

@Sparky "Sparkles" runs the pub and creates 110% gin 

@Chillidoggy anything to do with boating and Shan the weekly car magazine 

Sparkles Tracy obvs runs the cafe with excellent sausages 

@pete runs a weekly course,  in the pub,  on how to reply to anything with only four words 

@C8RKH Finances 

@Dan E Roads, speed limits and badly installed electrics 

 

 

 

[C8RKH]

I can't do math, let alone maths. And don't get me starting on rythymatics!

Hmmm, with @pete, four words is too many. My pet nickname for Pete is "Wordle". One words usually enough, but it can take you four guesses to understand his point.

[Dan E]

https://www.vladi-private-islands.de/en/areas/private-islands-for-sale-in-great-britain

 

[Dan E]

@Steve V8 carpets 

 

I am getting there 

[Chillidoggy]

38 minutes ago, Dan E said:

@C8RKH you run the figures I will deal with the running of said island. So far i have come up with this 

 

@Bibs Prime Minister,  Police Commissioner and how to have an unruly beard, plus drone shit 

@Sparky "Sparkles" runs the pub and creates 110% gin 

@Chillidoggy anything to do with boating and Shan the weekly car magazine 

Sparkles Tracy obvs runs the cafe with excellent sausages 

@pete runs a weekly course,  in the pub,  on how to reply to anything with only four words 

@C8RKH Finances 

@Dan E Roads, speed limits and badly installed electrics 

 

 

 

Just as long as it’s no further north than Margate, and preferably a lot further south. 

[Sparky]

Newfoundland is well south of Margate, and simply divine this time of year.

I watched a fantastic documentary on this subject some time ago.  A bunch of people wanting to get off the merry-go-round.  Collectively bought an island.  Lasted a few months before natural instincts took over and people started wanting a bigger slice or to rise to boss level.  Utter failure within a couple of years.

[Dan E]

1 hour ago, Sparky said:

Newfoundland is well south of Margate, and simply divine this time of year.

I watched a fantastic documentary on this subject some time ago.  A bunch of people wanting to get off the merry-go-round.  Collectively bought an island.  Lasted a few months before natural instincts took over and people started wanting a bigger slice or to rise to boss level.  Utter failure within a couple of years.

did any of them have a Lotus? I guess not and probably down to shit sausages. 

[C8RKH]

1 hour ago, Sparky said:

Newfoundland is well south of Margate, and simply divine this time of year.

I watched a fantastic documentary on this subject some time ago.  A bunch of people wanting to get off the merry-go-round.  Collectively bought an island.  Lasted a few months before natural instincts took over and people started wanting a bigger slice or to rise to boss level.  Utter failure within a couple of years.

That's the problem. People are mostly never content with what they have. Always want more. It's why some people constantly move to the next bigger house. The next fastest or blingest car. Etc.

Thankfully I'm passed the "personal possession" stage and am actively looking for ways to downsize. Although the wife did say last week to me, why don't you get the kids Hornby down and build a layout in the old study, we don't use it for anything anymore!  The "boy" in me took-over and now I want the biggest railway in the village!

[Bibs]

It's your party mate, we could open Danny's Sausage Factory in our new island, Lotusinium. You could even have a sausage party if you liked?

[Dan E]

We have a name, excellent! I think this might just work. 

@C8RKH is now arguing and model railways 

@Kevin Wheeler in charge of finance 

We need someone to build shit though an ideas? 

[eeyoreish]

I'm quite handy at building stuff. Not a fan of people though so you'll have to email me your requirements and I'll drop you a reply when it's done. I don't want any of that 'feedback' or 'review' stuff either so if you don't like what I've built keep it to yourself...

[PaulCP]

3 hours ago, C8RKH said:

 

I actually had a conversation (a sensible one at that!) with my wife last night. The gist of it was why don't we sell the house and everything we have got. Go and buy one of those of new static caravan holiday homes for £60k (there are some nice ones in stunning countryside near us) and put several hundred thousand into gold sovereigns in safety deposit box at the bank. We can then go off travelling the world without having to worry about our house etc, and whilst we are away we can let out the caravan when we are not there for income. We'd have a great lifestyle for 20 years,

Andy, if you are both half serious about this do it whilst you can. 
We had similar thoughts when we returned from Saudi 10 years ago, in fact we decided that this is what we would do whilst we were in Saudi. 

Then on returning put it off for what was going to be 3 years so that we could spend some time with family. Towards the end of the 3rd year the dream was over once my cancer was diagnosed.

As the saying goes “you just don’t know what’s around the corner” - too true!

Friends of ours who spent 5 years as ex pats in Hong Kong, returning just over a year ago, bought a Motorhome on their return and spend 3-4 months at a time travelling around Europe returning to the U.K. for a month then off again. Modern day “Gypsies” perhaps, but they are delivering on their dream (early) retirement.

[Kevin Wheeler]

28 minutes ago, Dan E said:

 in charge of finance 

Not me - once I am done in the office, I am done. Put me in charge of road design/building. Let me build some great chicanes and NO speed bumps.

[Chillidoggy]

38 minutes ago, Bibs said:

It's your party mate, we could open Danny's Sausage Factory in our new island, Lotusinium. You could even have a sausage party if you liked?

 

Dan's been holding sausage parties for years.

2 hours ago, Sparky said:

Newfoundland is well south of Margate, and simply divine this time of year.

I watched a fantastic documentary on this subject some time ago.  A bunch of people wanting to get off the merry-go-round.  Collectively bought an island.  Lasted a few months before natural instincts took over and people started wanting a bigger slice or to rise to boss level.  Utter failure within a couple of years.

Do they have snow in the winter? If so, the Isle of Thanet is preferable as we haven't seen any for years.