Monday, May 18, 2009
CAR SCRAPPAGE SCHEME - SOMETHING NOT QUITE RIGHT?
So, the car scrappage scheme goes live today.
If you have a car that's over ten years old, the government and the car industry will contribute £2,000 towards a shiny, new and presumably low CO2 emissions (and therefore low VED) vehicle.
So, what if your car is only eight years old, but has fallen foul of the new VED bands now being applied arbitrarily and retrospectively to vehicles registered after March 1st 2001?
Our Land Rover Discovery TD5 was registered in May 2001 - just two months too young to duck under the wire, yet it's exactly the same car as one registered pre-March 1st. That two months means that VED for our car is now a massive £400 per year - up from £210 this year.
That's a swingeing, punishing tax, penalising us for a purchase decision made some time ago, before we had any idea VED bands would start being moved around to address some pseudo-green agenda.
Here's the paradox: on the one hand the government is telling us our car is a polluter and if we keep it we can expect to pay more and more VED for the privilege of paying them more and more tax on fuel as well, but on the other hand it doesn't qualify for the scrappage scheme which is supposed to be taking more polluting cars off the road.
Now,that really makes sense, doesn't it?
But even if our car did qualify for the scheme, we couldn't afford to take advantage of it because we have no equity in it - the new VED bands have rendered such vehicles all but worthless and in any case we are only one year into a five year bank loan we took out in 2008 to buy the car in the first place!
This must be what it feels like to be set upon by a gang of thugs and be given a kicking while the Police look on but do nothing. Whichever way you turn you are being hit and the very people who claim to be helping you don't give a monkey's.
Apparently the new VED bands have affected over 9,000,000 cars - that's an awful lot of vehicles and many of them aren't 'evil' 4x4s - oh no, they're things like people carriers and perfectly ordinary saloon cars that just happen to have larger engines. The result is an enormous number of worthless cars that can't be sold, second-hand dealers stuck with stock they can't shift and therefore going bust and millions of ordinary and probably not very well off people caught in a rather nasty Catch-22.
I think we can expect to see more older but perfectly serviceable cars torched or otherwise 'disappeared' and a corresponding rise in dubious insurance claims as fairly desperate people try to extract some value from vehicles that have become veritable albatrosses. I have a friend - an East End lad - who could arrange for a car to be 'stolen' and torched. If we didn't need our dear old Disco for towing our boat, I think I would be tempted to give him a ring.
Now, when is the General Election due?
So, the car scrappage scheme goes live today.
If you have a car that's over ten years old, the government and the car industry will contribute £2,000 towards a shiny, new and presumably low CO2 emissions (and therefore low VED) vehicle.
So, what if your car is only eight years old, but has fallen foul of the new VED bands now being applied arbitrarily and retrospectively to vehicles registered after March 1st 2001?
Our Land Rover Discovery TD5 was registered in May 2001 - just two months too young to duck under the wire, yet it's exactly the same car as one registered pre-March 1st. That two months means that VED for our car is now a massive £400 per year - up from £210 this year.
That's a swingeing, punishing tax, penalising us for a purchase decision made some time ago, before we had any idea VED bands would start being moved around to address some pseudo-green agenda.
Here's the paradox: on the one hand the government is telling us our car is a polluter and if we keep it we can expect to pay more and more VED for the privilege of paying them more and more tax on fuel as well, but on the other hand it doesn't qualify for the scrappage scheme which is supposed to be taking more polluting cars off the road.
Now,that really makes sense, doesn't it?
But even if our car did qualify for the scheme, we couldn't afford to take advantage of it because we have no equity in it - the new VED bands have rendered such vehicles all but worthless and in any case we are only one year into a five year bank loan we took out in 2008 to buy the car in the first place!
This must be what it feels like to be set upon by a gang of thugs and be given a kicking while the Police look on but do nothing. Whichever way you turn you are being hit and the very people who claim to be helping you don't give a monkey's.
