Category: Advice

Thieves

Advice

I had to chuckle at this little piece of advice for dealing with this particular issue:

There’s even a handy-dandy little list:

It is, as they say, to laugh.

As I’ve stated so often before, seagulls don’t respond to defensive postures such as the above:  the little fuckers will sometimes attack you for fun, not just for food.  So ignore all the above, non-violent measures.

As with most animals, the best defense is attack.  Lo and behold Kim’s Ultimate Anti-Seagull Device (which I describe more fully here):

Instructions for use:  if you’re going into seagull territory — which is just about anywhere there’s a large body of water — carry one of these.  When you see one of these airborne rats approaching, wait till it’s in range, then take a full swing at it;  don’t just bat it away, you want to inflict massive pain on the fucker or else it will just come back for more.  In my experience, you’ll only have to do this twice or three times before the other airborne rats will get the message and leave you alone.  The goal is to leave the bird flailing around on the ground with broken limbs (wings, legs or neck), making an awful ruckus that will frighten others of its ilk away.

Don’t get put off by the anguished squeals of any bird-lovers in the scene because they’re irrelevant to your problem.  Just whale away at these rodents (the birds, not the bird-lovers, but be my guest).  Then relax and enjoy your snack.  When you leave the area, feel free to kick the carcasses out of the way.

Remember:  a tennis racquet is sports equipment, not a weapon.  Just remember to rinse the blood and feathers off the thing when you get home.

Great Idea, Never Happen

Advice, Economics, Taxes and Theft

Turning Britishland into Singapore?  It’s an intriguing concept, as explained here.  An excerpt:

There is nothing new in the comparison between modern Britain and circumstances in Singapore when it gained independence in 1965. Like the UK following the Brexit referendum, Singapore was involved in a rancorous divorce from a much larger geopolitical entity that left it facing an uncertain path. For one island’s withdrawal from the European Union in 2016, read another’s split from the Federation of Malaysia 55 years ago.
As many a minister has pointed out in recent years, Singapore went on to conjure an economic miracle. In the space of a generation, it has transformed itself from a country where the average citizen was two and a half times poorer than the average Briton, to a hotbed of soaring prosperity where total economic output is now 70 per cent higher than in the UK.

Here’s what the Brits would have to do, though:

In a country where the average monthly salary is about S$70,000 (£40,000), [Singapore] residents pay income tax of just 7 per cent – less than half of the 20 per cent charged in the UK – while a salary equivalent to £46,000 would attract 11.5 per cent tax.
The individual tax ceiling is 24 per cent, payable only by those earning more than 1 million Singapore dollars; the equivalent rate in the UK is 45 per cent, a bracket that comes into play for anyone with a salary of more than £125,140 (about 217,000 Singapore dollars).
The country’s more favorable tax regime extends to corporation tax, which stands at 17 per cent in Singapore compared with 25 per cent in the UK. There is no capital gains or inheritance tax.

Cut and eliminate taxes?  In Britain?

Hence the title of this post.

Heads-Up

Advice

Just about every single thing written here is correct, especially:

Gun: A gun is to shoot your way to safety, not to save the day. You are not a one-man counter-terror team. This is a fast track to being killed either directly, by a second shooter, or by police who have no idea who you are. Even if the cops are wrong in the end, you’re still dead.

Absolutely.  Other than to protect yourself and your family, leave the gun in the holster and get the hell away from the situation.  Leave the hero bullshit to Hollywood or to the people paid to be heroes, i.e. law enforcement (unless you live in a place like Uvalde TX or some big Blue city, where the cops are cowards).

People often think that just because I’m always yapping about self defense that I’m one of those palookas who just can’t wait for a firefight.  Nothing could be further from the truth, which is that I’m a big fat coward right up until I can’t be one because then I’ll be a victim.

But to go looking for trouble?  The hell with that.

“Dear Dr. Kim”

Advice

“Dear Dr. Kim:

“I’m a manager, and I try to be a good one. I struggle, however, when people ask for days off when they’re trying to get over the death of a dog or a cat.

“Should this really be considered in the same way as the death of a close family member?

“What’s making the issue more difficult for me is that I have never had a pet myself, which means that I probably have little idea of the attachment people can have to one of these creatures.  I am probably coming over as a bit unsympathetic.

“I would speak to HR to see if the rules on compassionate leave should be tweaked, but frankly, they’re too nervous to give a firm line on almost anything.

“Dr. Kim, what should I do?”

— Lost Boss

Dear Sorta-Boss:

You could start by acting like an actual boss.

