Brits pay a fortune in tax on petrol duty. We pay about 80p a litre at the moment, of which about 50p I think is tax. And of course there’s yearly road tax just for having a car.
House prices over here have been rising for years. My nice 3 bedroom house cost £90,000 two and a half years ago. If I put it on the market today, I’d get around £160,000 (maybe a bit more because I’ve done it up a bit). But income hasn’t risen in line with that.
So a first time buyer now is looking at around £150,000 on average for a basic house, double that if you’re trying to live in London.
We get taxed on all our earnings. 25% if you earn under £30,000 a year, then it goes up to (I think) 35%, then 50% once you start earning shedloads. Plus we all pay National Insurance as well, which is supposed to go towards public services like the NHS.
But then we have Council Tax will also pays for public services and is based on the value of your house. Then cost brackets for this don’t seem to have risen along with the house price, so that’s increased yearly, plus the amount gets put up annually regardless. And let us not forget stamp duty on houses when you buy them…
There’s duty on cigarettes (which doesn’t bother me because I don’t smoke), duty on alcohol (which does bother me because I drink), VAT on just about everything that you buy…
It occurs to me that just about all of your money ends up in the Government’s grubby little mitts, regardless of what you do… :sure:
Sometimes I do hate living in Britain. When I think about the weather, the state of the place and how much money we pay to keep it like this. When you see things like the Soham (sp?) murders, when you remember things like Brady and Hindley, when you see the litter, homelessness, drugs which just seem to be everywhere, an out dated justice system crippled because of a lack of judges and prisons, an oversized military costing millions for one of the smallest coutries in the world, the house of lords (whats the point of them, I still can’t see it) and certain members of the royal family sponging of the state (Edward & Andrew), asylum seekers being spat on…thats when I hate living in Britain. Thats when I wished I was somewhere warm, that didn’t tax their people as much and somewhere that didn’t care about world politics…that’d be heaven.
I was going to say that these problems would exist anywhere but I hope not. And to say it would be to destroy my dream. I have a big family and we’re all very close…if it wasn’t for them I’m sure I’d have left a while ago.
I’m sorry, but I am trying to get into web development. It’s not as though I plan on working at my job forever. But in my town it’s a pretty good job.
They are paying you right?
Yes but as I said it’s barely any money. If I were to live on my own (I live with parents now) I would die, literally starve and not have a place to live.
Radio if you don’t like the way you’re being treated then quit!
Right now I am trying to get into web development, but as it stands here are my options:
I work at another low paying job with even less perks, ie fast food
I work in a mill or Wal Mart DC and most likely make a ton of money buy can’t further my education and end up living in this small town the rest of my life and marrying my aunt or something.
I’m sorry but that’s my town. It’s a small hick town where people don’t succeed.
Canadian Guy, I respect that you have gone through hell and are all the better for it. I wasn’t saying my employer owes me something, only that they owe all their employees more, as no one can live off of what they pay us, and then have the dread of dealing with idiots all day long, screaming at us over four dollars.
I regularly got scheduled at a factory that was unionized and I’ll tell most of the people working there were the laziest bunch of idiots I’ve ever met.
You seem to be inferring that I’m lazy? My store is not union, nor am I lazy; I consider myself one of the best workers there, as do my managers. Of course I want to be promoted, I want to be Shift Leader, but I couldn’t because of school. Again, a trap.
I don’t think your union story holds water against me; maybe it wasn’t meant towards me. But that’s a harsh statement to make, it impleys I do not work hard. I do, I work very hard and do all that needs to be done.
Why does this company owe anything more to their employees? They’re getting paid for what they do! They agreed to take that job at that pay rate. I never meant that I thought you were one of the union whiners and I’m sorry you took it that way. If someone accepts a job then they should accept the terms laid out by the employer because that’s the consequence of relying on someone for a paycheck. Complaining about a deal that you entered into after the fact, knowing full well what the deal was to begin with is ludacris and the unfortunate thing is that it happens all too often. Here’s a little story where I’ve been on the boss end dealing with whiny employees.
A couple of years back I got a contract to build some decks/platforms for this little fishing camp. They needed fifteen or so decks and they were paying me good money so I figured I’d share the wealth with a friend of mine who was hard up and unemployed. I told him I’d pay him $100 per deck which worked out to be about $25/hr for him (before he’d never had a job where he earned more than $10 an hour). Anyways, we built the decks in three days (really easy work days might I add) and when I went to get paid the guy said that he wanted one step for each one. I said fine and called up my friend to tell him that we needed to build a step for each deck and he comes back with “well…duh? That means I get more money eh?” I swear if he’d said that to me in person I would have throttled him! THE NERVE! I paid the arse and did the steps myself in about four hours. Although this sounds extreme this is the same type of crap whiny employees are doing. If you enter into a deal you must stick with it! If you didn’t like the deal in the first place then don’t agree to it!
ARRRRRGH! That mofo pisses me off just by thinking about him.
Another lesson, don’t mix business and pleasure. lol
I hate the English government, they **** me right off. I have never voted and I never will cos they are all lying bas*ards, they say all this spill to get you to vote for them and never do anything they say they will do.
Our justice system is crap too, it’s all arse upwards.
We let any foreigners into our country legally & illegally and then when we do find them out, we find them a brand new house and let them live in it rent free. Then they sponge off of our NHS and we have to foot all there bloody bills with our taxes and we have to wait months for anything because they are all in the queues before us sponging as usual.
Okay, I understand that I can quit, and someone will take my place. But, you really think after nearly two years of hard work and dedicated service, upholding policies that get me nearly killed every day (okay so that’s abit of an exaggeration), but, after two years, I have received a .20 cent raise. That means I make 6.95 an hour, not even seven dolalrs! If I had made just five cents more, do you know how happy I would have been to be making at least 7? I seriously was expecting at least 7. While my friend in the camera/video dept of the grocery store next door made close to 14 an hour to do next to nothing (yes, union, haha). But the turnover in the company is huge: we lose people all the time, mostly because of school or something, but I mean some people just don’t like it. And I understand we can leave. But is it better to train someone, work them at crappy wages and lose them to start all over again (including the losing part), or just simply pay someone what they are worth and be done with it? Doesn’t that make more sense?
And, yah I had a feeling you maybe weren’t meaning I was lazy, I didn’t really take offense to it, it’s ok.
As for the deck thing, yah that’s pretty dumb, that’s quit a bit of money he was making already. But I still feel the company makes us do too much for too little, it’s not just whining; I think if the people upstairs had to do half of what we do, they would reconsider our pay.
Case in point: a while back there was some sort of thing where if people did really well selling some gift cards opr something then the district leaders would come work the store for a saturday night. Well I heard the DL’s couldn’t do anything, they were totally lost! And then, just recently, our DL came down and was in the store doing some work with the ATM machines or whatever, and my MOD went on lunch. Well someone came in and wanted a refund which I can’t do without the MOD’s password; the DL was there and told me to do the refund and she would use her MOD password. Well I had never done a refund, so I didn’t know what to do. But neither did she! She tried to do various things until finally the customer conceeded to doing an exchange, which I can do.
The DL said they ahd changed the refund process. I told my Store Manager, and he said they never changed it, it was always the same. haha.
Radio I understand what employees want but they really have no right to expect to be paid anything more than what they agreed to in the first place.
Also, so what if your DL doesn’t know your job aswell as you do?
If you stop listening to the whiners and realise that you are the one responsible for your own life you would be much happier with yourself and that feeling of being ripped off and unappreciated would surely go away.
Anyways, it sounds like your odds of finding another job where you are really appreciated are much better than the odds that this company will up pay rates.