Apparently the new VED bands have affected over 9,000,000 cars - that's an awful lot of vehicles and many of them aren't 'evil' 4x4s - oh no, they're things like people carriers and perfectly ordinary saloon cars that just happen to have larger engines. The result is an enormous number of worthless cars that can't be sold, second-hand dealers stuck with stock they can't shift and therefore going bust and millions of ordinary and probably not very well off people caught in a rather nasty Catch-22.
I think we can expect to see more older but perfectly serviceable cars torched or otherwise 'disappeared' and a corresponding rise in dubious insurance claims as fairly desperate people try to extract some value from vehicles that have become veritable albatrosses. I have a friend - an East End lad - who could arrange for a car to be 'stolen' and torched. If we didn't need our dear old Disco for towing our boat, I think I would be tempted to give him a ring.
Now, when is the General Election due?
Labels: government tax rip-off, insurance fraud, VED, vehicle excise duty
Monday, May 11, 2009
WELL, MY HEART WAS CERTAINLY 'DANCING AT LUGHNASA'
Some years ago, my wife (before she took on the job), sent me a cassette (yes, it was that long ago) copy of a CD called 'Talk on Corners' by a band I'd never heard of: The Corrs. She sent a note with the tape, which said something like:"Play this to see if you're still alive!" I did, and was instantly smitten by the electrifying blend of catchy pop and Irish folkiness I heard.
It didn't take long to become equally smitten by the beautiful Corr sisters: Sharon, Caroline and Andrea (talented brother Jim not really being my type!) and especially Andrea. So we started collecting their consistently brilliant albums, but never got the chance to see them live, having to settle instead for their excellent 'All the way home' documentary and concert DVD. After they released the CD 'Home' they split up, mostly to get married and have babies, and that seemed to be the end of any prospect of another live performance.
In 2005-6 I was working for an Irish software company and had to make regular trips to Dublin for meetings. Then there was the company's Christmas bash over a weekend at Castle Leslie, near Monaghan. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that my paternal grandmother (whom I never knew; she died of breast cancer before I was born) was Irish that led me to start feeling a real affinity for the Emerald Isle. I even wondered if I might qualify for an Irish passport! I couldn't track down my grandmother's parents, though, so never did. Like Australians, the Irish are viewed as kind of global citizens, welcome and envied more or less everywhere and I suppose I wanted some of that aura to rub off on me.
Such fanciful notions pass, just like the job with the Irish software company - and the Irish economy, come to think of it - but my interest in the Corrs, and Andrea in particular, has endured. Like her sisters, she exudes a girl-next-door sweetness which combines with an Irish winsomeness and, let's face it, looks that have propelled her to the top of numerous 'most beautiful woman in the world' polls. I love the little joke that Terry Wogan always makes when he plays a Corrs number: 'Ah, they've got great voices, those Corr girls - shame about their looks, though - plain as pikestaffs.'
It was interesting to see Andrea embark determinedly on a solo acting and musical career - she may be diminutive, but she must have big boots! You could see from her early efforts that she had a talent for acting, but at that time it looked as though she wasn't finding it easy to settle into her roles. It must be difficult to make the transition from pop princess to serious actress and maybe her not-entirely-successful solo album showed that she was struggling with the conflicting demands of the different careers and as a result not shining as brightly as she would have liked.
So it was gratifying to see her get the chance to put herself to the test more thoroughly in the role of Christina, in Dancing at Lughnasa at The Old Vic. We travelled down to London to see her for the matinee performance on the closing day, which also happened to be my birthday.
It's curious to see someone you've admired from afar in the flesh - and undoubtedly far closer in the intimate surroundings of the wonderful set in The Old Vic than would ever have been possible at a Corrs concert. But there she was, large as life - or rather, as petite as she is. And I have to say that she carried off her role extremely well, putting herself into the character heart and soul and with such a convincing array of facial expressions, gestures and delivery that left me in no doubt that she's an actress with genuine talent and deserves to go far.
Mind you, having read recently that her sister, Sharon - the violinist - is about to launch a solo album and go on the road, maybe there are signs of a restlessness in the family that will lead to the Corrs getting back together one day - I hope so. I know it's best to 'quit while you're ahead' and 'leave 'em begging for more', but I think they could have a few good years left in them first, without losing the magic.
