Early Risers.

[The Stationmaster]

Since I left the UK in 2004, I have correctly paid all my tax in France, as required by EU regulations. But now I am also paid a UK state old-age pension, that, under EU rules, is taxable in the country of payment. So when I got a letter from the UK taxman today, the first in many years, I expected him to inform me of the circs or even demand something. Not so.

 

"Your tax code for the year from 6 April 2014 to 5th April 2015 is NT. XX Pensions Management will use this tax code to take the right tax from the amount they pay you.

 

SNIP [unimportant stuff about checking things look correct]

 

XX Pensions Management will use code NT for this tax year. This means XX Pensions Management will not take any tax off your income."

 

Good to know you UK taxpayers are funding such a helpful document and its postage costs to France!

Does that mean you get two sets of Personal Allowances (or whatever they're called in France) then Ian - one in the UK for your state Old Age Pension and another in France for your occupational Pension?  That would seem to be a rather nice arrangement, no wonder folk emigrate in their later years if that's the case.

[travelintrev]

Good morning all,    terrific thunderstorms and heavy rain during the night...and this is the dry season!  Manged to get a bit more modeling done last night too. 

 

Today I have to be on my best behavior as there is a visit from some VIPs (UK Govt.)  to one of our projects, I have been deputed to be the tour guide! Well makes a change?  
 

So have a good hump if thats possible

 

Trev.

[Gwiwer]

Morning one and all.

 

Fine drizzly stuff intermittently troubling proceedings here.  The usual glut of inappropriate driving with sadly predictable results.  Entered freeway to find a jack-knifed, overturned and burning truck on the median strip being dealt with by the emergency crews.  Driver looked shaken but unstirred.

 

Off to Sydney tomorrow for a few days.  And offline with it.  

 

Go safely about your business and with as much happiness as you can muster.

[Robert]

Morning All,

 

It is warmer this morning - around 7°C with a hint of Spring in the air.  It is also starting to get light as I head off to work, which is a sure sign that longer days are on the way.

 

According to the news, there was a rather strange accident overnight.  A 18 year old lad in a car was struck by a Regio-Tram on a level crossing.  Apparently, he was just sitting there in the middle the crossing with no lights on - the tram driver applied the emergency brakes as soon as he saw the car, but it was predictably too late.  Nobody in the tram was hurt, but the driver of the car was killed.  By all accounts, there was an almost identical accident a year ago, which makes it all the more odd.

 

Time for a coffee!

 

Have a good day everyone...

[Barry O]

Morning!

Off to see Dracula's sister today. I will be giving feedback on my tablets...she is probably going to be less than impressed.....

 

Later on I am at our new railway clubrooms for a video shoot..pass me the stage makeup...

And then off to my accountants to find out when/if I am ever going to get some tax back...

 

So it could be a very busy hump day...

 

Hope everyone else has a nice,sensible day...

[Oldddudders]

Morning all

 

Robert's story sounds really weird, rather like those tales of train crashes where the crew were seen staring straight ahead as they went to their doom. Years ago there was a spate of accidents on the high-speed dual carriageway A21 near Sevenoaks. After dark cars just left the road for no reason. One driver, a doctor's wife, reported that she saw an optical illusion, as if the road went in a different direction from that which she knew to be the case.

 

I have yet to get to grips with how my dual-tax pans out. In the early years, we struggled to get the French to tax us at all! Their limited experience told them that our pensions must be UK Government, and therefore not to be taxed. Struggling to pay tax would be some people's dream, no doubt.

 

Not a great day in prospect, weatherwise, but it's nearly March. Winter really has gone - if it ever arrived here.

 

Hope your day goes well.

[gordon s]

I had four tax coding notices arrive on Monday to cover my state pension and work related pensions.  It took a while to work out what was what as each pension provider had a different tax code to cover the personal allowance and different tax bands as the income increased.  I eventually gave up and phoned them.

 

Glad that I did as my coding came down by a 1000 points….

 

On the plus side, I don't have to do an annual tax return any more.  :-)

[Tony_S]

Morning all.

