A Personal Journal

194 Chocolate covered doughnuts

In Gay, Sex life on January 24, 2008 at 5:26 pm

TLA catalogs, the Power and water bills, my lackluster sex life and chocolate covered doughnuts. Total running time: 34 minutes 38 seconds (Stereo) MP3. Mic: Shure SM7B; Preamp: Presonus TubePre; Recording device: Garageband.

Click here to listen to this podcast.


  1. Our Government is an enthusiastic collecter of taxes – you name it & they’ll find a way of shoving some tax on it. Everybody who earns a wage or a salary pays Income Tax – mostly it is deducted at source ( called P.A.Y.E. – ‘pay as you earn’ ) – the basic rate is 30% – so it’s paid week by week or month by month – but if you’re self employed/freelance you get a tax bill at the end of the financial year & pay it all then in one go. There’s also a national sales tax – called V.A.T.(value added tax) which is levied on goods & services at 17.5%. Other individual things like gas, tobacco, alcohol are more heavily taxed. Car owners have to pay an annual road tax which was originally meant to pay for the upkeep of the roads and the building of them but in reality most of what is collected from this tax just goes into the government coffers. When you buy a house, when you pay over a certain amount you’re taxed on that. When you die and the estate is worth over $500,000 whoever inherits pays tax on the excess. A local tax is also levied by your borough council to pay for services like the collection of the trash, libraries, public schools, social services, & you’re billed for that each year. Workers also have to have a deduction from their pay which contributes towards a basic old-age State pension ( it’s peanuts & ya can’t survive on just that alone), and for the National Health Service (medical & hospital treatment), and unemployment benefit (Social Security). The utilities like electricity, gas (heating & cooking), & water are charged much like the U.S. although water isn’t metered in every household & in that case it’s charged using an arcane formula based on rateable value of the property. This is in older apartment blocks where metering is problematic – ours is like this.

    That’s the basics & I’m sure that there are more little taxed items that I can’t think of right now – Mike is the one to answer this enquiry – he’s the financial whizzkid in this household.

    Our government raises HUGE amounts through taxation and manages to fritter a lot of it away in the stupidest of ways – like foreign aid, for example.

    To lighter matters: We have something similar to your Americal Idol – it’s called The X Factor and is headed up by Simon Cowell ( yep the very same ! ) (he also owns the production company for the show) presented by him along with Sharon Osbourne, Louis Walsh (ex BoyZone manager) & Dannii Minogue ( Kylie’s sister & a crap singer herself). Unlike you it is the audition stage that I love the most – watching all the absolute no-hopers, the delusional, the stark raving mad ones who think that they have talent, being brought sharply down to earth by the judges. When the show moves onto the serious business of the voting & the eliminations …… that’s when I lose interest.

    Paul_in_London 25 January 2008 at 3pm

  2. …..just thought of one of those little extra taxes…..

    Every household has to pay a ‘Television Licence’ of $280 a year – a tax in other words. This largely pays for the B.B.C. & its programming and goes back to the days when the national TV service was set up. Ya used to not have to pay it if you didn’t have a TV and the licencing authority used to have detector vans driving round neighbourhoods to catch non-payers who did actually have a set, but nowadays it’s assumed that EVERYONE has one and will watch a B.B.C. show at some point so everybody has to pay up.

    Paul_in_London 25 January 2008 at 4pm

  3. OMG Paul . . . and I thought we were overtaxed! Thanks for the info. BTW, the weatherman is forecasting frozen precipitation to begin later tonight. I’ll talk about it in tomorrow’s podcast and some other local news.

    cnickthomas 25 January 2008 at 5pm

  4. Yet another thought…..

    Re the ‘Inheritance Tax’ ……. only beneficiaries who are not the legal spouses of the deceased have to pay this. Which is why, for gay couples, getting a Civil Partnership can be so important if you’re well off financially. The right to exemption from having to pay this particular tax was extended to Civil Partners when the law came into force.

    Me & Mikey’s big day will be in July so by the time you meet us in September, Nick, we’ll be a sorta married couple!!

    Paul_in_London 25 January 2008 at 5pm