The doldrums

[Miss Demeanour]

Seems that is the place to be .....

No pay rises

Work till you drop

No jobs

No interest on your savings - if you are fortunate enough to have savings

A nation in debt for the next generation

A NHS service likely to be facing severe cuts

An education system that fails by its success rate

Mercenary utility companies that are mercilessly profiteering without redress


and so the list goes on.....


Can we designate The Doldrums as a new national park covering the whole of The British Isles ???

[Snoopy]

Come on Girl ~ where's that stiff upper lip! We have been though worse and come out smiling.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHPOzQzk9Qo

[The Moan Ranger]

A more fulsome list, reproduced in various other places...

?22,500 of debt for every child born in Britain
- 111 tax rises from a government that promised no tax rises at all
- The longest national tax code in the world
- 100,000 million pounds drained from British pension funds
- Gun crime up by 57%
- Violent crime up 70%
- The highest proportion of children living in workless households anywhere in Europe
- The number of pensioners living in poverty up by 100,000
- The lowest level of social mobility in the developed world
- The only G7 country with no growth this year
- One in six young people neither earning nor learning
- 5 million people on out-of ?work benefits
- Missing the target of halving child poverty
- Ending up with child poverty rising in each of the last three years instead
- Cancer survival rates among the worst in Europe
- Hospital-acquired infections killing nearly three times as many people as are killed on the roads
- Falling from 4th to 13th in the world competitiveness league
- Falling from 8th to 24th in the world education rankings in maths
- Falling from 7th to 17th in the rankings in literacy
- The police spending more time on paperwork than on the beat
- Fatal stabbings at an all-time high
- Prisoners released without serving their sentences
- Foreign prisoners released and never deported
- 7 million people without an NHS dentist
- Small business taxes going up
- Business taxes raised from among the lowest to among the highest in Europe
- Tax rises for working people set for after the election
- The 10p tax rate abolished
- And the ludicrous promise to have ended boom and bust
- Our gold reserves sold for a quarter of their worth
- Our armed forces overstretched and under-supplied
- Profitable post offices closed against their will
- One of the highest rates of family breakdown in Europe
- The ?Golden Rule? on borrowing abandoned when it didn?t fit
- Police inspectors in 10,Downing Street
- Dossiers that were dodgy
- Mandelson resigning the first time
- Mandelson resigning the second time
- Mandelson coming back for a third time
- Bad news buried
- Personal details lost
- An election bottled
- A referendum denied

Hat tip Dizzy

And OH added:

-Ballot Boxes are interfered with
-Voting registers go missing
-The Police can kill innocent people and get away with it
-You can be put in prison for 42 days on pure suspicion
-You can be put in prison indefinitely without charge on the word of a politician
-The State can torture people
-Your children are monitored at School by Political Officers
-Their behaviour is logged on a State database for their entire lives
-Your innocent fingerprints, iris scans and biometrics are held by the State
-You do not have the right to remain silent
-You are watched on 4 million CCTV cameras
-You may not photograph the Police
-The media is controlled by the State
-You do not have the right to protest peacefully
-Curfews exist for entire communities
-Your travel movements are logged and monitored
-Who you vote for is logged and monitored
-Your shopping habits are studied and logged by the State
-Your emails and telephone conversations are recorded by the State
-Your passport can be withdrawn at the whim of the State
-Government agencies can use lie detector tests on you.

[Miss Demeanour]

 

Miss D feels inadequate again 

[Uncle Mort]

Cheers for that, just what I don't need. 

[Pastis]

I'm in the mood to add another one 

 - Being warned, formally in writing, by HMRC that I might be penalised for late payment of a VAT return. I checked my records and, as usual I had sent the return by first class post 5 days before the due date. The debt recovery unit (sic) tell me over the phone that it took 11 days to get to them and thus, I made a late payment. 

[Snoopy]

But why leave it so close to the deadline? You've had a year to get it ready and send it in.

[Pastis]

Cash accounting, four x payments a year; accountant's advice: "Your money's better kept in your premium account earning what interest it can until it's due" 

[Snoopy]

Well as long as you have proof of postage it shouldn't be an issue. 

[Pastis]

To be fair to the woman who answered the phone, she agreed that it was pretty ludicrous 

[Miss Demeanour]

What is the position with credit card companies trying to charge you late payments when they haven't received your payment through the post due to delays caused by the postal strike....

?25 they want to charge and it was sent 2 weeks before it was due 

[Snoopy]

Legally they are right as it is your responsibility to ensure payment reaches them on the due date. Again proof of posting is normally accepted that you have done all that can be reasonably expected to pay them on time but some will take the view that the Postal Strikes have been well advertised and that they (the banks) do provide other methods of payment (Via Direct Debit, at a branch of the bank, on line credit transfer etc) that would not be subject to the delays. Whether they will waive the penalty depends largely on how much they want to retain your future custom.