Clear, sunny here so far. Not very warm yet but it is supposed to be almost double digits Celsius by late morning, 

I did some more work on my layout yesterday. I added the hardware to control the one point/turnout. There will be other points added later so using a DCC accessory decoder that can drive six point motors for just one isn't quite as daft as it may seem. I have now got as far as I want with basic track and can resume scenic work on the main board.

 

Tony

[skipepsi]

Morning all, still got a pain in the bum but getting moving is the painful part. Dry and mild for the time of year again, the birds are convinced it is nesting time I am still expecting nature to kick back. In the spirit of optimism I am renown for I have had the winter beard cut back. Happy Wednesday! 

[NGT6 1315]

Morning all.

 

Slept poorly last night, so probably not my normal self today – though I shall do my best to at least come close. Of course, a nice model railway parcel might just do wonders...

 

Pair of lesson drafts for next week to write up, too. Thankfully, I feel like I have begun acquiring some degree of routine in recent weeks, so it's no longer as endless a task as I perceived it in the beginning.

 

Robert – that's the accident you were talking about, is it not? http://www.hr-online.de/website/rubriken/nachrichten/indexhessen34938.jsp?rubrik=36086&key=standard_document_50962813

 

For those of you who might not be able to read the article: This happened on the mainline from Kassel to Frankfurt. The train involved was one of the tram-trains which operate around Kassel in lieu of "normal" suburban trains.

[DonBradley]

I'm late, but so what. I'm retired!

It's going to be hot at 31C but hotter tomorrow at 32C.

Right now it is pleasantly warm with the window open..There's no wind.

Happy Hump day and may you glide towards the weekend.

[trisonic]

Too right about an early Spring, Mick.....

Today we're expecting a "nuisance" 1-2 inches of snow. Possibly 18 inches next Sunday thru Tuesday......... I suspect we'll still have snow on the ground through April - we still have at least a foot on my deck and in my backyard, the big berm beside my driveway has shrunk to about 32 inches, however, as it get whatever sun is around.

It doesn't take much for a large rainstorm to morph into a snowstorm at this time of the year.

 

Best, Pete.

[grandadbob]

Good morning all,

Dry & sunny and after a coolish start has now warmed up to 5^oC. Forecast is dry day with sunny spells.

Splendid evening yesterday for Abbie's birthday - there was lots of cake and I had some! (diet put on hold briefly)

One parcel containing 2 wagons arrived yesterday, hopefully more stuff coming today. What is annoying is that this week the perishing post has been rearranged and instead of getting our deliveries about 10.00am it now looks like being midday/early afternoon. Not only that they appear to have taken away Darren our excellent friendly reliable and helpful postman who's been around for several years. The new guy has got a hard act to follow.

Have a good one,

Bob.

[trisonic]

Morning all

 

Robert's story sounds really weird, rather like those tales of train crashes where the crew were seen staring straight ahead as they went to their doom. Years ago there was a spate of accidents on the high-speed dual carriageway A21 near Sevenoaks. After dark cars just left the road for no reason. One driver, a doctor's wife, reported that she saw an optical illusion, as if the road went in a different direction from that which she knew to be the case.

 

 

By Robert's description it sounds like suicide to me. Surely it takes a conscious decision to sit on a "level -crossing" with your lights turned off.

 

Best, Pete.

[New Haven Neil]

Morning, a wet one outside and a coughing one inside.  Now have antibiotics for the bronchitis, but they haven't kicked in yet, my chest sounds like a boiling witches' chauldron.

 

So now on pills for blood pressure, pills for arthritis, pills for chest infection......no wonder Pharmceuticals are such good shares!

[skipepsi]

Forgot to mention spent a pleasant hour watching a guitar hero on Sky Arts while browsing cheap O gauge locos on ebay, not that I can bid for any I need another tooth removing.........

[Coombe Barton]

Blue sky - sun

 

Off into work later for a meeting abut the new Student Academic Regulations. Fun. Or some other description.

[Oldddudders]

By Robert's description it sounds like suicide to me. Surely it takes a conscious decision to sit on a "level -crossing" with your lights turned off.

 

 

The car does not look like the typical 18-y-o's first choice, as it appears to be a Mondeo estate. Perhaps it was dad's and they'd had a row. All very sad, whatever.

[AndyB]

Morning all. Sunny here. Walked the children to school and took some time to admire the snow drops growing in the meadow. 

