Activity is guaranteed to grow your Business

As some of you may know, I have been involved with a franchise business called The Utility Warehouse. I have been dabbling at this business half-heartedly for over 6 years, and I can safely say, that the income I receive from the business, has yet to overtake the amount of time and money invested into the business!

It does not mean that this business doesn't work, it just means that I have not taken it seriously enough to treat it as a proper business. Nobody told me that I needed to declare the business to the Tax Office, and be classed as self employed! As I was already working full time and paying taxes, I thought that it wasn't necessary until I started making substantial profits.

What I didn't realise is that had I employed a Chartered Accountant, I would have received tax rebates from my full time job to cover the expenses incurred on my business venture. I was told that in the first year alone, I could have expected up to £1000 tax rebate!

Instead, I finally declared my business 3 years ago, and I regularly get around £500 a year tax rebate. The income from the business is not very much at the moment, but it is beginning to go up month by month. The reason for this is I am finally doing some consistent action to promote the business. Let me explain what I have been doing.

At the end of October, I decided to invest in 10,000 A5 sized leaflets. I found a printing firm called GTEC online, and submitted this company approved advert below -

What I then did, was to set myself a target of delivering 200 leaflets a day, until I had completely delivered them all. But even the best laid plans do not always work out as you originally planned!

I soon discovered that it slows you down considerably if you try and do the leaflet drop in the dark! Also it is not a good idea to try and do a leaflet drop when it is raining (nobody will look at a soggy leaflet). Because I do shift work, my 200 a day plan was not a practical solution. As it turned out the system I finally worked out, seems to suit me best.

What I now do is deliver 200 leaflets on the days I am working late or night shifts. I do these in the morning, and it takes me approximately 90 minutes to complete the task. If it is raining, I will miss out doing the leaflet drop that day. When I have my rest days, or holidays, then I will deliver 400 leaflets. This will take me about 3 hours to complete. With earphones plugged into my mobile phone,I switch on the MP3 player, and it is surprising how fast the time goes by!

When I ordered the leaflets, I told myself I would be happy with gathering just 4 customers. The reason I chose this number is that the initial commission I would receive from those 4 customers would pay for the leaflets. Of course, every month onwards, I would continue to receive a monthly residual income (a form of royalty if you like). so far I have delivered about 6,000 leaflets, and I have successfully signed up 3 new customers. By my reckoning, I am well on target to achieving the goal I set myself.

I haven't done any leaflet drops the week before Christmas, or this week. If the weather is dry, I will be delivering another 400 leaflets on Friday 6th January. when this supply of leaflets have gone, and I have achieved my target of 4 new customers, then I will get in touch with GTEC again and order some more leaflets. What has surprised me is that I live in a small village (900 houses) on the edge of a large town called Milton Keynes. There is lots of green space, farmland, parks, and a river nearby, and yet I will have visited 10,000 homes, and travel no more than 3 miles (4.82 km) from my home!

So 2012 is going to be busy year for me, as I will be putting a lot more time and effort into my franchise business, than I have ever done before.

Is Britain becoming an unsafe place to be?

While on the way to collect my wife from work, I was listening to the Jeremy Vine Show on radio 2. He was talking about how an Australian, by the name of Timothy Smits, was stabbed on a London bus in Dalston. I admire Timothy's bravery for trying to stand up to the 3 yobs, and I sincerely hope he doesn't have any long lasting post traumatic stress from the incident.

What amazes me about this incident is how the bus driver did absolutely nothing throughout the whole incident. I was a bus driver for 10 years on London buses, and I know what I would have done. The drivers are in control of the bus and make decisions on what to do. The drivers of today are protected by a perspex barrier, so the yobs would have had a much more difficult task of getting to the driver than at one of the defenceless passengers.

On one of my journeys on route 286 (now known as 340) from Edgware to Harrow-on-the-Hill, I had some disruptive youths causing havoc upstairs. I immediately pulled over to the side of the road, and using the Public Address system made an announcement that the bus would not be going anywhere, until the youths got off the bus. When one of them threatened me, I just told him I was getting paid whether I drove the bus or sat still. He was welcome to stay on the bus until the Police arrived to arrest him if he wished. At which point the youth and his mates then ran off.

