General Chat

good morning CC

Droll, very droll!

I actually had to go back to see what I had posted! :0))

Wait till I tell you about the day I started Yodah!

Well I must away for a shower then a very long day.

Bye to all who may still be on the thread

Allan

Ahh CC Your tax office there sounds similar to ours here. I was visiting my daughter and she had to contact the tax office because of an error. 3 hours later and she was no further advanced. Are they deliberately obtuse? Or is it a prerequisite of getting hired on at the tax office? Thank goodness I don't have to deal with them any more. My accountant does that for me.

Pam.

Hello sueieeeeee

Hello Susanwithnumbers,

I don't think we've met yet.

Pam

OK 11am our time. It's about time I did some of that word that we don't use on here because it makes you ugly and a boring woman. Be back later.

All have a good day/night/whatever it is that you are doing.

Pam.

Hello Pamela

I have a rotten finger at the moment and can't write as well as I usually do ( yeah rifght lol ) but hello anyway. I am from the UK but am pretending to be a n Aussie person....whatever that may mean Lol.

CC - wot are you doing posting after 3am or even after 1am - for goodness sake woman go to sleep.

Funerals: A chap (rather large in size) has been asked to stop going to funerals up in Northland. He does not know any of the deceased - he turns up sits politely through the service and then has a good feed - he wasn't harming anyone so nothing much was said but now he is bringing along his tupperware and filling them with food to go - so the funeral directors had to ask him to stop. They had asked the mourners each time if they minded him being there and up until now they haven't worried. But the last lot asked the funeral directors to ask him to leave. So on the way out he was grabbing food left, right and centre and stuffing it in his pockets etc. They posted a picture of him on the TV but put a black strip over his eyes.

I attended one funeral - one of those - where people were asked to come up and speak and after friends and family had done so - one chap that no one knew got up and ranted and raved about God etc until the deceased's brother and friend asked him to go and then practically had to escort him out. He is apparently a funeral botherer - and attends so he can have his say.

Tec I have no idea what my daughter's title means - she started out as a Market Researcher and Strategist with our Newspaper Bureau here in Auckland - then when over in London worked for Fox TV and then the BBC - she even got to work in their sports area - one she knew nothing of but enjoyed it. When she came back after much searching in Wellington (where it is harder to find the right job) she ended up working for one of our phone companies. I call her the secret squirrel because she was always checking out the opposition - even to the point of grabbing the Chinese papers and checking them out. Then she got into designing a website and this job I think has stemmed from that.

I enjoy the same sort of books that the Duchess reads but I also read a lot of other genre and non-fiction. I carried around in my glove box for a long time a non-fiction book titled "Women who Kill".
Have just been reading a book about this Australian family over in Italy and at the same time have been reading Rifling through my Drawers by Clarissa Dickson Wright. Then I have a thriller to read. The Greaders that Berona and I belong to takes me out of my comfort zone from time to time as I have to read two books of whatever gets the most votes.

To the rest of you .... gidday

Cheers Persey xxx

Hello Perse,
Speaking of reading - my last order of books arrived so late that I am still reading the first one, with the other one left to read - and I have ordered the latest two - and still waiting for them! Yes, the Greaders' selection is usually much different from my choice but it's a break from the normal.

CC - I am not familiar with the UK tax system, being an Aussie, but it sure sounds like a convoluted way of going about things. But then, maybe they wrote the book "keep them in the dark and feed them ........ etc." I'm sure you know the one. Sounds to me the way you were describing what happens over there that you don't automatically get an Aged Pension when you reach a certain age. Or do you have both like we do. When you reach a certain age you are entitled to an Aged Pension unless you've been silly enough to save for your retirement and are Superannuated. Then you are expected to live on your annuities and/or income from investments which is often less than the Aged Pension, still have to contribute to tax and don't get any of the benefits of a pensioner such as the Health Card etc.

I don't have too much trouble here in Australia. Mainly because I don't have any money or investments. I own my home and because I have 14 acres then 9 acres of that is considered to be asset. (Your home and the first 5 acres don't count in the assets test.) Other than that, I work part time and each fortnight I have to report to the Dept of Stupidity (Centrellink) what my gross earning were for that fortnight. Then they adjust my pension accordingly. Keep in mind though that this calculation is done on the gross earnings and I pay tax on that so only receive the nett. However at end of financial year I do get a fair bit of it back in Tax return but I still don't think it's right that I have to pay any tax at all. After all, I've worked all my life since I was 16, had 4 children who have all worked and still are and paying lots of taxes and now grandchildren are also starting to go out to work.

