Teasmaid

It's not strictly tax evasion as I'm assuming he wouldn't be making any profit on it for the next 20 odd years. In fact, it will probably cost him more than he's getting back each month. And it's not a second home, because he hasn't got a first home. Obviously if he sells it in 20 years and has subsequently bought another house, and is living in it, he'd have to declare it as a second home for capital gains tax. You've got me on the fraud part though. To be honest, in his shoes I'd buy a place, live in it, and rent a room out. It saves all the bother.

Do it if you're looking for a long term investment, but don't expect to make enough money from it to subsidise your income. Deposits for buy to let are usually between 20 and 40%, and interest rates are higher. The recent changes to mortgage relief will put a lot of people off too. Do shitloads of research, it's a different game from buying to live in a place. I've been looking round ours. It's more profitable to buy in a shit area, than a decent area. A 3 bedroom semi in Birkenhead will rent for about £500-£600 a month. A 3 bed semi in a nearby, sought-after town would only get about an extra 100 per month, but the house would cost twice as much. If you don't already have a mortgage, I'd just get an ordinary mortgage and keep my gob shut about your intention to rent it out.

The utter fucking irony of Blairites calling socialists out for not supporting the aims of the Labour Party. So we're not allowed to critisise the party at all, lest we are denied our democratic right as members to a vote? They're like the fucking Stasi, asking people to rat out their family and friends for merely disagreeing with them. I support my kids, and I would to my dying breath, but I still moan about them approximately 275 times a day. If they deny me my vote, I would demand every penny I've ever paid in subs back, and I'd like to see everyone else do the same. Democrats, my fucking vulva.

The reduced section in the supermarket. It's always at the end of one aisle. There's always a crowd of cheapskates barging each other out of the way to get the bargains. I should put 'bargains' in inverted commas, because in reality the whole section comprises of bags of lettuce, or bits of fish that have to be eaten within the next 4 hours. Even if you've no intention of perusing the meff section, you can't even get past the vultures with your trolley, so you have to take a detour round the next aisle and back down, to get to the rest of the aisle. Why do people go so mental for a few pennies off shit? A piece of sea bream on the turn that should have been £4.79, that's been reduced to £4.54. Is it worth killing someone to save 25p and risk food poisoning to boot? I'd rather pay the extra for a nice bit of fresh fish. The reductions are pathetic, and the grasping, violent locusts who think they're saving money are doubly pathetic.

I "Doctor, I'm bleeding out of my arse, I've lost 3 stone, my stomach is distended and in agony and I can't stand for more than 2 minutes without fainting". "Yes, that'll be your anxiety, now run along you nice little nutter"

Follow up care is in an even worse state than crisis care, and that's bad enough. I've seen nobody since I was discharged in February. They just hope you'll take yourself back to your GP if you start to feel bad again. I'd make yourself an appointment if I were you, at the very least to have your blood pressure checked. There's a danger of thinking 'Oh well if I'm feeling okay on them I'll just stay on them'. My Mum developed type 2 diabetes a couple of years ago. She's a size 10, in no way overweight, and her doctor said "Oh it will have been caused by your psychiatric medication" like it was the most normal thing in the world. She'd been on meds on and off for years, and nobody had ever told her there would be a big risk of developing diabetes. It is quite scary.