My purpose was to inconvenience these idiots. Where I stopped the bus, was on part of the route where no other service travelled, so these Yobs would have had to wait for another 20 minutes before the next bus came along. As we had radio contact with our Garage, it was easy to send out an alert to other drivers to be aware.

In my 30 year career working on London Transport (buses and Underground) I have been assaulted only 3 times. It is only the first assault that I still have the odd nightmare over, and this happened nearly 15 years ago! It was my own stupid fault for not assessing the situation properly (that the Yob wasn't alone) realising that I shouldn't have tried to tackle the Yob smoking on a train! I ended up being headbutted by one of the Yob's mates! With hindsite, I would have acted completely differently. I would have still confronted the Yob who was smoking, but I would have used a different tactic other than trying to grab the Yob's cigarette from his mouth! Instead I would have gone for the fire extinguisher and used it on the yob! (well there was a fire, right?). More importantly, I would have had a very useful weapon to defend myself with if they decided to threaten me with violence.

What worries me about society today, is how the Liberal do-gooders have eroded all forms of discipline in this country. Now, young children grow up knowing that they cannot be touched by any adult, no matter how obnoxious, violent, and intimidating they be. As they grow older they think they cannot be disciplined by anyone. In this day of CCTV, I cannot understand why schools are still not allowed to discipline unruly children in class. If a child is being disruptive in class, why can't the teacher discipline them? With the CCTV footage available, the evidence will be there to protect both child and teacher. Surely it is in society's interest to show these Yobs that they cannot continue to terrorise everyone around them with impunity. By instilling discipline at an early age, will have major benefits of having far fewer troublemakers growing into adulthood, and creating an even bigger problem for society.

The Curious Case of the Disappearing Data

There are times when I truly despair of ever really understanding the foibles of computers. What should seem easy turns out to be a protracted mess of damage limitation, and a desperate search for answers to your problem. Where is Sherlock Holmes when you need him?

What I am referring to is my previous blog (Computer Geek to the Rescue). After completing the blog on Saturday, I posted it without any problems. On Sunday, I noticed a few things I wanted to change, so I tried to edit the post, specifically, to add another picture. What happened was when I went to edit the post, all the data disappeared! All I was left with, was the title!!!

No amount of logging out, and back in again would magically restore my post!! So I started searching the web for any possible solutions.

What I discovered is that, again, I was not alone with this problem. In fact, it seems to be a major design fault with Blogger. Countless users are complaining about how the auto-save wipes out vast tracts of their data, and then they have no way to restore what has been lost. These posts have been going back years!!! Any mistake you make accidently deleting something cannot be undone!

It seems to be a problem with Blogger and Google have so far not done anything to resolve this problem. A lot of disgruntled bloggers are switching to Wordpress, which doesn’t seem to have this problem.

The other alternative (which is what I am doing at the moment), is to write your entire post as a word document, save it, and then copy it over into the data box in Blogger. This was what I had to do with my previous post.

The only thing I haven’t quite worked out how to do is get any pictures I have added to the word document, to copy over into the Blogger post field. I have just discovered a blog post by Robert Slater, that was created nearly 2 years ago, explaining how you cannot transfer pictures from word to blogger, and possible ways to to get around the problem.

Computer Geek to the Rescue!

When I came home from work, my daughter informed me that our WiFi connection had stopped working. Now normally, this isn’t a problem, as the router has been known to freeze, and all you have to do is switch it off, then on again. So this was the first thing I tried, even though my daughter had already tried this already, I was too stupid to believe her that there was something more seriously wrong with the router!

What I did discover, was that it was the wireless part of the router that wasn’t working. The router (Thomson Gateway TG585 v7) was connected to my desktop computer via an Ethernet cable, and it could access the Internet without any problems. It just would not transmit any signal for the laptops to pick up!

