Soapy FFC

A Greyhound by any chance?

Keeping on the dog theme, dogs that decide to crap in inappropriate places. A few weeks ago there was temporary traffic lights in the village as the road had been reduced to one lane due to road works. I was sitting at the red light waiting for the other traffic to come through. The first car coming through went to turn into the entrance of its house which was right at the traffic light, but someone was walking a small dog that decided at that exact moment to do a crap right in the middle of the entrance to the house. The car couldn’t move due to the owner and dog being in the way causing all the traffic behind to stop, and the dog wouldn’t move because it wanted to crap, and the traffic lights had changed to green for me. The owner was pulling the lead of the dog, but it just dug its heels in and kept crapping, leading to a trail of crap along the pavement that the turning car had to drive over, spreading the crap everywhere. One of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long time.

Apparently it was used before the rod was the official measurement

or alternatively 40 perches x 4 perches

The last line of this post still makes me laugh.

To a skim reader, the use of capitals make it look like he's saying the USA should rot in Hell

And would I be correct in saying that in that time there has also been more houses built, and more scheduled to be built, south of Niddrie Mains Road that have to use the road. Doesn't seem like things are joined up.

Maybe controversial, but now I'm used to them I like them. So much easier to open a bottle with one hand when driving, have a drink, and close it again without losing the top under your feet.

Headphones?

As fences go, it looks a well made fence, just imagine what they'd be like if it was a cheap scabby fence like new build houses now get.

I've been to Ullapool several times now, and things have changed so much since the first time I was there 30 odd years ago. Then there was nothing open on a Sunday, with only a van that came from Inverness to sell papers and rolls about 10am. It was like something from a zombie movie with people appearing out of nowhere when the van appeared. It's still a great place to spend a few days.

But we weren't taking about the whole pension, we were on about additional payments that could be made without paying tax. Put £1000 away in a pension for 20 or 30 years in an investment that has an above inflation return, and you will end up with more than you started in real terms, and hence will probably pay more tax on that part of the pension.

The final salary scheme that I used to be in had AVC's that did not count towards your final salary, but you could also pay fixed 2/3/5/10/15% extra that did modify your accrual rates. They were 2 separate things. I'm not sure why you'd go for the one that didn't change your accrual rate.

I assume what he means is, an AVC does not count towards your X% for every year of service. The AVC is a separate pension pot that does not change your DC benefits. I Think.

Do you have a crystal ball and know how much investments will return in the next 10, 20, 30 years? Do you know how old the person making the contribution is and how long the contribution will be invested before it's taxed? Most pension investments aim to have a return of inflation+x%, so I don't really follow your lower in real real terms tax paid.

He's also 'avoiding' some of his income at present, so taking home less money. As I've said previously, if you don't take it as income, how can you pay income tax on it?

I would like to think that when I came to withdraw from my pension, it will be worth a lot more than the contributions I put in, so I may well be paying more tax than I would have paid on the original contributions. But that's just me guessing/hoping, in the same way you are guessing I will pay less tax. The problem I see is I pay income tax. Surely income is the money that you get that can be used to buy or pay for things. If you defer your pay by putting it in a pension, that money is not accessible to you to be spent, so it is not income. It only becomes income when it becomes available to use when you retire and after you withdraw it, so currently that is when you pay the tax. People are objecting to others 'avoiding tax' by putting money into a pension scheme. The 'problem' probably isn't that you don't pay tax on your contributions, but how the pension itself is taxed. Maybe there shouldn't be a 25% tax free, maybe there should, but that is part of the taxation rules for how money is TAKEN out of the scheme, in other words how you draw your income from the pension. If you tax what goes in, then don't tax what goes out, or treat what goes out in the same way as capital gains, since after all most of the value of a pension will not be the actual contributions, but the gain in value of the investments in the pension. The only time that someone can realistically use payments to pensions to avoid paying tax, is if they are only a year or two away from retirement, in which case they can put money into pension and withdraw it very quickly to make use of the 25% tax free.

The thing about putting part of your salary onto a pension to ‘avoid tax’ is that you are deferring that part of your salary to sometime in the future, when you will ultimately pay any tax due, but the immediate effect is you have reduced your take home pay. For some people it might be 20 or 30 years before they get their hands on that deferred salary (and who knows what the tax regime will be then). It’s a bit different to someone who uses tax allowances/schemes/loopholes to avoid paying tax whilst still receiving an immediate income which will increase their take home pay, and is in my view is an absolute loss of money to the treasury.

My cousin, who lives in Maryland, posted this on FB the other day. If people think that other healthcare systems are miles better than ours, it's worth seeing what users of these systems actually think. (PS, excuse the spelling etc)

Probably no queues as people are dumping their stuff in lay-bys now.

I thought a wham bar was 10p, or am I showing my age?

Looking at the video, it would appear that the extension in front of the gate is a bigger obstruction to vehicles getting in/out of the property than the bins are.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/dec/10/wes-streeting-nhs-uses-winter-crisis-excuse-more-money-labour I always think it's funny when politicians talk about money being tight whilst in exotic places.

I hope any training they get will include basic IT skills like using and backing up mobile phones. I'm sure most future employers will require skills like that.

I thought that MPs were meant to be the creme de la creme, so why do they need help?