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Tuesday, April 7, 2009 12:33:00 AM
We pulled in at a farm that did snacks and sold ice-cream. They had a couple of newspapers available for customers but the only one left was The Torygraph (If you can use the word 'left' in the same sentence as the 'graph).
So here's what's in today's headlines.
Taxpayer's £500 bill. This one caused a bit of a raised eyebrow. 500 quid? We're being told that we're in deep felgercarb and yet if every taxpayer handed over 500 smackers the debt would be paid?
Don't get me wrong, if a bill arrived on my doorstep saying 'Dear taxpayer, please send us a check or postal order for £500' I'd be well annoyed, but that doesn't alter the fact that everyone earning enough to be paying tax could afford it. I was a little miffed that we'd all been misled in this way.
Naturally there was more to the story. It was £500 a year that the taxpayer was going to have to pay extra in order to pay back what we now owe. Not so good, but not so bad either since obviously those on my wages would be paying back proportionately less of the 500 than those onwankerbankers wages. Not really headline grabbing stuff really I thought.
Grand National winner's mother bets 50p. They actually missed the apostrophe, but I couldn't bring myself to do a sic on them. The big story here was that the rank outsider ridden by a total newcomer that won the Grand National (It's a horse race if there's any of you don't know about all this local stuff...) was not entirely unbacked. The jockey's mum bet on him, but she didn't think he stood a snowflake in Hades chance of winning, so she only bet half a pound, 50% of a quid, five-zero pee. So after her son came riding home in tremendous style leaving all the opposition to eat his dust, his mum was able to collect just £50 for them to celebrate with. Amusing, but not my idea of a headline grabber.
Postmen face rubber band fines. Long time readers will recall I have addressed this topic before. I no longer buy rubber bands, if I want one I go outside and pick a few up from the pavement. It seems that some spoilsports think of this rubber band dropping as litter, and want intransigent postmen to be fined accordingly.
Sorry, still not a real attention grabber along the lines of 'Freddy Starr ate my hampster' or 'Phew! What a scorcher'.
Council staff earn over £100,000. According to this story over a thousand council staff have salaries with six figures before the decimal dot. Considering how many councils there are that doesn't seem like that many to me, not compared with the number of execs in private industry earning 7 figure salaries.
The article follows the usual pattern of 'shock horror while the private industries are having to cut back on employees (Not the boss's remunerations you notice) over 1,000 employees in the public sector are earning (etc.)'. This might concern me more if during the good times there'd been articles about how much the private sector were being paid compared to their opposite numbers in the public domain, but since there were none I'm afraid I can't get excited about this either. Another none attention grabber.
So that's it. Must've been a bad news day for that little lot to have made the front page.
Oh wait...
What's this little column here?
'Obama calls for a nuclear weapon free future'.
Good to see they've still got their fingers on the public pulse.
So here's what's in today's headlines.
Taxpayer's £500 bill. This one caused a bit of a raised eyebrow. 500 quid? We're being told that we're in deep felgercarb and yet if every taxpayer handed over 500 smackers the debt would be paid?
Don't get me wrong, if a bill arrived on my doorstep saying 'Dear taxpayer, please send us a check or postal order for £500' I'd be well annoyed, but that doesn't alter the fact that everyone earning enough to be paying tax could afford it. I was a little miffed that we'd all been misled in this way.
Naturally there was more to the story. It was £500 a year that the taxpayer was going to have to pay extra in order to pay back what we now owe. Not so good, but not so bad either since obviously those on my wages would be paying back proportionately less of the 500 than those on
Grand National winner's mother bets 50p. They actually missed the apostrophe, but I couldn't bring myself to do a sic on them. The big story here was that the rank outsider ridden by a total newcomer that won the Grand National (It's a horse race if there's any of you don't know about all this local stuff...) was not entirely unbacked. The jockey's mum bet on him, but she didn't think he stood a snowflake in Hades chance of winning, so she only bet half a pound, 50% of a quid, five-zero pee. So after her son came riding home in tremendous style leaving all the opposition to eat his dust, his mum was able to collect just £50 for them to celebrate with. Amusing, but not my idea of a headline grabber.
Postmen face rubber band fines. Long time readers will recall I have addressed this topic before. I no longer buy rubber bands, if I want one I go outside and pick a few up from the pavement. It seems that some spoilsports think of this rubber band dropping as litter, and want intransigent postmen to be fined accordingly.
Sorry, still not a real attention grabber along the lines of 'Freddy Starr ate my hampster' or 'Phew! What a scorcher'.
Council staff earn over £100,000. According to this story over a thousand council staff have salaries with six figures before the decimal dot. Considering how many councils there are that doesn't seem like that many to me, not compared with the number of execs in private industry earning 7 figure salaries.
The article follows the usual pattern of 'shock horror while the private industries are having to cut back on employees (Not the boss's remunerations you notice) over 1,000 employees in the public sector are earning (etc.)'. This might concern me more if during the good times there'd been articles about how much the private sector were being paid compared to their opposite numbers in the public domain, but since there were none I'm afraid I can't get excited about this either. Another none attention grabber.
So that's it. Must've been a bad news day for that little lot to have made the front page.
Oh wait...
What's this little column here?
'Obama calls for a nuclear weapon free future'.
Good to see they've still got their fingers on the public pulse.