So I had a brainwave. I started searching the web for forums that might shed a light on what was going on. I also dug out the flimsy instruction manual on setting up the router (about as much use as a chocolate fireguard). To my surprise, I was not alone in experiencing this problem. It seems that this router is prone to throwing a tantrum, and refuse to work!

One of the forum suggestions required me to reset the router, which I did using a wire paperclip in the recess at the back of the unit, and restarting the process. This also required me to input the username and password. So far, so good. I then had to use another username and password to access the routers settings, as it was here that I could try and get it to kick-start the transmitter again. As I was going into the settings, I was asked to change the username and password, which I did, and checked to see if all the settings were correct. They were. When I exited the settings, and checked the router, it still wasn’t working. To make matters worse, I couldn’t log back into the settings, as it wouldn’t recognise any of the username’s or passwords!

So I got out my trusty paperclip, and reset the bloody router to its factory default again. This time, I ignored any of the requests to change usernames, or passwords, and went back into the settings screen. This time I followed another forums advice to simply change the channel the router was broadcasting on. I changed the channel from 11 to 9 and “hey presto!” the router started working properly again!

My wife told me that when I first started to come to grips with sorting the problem, I was like a bear with a sore head, muttering curses under my breath, and a scowl upon my face. When I finally succeeded in fixing the router, she says I was grinning like a Cheshire Cat!!

Budding Film Mogul Bites The Dust!

3 years ago, I was approached to invest in a new film production called "The Mortician". I was told that it was a high risk investment, as there is many hurdles to overcome, before the film is ultimately released.

Most films fall by the wayside before they even get to filming! With "The Mortician" everything seemed to be going well until last November, when we were invited to see a private screening of "The Mortician" at the BAFTA offices in London. Then we were told the film company was still trying to raise another £500,000 to pay their creditors.

Even though the film was completed and ready for release, we were told it was to be shown at the Berlin Film Festival, where negotitations would be made for the distribution rights around the world. Once the festival was over, I was expecting news of the films imminent release. Instead there was a sudden silence.

About a month later, I started to receive emails from one of Full Circle's directors informing me that he was starting up a new film company, and I was invited to come along and invest in the new project! I am not that stupid to be bitten twice!

I then tried to go to the web site of Full Circle Films, but couldn't gain access to it. I wasn't sure if it was a problem with my computer, or the website itself. So I left it alone, and continued to wait for some news to appear.

Today, I tried again; and again, I couldn't gain access to the Full Circle website. I then started a more indepth search and came across a statement published earlier this month in the London Gazette that Full Circle Films has ceased trading!

It now seems increasingly likely that I will never see my investment returned, unless the film gets a cinema or DVD release. The only saving grace is I got some money back from the Government via the EIS tax rebate scheme. I only decided to take this risk as the money I had in savings was forcing me into the higher (40%) tax bracket, and this was a way of turning the tables on the Government. Had the venture worked, I would have been happy with a small profit. Now, all I can say is I have learned an expensive, but valuable lesson, and I am glad that I invested only the minimum amount allowed, so my loss is not going to be as big as it might have been if I had listened to the hype about how succussful the film was going to be, and invested more money!

Now I will have to make money the hard way, by working for it!

My trials and tribulations on holiday in Spain

This is my account of my first official holiday abroad since 1981. Yes, I did go abroad to Russia (3 days), and the Ukraine (2 days) in 2005. Also to Belarus on 3 occasions in 2006 and 2007. Those holidays had a purpose behind them. This was the first time I had organised a holiday for my wife, daughter, and myself to somewhere completely new to all of us. What follows are our attempts to create a memorable holiday for all of us!


First we have to go back to late November 2010 to understand why we chose Spain as our destination. Out of the blue, I received a phone call from a Company called Heritage Resorts. They offered us one weeks stay in one of their apartments at a special discounted rate of £49 in February, or £79 in April. The only date that all three of us were on holiday was April, so we decided to choose the week 16-23 April, although this would cause a problem for me immediately!