Can I just wade in with my opinion, because although Dennis might not have put his case forward very sensitively, it is important not to brush over what he's saying, as there is more than a grain of truth in it. Study after study has shown that SSRIs are no more effective than a placebo in mild to moderate depression, that is true. However, they are massively more effective than a placebo in severe depression. Just wanted to clear that up. People are at a much greater increased risk of suicide when they are first prescribed anti-depressants. Whether that is caused by the drugs themselves or the severity of their illness is up for debate, but it's important to be aware of this. Keep a close eye on anyone you know who has recently been put on meds, and make sure they're aware of the risk, and encourage them to talk to you or someone else if they do begin to feel suicidal. I have felt truly suicidal twice in my life. The first time was when I'd been put on Champix for stopping smoking. The second time was earlier this year when I'd been injected with progesterone (a female hormone) for period problems. I was taken into hospital on that occasion. It's been a really tough year and I'm feeling much better all the time, although I've been told it could take up to a year for the progesterone to get out of my system, I'm seeing a big improvement month on month. My point is, medications (whether anti-depressants or otherwise) can have a huge impact on a person's state of mind. There's no point sweeping that under the carpet. I can't take anti-depressants. They fuck me up massively. Before I got admitted to hospital, I was put on Seroxat. It made all my muscles seize up, so that my limbs were all twisted and my face contorted. It was agony. I'm not exagerrating when I say I looked like Steven Hawking. A psychiatrist walked past me and took one look at me and said to a nurse "Get her off the Seroxat immediately". Now this doctor knew straight away what was causing it. It seems obvious to me that it must be a fairly common problem if it was so obvious to him. They tried me on different anti-depressants and none of them suit me. They reached the conclusion that I've got such a hyper-sensitive brain chemistry that most things fuck me up quite easily. I try not to even take so much as a paracetamol now if I can help it. That doesn't mean I'm anti-meds. They help too many people to be written off, but there are enormous negatives for some people, which many medics seem reluctant to admit. Interestingly, psychiatrists are the first people to acknowledge the problems, whereas GPs tend to fob you off and think they're a miracle cure. Saying that, I do think they're hugely over-prescribed and I think that's because we've all been brainwashed into believing we should all feel great and happy all of the time. I think that's bullshit. People who are going through shit and are feeling understandably low will go to the doctors and be given anti-depressants. In my opinion (and I'm sure many people would disagree) these people aren't depressed - they're having a very normal reaction to a bereavement, or a relationship break up or whatever. I don't believe in medicating people who are having normal responses to shitty situations. I think meditation, teaching people coping strategies, and counselling/CBT/other talking therapies are far more appropriate. There's a world of difference between these people, and someone who is genuinely mentally ill. It's normal to feel like shit some of the time, it's when it's prolonged and unrelenting that people need treatment. Sorry for waffling. #bibble

I fucking love nosing at houses on Rightmove. Give us your area/spec/budget and I'll find you a gaff. Like a rougher Kirstie Allsopp without a lanky wet lettuce to fawn all over.

Kale-eigh - Marillion Swede dreams are made of this - Eurythmics

Hey, I throw my shit through that checkout like a badger digging a hole. I'm a speedy shopper. So quick, I usually forget half of what I've gone for!

Reading this thread feels like going out to lunch with my mother and aunties.

I've never flown a St George's flag in my garden, nor bummed a young boy in the care of the local authority.

Impatience winds me up. At my local supermarket, you have to pay for parking, and then give them your voucher at the till and they knock it off your bill. I never used to remember to reclaim my parking, but since we've been having our kitchen rebuilt I now have to go to the supermarket almost every day. I worked out that I was wasting about 40-50 quid a month on parking, so I've been disciplining myself to reclaim my £2 each visit. Yesterday I put my stuff though the self-service check out, and then you have to try to catch the attention of the gormless, acne-ridden 18 year old lad to come over and knock your parking off. Said kid was busy helping another customer, so I had to wait approximately 2 minutes for his assistance. Behind me in the queue was a couple, with a young daughter. I try not to make judgements about people generally, but I'll make an exception in this instance. They were filthy, and I would wager their kid existed on a diet of Quavers and Sayer's sausage rolls. They didn't strike me as being in employment, and given their pallid faces and scabs on their arms, I would imagine they were in the tragic grip of heroin addiction - or as we call them in Birkenhead. 'a pair of filthy fucking bagheads'. Maybe I misjudged them. Perhaps this bloke was actually Chief Exec of fucking ICI or similiar, because it quickly became evident that his time was extremely precious. He began to exclaim loudly "Would yer be aaaarsed? Would yer, for 2 fuckin' quid? Fuuuckkkkin 'ellll!" Normally I'd just ignore such behaviour, but he caught me on a bad day so I replied (even louder than him. To be fair, I was probably verging on a shout) "Actually, yes. I can be arsed. I spend about £500 a year parking here. Now you strike me as a particularly wealthy gentleman, so maybe you can easily afford to throw away that kind of money. I can't. I do apologise if you've got far more important things to do with the 90 seconds I've kept you waiting". I was gutted when I walked off that I didn't club him in his grey, soon-to-be-dead face with my tiger baguette. Dirty cunt.

