Latest Moan From You and Me 2025

I'm a shoulder bag person too and it holds my purse, reading glasses, driving glasses, phone, tissues, sweeteners, trousse with a plaster, paracetamol, lip gloss/salve, nail clipper, car keys, house keys, patchwork hall keys, wallet full of fidelity cards, little notebook, pen, sometimes a camera.....

I have summer and winter versions in different colours. They have to be leather and/or fabric. Never plastic. I haven't bought one for 9 years now and have one bought in 1991 (Honfleur) and another bought in 1999 (San Giminiano) but I've also started making them myself so I can decide on inside pockets.

Bags for life are for shopping and we have loads. As they age, they end up being plant carriers.

 

We have had a few “:wrong days” when nothing has gone to plan, indeed, very unexpected things happened every day .My poor brain feels like mush tonight coupled with a splitting headache. Plus, a latest IOS update has changed a few things which I don’t like at all. I feel a right grump tonight.

 

We've had one of those days today. In our case it was caused by a bomb. Yes, an unexploded WW2 device.

We were doing one of our favourite walks from home with a cafe stop in the middle. No problems with lunch but when we were making our way back home we came upon a police car and officers going door to door. One of them stopped us and told us that we couldn't proceed any further on our selected route past a quarry. Apparently a bomb had been found in a nearby village and had been transported to the quarry where they planned to conduct a controlled explosion. They had blocked roads and were evacuating people from their homes while they did it. So we had to make a long detour. Heard the explosions though!

Mottram St Andrew properties evacuated over suspected WW2 device - BBC News

 

This time last year all the government talk was about a 22 billion pound black hole.
Then they had sorted things out now and everything will be better from now on.

Suddenly now there seems to be a 40 billion pound black hole.

 

And before the election they claimed to have costed everything but somehow didn't notice 22 billion missing

 

@LunarSea , goodness me, now that is definitely not planned when out walking A wrong day indeed.

 

Trump, who appears to be introducing martial law city by city, and WMD Blair are going to bring peace to Gaza. No wonder I lie awake at night wondering what the next day can possibly bring.

 

Netanayahu has yet to get the "agreement" signed off by the far right cabinet members, who he needs onside to stay out of court.
As far as Hamas go it's more of an ultimatum; sign up or be exterminated.
Don't worry though it's all a video game as far Trump is concerned; his son in law is involved in the buyout of EA.

 

@LunarSea we bought an old farmhouse in Belgium in 1993 and it's "garden" was former cow pasture all the way to the walls and doors except at the front. We had a local chap come with his bulldozer to scoop out a pond for drainage and smooth over the rest ready for seeding for grass and making borders and a veg plot. He left it all to settle for a week or so then came back to harrow and riddle the soil ready for sowing the grass. As he went along he'd stop and pick up big stones to move to the side but one turned out to be a WW2 landmine.

Work stopped. Chappies installing our new staircase evacuate. Council chappies mending the bridge a 100m away downed tools. Bomb squad gendarmes arrive. Did they talk to me, the owner? No. All conversations with bulldozer man then they put it in a strong box and went off to explode it somewhere else. Interesting day.

 

The £40 billion was predicted last October, the increase in public sector pay and the increase in public spending would result in a £40 billion black hole if it wasn't funded. The problem, they predicted the economy to grow better than it has done, but the labours policies of lowering the national insurance threshold while also increasing it, which with other factors resulted in slowing economy growth. Growing the economy was in their manifesto, by doing this it would fund their increase in spending.

Unemployment has increased and so has claimants, it's a bad idea increasing spending if your banking on the economy growing in the future, history has proven that the economy has been subdued for a number of years.

They have even considered extending the scope of NI for it to be included in employer pension contributions. There manifesto was not to increase taxes on the working public, they are not doing it directly but they certainly are indirectly.

The Tories introduced a plastic packaging tax back in 2022, now all packaging will be taxed from October, with glass seeing the highest increase as the tax goes by weight. They first announced that this would be introduced just to alcohol by adding 5p tax to a 330ml glass bottle, so 6p when you include VAT. This rate will now be included in everything we purchase that is in glass. Many say, it will result in manufactures looking at using more plastic in the future for packaging.

The trouble is, when businesses increase the prices, many consumers say we are profiteering. What they don't understand, the government is raising taxes on the working people but indirectly to shift the blame from themselves.

 

I've learnt something there I didn't know about that tax

 

Once you work with billions and trillions, it’s easy to overlook

I used to work for a tax office many years ago. One day we got a call from a client who was missing 500.000 EUR tax return.
It turned out that the payment was done correctly but she had overlooked it in her bank statements

 

I'll take your word for that
Must be nice to overlook that amount

 

Unless they print some more, there is only a certain amount of money to go round, so all thes budgets have always just seemed like fiddling around and they never seen to make more money.
We seem to rely on foreign workers and foreign investment.

I'm no financial expert, unlike Rachael from accounts, but something seems to have seriously gone wrong, its not just this bunch but successive governments don't seem to understand how to make money.