People

An interesting little development was reported in British newspapers today.

Oil companies are in a panic because prices here may soon rise above £1. This presents a problem because most of the pumps can only register 99.9 pence. Even the latest ones can only do this because no-one seriously expected the price to go above that level! They naturally want to replace them, but whine that it will take a year to doi them all and it would cost a lot as well. So of course they have to raise the price to pay for the replacement pumps. Vicious circle anyone?

On another note, our average earnings are £21,000 pa. ($33,600) with a tax level of around 30% once all taxes are taken into consideration. How does this compare around the world?
(Incidentally, it is also estimated that two-thirds of British people earn less than average wages. All those high earning sportspeople skewing the figures!)

Our transport network is both good and bad. For instance. If I want to travel from London to Birmingham, it's about 120 miles. I can drive it in 90 mins given a clear road. I can get public transport and get there in less than five hours if I'm lucky.

On the other hand, I can try and get around London on the M25 (A notorious British Motorway that has given people nightmares!) in rush hour and takes three and a half hours to go 75 miles. Or I can get on the underground and cross in little more than an hour.

It's all relative. I find that city-to-city sucks, but in-city is generally better.

But I will say, we have a different culture here. I have driven in the US and found that if I wanted to go city-to-city by car it would probably take a week. Here the most excessive journey could be done inside of a 12 hour day.

I flew to the States to New York and then on to San Francisco. Each journey took about the same time!

My signatures tend to be spur of the moment. I'm just cursed/blessed with a weird imagination I guess!

Bea 'ting up on yourself may leave your nose twi' sty