Have Your Say! forum: Have Your Say 20.
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| A new thread for you all to enjoy. This is a Chinese witch hazel or Loropetalum chinensis which my mother got me, and I am very fond of it. On the Plants I love thread on my ATP forum, anybody can put plants they love as well. Lucy has most kindly put irises on, but you are all welcome to add to the collection. Regards. Neil.  |
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| Thank you Lucy. I was about to ask that myself. I prefer new threads to that page thing. So much quicker to load and review. Thanks Neil too for doing it that way. Interesting about the pension funds. Here the similar is called Social Security. As Lucy said, direct deposit to one's account after qualifying age but only 1x/mo. It is a variable payment based on contribution during working years though and not automatic. It also does not reflect increases in the cost of living. During working years, based in salary, there is a deduction to one's paycheck to partially fund one's retired future after a qualifying age. The idea was that the workforce would be maintained so that one generation would actually maintain the funds of the last. We also have untaxed savings plans either through work or personally. This should work, but the government borrowed against the Social Security fund (especially during the years that the Bush family was in adminstration) and now that the entire world is suffering economic decline, proceeds on investments are down and there are not nearly enough jobs for the young so insuffient additions to the SS fund exacerbate the shortage. Worse, those beginning to draw against the fund is the very large post war (WWII) baby boom generation. I am on the 'tail end' of that and have known for a long time that the system was likely to fail. In that regard, no matter how 'poor' I thought I was, I made a rule to save and invest 1/3 of my earnings and to not accummulate debt. Maybe by the time I qualify to collect social security I will see something, maybe not but I have always thought it foolish to live in such a way as to expect it to support me. I DO feel sorry for the folks now who will be hit hard by whatever the outfall is but then I have long wondered why they found it important to drive expensive cars, live in excessive homes, take fancy vacations, and dangle bling when they should have seen the end of the "American Dream" coming fast. My motto might be 'work hard, live humbly'. Woman on the eastbound train ...........................................Je Suis Désolé. (also a mule lovin', Charley huggin' girl) |
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Dear Jamie, we used to have social security but it is now called the Department of work and pensions. It works very similar to your system but you pay what is called National Insurance which covers health care and your pension when, for women you reach 60 and for men 65. It is payed into your account once a week, they wouldn't pay it in monthly in case you spent it all in a week and dropped dead. Then they could not get 3 weeks money back.  As the banks are too far for some people to travel the Post Office has a bank and it can be paid in there, as most places have a Post Office near them the OAPs go to get their money out there. National Insurance is a set rate and you cannot put more money in, it is what they call a stamp so you have to have all your stamps up to date to receive a pension. If you are unemployed it is payed for you by the Government. Many people who worked for the Government and the Banks were encouraged to take out personal/private pensions, a lot of these went bust as the money was used in the boom years to try and get more money some of these high risk ventures collapsed and left the pension funds with nothing in them, which is disgusting. Also in many companies the same thing happened, although it was not used it just disappeared! There were some spectacular court cases against individuals for fraud, who took millions of pounds out for their own use. My friend who is no longer with us any more had a motto, drink hard, sod them, and die in debt, he did. It is hard to get money out of someone who is dead. Love. Neil. |
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 yep, after mom died, there were bills (from healthcare providers I never even heard of). Her funds were in trust and as POA/executor I could have paid them but first, I would just return the bills marked, "deceased". Almost all of them just disappeared, the ones that didn't I argued (that they were not 'authorized providers') and they went away too. She had an extravagant funeral though, all she would have wanted.Woman on the eastbound train ...........................................Je Suis Désolé. (also a mule lovin', Charley huggin' girl) |
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| My friend had a quiet funeral with a lot of people there as he had a lot of friends. He had left quite a lot of money behind the bar in the pub he worked in for everyone to have a good drink and something to eat. His wife Kit claimed that it is what he wanted so that everybody enjoyed themselves and nobody was to be upset. He was 84 when he died and an ex soldier. Strangely enough the pub did not pay him a lot, as bar work is not well paid over here. So he got a job working on a weekend for my father in Security; which he loved, as going out with my father was fun to him at 79 years old. More like Security in the famed Cock pub off Oxford street for them two! I unfortunately have to go to a lot of funerals because of my work for the Royal British Legion, and a lot of our world war 2 veterans keep popping their socks all the time. Although I absolutely despise undertakers (funeral directors), as when I did the gardens at the cemetery/crematorium I used to see what they got up to, they do have respect for our war veterans and will always place a Union Jack over the coffin. If asked they do at some extra cost provide a gun carriage with horses as well. Love. Neil. |