I've been a full member for years, but I've not heard a dickie bird from any of the bastards. It's like phone companies schmoozing for new blood, while not giving a shiny shit about their current clientele. It's funny how they emailed me 14 times a day asking for money in the run up to the general election. Shower of cunts.

Yeah, that's the one. Mine has gas ovens though, not electric. I regularly cook roast dinners for 10+ people (well, I did when I had a kitchen) and the ovens are plenty big enough for 3 large roasting tins in each. You do have to buy extra shelves though because they only come with 2 shelves in each. It's dead easy to clean, and the big burner is brilliant. The only negative for me is the grill. There's nothing right with it. It's tiny, it's got no handle on the grill pan, and whenever you even nudge the door (even when not in use) it sets off an industrial-sounding fan that won't stop for about half an hour. Truly maddening. I've turned the electric off at the mains before just to get some peace. Luckily, I'm not much of a griller.

Wait until September/October if you want a bargain. They always get flogged off cheap at the end of summer.

Yeah, it had to go into the chimney breast. If it's not in a chimney, and you're just having a normal extractor against a wall, they're much cheaper.

I've got a Belling with 7 burners, 2 ovens and a grill. I love it, and it wasn't too pricey. What I didn't reckon on was the price of an extractor to go above it. That cost a grand, which was more than the cooker.

No Ad, higher rate dividend tax isn't the same rate as higher rate income tax. Higher divi tax (paid on anything over 42K income) is effectively 22%, as opposed to the 40% you'd pay if it were income tax. Trust me, I'm married to a chartered accountant.

That's only if they're on 150K+. Chief Execs will usually put anything above this in a pension, so they don't pay any tax on it. They'll pay nothing in divis to 40K, and 25% in divis up to 150K. Still swerving far more tax than mere mortals.

In a nutshell. If you're on a low/middle income, you pay tax. If you're a high earner, you're offered ways around it. In my last job, I was offered the chance to take a low salary and have the remainder paid as dividends to avoid paying 40% tax. I told them I'd take it all as salary - if I've earned it, I pay tax on it. They thought I was a mental communist, and it was made clear that it 'wasn't the norm' for people 'of that level'. Dividends, expenses and obscene amounts in pension funds are the main ways people dodge taxes, and they're all sickeningly legal. Wealthy people don't have to worry about taxes, because they barely fucking pay any.

Our kids sure as hell will be. I fucking despair for them. There are fuck all opportunities for school leavers who don't want to take the uni route. The government have scrapped the adult skills budget, which means if you don't have qualifications by the time you leave school, you're written off unless you pay thousands for a course yourself. The only avenue you can take is the Apprenticeship route. Just watch, there'll be hardly any FE colleges within a couple of years. The government are constantly banging on about providing 3 million Apprenticeships. This means they'll provide funding to a college or training provider to deliver the course. It fails to mention that they need to magic 3 million placements for these kids. They could fund a billion Apps, but they'll never fill them. Employers don't want unskilled kids. The majority of those that do are just looking for cheap labour. Why the fuck does a kid need to do a course for 12 months to become a 'sandwich technician', a barrista or a cleaner? So these kids will get an NVQ in making a butty, and then what? Even if they're lucky enough to find a job, they'll never own a house. They'll work in poverty until they're 70 and there's no state pensions left.

Peter Barlow must have spent the last few years in such a deep state of inhibriation that he's failed to notice that his son is obviously mixed race.

People who inflict their screaming babies upon the wider public really piss me off. If you've gone out for something to eat, it's supposed to be a relaxing, enjoyable experience. I'm not paying good money for the privilege of having my ears assaulted by a squawking child. I've served my time when my own were nippers, but if mine kicked off in public I'd take them outside until they'd calmed down - a fucking novel concept to many modern parents, who believe we should all suffer just because they have to. I was at a school open evening a few weeks ago with my daughter. The Head was giving a talk, while a women sat in front of me with a baby on her knee that bawled throughout. Nobody could hear a word of the presentation, yet this woman seemed totally oblivious. TAKE THE POOR LITTLE BASTARD OUTSIDE, YOU SELFISH BITCH!

I've thought this too. Every time he talks about asking questions on how ISIS is funded, I wince. I reckon he'll be Robin Cooked within a couple of months if he doesn't watch out.