Heritage Resorts base their week from Saturday to Saturday. The Company I work for base their week from Sunday to Sunday! So on the Saturday we should be checking into the resort, I would still be at work! Worse, the shift I was doing was my late shift (14:30-22:30). We had to fly to Malaga, and the cheapest option was by Easy Jet departing from Gatwick. We decided to hire a car in Spain, so I booked a car through the website http://www.doyouspain.com/ who told us to collect the car at the airport from the rental company Record Go.

There were only 2 flights out of Gatwick available to us on the Sunday. One departed at 05:40, the other departed at 19:30. As the evening flight would not arrive at Malaga until 22:30, I was worried about driving a strange car, on strange roads, with unfamiliar road signs, at night! I chose the 05:40 flight, although it would mean I got very little sleep in the process. How little sleep, was a surprise to me, as events conspired against me to abort the holiday before it had even begun!

Now I will give a day by day account of our adventures.

It all started on Thursday 14th April. In the morning, I had to take my wife to the doctors for a blood test appointment. As I parked outside the doctors my Land Rover showed a warning light. The picture looked like a car with its doors open. We checked all the doors, but could not see anything wrong. After taking my wife back home, I had no more time to investigate the warning light that day before I had to set off for work.

Friday 15th April. When I took my wife to work in the morning, the warning light came on again. Once I got home I checked the cars operation manual and discovered that the warning light was to do with the ACE (Automatic Cornering Enhancement) system being faulty. I checked under the bonnet and discovered the ACE hydraulic fluid reservoir was very low. As I hadn't checked under the bonnet for a few months, I topped up the reservoir with fluid and then drove off to my local garage to try and get some bulbs for the dashboard that needed replacing. On the way to the garage the warning light came back on again! At the garage, a mechanic pointed out that the system was leaking fluid from a corroded pipe behind a front wheel. Now I was beginning to panic! The garage did not keep the pipes in stock, if they ordered them in, they would not arrive until Monday. To replace the pipes would take the best part of a day to do as the radiator would have to be removed first! There was no way my car could be repaired before we set out for Gatwick!
What I decided to do was stock up with loads of hydraulic fluid, and just keep topping up the reservoir frequently and hope that my car got me to Gatwick without any major mishaps!

Saturday 16th April started off OK, but once I was at work, my plans started to unravel. I was due to finish work at 22:30, and was looking forward to catching the 22:34 train home. Unfortunately my colleague was delayed getting to work and did not arrive until 22:40. To add insult to injury, the next train home at 22:54 was cancelled by London Midland. So I had to wait until 23:30 before I finally left London, heading for home. Once home, I managed to get one hours sleep before we set off to Gatwick.

Saturday morning started off relatively well. I made a single stop to top up the fluid in the car, and we arrived safely at the parking lot at Gatwick. When I handed over the car, I was asked if I wanted to have the car valeted and delivered to the airport when we arrived back. Considering the problem I have with the car, I declined the offer!

We arrived at the airport, checked in, and boarded the flight without any problems. I managed to doze for an hour during the flight. I couldn't discover how to tilt the seats back a bit so I could relax. So we arrived at Malaga at 09:30, Spanish time. I then had to go and collect the hire car. That's when the fun and games started!

It is common policy for the car hire firms to charge you for a full tank of petrol, we were charged €75 (more about that later), and they wanted to charge us an extra insurance for any damage or punctured tyres we might have. If we didn't take the insurance, we would be liable to pay €300 for any damage. The first car they gave me had the nearside mirror casing practically falling off the car. Also there was a bolt in one of the rear tyres, and one of the rear lenses was broken. Not happy with the car, I went back to the hire desk who told me to take the car down to level -2 where they would change the car. This they did, only car number 2 had a bald tyre! Car number 3 had a broken front and rear lens, and extensive body damage down the nearside! Car number 4 had another bald tyre! Finally car number 5 was all in one piece and we could begin our journey to the resort.





