The evening before yesterday was one of those days when one thing led to another so I spent time in ways I had not anticipated. In the days when Meg was alive, I had invested in a second hand but refurbished IBM ThinkPad Windows laptop which I kept in our Music Lounge when Meg was alive. I could write some bits of this blog and read emails whilst not going into another room so I was present in case Meg needed me. In fact, this little system worked superbly well and as intended because I could start to compose using Microsoft Outlook email client in one room and then finish it off using the saved draft on another laptop when Meg had been transferred by the carers from one room to another. Being a Windows based machine in which I occasionally used the internet, this system needed some virus protection and I had purchased a McAfee computer package a year or so ago but I received a reminder that the subscription was shortly to be renewed. I thought I would probably cancel this but when I eventually rediscovered my credentials to access this package, I followed the route to cancel the subscription. This, needless to say was made difficult and I discovered that I probably had two overlapping protection packages one of which certainly wished to cancel. On trying to cancel it, I was directed by an automated system to call McAfee which I did but was at the wrong end of some jangly music for some 40 minutes. These large corporations always make it incredibly easy to take out a subscription but correspondingly difficult to cancel one when you get into their clutches. But eventually things worked out as eventually I was answered by a very distant, probably Asian, member of staff who actually cancelled one subscription (due to be renewed in a month) and put the expired portion of it on to the end of the other subscription so eventually all turned out well but it did take quite a lot of time. But whilst I was messing about with this legacy system that I have not used for months, I decided I would learn again how to utilise the ‘text-to-speech’ facility in Windows 11. Once you get this to work (and it is one of these pieces of software where the instructions seem both clear and unclear at the same time) you can get some text put upon the screen and the facility will read it back to you and you can even choose from a huge range of differently accented English should you do desire. So I got this working again and occasionally used to play it for Meg so that she can could hear rather than read what I had written recently. So I am going to use this as a party piece to play to people when they come to the party next weekend – I suspect that most users of Windows 11 have no idea that this facility exists within the software or even how to use it. But now I have my sequence of commands written down in a little book so I can remember it when I need to use it again.
The day was one of those days which assail us occasionally where absolutely nothing seems to go right. I counted up at least five minor irritations before 11.00am ranging from our domestic help not turning up today (as she was coming later in the week) to failing to coincide with my friend in the coffee shop we had arranged a few days beforehand to the act that even my free coffee was denied at Waitrose because I had dashed out of the house without my little fob that authorises the machine to dispense me a coffee. So I texted my Droitwich friend who seemed to be having a day similar to my own and we agreed to have a chat over things once the day’s business has been done. I did though manage to get my Pilates session undertaken without ay mishap and then came home and cooked myself a risotto lunch which I ate half way through the afternoon. Whilst going through the newspapers the other day, I discovered a fascinating little article that had been written summarising some ONS (Office of National Statistics) analysis. Most of us will be aware that in the very broadest of terms, the state pours money into us when we are young (being born, health and then education) but as grow up we pay money back into the state in the form of taxes of various kinds and then, as we age, the state pours money back into us again (pensions, health and so on) But this analysis divided the population into ten income bands (called, technically, ‘deciles’) and it comes as no surprise to us that the poorest decile receives more than it contributes whilst the reverse is true of the richest decile. But even the richest decile receive abut £12,000 a year including NHS benefits, education and rail travel subsidies. The fascinating part of the article came when we came discuss the sixth decile up from the bottom, earning £40,888 before taxes but receiving £5,000 more from the state that it puts in. This was not always the case for if we go back to 2002, the average household in the 6th decile used to be a contributor to the tune of about £3,000 a year. So in two decades, the middle earners went from being net contributors to net recipients. Moreover, in 2002 the full-time worker on the median (= coming in the middle of the range) salary contributed 24% of their salary in tax and national insurance whereas today this proportion has fallen to 19%, the extremely rich making up the shortfall. So these facts should be made to every right wing politician and right wing newspapers who are convinced that we are increasingly overtaxed whereas the reverse is actually the case (but this would conflict with their overall world view but that is based upon sentiment rather than factual analysis). But since the pandemic, nearly 60% of the population report feeling very or quite dissatisfied with the NHS and hence the number of private hospital admissions has increased by about one half from 160,000 to 240,000 in round terms. So what is interesting here is the underlying factual basis with the perception of that basis – if we are constantly being told that we are very over-taxed (when we are not) then people will come to believe it (and, incidentally, no political party which might form a government will run on a manifesto of increasing the tax take