Politics

[DavCobb]

For me Private Healthcare is too expensive as an employment benefit due to the tax rate that is applied to it.

After loading into my pension, private healthcare costs me £39 per month from my pocket. I think it is money well spent.
What's the sting over there?

[BackOfTheNet]

I can imagine my dad (pushing 90) with an IFA. He'd have him out of the door or talk about his national service in Hong Kong or his garden 
It wouldn't surprise me if he has cash in envelopes and had to seriously nag him to offload out of a 0% current account. Fair to say he is from a different generation.
He sometimes gives me cash for stuff I've got him and I try explaining that I have no means to put it in the bank. "Is a cheque better?"

Very familiar!! My dad is 89 and also spent 2 years in Hong Kong while doing his national service. He was in the Ordinance Corp and landed a cushy job chauffeuring an officer around in a jeep. He liked it so much he signed on for the second year.

He's a bit more switched on with finances though and has even started using online banking, which has solved the problem of being handed cheques and cash whenever I order anything for them from Amazon (online banking and bill payment fully embraced, basic shopping  viewed with great suspicion  )

[guest3474]

After loading into my pension, private healthcare costs me £39 per month from my pocket. I think it is money well spent.
What's the sting over there?

If you get full cover for £39 a month with no exclusions that‘s excellent value.
- it’s approximately 10x that here in Switzerland.

[DavCobb]

If you get full cover for £39 a month with no exclusions that‘s excellent value.
- it’s approximately 10x that here in Switzerland.

They have just changed the scheme, which works for me.
It had full cover for any major stuff (ops, in-patient treatment etc) but had a £1,500 a year limit of outpatient. Considering I had recent blood tests (£900), a scan (£450) and three consultant appointments (£700), you ended up paying an excess at times.

Now there is a £100 a year excess fee (to prevent frivolous claims no doubt) but no limits on any of the scheme. It is £2,375 a year as a taxable benefit for the whole family, kids up to 24 years old. It has always covered any pre-existing conditions, which is always a good benefit for anyone joining.

[DavCobb]

Very familiar!! My dad is 89 and also spent 2 years in Hong Kong while doing his national service. He was in the Ordinance Corp and landed a cushy job chauffeuring an officer around in a jeep. He liked it so much he signed on for the second year.

He's a bit more switched on with finances though and has even started using online banking, which has solved the problem of being handed cheques and cash whenever I order anything for them from Amazon (online banking and bill payment fully embraced, basic shopping  viewed with great suspicion  )

Ah that's cool, I love my dad's stories and reading his letters back home with black and white photos. They spent weeks on a boat to get there and also did two years. It was where he was given his HGV licence by driving around a field a few times and never took a proper test, which became his job for 40 years.

I did buy him a tablet for his 80th and think he has ordered from Amazon when I added a voucher on for him but forget online banking.
You can see how stand-ups get material from their folks. My all time favourite quote from my dad "I only googled Carol Vorderman and ended up on the dark web!"...whilst my mum shakes her head in the background. He regularly gets "banned from Twitter" even though he doesn't actually Tweet.


 

[guest3474]

They have just changed the scheme, which works for me.
It had full cover for any major stuff (ops, in-patient treatment etc) but had a £1,500 a year limit of outpatient. Considering I had recent blood tests (£900), a scan (£450) and three consultant appointments (£700), you ended up paying an excess at times.

Now there is a £100 a year excess fee (to prevent frivolous claims no doubt) but no limits on any of the scheme. It is £2,375 a year as a taxable benefit for the whole family, kids up to 24 years old. It has always covered any pre-existing conditions, which is always a good benefit for anyone joining.

That’s a great deal and would have thought very popular

[Tabasco Kid]

Ah that's cool, I love my dad's stories and reading his letters back home with black and white photos. They spent weeks on a boat to get there and also did two years. It was where he was given his HGV licence by driving around a field a few times and never took a proper test, which became his job for 40 years.

I did buy him a tablet for his 80th and think he has ordered from Amazon when I added a voucher on for him but forget online banking.
You can see how stand-ups get material from their folks. My all time favourite quote from my dad "I only googled Carol Vorderman and ended up on the dark web!"...whilst my mum shakes her head in the background. He regularly gets "banned from Twitter" even though he doesn't actually Tweet.


 

Just mentioning Twitter, over the last few weeks, my feed has been clogged with some very distasteful bits of film, of people dying in various ways. As fast as i block the accounts, another one pops up. With quite a few Japanese ones just lately. There truly are some sickos out there.

[BackOfTheNet]

Ah that's cool, I love my dad's stories and reading his letters back home with black and white photos. They spent weeks on a boat to get there and also did two years. It was where he was given his HGV licence by driving around a field a few times and never took a proper test, which became his job for 40 years.
 

Yeah, I get those stories of the time on the boat too. Similarly, he got his licence from, as he puts it "Driving down a road and back. As long as you didn't hit anything you passed"

It qualified him to drive anything too!