We arrived at our destination at the Playa Real, Marbesa, around lunch time, and collected the keys to our apartment. The complex was called El Toro, and the views from the apartment were stunning! We had been given one of the top floor apartments, so we could see the sea in one direction, and the mountains behind us. You could only gain entry to the complex via an electric operated gate. Without our keys, we couldn't get in or out! We had our own communal swimming pool to use too! It was a very spacious 2 bedroom apartment. The fixtures and fittings were of a high standard too. As soon as we unpacked we all had a 3 hour siesta! Later we went for a walk along the beach. Although it was sunny, it was very windy, keeping the temperature down. In the evening we went to a local supermarket (OpenCor) to get some milk, bread and some meat to eat. Later in the evening we went to the restaurant in the main hotel complex (Roberto's) and availed ourselves of the special offer of 2 pizzas for the price of one, shared between the 3 of us.


Monday, we went to Marbella to visit their weekly market. The weather was overcast, but still warm. The girls bought jewellery, some strawberries and tomatoes. I bought 2 leather belts. Then we visited a larger supermarket and stocked up on food for the week. Then we went back to the apartment, cooked ourselves some dinner and had an early night.


Tuesday, was very cloudy. So we decided to go to Gibraltar. Unfortunately, it was still cloudy when we got to Gibraltar. The clouds were so low, the top of the rock was into the cloud base. We walked across the runway into the town. Had a stroll through the shopping precinct before taking the cable car to the top of the rock. There we had some very close encounters with the Barbary macaques! Once back down to ground level it started to rain, so we beat a hasty retreat back across the border, stopping off at a McDonalds for a hot cup of coffee, only to find their coffee came in tiny cups, two slurps and it was gone!












Wednesday, we ventured up into the Sierra Navada, and visited the delightful town of Ronda. We even found the sunshine too! The roads through the mountains twist and turn with sheer drops off the edge, and no barriers to stop you going over the edge if you made a mistake! On the way there, we saw farms with groves of Olive trees, orange trees, and a few lemon trees too. We passed through a small village that had some market stalls and my wife decided to buy 2kg of oranges! God knows how we are going to get through that many oranges by the end of the week! Once we got to Ronda, we had lunch in a local restaurant, then headed back to the apartment. In the evening we spent an hour in the fitness centre, because the indoor pool was full due to the bad weather. By the time we got back to the apartment, the weather had cleared up and I braved a quick dip in the outside pool!




As the evening progressed, my wife began to feel ill. So much so, my daughter and I had to go to a chemist to get some medication.

Thursday, we decided to visit Nerja, specifically an aqueduct at Maro. On the way there, we stopped to fill the car with petrol as it was nearly empty. It only cost me €40 to fill it up! How the car hire company can justify charging us €75 is something I would have liked to ask them! When we got there, we found the aqueduct was covered in scaffolding undergoing maintenance and repairs! We then went back to the apartment as my wife was still not feeling well, and now my daughter was feeling unwell too! The evening brought on a heavy thunderstorm, so we all snuggled up on the sofa and watched some TV.


Friday morning, we had to attend a presentation by the resort. They wanted us to invest a lump sum of over four figures, plus an annual top up for a weeks free holiday every year at one of their 31 resorts all over the world. Because of the Spanish anti-harassment laws, we could easily decline the offer. With my wife still not feeling well, my daughter had the sniffles, and being a very generous girl, passed the sniffles on to me! So now all three of us were feeling under the weather. Despite not feeling 100% we were determined to keep going! Later in the afternoon, we just went exploring along the coast in the car as it was still raining. The thunderstorm came back again in the evening, and we discovered the apartment had heaters in the bedrooms. So for the first time all week they were warm and cosy at night!




Saturday, our last day in Spain. After packing everything, I noticed our suitcase was a lot heavier than when we brought it out! My wife told me she would sort it out at the airport once she could weigh it. After handing in the keys to the reception, we headed for Fuengirola, to try and find the market. Unfortunately, my SatNav couldn't locate it, and driving around town for 30 minutes didn't help either. Then we headed up into the national park (Parque Natural Torcal de Antequera), north of Malaga and enjoyed some spectacular views - well we did if the clouds moved out of the way!



