Increases in Tax to Pay for Health and Social Care

Windows

And they are all open right now

Even with the windows open the air quality is poor just now because the outside air is so still.


The heat the computers and TV generate fights with the fridge and freezer but although I find 26 degrees C very comfortable it pushes up the costs of the refrigeration for the food.

If there was any kind of air movement outside that figure would be down at 413 ppm.

Yeah you need to get that fixed, your employers Payroll system should have automatically stopped deducting NI, they still have to pay employers NI contributions on your behalf but the Payroll system should have known your age and automatically sorted this.

If I do work after retirement I will damn sure make sure my lot know all about it well before the day I turn 66

Your state pension is paid 4 weekly in arrears and you should get your first payment within 5 weeks of your retirement date, mine will be paid on a Wednesday based on my NI number, have they taken longer than 5 weeks already?
The new State Pension: What you'll get - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Ah interesting and sneaky it is not just 1.25% it is 2.5% as Employers NI also goes up by 1.25%. Analysis: A very significant tax rise - BBC News

This is going to have an affect on employers willingness to match inflation in the annual wage round as their Employer NI rate will now be 15.3%.

Yeah that's pretty bad then, I would be pretty upset if my pension had not come through on time, for me it will be a significant portion of what I live on.

Your extra pension will be the result of maybe some graduated pension if you started work early enough, SERPS and later State Second Pension, and my guess is you never contracted out and therefore paid many many years of one or more of the above.

Yeah, the only reason I didn't get a lot more was being contracted out when I worked for the SSEB and later jobs, and my self employment years automatically resulted in no SERPS and SSP.

They are all going to be transitional claims for decades to come, SERPS eligible people will all be done in about another 30 years but the only people who won't be influenced by SSP are those who started work after 2015/16 after SSP was abolished and the new pension was brought in, so Iain Duncan Smith's vision of a simpler pension scheme might bear fruit sometime after 2070 maybe

edit: actually when I think about it there will come a point in about 20 odd years where SERPS and SSP would not be sufficient to get you over the new State Pension threshold so at that point it is easy to exclude those people from more complex calculations as they are actually better off under the new rules.

I would not be surprised if they had failed to write an integrated database, I've worked on government systems before, they were not good at defining clear specifications for implementation.

I was getting 413 ppm all day a few weeks ago Jim when there was a bit of movement in the air outside, it has been unusually calm here the last couple of weeks.

Yes that is a problem, people at higher grades in the civil service usually have better more detailed understanding of the sets of rules that apply to specific legislation, but when you try to move that knowledge into a computer system you deskill the workforce or at least let them try to man a service with more junior staff and if the system is buggy the end user can't cope.

Ah yes of course that is going to have a huge impact on electricity prices given how dependant we are on gas turbine power generation plants these days.