• Dear Guest, Please note that adult content is not permitted on this forum. We have had our Google ads disabled at times due to some posts that were found from some time ago. Please do not post adult content and if you see any already on the forum, please report the post so that we can deal with it. Adult content is allowed in the glory hole - you will have to request permission to access it. Thanks, scara

Politics, politics, politics (so long and thanks for all the fish)

Rorschach said:
I crossed a similar mental threshold there a few years back where I decided that having extra time off is more important than the money I lose by taking it, so I take an additional month off in the summer on top of the holidays I get anyway. I've been doing it for a few years now and it is one of the best decisions I've ever made.
Click to expand...


The work to live, live to work balance is very important and is often askew for so many.
 
glasgowspur said:
The work to live, live to work balance is very important and is often askew for so many.
Click to expand...

From this year, the company I work for removed the cap on annual leave entitlement, meaning - theoretically - there is no fixed maximum number of days you can take. It is down to manager's discretion, so I could see that potentially causing some issues, but as a manager you would have to be able to justify refusing leave.
We already had a reasonable amount anyway (UK at least), although less than I had in my previous job. 25 days + a day for birthday, and a general 'wellbeing' day that was really just another day's leave, plus you could buy/sell up to 5 days. I always bought 5. During covid the company would give a fixed company-wide day off every 6-8 weeks and they've kept that going now post-covid, on a quarterly basis. They treat the work-life balance thing seriously.
This year with no limit I still took my usual two holiday 'chunks', one 2-week, one 3-week, plus Christmas week, but where the policy makes a huge amount of difference is the odd days that you might need/want here and there that you can now take without having to worry about eating into annual leave entitlement.
I could certainly see more large companies going this route, although it might be more difficult for smaller businesses to manage.
I can never understand people who get to the end of the year with loads of annual leave untaken.
I work for my holidays.
 
Glenda's Legs said:
From this year, the company I work for removed the cap on annual leave entitlement, meaning - theoretically - there is no fixed maximum number of days you can take. It is down to manager's discretion, so I could see that potentially causing some issues, but as a manager you would have to be able to justify refusing leave.
We already had a reasonable amount anyway (UK at least), although less than I had in my previous job. 25 days + a day for birthday, and a general 'wellbeing' day that was really just another day's leave, plus you could buy/sell up to 5 days. I always bought 5. During covid the company would give a fixed company-wide day off every 6-8 weeks and they've kept that going now post-covid, on a quarterly basis. They treat the work-life balance thing seriously.
This year with no limit I still took my usual two holiday 'chunks', one 2-week, one 3-week, plus Christmas week, but where the policy makes a huge amount of difference is the odd days that you might need/want here and there that you can now take without having to worry about eating into annual leave entitlement.
I could certainly see more large companies going this route, although it might be more difficult for smaller businesses to manage.
I can never understand people who get to the end of the year with loads of annual leave untaken.
I work for my holidays.
Click to expand...


I work for a small family owned business, our holidays are set and are at the same time every year, 32 days per year.
It doesn't work for everyone but it does for us, average length of service is around 18 years so can't be that bad.
What keeps me going is retirement, i have 7 years and 4 days to go, that has been my target for 25 years, everything my wife and i have done has been with that in mind.
I will be 61, my wife 60.
That is when we hope to redress the work/life balance.
 
monkeybarry said:
Surely the pursuit of happiness has to contain trade offs within all the elements of the systems of life? Different people have different happiness needs, so the trade offs are what allow people the flexibility to get to where they want? (The current system is completely broken of course)

Thanks. Yeah it's a really odd situation. She literally flipped from being a well balanced, emotionally intelligent and thoughtful adult to dumping me by text whilst I was on holiday and being threatened by the existence of my female friends.
All very bizarre. I feel despondent about it. But not upset. More just frustrated and bemused. It is what it is - people are odd.
I'm going to wait until after Xmas and then reach out to her to suggest meeting for coffee and try an adult conversation - with no expectations.

But if nothing comes from that, I have a great opportunity to do something else.
I'm very lucky, I have a super power - I don't need anybody else in life. So anyone in my life are people I want in my life (ironically that includes all of you freaks) and add to it.
The only person I'm beholden to is myself.
Click to expand...

The trade off is an interesting one, the person I was referring to has traded off the opportunity to seek wellbeing to be able to earn more money by selling AL rather than using it. Financial security doesn't equate to happiness (fiscally rich people do top themselves too and can't take anything with you etc*). For this person (noting that everyone is different) maybe the AL wouldn't have been used productively anyways but who am I to judge how people spend their time.

Interesting on your outlook regarding having a guarded social circle (I hope that's not a misinterpretation of what you have mentioned). Occasionally anything spiritualist or religious is written off as "New age-y flimflam" but the Buddhist principle of negativity coming from being inwardly focused rather than helping others but of course there's a balance, you can help others by helping yourself and vice versa but given how stressed / pressured by the system everyone is understandably not going to spend their limited free time litter picking or helping old people across the road.

On your travel front, you may have read it but if not I'd really recommend "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance", not suggesting I understand all the concepts and am due a re-read of it myself but it's not crucial to be in to Zen or motorbikes.

I live your point regarding this place and the community aspect of it. Spurs is in my blood but chatting to a wide and varied bunch of characters on all sorts of things and the posters make it what it is, not that there aren't regrettable squabbles, I have been pretty awful on here at times during phases of seeking amswrs at the bottom of bottles - Just looking through my DMs is a bit of a journey of different discussions from way back when + the odd custard / stockings selfie whether requested or not! Sincerely, I hope you get what you want (thought of saying deserve but not sure about the usage of that word, or at least how I've been using it) from your proposed meeting and the other steps if it comes to it pal.