Finally, we made our way back to Malaga. My wife insisted on buying more food, despite my misgivings that we had more food than we could take with us. We arrived at the airport and returned the car. Once inside the airport, we found a check-in desk with the scales still switched on. The suitcase weighed 30kg, and my wife then started to empty the suitcase to bring the weight down. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't fit everything into our had baggage. In the end, we had to eat a loaf of bread, a packet of salami, a litre of red wine, a litre of yoghurt drink, and a couple of oranges! She also managed to split her brand new leather holdall trying to stuff too much into it! Also she broke the zip of another bag! She was not a happy bunny! When we checked in, all my wife's efforts paid off, as we sailed through without a single hitch.

With 2 stops to top up the leaking fluid in the car, we finally made it home without any further incident at 04:00 Sunday morning.

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Home decorating.... Again!!

Last year, I had a major crisis when the hot water tank burst. The water poured through the ceiling and left stain marks on the ceiling and wallpaper. So during this holiday, I decided to make a start on redecorating our dining room. the picture above, is what the wallpaper looked like before I started the decorating.









First, I started to remove the radiator. Having done this before, I am becoming confident of doing this without any major mishaps. I just needed a couple of sauspans to drain the water from inside the radiator itself. This particular radiator made it even easier for me as there were valves at both ends to shut down the water supply, so I didn't have to go into the loft and shut down the water supply from there. Once I had losened the nuts at the base, all I had to do was open the bleed valve and let the water pour into the sauspan. When the saucepan was full, I tightened up the bleed valve to stop the water flow, emptied the saucepan, and then repeated the process until all the water was drained.



Soon, the radiator was off the wall. As you can see, there were loads of cobwebs behind the radiator. You can also see that when I last did the wallpapering, I hadn't removed the radiator. I hadn't even bothered to remove the original wallpaper either! I put special end caps onto the pipes to stop any potential leaks while I was doing the decorating. I also removed the support brackets for the radiator. One problem I did have though. The plastic grommets that held the radiator in place on the brackets had become brittle and disintegrated when I took the radiator off the brackets. Luckily, I still had some grommets left from when I had taken the radiator off in the hallway. Now I have only one grommet left, I think I will need to get some more in stock for my next decorating project!







Next, it was the infrared detector to be removed. This involved me shutting down the alarm system (which took 20 minutes of the external siren wailing before it shut up), then carefully removing the sensor, and making a note of the order of the wiring connections as I removed it. As you can see in this picture, you can clearly see the water damage, and also the last time I decorated this room I didn't remove the detector (I didn't have enough confidence in myself at the time to attempt such a task).










I then put masking tape arround the windows, floor edges, and light fittings. Then I commenced wallpaper stripping, with lots of help from my wife and daughter. Once the wall paper was off, I commenced painting the ceiling, window frames and the skirting boards.












Finally, all the preparation was completed< and with help from my wife and daughter, we started putting on the new wallpaper.












It took us two days to complete the wallpapering. We could have done it more quickly, but we only did a few hours each day, as we had other things we wanted to do with our time. As you can see from this picture, the room certainly looks different. Personally, I don't like the look of the wallpaper, but I let the girls choose what they wanted, and they seem very happy with the result!

Transparency of TV competitions

Normally, I avoid watching the TV reality/celebrity shows, where the outcome of who gets voted off relies upon telephone voting. The only exception is Dancing On Ice.

I have always wondered why none of the TV companies will show the actual number of phone votes each contestant gets. They used to do it many years ago. So why have they stopped? I am sure if the audience actually saw how many votes their favourite performer received, they would be more likely to pick up the phone and vote, if their favourite was in danger of being voted off the TV programme. Surely it would be in the TV programmmes interest to increase the revenue it gains from the phone calls, and also it would be more transparent about the voting process. Then they couldn't be accused of fixing the competititon.

I have left a couple of messages to the Dancing On Ice presenter Philip Schofield, in the hope he may redirect me to someone who could actually give a valid response to my question. Who knows, I might be lucky and get a reply from him!

