Thread 9 - TalkLair: “Russell's teapot goes on being round”

[Kucinghitam]

Continuation of previous threads (thread 8).

The new lair of JTT escapees is all cosy and homey; we have truly settled here. Outside, the garden is blooming with summer flowers - should bloody well be, what with all that rain. Inside, the hearth is glowing, pictures are up on the walls, rugs are down on the floors (and assorted pets curled up on them).

We just won’t mention the gnawed bones of our prey over there in the corner of the cave…

At least he is now employed by someone who takes care of his tax and NI payments. It cost me an accountant's fee this year to dig him out of the hole of three years' non-payment of either when he was working for someone who said he was "self-employed". At least he's now catching up on his taxes, though I think the NI is a lost cause. His girlfriend recently moved in with him and the work is regular so he's paying his own rent at the moment and I'm crossing my fingers that it doesn't go up.

‘Stuff’ makes me feel uneasy. When I was growing up we weren’t allowed much ‘stuff’ as my dad talked about how it would eventually end up in landfill. He always recycled stuff too. I hate the thought of things going to landfill so I avoid purchases beyond food as much as possible and keep things until they no longer work or fall apart.

It fascinates me (in a bad way) how much rubbish we produce. I go through one bin bag a week as a single person. So say everyone generates about the same (obviously this will vary depending on how many in a household) that would be 52 x 68 million = 3,536,000,000 bags per year in the UK. Plus all the building and industrial waste. Where does it all go???!!

My currently car is an eco model, for whatever that’s worth, so I pay no road tax. I’ve hardly taken any flights in my life though, again because I can’t afford to. I also have no children. My carbon footprint is pretty small.

Same here. I never took many flights, mainly because the experience is so unpleasant, and the last time I flew was July 2001.

Growing up, my dad was really tight-fisted and generally bought only the cheapest essentials. In the 1970s he even used to complain about the price of potatoes, for goodness sake. It took me and my brothers a long time to realise that, once we were working, we were allowed to have some nice things. None of us buy much, even now. My dad was born in 1935 and I've met several men of the same age who are just the same about spending and have wondered if it's because of growing up during the war.

I definitely have far too much stuff and have taken too many flights in the past but try to cut back on both stuff and flying.

The sanctimonious tone of the OP on the non-eco parents thread is awful which makes for quite an entertaining thread. I do get frustrated with my mum needing the heating on when it’s just not cold but she’s old and she’s always felt the cold and her skin isn’t up to the layers of woollies she used to wear so I put the heating on and swelter. I get more frustrated when I discover she’s left the hot tap running in the bathroom thereby wasting a tankful of hot water. It doesn’t happen often thankfully but if I look back at our gas usage I can spot those days very easily.

My dad was born in 1935 and I've met several men of the same age who are just the same about spending and have wondered if it's because of growing up during the war

Oh yes, the tight-fistedness. My dad was born just before the war and grew up with rationing. He was also looked after by his grandparents, born in the 1890s, while his mother went to work. Which can’t have helped.

It took me and my brothers a long time to realise that, once we were working, we were allowed to have some nice things.

This took me a long time to realise as well, and I still hear my dad in my ear about something being a waste of money. Even when I had money, 98% of everything I buy is on offer or reduced in some way as that’s how he lived. The 2% is very basic things that are never really on offer like sugar and black underwear (unrelated purchases!). It doesn’t really occur to me to look at anything full-priced.

I had a friend who was really sanctimonious about this sort of stuff. She especially hated car drivers. Funnily enough, in her world, getting countless lifts from her parents didn’t count. I did point out to her once that she’d done more than twice as many miles as me that year, which she didn’t appreciate.

This took me a long time to realise as well, and I still hear my dad in my ear about something being a waste of money.

Yeah, me too! 'Can I have a new pair of shoes?' 'What? Don't be ridiculous, you've got a perfectly good pair of shoes!'. These days I'll pay over £100 for a pair of shoes or work boots while my dad resents paying more than £30.

My grandparents were born a bit later than yours, in the first years of the 20th century, and mainly grew up in villages. My paternal grandfather was from the Lakes and grew up in a house with no bathroom. He never had a bath in his life, though he did have what he called 'a thorough wash'. Never noticed any smell from him so it clearly worked. My maternal grandmother grew up on an isolated farm near Durham so it was much the same for her. I remember how sparse the furnishings were in their houses, they just didn't have much stuff. The paternal grandparents didn't even get a fridge until 1971, before that they kept stuff on the upper steps of the cellar.

My Dad was 3 years old at the start of WW2 and 17 when food rationing ended, but says his mother never let him go hungry, usually of course by not eating anything herself. My Mum grew up in shoeless, foodless, motherless poverty, and I think she resented us kids for having everything that she hadn’t. She hoarded cash and food her whole adult life, “just in case”. She had her purse snatched on the tube one day and although she lied to my Dad how much was in there, confessed to me there had been £thousands, a very good day for that thief. When she died my Dad found £thousands more stashed around the house (along with a million shredded tissues, her main hobby as her dementia advanced).

