Everything is going up except our income.

Yes Rigby46 if only life were so simple indeed.

yaiyai I think maybe it is you who have lived a sheltered life unless you are being deliberately awkward, pretending not to know what I meant.

In your earlier post you say we all have a choice. I tried to show you some examples where we do not, and stand by those.
There are many people who work very hard all of their lives and get nowhere very far at all. Then there are others who (through sheer fortune) enjoy riches beyond the reach of many. There is a huge difference between working hard and earnings.

How is anyone meant to save if they live on or around the breadline?

Not sure what using contraception has got to do with anything. A whole different argument there. I will say however that it's a good job young people still do have children (makes me wonder why sometimes with attitudes such as yours) . Let's not forget that those children will be the ones looking after you and me when we are unable to look after ourselves. They will be the ones paying their taxes, NI and council taxes.

On the subject of fuel. I wonder if that 2p filters down to the pumps anytime soon?

The 2p a litre price reduction is already applied at Sainsbury petrol stations around here. Filled up this morning! Asda & Tesco stores are nearby so I'll check later today.

Is that the bleedingheart/dogooders who fought to have a safety net so that no-one died of illness if they couldn't afford medical care? that no-one starved if they were made redundant and had never earned enough to save anything? who were actually paid regularly when they did work? (until someone else invented xero-hours), the bleeding-heart dogooders who over centuries have manned voluntary services and charities and lobbied for universal suffrage, women's right to their own money and the legal ability to divorce an unfaithful or violent spouse, children's right to education not child labour, the age of consent to sexual intercourse to be 16 not 12, and a thousand other things we take for granted?

We had our new Council tax bill yesterday. A more than anticipated (by me) rise of 4.7%. This brings the cost to us of £2130. So no Lurpak for us ?

We had ours last week too annsixty a whopping great rise of over 5% . Where on earth do they think ordinary people get that kind of money from? Mind you in our town there will be an awful lot of people who pay very little (I believe that even on benefits you still pay something) as we have a much higher than average low income elderly population here.

Yep Elegran - those bleeding heart do-gooders. Waste of space . See my thread ' A life well lived' for another example of these appalling human beings.

Good post Elegran

I see where yaiyai is coming from - without all those employment reforms gillybob would be free to chop a very large chunk off the cost of each of her employees and add it to her and MrG's own, dock their wages when they were too ill to work and lay them off without pay with no warning at slack times while expecting them to work unpaid overtime when there was a rush of orders.

No wonder she is not prosperous, but somehow I can't see gillybob doing that even without the bleeding-heart dogooders.

Sadly a lot of people assume that business owners are all greedy, money grabbing tyrants, who pay their employees the least they can get away with and pay themselves over the top. DH and I will never be rich or indeed successful. We run our business with compassion for our employees . They all (with the exception of the apprentice, who still earns living wage) earn more per hour than either DH or I do. I understand that they have families who come before anything and I would never dock so much as a penny from anyone's wage because they were ill, or had family issues. Unpaid overtime ? Are you joking ? There have been some very hard times when we have questioned whether we should just throw in the towel but we have cashed in pensions, sold our house and beloved caravan ( the only thing that upset me) in order to keep people in jobs and keep going.

I so agree gillybob. We also treat our employees well. One employee had a very difficult pregnancy, being admitted to hospital several times and suffering dreadful morning sickness. We told her to always go home or not come in if she felt unwell. I am horrified sometimes when I read about how some employees are treated, no sick pay etc. Even the public sector now has much stricter rules on sickness absence.

It's not just about what we buy and how much tax and council tax we pay.
Today I received a letter from a charity. It says that based on what their current programme is overseas, the fall in sterling last year, the greatest drop since 1985, means that it will cost them an extra half million pounds to do what they have promised. This is to provide people with pour-flush toilets so they don't get cholera and dysentery.
Puts things into perspective, doesn't it?

By the way, I wouldn't mind paying higher taxes to live in a happier country, like Denmark, providing the system was fair and closed to tax cheats. But I would say that, wouldn't I?

That's interesting - Norway is 'the happiest country in the world' - interesting because I met a Norwegian man when we were on holiday in Cyprus one year and he said that everyone who was able to fled Norway in the winter to escape the snow and ice! He had been in Cyprus for several weeks with friends.

No different to people in this country going to the Canaries for winter if they can afford it.

But we are not the happiest country in the world - apparently!!

so it is different.

Not really. Because Norway is the happiest country in the world doesn't mean they have to stay there all the time.
They go elsewhere in the winter to get away from the snow and ice, just like wealthy Brits. Maybe more Norwegians do because they are wealthier. Maybe in Cyprus you only meet the wealthier ones who can afford to go away for weeks at a time.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with happiness.

We are well down in the happiness stakes because of the differential in pay, more than anything else, and because we have more in poverty.

The five happiest are four Nordic and Switzerland. Perhaps the cold does have something to do with it, but it's more likely to do with equality.

Well it does depend on the criteria you chose what results you get in these type of surveys. I do remember one not so long ago where Columbia came out as the happiest country. Having lived in Switzerland for many years, I would have described them as self-satisfied rather than happy - at least the German speaking part.

Baden

How would you quantify the happiest?

I agree with DJ and maybe it's more to do with equality.

I'm reporting back on my experiment with Lurpak butter. I really can't discern what makes it any better than any other butter. If anything, it seems oily and over-processed. So, I can save myself the extra pennies in future by carrying on buying my usual Scottish butter!

There was always a choice of Lurpak or Anchor at my grandparents' house as they both had their preferences!

Thank you for taking the time to carry out a "field report" SueDonim I really appreciate it. I would love it if I could convince my dear dad that there was a cheaper/better brand available to him . Which butter do you prefer? Is it available UK wide?

One of my sons graduates soon. As a student he has been exempt from Council tax. Does anyone know what happens if he lives in a mixed house of students and workers next year? If say 3 are students and are exempt would one working young person have to pay the whole council tax themselves? It is putting him off living in a mixed house.

Yes the working young person has to pay the whole amount. If his salary is low, he may be entitled to some council tax reduction. I also think there are plenty of other reasons for not living in a mixed house