*Not suggesting you or anyone else aren't aware of this
 
glasgowspur said:
I work for a small family owned business, our holidays are set and are at the same time every year, 32 days per year.
It doesn't work for everyone but it does for us, average length of service is around 18 years so can't be that bad.
What keeps me going is retirement, i have 7 years and 4 days to go, that has been my target for 25 years, everything my wife and i have done has been with that in mind.
I will be 61, my wife 60.
That is when we hope to redress the work/life balance.
Click to expand...

My husband retired - early - last year. It is now driving me mad that I have to work and he doesn't, haha, and I am doing everything I can to join him in retirement as soon as I can. Hopefully by end of next year. We just want to take off and go travelling while we both have the health to do it.
 
Rorschach said:
The purpose of work should be to satisfy need rather than want. Our failing as a species in one sentence
Click to expand...

Abso-fudging-lutely.

The trick is determining the difference, where people feel entitled to things ie 1 day delivery for anything and everything - Its not worth couriers being pushed to the absolute limit to satisfy insane levels of convenience and it adds to the general loss of humanity prevalent. I'm sure a staunch anti wellbeing advocate could defi e me as a hypocrite as I'm typing on a phone with a a lithium battery, or am veggie but may accidentally eat a spider in my sleep etc etc

There's a great quote that I need to memorize but the agricultural developments a couple of centuries ago were meant to enable us to not work >20 hours a week but instead we've ended up having to do more mundane/ flimflam work and at a competitive level of flimflam as well....
 
SpurMeUp said:
Maybe part of the reason Marx is still relevant today is that he was trying to deal with the same issue. He saw Communism as a system where you'd work half a day and then go fishing. Because you owned part of the factory, it would afford you more time to improve the quality of your life. Of course, Communism didn't shake down like that. It wasn't Marxism as he envisioned it.

But now, thanks to technology, you can work from anywhere in many fields. You can dictate the terms of your work too. I think ultimately it is about finding something you enjoy.
Click to expand...

Not being well read on Marxism I may sit on the fence but see your point here, wellbeing + freedom of choice is something everyone deserves, older generations may consider the current generation work-shy but the quest has got to be meaningful work - Instead of aggressively selling insurance on commission to vulnerable old people who don't need it for commission to get by, I'd rather opt for voluntary euthanasia.
 
Gilzeantoscore said:
So where sis the 300 million pounds saved from the EU go? Straight into the pockets of Tory donors.
Click to expand...

It miraculously turns into a £3.3b a month deficit. Take your £3-4b a year EU bonus and turn it into £40b a year the government black hole - what the government are spending above what they are receiving. Quite a magic trick the Tory’s have performed.
 
Last edited:
Glenda's Legs said:
Some eye-watering numbers there. However, these lists should split out expenses for staffing and running constituency offices (which allowing for variance in locations, should be relatively similar), versus other expenses, as it is a bit misleading otherwise.
Click to expand...

Yeah - there's a bit of a difference between a Foreign Secretary's flight tab vs Teresa Coffey's hotel Television X subscriptions. I'm sure it's bad, but it needs context/details.
 
Glenda's Legs said:
Some eye-watering numbers there. However, these lists should split out expenses for staffing and running constituency offices (which allowing for variance in locations, should be relatively similar), versus other expenses, as it is a bit misleading otherwise.
Click to expand...
But the expenses for an average mp including constituency office costs are normally circa £200k. Why are these lot 4 to almost 10 times that? Very suspicious.
 
Crab.C.Nesbitt said:
But the expenses for an average mp including constituency office costs are normally circa £200k. Why are these lot 4 to almost 10 times that? Very suspicious.
Click to expand...

without breakdowns who knows, I'm sure some are dodgy, but to take Ben Wallace for example, the job he has, it could well all be justified
 
  • Like
Reactions: DTA
Baleforce said:
without breakdowns who knows, I'm sure some are dodgy, but to take Ben Wallace for example, the job he has, it could well all be justified
Click to expand...

Expenses directly linked to roles as a Minister/SoS would be covered by the relevant Ministry I would have thought? So Ben Wallace flying around the globe wouldn't be expensing his flights and associated costs?

For anyone who is interested in what their MP is claiming for (or other MPs) you can see - to some extent - via this link https://www.mpsexpenses.info/#!/search
 
Glenda's Legs said:
Expenses directly linked to roles as a Minister/SoS would be covered by the relevant Ministry I would have thought? So Ben Wallace flying around the globe wouldn't be expensing his flights and associated costs?

For anyone who is interested in what their MP is claiming for (or other MPs) you can see - to some extent - via this link https://www.mpsexpenses.info/#!/search
Click to expand...

knowing how that bureaucracy works, I wouldn’t be surprised if short notice trips were expensed and recoded after
 
glasgowspur said:
I work for a small family owned business, our holidays are set and are at the same time every year, 32 days per year.
It doesn't work for everyone but it does for us, average length of service is around 18 years so can't be that bad.
What keeps me going is retirement, i have 7 years and 4 days to go, that has been my target for 25 years, everything my wife and i have done has been with that in mind.
I will be 61, my wife 60.
That is when we hope to redress the work/life balance.
Click to expand...

I love that you know the exact number of days remaining.

It's horrible really that you get worked to the bone with retirement age's increasing to the point where most people won't have any sort of life post retirement at all. Most of us will be resting our tired bodies dribbling into a chair somewhere.

I think the retirement age for me is now going to be 68, I'd like to retire at maximum 65 but ideally earlier.
 
One of the things that isn't said enough to Brexiteers in my view is that you might have seen the potential benefits of Brexit if it was managed by super competent folk in our government who are sincere. We had neither and have neither. And the fact you didn't realise this is where you fukd up lads. And fukd it for everyone who did realise it. Which is why we are in this economic mess. Thanks for fukin it up for all of us.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back