Hjemmefrisør
Selvom det herovre kun koster seksten kroner at få klippet et lille barns hår, synes jeg nu, det er meget sjovere at klippe dem selv. Phyllis kalder mig en frustreret frisør…
I dag fik jeg lov til at kaste mig over Léons lyse lokker, og for første gang i hans liv blev der brugt maskine til bag og sider. Phyllis troede, det måske ville skræmme ham, men hans spiste bare mere chokolade og så ud til at more sig.
Jeg er ikke sikker på, resultatet blev helt professionelt, men helt ringe blev det nu da heller ikke.
2 år!
I dag er det Léons fødselsdag, hurra, hurra, hurra!
Han fik en masse gaver (bøger, biler, en togbane, en gravko og meget mere), og jeg bagte en chokoladelagkage med abrikos, som både Léon og hans fætter Gordon satte stor pris på.
Da den lille mand elsker kødboller, spiste vi aftensmad i Ikea (og benyttede lejligheden til at købe et gulv til Marcels nye værelse).
Det var rart at kunne fejre rigtig fødselsdag for ham. Da han fyldte ét år, havde Phyllis endnu ikke fortalt hele sin familie om os, så den fødselsdag blev fejret i afdelinger. Det blev den her selvfølgelig også, da hans far er meget langt fra at kunne være i stue med mig, så han havde børnene i formiddags.
Jeg tror, Léon havde en god fødselsdag – da jeg lagde ham i seng, lå han glad og sagde “Bil! Gravko! Kage! Gravko! Tog!”
Det store generationstyveri
Der er et dejligt provokativt blogindlæg om 68ernes evne til at mele deres generations egen kage her.
Jeg tror egentlig ikke, min generation er den, der har det værst – dem, der er ti-tyve år yngre må kæmpe med endnu mere umulige boligpriser og nu også i mange lande dyre videregående uddannelser.
Men det eneste, der er at gøre, er altid at vælge politikere fra ens egen generation, og især dem, der vil kæmpe imod forfordelingen af 68ergenerationen. Der er jo trods alt ikke et flertal af 68ere i samfundet.
The City’s own currency
There’s an interesting article in The Scotsman today by George Kerevan.
He argues that the Bank of England, and therefore the British pound, tends to focus far too much on the needs of the City of London, rather than looking at the whole country and trying to balance the needs of all the regions.
I think he’s absolutely right, but while his recommendation is for the Bank of England to change, I’d prefer Scotland (and the rest of the UK) to join the Euro, given that the ECB does look at all parts of the Eurozone when making decisions. In other words, Scotland would not suffer a loss of influence at all by replacing the pound with the euro, just the opposite.
Local variable income tax
There’s an article today in the print edition of The Scotsman by a guy called Tom Miers from Policy Institute about why he doesn’t think it’d be a good idea to replace council tax with a local income tax.
Many of his points are valid, but he’s clearly disregarding one option wrongly. He writes:
A variable local income tax would, in theory, avoid these problems. But a sufficiently flexible scheme is hard to imagine in practice. Can we really expect firms to levy PAYE at, say 23.84 per cent on their employees who live in Dundee but 23.87 per cent on those from Angus?
Yes, we can really expect firms to do that. That’s exactly how it works in Denmark, and it’s not causing any problems. Councils determine how many percent income tax they need to get from people having their primary address within their area and send this percentage to the employers. Yes, it means an employee can save money by moving to another council area, but that’s not different from Scotland today.
Speaking of local income tax in Denmark, it’s interesting to note that by far the largest share of income tax goes to the councils – income tax to the state is very low (typically 0% for people earning less than £30k if I remember correctly). The reason why council tax is so low in Britain is because most of the councils’ incomes come as a block grant from the state, and the council tax only covers a few extras. If the councils were to cover all their expenses from a direct tax, council tax (or local income tax) would have to rise dramatically, but at the same time the income tax to the state would drop a lot.
Mig og min motorsav
Jeg er nu trådt et trin højere op på mændenes rangstige!
Jeg tænker her ikke på vores nylige huskøb – at købe hus i en forstad kan alle og enhver jo komme og gøre. Nej, sagen er den, at jeg i dag har investeret i en motorsav af mærket Bosch, da der i vores nye have er en del planter, der har fået lov til at vokse sig lidt for store.
Det er altså en helt speciel følelse at føle dyrets vibrationer forplante sig op gennem armene, mens man skærer gennem grene, som var det smør.
Virtual estate agents
Why is it that estate agents are still based in offices you can walk into?
It seems so obvious to me that apart from valuing the property initially and handing out the keys in the end, none of the rest requires a physical estate agent.
I know, all estate agents these days have web sites that you can use to search for properties, but they’re still spending lots of money of printed property ads, laminated schedules and big inner-city offices with photos in the windows. These costs could be cut by an estate agent that operated solely online.
I’d start up a virtual estate agency myself if only I knew anything at all about that area, and if I could see a solution to the problem of getting enough properties on the book to make it worthwhile for prospective buyers to surf my pages.
New home
We finally got the keys for our new house today!
One of the first things we did was to rip apart the built-in wardrobe in Marcel’s room, throw the pieces out the window and take them to the skip.
Interestingly, the previous owner has left us a washing machine, so now we have two. 
Tomorrow we’ll move a lot of things from various places to the house. Alas, we cannot bring everything from the flat just yet, given that we haven’t found a buyer yet, so it needs to continue to look its best.