Sunday Thoughts: HMRC says - get divorced, sleep around: very loudly...!!!

Thursday was A levels results day - and I am sure that many students received both good and bad information. Just a thought, but which ever way it turned out, you have more than enough time on your side to make what may seem a life ending drama to have a very successful life: just get focused!

On Friday, a friend who I played bestman for in his second marriage a few years ago rang to confirm his son had passed his A levels, and was off to University. I congratulated him, but said: "Wow - but with three at University, that will be expensive!" He contradicted me, and said that as he was divorced from their mother and his wife remarried, the three children get all tuition fee's paid, a full grant plus a full loan - so that's around £120/week per child, less £70/week for accommodation, leaving £50 for books, food and transport.

Peter is my personal role model for a father. His wife left him while the family was in Singapore and about to move to Saudi Arabia. Peter told the children to go home with Mum or her parents, but as Mum didn't want anything to do with them for the next four years they decided they liked to stay with Dad, which they did with him as sole parent for seven years. Mum then came back into their lives, and they all effectively now live with Mum, who is remarried.

Peter is the most caring parent I know of - and he earns over £100k pa, and his wife is married to a millionaire. And yet, as the children are domiciled with Mum (hence Peter's income is dismissed in assessment), and she is a lady of leisure with no "income," Buckinghamshire council pick up the tuition fee's for three children.

I was watching BBC News 24, and they featured a story of a married couple with four children who all wanted to go to University. The couple estimated that the cost of putting each child through University was £20,000 per child - they had hence concluded to take out another mortgage, which would be paid back when they were both 70!!!

I say - HMRC says: get divorced! And its not just saying it, its encouraging it

What does this say about the modern morals of 21st century Britain? At one point, the family was the centre of our community. Now, if even the government penalise you for being married, is it any wonder society is breaking down so quickly?

NB: I'm not saying divorce is bad - or that many of the modern changes in our society are bad for it: the persecution of the LGBT community was as daft as the Victorian models of a woman's duty. I am just astonished that even couples who lived together are also persectuted under the same rules - surely we should be encouraging long term coupling, not discouraging it?

Sunday Thoughts: Stop drinking water - and drink water instead....

The bottling industry has always been one that amazed me. As a child for instance, I could get Coke and other drinks in glorious glass bottles, and which after I drunk them I could get 1/2p back on them - which encouraged me to drink more!

No say's the drink industry, that's not safe or efficient (Hmm - so all those empty lorries going back to the depot is "efficient"?), and some nasty people were using them to attack people which we got sued for - so we need to replace them with (unrecyclable) PTFE plastic.

OK, so let the customer have an inferior experience, reduce customer loyalty, and let the council worry over how to dispose of four out of five of the PTFE bottles, which take 1000years to degrade.

The Mayors office of New York City has started a campaign, encouraging citizens to be environmentally friendly and dump the bottled water for tap water. Why? Because some of it comes from half way around the world, the distribution lorries create congestion, and bottles create landfill waste. Restaurants in California have separately started to use tap-water as their standard product, unless you ask for the bottled version.

But the Bottled Water Association says it is unfair to single out an industry that is promoting recycling and introducing biodegradable packaging. Yeah, yeah, yeah - talk to the hand buddy!

Note - if you have one of those office water dispensers in your office, supplied by a nice lorry, think about this. If you swapped that for a tap-feed dispenser supplied via a micro-bore system, it would take around 4months for the costs of initial outlay to be repaid and for you to start saving money - at between a 50% and 70% level. On the other hand, you could keep clogging up the environment, and instead of drinking water that's fresh from a tap and fully filtered; drink stuff that on average is four months old instead, and biodegrades in that nice container in the top due to sunlight: Yum!

Sunday Thoughts: No doubt - the EU's not protecting my Human Rights

The tragic and callous murder of head master Philip Lawrence outside his school in Maida Vale in 1995, caused national headlines and sympathy for his family, as well increased security for schools.

And yet, the EU Court of Human Rights has decreed that his killer, Learco Chindamo now 26 and serving a "life sentence" from which he is likely to be released from in less than 18months; that deporting him to Italy, where he was born, would breach his human rights.

The rules covering the deportation of convicted criminals between EU states are complex, particularly when they have spent a significant part of their life in the country where they have been imprisoned: Chindamo came to the UK when he was five. In such cases a criminal can be deported only if they are a "genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat to the fundamental interests of society."

Personally, I have never heard an interview from Chindamo expressing his regret at the killing - and a jury found him guilty of murder, not manslaughter. Personally I'd call that a "sufficiently serious threat to the fundamental interests of society."

The more the EU Human Rights laws are abused, the more I'm thinking as a social liberal that there's something in voting for UKIP. How much more of this lunacy should we take, from a law that has been bent beyond recognition of what it was originally meant to achieve?

PS: if you want to get really happy, then just be advised that the costs are to be picked up by HMG.. ie: your taxes!

Sometimes, you just have to go with the flow!

Sometimes in life, you just have to accept that you just have to go with the flow - so welcome to my first blog!

Its a great Sunday here in Wales. The weather is typical - here we only have two types of weather: its either raining, or its about to rain. The wet British summer and changes to the gulf-stream mean that our normal 10month weather has extended to a 12month - so that's less hassle, no need for the sun creme, and we just do as we normally do and take an umbrella.

My only care at present - my confused plants. They had a great Spring, but now they don't know whether it June, August or October! The roses are particularly confused. My motorcycles also are not happy - you can't take British chrome out in the wet - a one hour ride for three days of polishing just is not the idea!

So, there it is - my first blog here on blogger.com: be back soon for some more!