There's one photo I have of him looking very cool, sitting on a Norton by the harbour.

The two favourite army stories I have of his are the time he was taught to drive a tank by Henry Cooper's twin brother. He lost control of it and crashed straight through the garden wall of some poor sod whose house backed onto the training ground.

The other was that they used to have caches of ammunition and explosives dotted around all over the place should the Chinese invade (a scenario in which he said they wouldn't have stood a chance of doing anything about it anyway). One day they received a report of a box of gelignite from one of them turning up in the hills. My dad took the officer he drove around to investigate and found, sure enough, there was an unsecured box of gelegnite there.

The officer wasn't keen to do anything about it as he wanted to go on a personal errand so they left it and came back later, only to find it had gone.

My dad enquired what they were going to do about it.

About what? replied the officer

The gelignite?

What gelignite?

The gelignite we found earlier....

We didn't find any gelignite earlier. I've no idea what you are talking about.

But...

WE DIDN'T FIND ANY GELIGNITE.

At this point my dad got the message and they drove back to barracks.

[Deepcut Cobbler]

Ah that's cool, I love my dad's stories and reading his letters back home with black and white photos. They spent weeks on a boat to get there and also did two years. It was where he was given his HGV licence by driving around a field a few times and never took a proper test, which became his job for 40 years.

I did buy him a tablet for his 80th and think he has ordered from Amazon when I added a voucher on for him but forget online banking.
You can see how stand-ups get material from their folks. My all time favourite quote from my dad "I only googled Carol Vorderman and ended up on the dark web!"...whilst my mum shakes her head in the background. He regularly gets "banned from Twitter" even though he doesn't actually Tweet.


 

My Dad, who you've probably seen at games, has just turned 90 and also did his two years National Service in the RASC (Run Away Someone's Coming), but didn't leave these shores, serving in Yeovil and Oakham, Rutland.
He also was given a licence without a test in order to drive tank transporters all over the country. He was then sent to the training Depot to teach others how to drive, again without any formal qualifications, just the two stripes on his arm.
On leaving, he worked on the loco footplate as a fireman and ended up driving artic's until he retired in his mid 70's, still not having formally passed a HGV test. There must have been a fair few of them.
Although he did have to pass his PSV license for when he drove the Towns red buses for a while...

[DavCobb]

On leaving, he worked on the loco footplate as a fireman and ended up driving artic's until he retired in his mid 70's, still not having formally passed a HGV test. There must have been a fair few of them.
Although he did have to pass his PSV license for when he drove the Towns red buses for a while...

Shows what a small world it was. After coming back from HK my dad also shovelled coal on the engines, then drove buses around town before joining Watney Manns where my grand dad worked. He got made redundant at 60 after 37 years service.

[Manwork04]

I see Ange is driving economic growth with more workers rights 😂
#utterly clueless.

[Bingers]

Not just the French with dodgy driving licenses then. My father in law had a go at learning to drive in the desert in the war on Algeria, but wasn't any good at it (not that it can have improved much by the time I met him), so came to an agreement with the bloke who signed the form to say he could have a licence. The driving test bloke didn't like needles, my father in law signed to say he'd had his vaccinations and in return got his licence.

One of his other "jobs" in the conflict was the crucial role in the military run brothel, where he had to check his colleagues were free from syphilis etc before they were allowed any comfort time.

[guest3474]

Shows what a small world it was. After coming back from HK my dad also shovelled coal on the engines, then drove buses around town before joining Watney Manns where my grand dad worked. He got made redundant at 60 after 37 years service.

He probably knew my Dad then - Eric Frost, he was a chippy for Phipps, Watney and finally Carlsberg

[DavCobb]

He probably knew my Dad then - Eric Frost, he was a chippy for Phipps, Watney and finally Carlsberg

I'll ask him Peter. You are not part of the Northampton 'Frost' family from Spencer are you?

[Manwork04]

All this will soon be rendered irrelevant when the Comrade Bingers and Comrade Manny Common Sense Coalition come to power!

Exactly MR Claret, we may be able to find a plum job for your good self 😉

[guest3474]

I'll ask him Peter. You are not part of the Northampton 'Frost' family from Spencer are you?

Not that I‘m aware of - a smaller family Far Cotton and Weston Favell origins

[Bugbrooke Boy]

The Tory leadership race to the bottom is the gift that keeps giving! Now we have MPs voting against the person they don't want rather than for the person they do want; all sorts of tactical stuff from what has been described as the most duplicitous electorate in British politics. Now whoever wins will take the Tories even further to the right. Labour must be delighted! #ToryLosers

[Bugbrooke Boy]

Labour set out in its manifesto that Workers' Rights would be a focus - and they'd carried through with that. They were voted in on that mandate.  Well done Labour!

[Manwork04]

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[Tabasco Kid]

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