As for Andrea's personal life: it's probably typical of her generous nature that she has rescued a waif and stray (chuckle) by becoming engaged to a hedge fund manager, one Brett Desmond, who probably needs her millions more than she needs his right now (if the credit crunch hasn't left him destitute). I hope he's a good man who will treat her well, love her as she deserves and nurture her career and many talents. To paraphrase Colonel Brandon's words in Sense and Sensibility, "To Andrea I wish all imaginable happiness; to Brett Desmond that he may endeavour to deserve her."
It didn't take long to become equally smitten by the beautiful Corr sisters: Sharon, Caroline and Andrea (talented brother Jim not really being my type!) and especially Andrea. So we started collecting their consistently brilliant albums, but never got the chance to see them live, having to settle instead for their excellent 'All the way home' documentary and concert DVD. After they released the CD 'Home' they split up, mostly to get married and have babies, and that seemed to be the end of any prospect of another live performance.
In 2005-6 I was working for an Irish software company and had to make regular trips to Dublin for meetings. Then there was the company's Christmas bash over a weekend at Castle Leslie, near Monaghan. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that my paternal grandmother (whom I never knew; she died of breast cancer before I was born) was Irish that led me to start feeling a real affinity for the Emerald Isle. I even wondered if I might qualify for an Irish passport! I couldn't track down my grandmother's parents, though, so never did. Like Australians, the Irish are viewed as kind of global citizens, welcome and envied more or less everywhere and I suppose I wanted some of that aura to rub off on me.
Such fanciful notions pass, just like the job with the Irish software company - and the Irish economy, come to think of it - but my interest in the Corrs, and Andrea in particular, has endured. Like her sisters, she exudes a girl-next-door sweetness which combines with an Irish winsomeness and, let's face it, looks that have propelled her to the top of numerous 'most beautiful woman in the world' polls. I love the little joke that Terry Wogan always makes when he plays a Corrs number: 'Ah, they've got great voices, those Corr girls - shame about their looks, though - plain as pikestaffs.'
It was interesting to see Andrea embark determinedly on a solo acting and musical career - she may be diminutive, but she must have big boots! You could see from her early efforts that she had a talent for acting, but at that time it looked as though she wasn't finding it easy to settle into her roles. It must be difficult to make the transition from pop princess to serious actress and maybe her not-entirely-successful solo album showed that she was struggling with the conflicting demands of the different careers and as a result not shining as brightly as she would have liked.
So it was gratifying to see her get the chance to put herself to the test more thoroughly in the role of Christina, in Dancing at Lughnasa at The Old Vic. We travelled down to London to see her for the matinee performance on the closing day, which also happened to be my birthday.
It's curious to see someone you've admired from afar in the flesh - and undoubtedly far closer in the intimate surroundings of the wonderful set in The Old Vic than would ever have been possible at a Corrs concert. But there she was, large as life - or rather, as petite as she is. And I have to say that she carried off her role extremely well, putting herself into the character heart and soul and with such a convincing array of facial expressions, gestures and delivery that left me in no doubt that she's an actress with genuine talent and deserves to go far.
Mind you, having read recently that her sister, Sharon - the violinist - is about to launch a solo album and go on the road, maybe there are signs of a restlessness in the family that will lead to the Corrs getting back together one day - I hope so. I know it's best to 'quit while you're ahead' and 'leave 'em begging for more', but I think they could have a few good years left in them first, without losing the magic.
As for Andrea's personal life: it's probably typical of her generous nature that she has rescued a waif and stray (chuckle) by becoming engaged to a hedge fund manager, one Brett Desmond, who probably needs her millions more than she needs his right now (if the credit crunch hasn't left him destitute). I hope he's a good man who will treat her well, love her as she deserves and nurture her career and many talents. To paraphrase Colonel Brandon's words in Sense and Sensibility, "To Andrea I wish all imaginable happiness; to Brett Desmond that he may endeavour to deserve her."
Labels: andrea corr, brett desmond, dancing at lughnasa, the corrs