In my opinion a fairer system would be that, if you have worked all your life, you should be able to continue working part time and not have that affect your pension until you earn a certain amount. None of this pro-rata business. Also, if you are superannuated, you should still be entitled to a top up pension with all the benefits of free medical, doctors and cheaper medications that the pensioners get. There's got to be a better way to do this rather than to take it from the people who've worked hard all their lives and others who've barely worked at all get the same as the ones who have.

I hope I"m making sense here.

Pam.

Hello everyone:-)

I didn't sleep too well last night so I'm a bit tired.

I was woken at 5am this morning to my oldest son coming home from a night out with his mates. He tells me he was attacked on his way walking home this morning. Some boys around his age demanded his phone and wallet then proceeded to start punching into him - He has a black eye and some scratches, other than that he is fine. He managed to run from them, they chased him for awhile but then gave up.
I am so happy he is OK, but very angry that this sort of thing can happen in a small country town.
I have told him in future under no circumstances is he to walk home from anywhere and regardless of the time he must ring me to come and pick him up - he agreed fully!!!!
Rant over....

CC, thank you for your kind offer to help, its the hardest Ive come across to date.

Carole xx

We did have a really dumb dumb stupid tax here once it affected my father he had investments and lived on his pension and the government decided that all superannuitants that had income from another source as well as their pension - they were to be taxed 99c in the $1.00 - boy was there an uproar. All those that had set up trusts got off with it which included those in government as they had already done this with their parents etc. Trouble was he went into a resthome at that time and that cost way more than his pension. So a lot of his capital got eaten away in a very short time.

grrhhh Persey

Persey, Hello,

Yes, I keep wondering why we don't have an organisation like they have in the US called Grey Power .There are so many anomalies that affect older people that are never addressed. I wish I were smart enough to start up something like that. Alas, I'm not. I do know of people here in Aust. who've had elderly relatives go into nursing homes where the place only takes their pension and that's all it costs but there aren't enough of them to service the number that need them.

Maybe Allan could round up his wheelie bins and get a Grey Power started over here. After all, I'm sure that they'd have more common sense than most of the people who are currently supposed to be looking after the needs of the elderly. I think they're only looking after their own needs for when they are elderly.

Pam.

We have grey power here - and then we had Winstone Peters who may not be the popular choice but he got all the pensioners their super card which gives them free suburban train, bus travel and ferry boat travel. There have never been so many senior's outings. The pension kicks in at 65 so I haven't reached that milestone yet but OH has a card. People are having trips to Waiheke Island - and the cafés and restaurants over there are doing well and the present government is not happy about the cost of the transport. I am left wondering why - because if the pensioners had to pay they would not be day tripping (no extra boats have had to run) - and the cafés and local shops would not benefit and there would be a down turn in trade and this would affect the economy as well.

Winstone - also got the free childcare at the doctors for those under five.
We have had that many chops and changes over the years. Once it was free prescriptions - then it was pay for them, then it was discount after so many prescriptions and now it is only some that we have to pay for.

Each govt. puts us on a merry-go-round budget - one time we were all told to invest etc as there may not be enough to go around. The high flyers benefited and paid themselves handsomely with money lent to them as investments and then they go bust and people who thought they would have a nest egg to supplement their pension have lost thousands and thousands of dollars.

We took the other approach and we invested in rental property ... now they are trying to hit us with an extra tax etc. They have changed how we can claim things etc and this will be our last decent tax return and will be taking a drop in income. We are a lot better off than some at least we have houses to sell if the worse comes to worse and we have always been quick to pay back the mortgages so we don't owe anything.

In between postings when you posted Pam I was in the garage helping himself sawing up timber - he is rebuilding a vanity unit for one of our tenanted properties. Does a bit of the "Bob the Builder" act - he is still learning how to do DIY. Can we fix it? Yes somehow!!

Persey

A quick good morning while I wait for the rest of the household to wake up.

My daughter is fit to burst,but still has six weeks to go. she will be huge by then poor thing.

CC I commiserate with you about the tax. As you know, I have been administering mums will and probate by myself. Once the house sale went through, I had just about finished it all. The last thing I did was to submit her tax form to claim back the overpaid tax. It should have been so simple, but they seem to think that the pensions we declared don't tally with what they thought she was getting. So I have had to unpack all my paperwork and send all the details in again. I did have two goes at phoning them to find out what they thought the problem was, but I gave up after listening to the "musak" for a while.