Fire the whole HR department, for starters.  Or if you want to go all wussy, ask the entire department, individually, to give some cogent, business-oriented reasons why you should give time off for the death of a pet.  If they can’t, then fire the HR manager anyway, because she’s clearly incompetent and shouldn’t be a manager.  (I say “she” because that’s the world we live in nowadays.)

Who cares if you’ve never had a pet yourself?  That has nothing to do with the actual managing of a business which is nominally responsible for creating profit for its shareholders or owner.  It’s purely an economic decision:  can your company deal with the loss of productivity, or not?  (If it can, you may want to consider retrenching staff anyway, because you’re carrying too much employee fat.)

Finally, your snowflake employees.  I can understand needing time off to grieve the death of a family member, especially immediate family:  mother, father, grandparents, siblings.  I find it more difficult to be sympathetic about grief as the family circle starts to expand to aunts, uncles and cousins, and almost impossible to sympathize when it’s second cousins, distant cousins, nodding kin, and the like.

You may therefore take it as read that when it comes to the death of pet animals, I think that asking for time off is a colossal piece of chutzpah.  (If it’s unpaid time off, of course, then by all means give them all the time they think they need, within limits of course.  Let’s see how much they really loved Fluffy when it’s an affair of the wallet.)

Lest I be thought a martinet — it can happen — let it be known that I have never been one of those clockwatcher types of boss, myself.  If a woman wants to have her hair done and can’t get a weekend appointment, then fine — ditto a man who needs the same — especially if their job involves customer interaction, where grooming is important.  And of course time off for real medical appointments should be a given.

Frankly, while I appreciate the fact that society is changing and employees demand more indulgences from employers,  I do think that this pet-worship thing is getting out of hand (see:  “comfort animals” FFS), and it needs to be curtailed.  By the way, where does one draw the line with this:  cats, dogs, horses… also snakes, hamsters, and fucking goldfish?

And for the record, I’ve owned pets for almost all my life, I’ve indulged them more than I did my own kids, and my heart has broken at the death of every single one of them.

But as much as there’s been sorrow, I could not think of asking for time off to mourn their death, because while this may have been a factor in my life, I can’t imagine why a business should be forced into this pantomime of shared grief.

And also by the way:  you will see from the response to this question in the linked article that “Nicola” (of course) thinks that giving time off for this foolishness makes the workplace more attractive to current and prospective employees.  While I’m not advocating a return to Victorian sweatshops and textile factories, I think that today’s work environment — before this time off for pet grief nonsense — is the most congenial and employee-friendly of any generation, ever.  But it never seems to be enough now, does it?

Shape up and get your employees (especially those HR weasels) under control before it’s too late.

—

“Dear Dr. Kim”

Advice, Men & Women

“Dear Dr. Kim:

“I have been happily married to my husband for two years now. We met when I was in my late 20s and we tied the knot when I was 31. I’d never had a serious relationship before, and I used to travel around for work – so I’ll admit that I’d slept with a fair few people before we met.

“Not that it’s something we ever discussed.

“Last week, however, my husband told me his best friend had discovered his girlfriend’s ‘body count’ and was horrified by the total. His girlfriend had admitted to sleeping with 20 people, a number judged by my husband and his friend to be ‘extremely high’.

“Then, out of curiosity, he asked what my ‘body count’ was. And, having heard his outrage at 20, I decided to lie. A little panicked, I claimed I’d slept with no more than 15 guys.

“It turned out that my husband was disturbed even by that lower estimate – and admitted that he found ‘so many’ sexual partners to be a little off-putting.

“Yet the truth is that I’ve slept with well over 50 men, so many that I’ve lost count. Now I don’t know what to do. Should I stick to my lie and just hope the subject never comes up again?”  — Heels-Up Harriet

Dear Harlot  errrr Harriet:

It’s always so healthy to base your relationship on a total lie, isn’t it?  Okay, here’s the deal.

The topic is going to pop up again, because your hubby is clearly one of those “vulnerable” men who feels that your previous shags will form the basis of a comparison to his performance — and it might, might it not?

However, having lied and given the number as fifteen, you may as well stick with it;  but here’s how to rationalize it.  Assuming that you started at age 19 or 20 (I’m going with averages here, as most women “claim” hem hem to have lost their mimsy-wall during their first- or second year at university), that number of fifteen translates into fewer than two men a year in the decade before you met him — which, to be honest, is not that horrendous in this day and age — and if he does bring it up again, show him the math, so to speak.  (Maybe even that number will be too high for Hubby, in which case you are in deep shit — okay, deeper than you are already.)

Just pray that one of your female BFFs doesn’t let your actual number slip during a Drunken Party Episode, or as a way of getting a revenge shag out of Hubby, just for spite.

Welcome to the Sexual Minefield, honey.

—