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| "popping their socks" Does that happen to regular folks or only WWII veterans??? Woman on the eastbound train ...........................................Je Suis Désolé. (also a mule lovin', Charley huggin' girl) |
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| No that means to anyone who has kicked the bucket. Love. Neil. |
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| Dear Neil: do they kick the bucket and then pop their socks..... or the other way? Regards, Jamie Woman on the eastbound train ...........................................Je Suis Désolé. (also a mule lovin', Charley huggin' girl) |
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| Same thing! Love. Neil. |
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| All at once??? No, not possible. Something has to happen first. Woman on the eastbound train ...........................................Je Suis Désolé. (also a mule lovin', Charley huggin' girl) |
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| Just means they are dead that is all, and are expressions used by most of us! Love. Neil. |
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| But you can't use both without relating them ...like maybe the socks pop off and kick the bucket. OR maybe they kick the bucket and it causes the sock to pop off. Think about it, I'm going to bed. See ya' tamora' iffen the whole US grid doesn't go down as a part of the big storm soas we have no connective power. Nitey, nite friend Neil. Woman on the eastbound train ...........................................Je Suis Désolé. (also a mule lovin', Charley huggin' girl) |
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| Ah but Jamie if you are 'kicking the bucket' you are probably 'popping your clogs' simultaneously - Clogs don't have a back so would just slide off if you kicked something and they'd take your socks with them. The expression actually goes back to a time when a pair of socks were worn all the time - in bed as well - no heating back then. People didn't have much and everything was valuable - no point in burying good socks - so once someone was dead their socks were removed and 'popped'. Now that is an old expression meaning pawned, as in the song 'Pop Goes the Weazel' which refers to the habit of people of popping or pawning their weazel (Weazel and Stoat is cockney rhyming slang for a coat)- on a Monday to get the money feed the family and claiming it back on a Friday before spending the rest of their money in the pub so having to pawn the coat again on a Monday! Pop goes the Weasel Half a pound of tuppenny rice, Half a pound of treacle. That’s the way the money goes, Pop! goes the weasel. Up and down the City road, In and out the Eagle, That’s the way the money goes, Pop! goes the weasel. Carol |
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| 'Kick the bucket' is a common expression here. Never heard of the explanation for 'pop goes weasel'. Windy & rain here although hurricane winds are supposed to be down to tropical storm strength. We already had quite a bit of rain which allows trees to come down easily as the ground is so saturated. Sorry for your dad to lose his friend. |
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| When I retired, I found out at sometime along the way, I had opted out, which ment I paid extra into the State Pension, so I get a bit more than those that get the basic State Pension, which came as a nice surprise. |
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Carol, thank you so much for the history lesson. Its a song  I sang as a child.Hugs, Nancy What would you attempt to do if you knew you would not fail? ~~Dr. Robert Schuller |
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| Luved it Carol! We too sang 'Pop goes the weasel' with absolutley no inkling of a meaning like that. In fact, I had a 'jack in the box' that 'sang' it and looked (kinda') like this:  Now I suppose there might be a 'jack in the box' story too? Are these things related by anything other than US children's toys? Woman on the eastbound train ...........................................Je Suis Désolé. (also a mule lovin', Charley huggin' girl) |
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| Dearest Jamie, there is a story behind it! The origin of the jack-in-the-box is that it comes from the 13th century English prelate Sir John Schorne, who is often pictured holding a boot with a devil in it. According to folklore, he once cast the devil into a boot to protect the village of North Marston in Buckinghamshire. This may explain why in French, a jack-in-the-box is called a "diable en boîte" (literally "boxed devil"). Then of course it was developed into a children's toy, but still meant to scare the unwary child. Love. Neil. |
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| HA! So iffen ya git Jacked in the box ya jest might pop yer socks.... er otherwise git poor and pop yer weasel? Woman on the eastbound train ...........................................Je Suis Désolé. (also a mule lovin', Charley huggin' girl) |
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| Dear Jamie, something like that! I would not worry about that unless you are thinking about to pop your socks/boots if you put your foot in with the devil. Then you would not have to worry about having to pop the weasel. Hugs. Neil. |
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