 

Bit tired today as I sat up and watched a couple of programs last night about WWI. The first with Max Hastings who seemed to be on a mission to debunk the "Blackadder/Baldrick" theory about the war and featured a number of eminent historians who'd been studying the subject for decades. Fascinating and complex set of circumstances seemed to drag the continent into war. 

The second was the first program in a series on BBC4 covering the lead up to the declaration of war. I'm guessing it will be repeated at a more sensible time of day.

By 23:00 it was time for zzz zzzz so I missed episode 2. 

 

Science club tonight and I'm leading a session on earthquakes. The challenge will be for the children to build earthquake-proof structures from cocktail sticks and marshmallows. I've build a 30cm tall skyscraper from straws and plastic connectors. Inside there is a weighted damping mechanism which really works well. The earthquakes are simulated using a foil tray full of jelly which you put the building on to and then shake it gently.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 26, 2014 by AndyB

[Happy Hippo]

 

 

The Fiat campervan has so far proved to be OK, so much for Fix It Again Tomorrow.  Fingers crossed.

Neil,

 

Over the years I've had 4 Fiats:  A Tipo,  2 Puntos and a Grande Punto.

 

The Tipo I bought nearly new in 1994, and I still see it running around in the Shrewbury area!

 

the only serious problem I had was with the grande version when I got a hole in the tyre.  The non spare wheel, magic foam system was a complete and utter waste of space.  So the vehicle had to get recovered.

 

Apart from that, there was never a mechanical or rust issue with any of them.

[PhilJ W]

By Robert's description it sounds like suicide to me. Surely it takes a conscious decision to sit on a "level -crossing" with your lights turned off.

 

Best, Pete.

Seeing as its happened before I hope its not a game of 'chicken'.

[PhilJ W]

Slept like a log last night, but somehow the duvet and sheets ended up on the floor!!! Every cloud has a silver lining and switching the street lights off at midnight means that if anything of interest in the night sky (such as meteors, planets or the ISS) will be easier to see, as long as those silver lined clouds stay away.

[Donw]

I had four tax coding notices arrive on Monday to cover my state pension and work related pensions.  It took a while to work out what was what as each pension provider had a different tax code to cover the personal allowance and different tax bands as the income increased.  I eventually gave up and phoned them.

 

Glad that I did as my coding came down by a 1000 points….

 

On the plus side, I don't have to do an annual tax return any more.  :-)

There is a big advantage to doing your own tax code you work out (or the on-line computer does but you put in the figures) how much income you get and how much tax is owing. So any errors are down to you. In your case if you hadn't phoned they would have been taking too much.

Don

[beast66606]

A scan, a scan, my kingdom for a scan

 

 

This has been reduced to 800x600 and resaved to PNG format, I'm currently saving the masters in TIFF as it's a non destructive format.

 

Now in a quandry, my feeling is I should scan at the highest resolution possible but that takes huge amounts of real estate - time and computing power and storage. The computer power is fine, it can handle the load but the time is an ever decreasing commodity, I have thousands of negatives to scan and I won't be doing it full time - at least not for a few years - so I have elected to scan at 4800dpi as a happy compromise - the original negatives are not always the best so more than that could be wasted anyway, and less would probably be too little so 4800 it is - unless anyone has a better plan ?

 

TIF format seems to be a good choice too, it can be resaved and doesn't lose quality - not that I intend to resave but occasionally my brain f@rts and ..

 

 

[Happy Hippo]

The sky is clear and blue with Mr Sun in full attendance this morning.

 

If it goes on like this, the postman will be in shorts by the end of the week!

 

Mega excitement this morning:  My Waitrose card arrived, so now I can join the hallowed clientele such as the likes of the Stationmaster in the more salubrious establishments, rather than grubbing around the bins behind Aldi and Lidl.

 

I must admit I only got the card because it promised me a free cup of coffee.

 

As for Barry O's potential debut on the small screen:  'Break a leg, dahling!' (Ashers would have done that so much better.)

 

Off to Waitrose now.....................

 

 

 

 

 

Edit for capitals at start of sentences

 

and again for spelling: Doh!

Edited February 26, 2014 by Happy Hippo