OT: Letter boxes

I was thinking Arthur and the Black Knight.

Which does leave me wondering why, in 1953, they decided that a new post box required a shallower hole than an old one.

Don't we mean "That was the Week that Was"? Which had the sketch featuring John Cleese (monied classes), Ronnie Barker (middle classes) and Ronnie Corbett (working class). (Though in size order, so that the first two could look down on the third).

Re "Royal Mail" - the fact that it continued to be called "Royal Mail" after privatisation always makes me think that the government of the time were so bloody keen to sell it off to any hard-nosed buyer that they would promise _anything_ - including Her Maj's imprimature and name. Like all our public services, it used to be ours, now it's not. But hey: look at all hte benefits that the privatisation has brought!

John

Ah i was wrong I see -- I was going even further back (3 or so years), to TWTWTW.

Reading the Wiki entry on that programme...

But I see also that Ian J has said: "The Knights who say "Ni", or even the Black Knight after King Arthur cut his arms off?" Yeah -- probably that!

John

There's one near me, but it has recently been painted black for some reason. The genuine one is about 30 yards down the road.

Just a guess but maybe when the design originated the pit and then the fill was all done by hand, by the fifties powered tools could be used, shallower hole but an ability to compact the ground harder than by hand.

GH

Cost I imagine. New ones are cheaper to make.

They do seem seriously over engineered with regards to their foundations. These days street furniture is generally designed to be move forgiving in the event of an RTA.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the newest ones don’t have an even shallower “root”.

Tim

It was never ours. Like all nationalised stuff, it belonged to an entity known as "The Government", which could do what it liked with it. What d'ye mean, "ours"? Had share certificates, did you?

Plasma Cutter £119.

Collect as many RM post boxes as you can man-handle

It is a fallacy the Left use that nationalised services 'belong to the peepul'. They never did. They are funded by the peepul but belong to whitehall and the unions.

By "ours" I mean "Us: the Community of the Nation of the United Kingdom". Part of our Common Wealth, to be run for our benefit by the Government of the day. (It takes _taxes_ to do this, but successive Governments, for a few decades now, never admit it this, and never try try to persuade (or rather: teach) the population thar if taxes are continuously cut, public services will go down the toilet.

So: privatised public services used to belong to us, but now to whom do they belong? Giant corporations - all of them foreign - who have never been able to believe their luck, when the Tories decided that the best way to avoid squaring the circle of low taxes versus good public services would be to flog them all off, to whoever would take them, so that _they_ could be blamed when the railways fell apart, and the bus companies, and the Very Wonderful Private Energy industry, which does such a great job of keeping prces fair and simple. Profit - preferably as excessive as you can make it - is all.

I would be less cheesed off about all of this, if the people who run these "businesses" got paid such astronomical rewards, on the mutual merry-ground of "top people".

Go ahead.

J.

Taxes are already high. I don't bother with overtime, because I'm not willing to sacrifice my precious free time, only to have 40% income tax

• 2% national insurance + another 13.8% (as a contractor I pay both employee's and employer's NI) taken in tax. Then I am charged 20% VAT when I spend it. Then there's having to pay into a pension, due to the UK's pitifully low state pension.

On top of that there's fuel duty, VED, insurance tax, council tax, councils grabbing every penny by charging high rates for parking, congestion charges, low emission zone fines, tolls and a whole lot more.

After all that, I am expected to pay £1000 a months for accommodation, while two of my sons are away at university.

My wife is disabled and so our home needs heating 24 hours a day and the costs of that are going up and up.

We go out very little. There's little enough left for hobbies to have some enjoyment in life and there'd be little point to life with even higher taxes.

Yes, you could tax the highest earners a bit more - but push too much and, as has been seen lately, they can decide that they are better off emigrating.

Then there's the opportunity to pay directly into a pension fund, with no income tax nor NI, and no government control of the fund.

But you can still pay 100% of your income into a pension and get full tax and NI relief. In practice you can decide how much *gross* your ltd co can afford to pay into your SIPP and that massively reduces your liability to employers NI

But you have a free EV thanks to your wifes condition which you use for your daily commute and when she is with you that nice free-parking blue badge covers that, surely.

Who should pay for their accomodation ?

Should have spent more money and effort on insulating your house when energy costs were 'cheap'. Your choice.

Most students get a living costs loan, but because our household has a higher income (note it only looks at income and not what remains after fixed outgoings), ours sons only get half of that, which is enough for food and clothing, but with nothing left for accommodation - WE are expected to pay that.

We have cavity wall insulation, loft insulation and double glazing, we can't afford to do more at the moment.

If you are lucky enough to be able pay more than £60k/year (modulo carry-forward from unused years) into a pension, you won't get full relief.