Yes, Persey, we have the free bus, train and ferry travel; but that doesn’t help me at all. I don’t live on a bus, train or ferry route and there are thousands of pensioners like me. But I do get one return trip with sleeper on the train from Cairns to Brisbane each year and that’s a distance of some 1600klms or so. It costs me $60 each way for the sleeper. But that’s worth it even though it’s a share situation. But it’s better than nothing. If I need to take my car I can put it on the train too, but that costs an extra $200 or so. Costs keep changing. However, if I’m going to Sydney for an extended period of time and want to have my car whilst I’m down there it beats driving all the way. It’s almost 3,000 klms from here to Sydney.

Whilst I’m down there I can get concession fares on the bus, train and ferry; not free as I would here in Queensland. Those concessions are a state thing, not federal. Crazy, I reckon.

Our scripts cost us around $6 providing what is prescribed is on the National Health. It’s quite hilarious in one way. Pays to shop around. We were paying for the scripts for Panamax for arthritic pain. Then we were told that it’s cheaper to buy it over the counter. Sometimes you can get it for only 99c per packet instead of $6.40 or whatever it is.

I’ve got one of those Bob the Builder people. He’s been making and building so many things but nothing gets finished which drives me crazy. I’ll start to do something and he’ll say, leave that and I’ll do so and so. Weeks later it still isn’t done. At the moment he’s got the tractor stuck in the creek and it’s taking ages for him to work out how to get it out. I sure hope he does – it’ll be disaster if he turns it over into the creek. I think I’ll leave home for a couple of weeks if that happens. Haha.

Linda, it just amazes me how these people keep their jobs, it really does. They are so inefficient, so not people or customer service oriented. It just drives me nuts. I’ve just had a problem with my mobile phone. Not a year old yet. I have it on a 24 month plan with our telephone provider. They reckon that it wouldn’t work because it had “liquid ingress” – goodness only knows how that happened. I certainly haven’t had it near any liquid. However, the telephone company sent it away to their repair department. They wouldn’t fix it because they couldn’t guarantee the work. They also told me that the manufacturer would probably charge me to fix it and there was a $50 service fee just for them to look at it. So, I went ahead and bought a $99 phone, put my SIM card in it and it’s working just fine. Now I plan to take on the telephone company and tell them that at law they are responsible for the goods that they provide. We’ll see how I go.

Pam

Morning everyone,
Pamela, that's the thing about Australia -large distances.
I've got several years to go before I get free bus travel and I reckon by the time I get to 60 the concession won't be there anymore because it's costing the council too much.
Linda I didn't realise you're expecting a grand chlid soon. I hope it all goes well.
I've got my England shirt on in readiness for tonight's match. My sister and brother in law are coming down later on this morning. We're going on a picnic. It's my birthday next Tuesday. It's also my brother in law's mother's birthday as well the same day and she is 25 years older than me.

Hello whoever is around:-))

I won't add much to the tax debate but I will say that it was disappointing to find that all our hard work over the years penalised us when OH retired. Because he received a "package" from the place he worked for over 40 years the government says we have to live on that before we're entitled to any benefits. Thank goodness we had financial advice because we certainly wouldn't have been able to wade our way through all the rules and regulations that change almost weekly.

CC - what on earth were you doing up in the early hours of your morning? And you told Diane to go to bed. Tsk tsk:-))

Carole - try not to worry too much about what happened to your boy. It's frightening but he seems to have come out of it without too much trouble. He'll have learnt a lesson I'm sure about looking after his own safety.

I'm a huge consumer of books. I love all the whodunits, Stephen King, Dean Koontz. I've read all the Wire in the Blood books and the Stieg Larssen trilogy. I'll read just about anything that catches my interest although I'm not keen on sci-fi. Daughter's fiance part owns and manages a book-store so he keeps me well supplied. Unfortunately he and his father are selling the store but I've just received a large bag of books so that will keep me busy for awhile:-))

Sue xx

Hi Sue,
I like whodunits as well. Tec's wife's list of books sound fascinating! I haven't read any of the Larssen books yet but I will do at some point.
shame about the book store being sold!

Hi Joan,
books are good!

Joan - everytime I go to the markets or a garage sale I come home with an armful of books. I've got about 20 books to read and I really don't need any more but when I see some I know I'm going to like I can't help it:-))

Pat - I was disappointed when I found out they were selling up but bookstores here are suffering because people can buy them so much cheaper in variety stores.

Sue xx

Hi CC,
I'm one of those who have to work until I'm 65. I've done 36 years already!
My friends keep on teeling me that i'll have to work until I'm 70. I hope not!