Spam E-mails

Normally, when I get spam e-mails, I delete them immediately. I can also normally work out from which site I had given my e-mail address to, that has sold it on, generating the sudden increase in spam!

Today, I have been highly amused, as I have started to receive spam e-mails at work, and I am very curious to know how the spammers have got hold of it.

I have just received 3 love letters, almost certainly from the same person, but with different names and emial addresses. They all seem to be coming from a Russian girl Tanya/Lusine/Lusi, claiming she is a lonely girl searching for a man's attention. Then there is an email address to reply to.

Now, 6 years ago, I might have been tempted to reply, just to see what would happen next, and maybe have some fun pretending to be interested to see how far they would go to try and squeeze money out of me (learnt the hard way the first time around).

As I am a happily married man to a Belarusian woman, I have no intention of investigating this any further, unless I get my wife to write back to this girl, in Russian! I wonder what would happen then!

As to how this girl has got hold of my work e-mail address, I can only think of two possibilities. First was I had used the work computer 6 years ago to register on a dating website, and then closed the account 5 years ago, although that was extremely difficult to do as the company I work for had massivly restricted our internet access, so it took me a bit of time to find a way to redirect the e-mails to a computer that allowed access to the main website so that I could close the account and stop the spam e-mails coming through.

The other possibility, is that my daughter has sent me some e-mails with her homework attached for me to proof read for spelling and grammar. When I have checked and altered the homework, I send the e-mail back to my daughter. I have only been doing this for the last 3 months. So it seems more likely that the spammers have got hold of my company e-mail somehow through these correspondences.

When I get home, there should be an interesting and amusing conversation with my wife and daughter.

Governments Austerity Measures Hits The Working Class Hardest

After my Land Rover Discovery had been in for repairs for an entire week, I finally picked it up yesterday. I now have a major crisis as I need to find the money to pay the bill!!

The reason for the repair was at first what seemed a minor problem of a fuel leak from the bottom of the engine. When I took the car to my local garage in early december, they initially thought it was an oil leak, and not a fuel leak as I had thought. Still, I booked the Discovery in for repairs at the first opportunity a week later.

The garage took a look at the car, and discovered that the cylinder head was cracked, and fuel was leaking into the engine oil. I was told that a new cylinder head would cost £1100. They couldn't do the repair before Christmas, so I had to book it in last week.

I had worked out that the cost of repairs would not leave me with much change from £2000. Imagine my shock when I was presented with a bill for a few pence short of £3000 !!!

Looking at the breakdown of costs, about £1600 was for the parts, £900 for labour, and a whopping £500 VAT charged! I had to pay an extra £62.50 to the Government because the car was repaired this month instead of last month!! The garage even refused to give any discount for cash!

The garage has now lost my custom!

I have also noticed that the price of petrol and diesel have gone up by 10p a litre over the space of a month. So now it is even more expensive to have a car than before. Of course, public transport should be a viable alternative, except, due to previous Governments privatisation policies, the cost of public transport has gone up enormously, and any route that was unprofitable, reduced or eliminated. Where I live, I would have to add another hour to each end of my journey if I switched to pedal power. Buses are of no use as they do not operate outiside of daylight hours!!!

If the present Government continues with their plans to reduce the deficit so rapidly, I think they will kill any growth in the economy, as more and more people find that they cannot afford even the smallest luxuries anymore. If labour get into power again, all they will do is spend, spend, spend, and ultimately bankrupt the Country!

I've just received notification that my electricity is increasing by 8.5%. I am sure that gas, water and telecommunications will follow soon, it has to, as VAT has increased. I am almost certain that this year, very few employees will be given a pay rise that will negate the erosion of their wages by the government taxes imposed upon them.

I heard a guest on Radio 2 a few days ago mention that a good way to beat the VAT hike is to buy items second hand, as they are exempt from VAT. As a form of protest, I am now going to look closely at items I buy, and refrain from buying items that have VAT charged, unless I have absolutely no other option available. Does anyone know where I can buy second hand petrol and diesel from?