Brit if he was "working for someone" who said he 'was self-employed', there may be a way to get the 'someone' to cough up the tax.

If the relationship was really that of employer and employee then the employer should have accounted for PAYE tax.

People like that often often get away with not paying people properly because they won't get caught, because for some reason the government doesn't think it's sensible to fund H M Revenue & Customs properly.

But he (you) could in the right circumstances claim now that he's been an employee all along and request the tax he's paid as self-employed back, and get his employer to pay instead, as they should have dealt with it properly.

Have a go on this to see what the H M Revenue & Customs tool says, about the relationship and if you want to pursue it, let me know - I can help:

www.gov.uk/guidance/check-employment-status-for-tax

Thanks @MmePoppySeedDefage but that's not going to happen. I'm too far away to be in control of this and he isn't up to it, and I very much doubt his previous employer would be co-operative. There was a certain amount of cash-in-hand as well as stuff that went through his bank account (which is what the accountant looked at) and he didn't earn enough to pay a lot of tax. I agree that his 'self-employment' was a con - he worked at the guys direction and went where he was told to go and did what he was told to do. I didn't know about the 'self-employment' until after he was fired (for having an accident in the guy's van), after which he went back to working for an agency on building sites so he did get tax and NI paid by the agency. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping he can hang on to the present job. He nearly lost this one because the gearbox went on his car and the owner gave him a week to get it fixed or get fired because he has to have transport for his job. Hence the bank of mum coming to the rescue yet again.

On the one hand, I know exactly where the OP in that thread is coming from but the sanctimony is overwhelming.

My carbon footprint is relatively low although I've spent far too much on fast fashion which is killing the planet. It's one of the reasons for taking up sewing. I want to make my own clothes and although that will cost more in the short term, in the long term I'll have better quality clothing and won't be filling up landfill with all the things I buy and hardly ever wear.

Oddly, having grown up in poverty (my grandparents house had no indoor running water and no electricity when mum and her siblings were kids and there was almost no work through the years of the depression), my mum has an attitude of “it’s only money” about lots of spending (though not all; she’s been saying “I don’t need any more clothes at my age” for a decade at least despite it often being obvious that she really does). I think she’s often horrified by how much things cost because she thinks back to what things used to cost and can imagine how shocked her parents and my dad would be by the cost of things now.

My dad was big on things being a waste of money but would spend on some stuff (so no to tourist tat souvenirs when we went on holiday but he’d bring us back presents when he went away for work). We didn’t have a telly until after he died because he couldn’t see the point in getting one until colour was sensibly priced (he was an electronic engineer). I think my mum’s reluctance about some spending comes from thinking he’d be appalled by some perceived waste of money.

I guess most people are inconsistent about this stuff in one way or another.

Oh my fucking gawd.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/aug/28/live-worm-living-womans-brain-australia-depression-forgetfulness

Oh dear God Why do people live in Australia why?

It's on my list of countries I never want to visit.

Bloody hell, that's grim! Agreed, Australia is not on my visiting list.

Years ago I read about a man who had a long, live worm pulled from his eye. I asked my optometrist to check for them, just in case.

Oh shit, @CyanCrystalViolet - that’s a thousand times worse than a brain worm.

I remember reading about those worms that get transmitted through water somewhere in Forrin, and start emerging through holes they make in your legs. They tie sticks or threads to the worms to stop them going back inside you, and eventually enough emerges to yank the whole thing out.

Now I’ve recited that from memory, I have to go and google them again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracunculiasis

Oh yes, Guinea worm. We covered that this year and got to see lots of grim photos. One of the students had had some experience of pulling them out, which she described as ‘satisfying’. I’d still rather that than an eye worm though.

My pal had one in her leg, after working in Ghana. She had to have several visits to the tropical diseases unit at the RVI Newcastle!

Good grief! Another reason to stay away from Australia!

I learnt about them after reading a similar story, Sinner, maybe it was her?!?

Arf! My sister has lived in New Zealand for 40 years and I've stopped over in Sydney and Perth on visits ... for increasingly long times, basically to get out of NZ. Sydney I can take or leave (on second thoughts probably leave), but if I'd been to Perth when I was 20 I'd have been back on the £10 Poms Scheme and would probably never have returned! I see they've reintroduced it, but sadly I'm a little too long in the tooth.

https://www.emigrate-to-australia.co.uk/the-return-of-the-ten-pound-poms-scheme-australian-migration/

The original harness for the GoPro camera was made of very stretchy elastic, so the weight of the camera made everything slide to the side, so macman has bought another non-GoPro harness and cable-tied the camera rest thing onto it - Badger looks so handsome and important in it, like a police dog!