It has caught my eye that a PO Box has gone up to £222 per annum including taxes in the UK.
I thought you would like to know that our Garden Club has a PO Box for the princely sum of £27 per year! Exactly one tenth??!!
What the hell is going on in the UK?
It pisseth with rain and there is a drought?
UK landing fees are astronomical and there are no immigration officials?
Astronomical road taxes and lanes are hived off for olympic orifice officials?
Private gated communities are misappropriated as missile bases without a by your leave?
I seriously think you need your revolution sooner rather than later!
Boadicea's Chariot 
I’ve never wanted a PO box, Christina. What does one do with them? Why does your gardening club need one? As for immigration officials … I keep volunteering. I can say “No” like you wouldn’t believe.
We have our post delivered to the door, so I agree with Sheona. Why on earth would one want a PO box?
No time for a revolution; messy and unnecessary, bit foreign, in fact, but I could well do without the Olympic Games.
Funny! I bet that would go for a lot of us!!
We need a PO Box because club officials change and we would need to reprint our literature with new addresses. This way we can keep the same literature for years, too mean to pay for reprints!
Of course here you need a PO Box if you live in the outfield so to speak. We have post delivery to a box on the road at the bottom of the drive but when you get to more rural roads they have no delivery. You have to go into town for your mail. We are the last route out, none beyond us and we are 3 miles from the post office, beyond us the popultion is very sparse and on 20 acre lots minimum. (We are one house per 5 acres zoning here)
Only the centre of towns have delivery to their doors and not all of them.
But £222? she says incredulously!
I have known people in the UK who live in flats have PO Boxes, to avoid other residents tampering with their mail.
Really, Tina, oh.
Araminta: in the American countryside many people have PO Boxes as the post office does not necessarily deliver door-to-door or even to rural distribution centres. There is also the risk of mail tampering and sensitive documents/information being too easily accessed by society’s lesser elements.
A post box here is about £25. People in rural areas where the postman doesn’t deliver get it for free!
Had mine since 1989.
Very handy for new families, no need to change addresses each time we moved. (Utility bills, telephone a/c’s, bank statements etc.)
I saw a report that it is now compulsory to microchip dogs in the UK at a cost of £35 (is that true?) Now there’s a rip off.
Soutie, g’dag! It’s a Tory conspiracy to stop people getting mail or keeping dogs.
Môre Janus, time for a revolution then?
Viva a revolução! A luta continua!
Yes, just a well-mannered one maybe.
Cats and dogs have to be micro-chipped in Queensland and NSW – I suspect it’s also mandatory in the other states. I don’t have a problem with that. I’ve no idea how much it costs.
Well, today the price of a first class (will get there eventually) letter stamp has gone up from 46p to 60p and a second class (will get there if you are lucky) letter stamp has gone up from 36p to 50p. I think the idea must be to kill off the Royal Mail altogether. It is, after all, one of the few organisations not yet privatised.
As you said, we need a British Spring to get rid of the self-serving idiots running or potentially running the country at the moment
In some cases it’s the owners that should be micro-chipped as well as the dogs.
Good idea sheona!
If you move dogs internationally they have to be microchipped. Most here are anyway from the point of finding them if lost or stolen. But I don’t know the price, all ours were rescues and the shelters do it in the price, about $150.00 for the dog including microchip, speying and shots.
Rule of thumb everything in the UK seems to be from one third to twice the price of everything here across the board!
Thinking about it vets bills are as high if not higher here, the two terriers had their teeth cleaned this Feb and the bill was $200. EACH and that was a deal.
Of course medicine is the big kicker here, dying of something expensive can easily bankrupt a family and frequently does.
But you only die once and think of all the grocery bills to get there!!!
I was appalled at the grocery bills in Feb in the UK, quite extraordinary. I noted a lot of people are doing the Aldi/Lidl route, very fancy cars in their car parks these days. A lot of my friends who are not short of a bob or two refuse to go to Tescos anymore for some reason, mainly price I presume.
Tina.
Yes, of course everything is more expensive here and always has been compared to the US. That said, there is a huge variation in prices in say, London, South Oxfordshire and Wales, and I’m sure that is just as true in the US.
One has to remember the differentials in average income, which from memory is about £24,000 per annum in the UK and about $27,000 in the US. The exchange rate of the dollar versus the pound varies but you can work it out; its a bit more than half at the moment. Now if you are unlucky enough to need medical treatment from an early age and not pop your clogs, this can make a huge difference, as you point out. It’s not just the cost of a terminal illness.
Aldi/Lidl route not an option here, still shop at Waitrose, or Tesco, and occasionally pop into the new Sainsbury store, only a small, one in Bell Street.
I’ve been back and forth here from 1976 and believe you me the difference in the cost of living has done nothing but grow further apart over the years. The minimum wage here in Washington is higher than in the UK, work that one out!
Just checked £6.08 UK and $9.04 WA/USA so virtually the same, (per hour)
How long since you visited here araminta? Quite a while I should think.
Ah, but yanks pay less income tax and sales tax is lower.
One big reason for higher prices in the UK is space. Property in short supply and building codes are much stricter in terms of how high you can go. All this makes owning and renting property far more expensive. Costs get passed on. Nothing one can do about shortage of space, except kick out all those who are not nice clean Anglo-Saxons with a healthy splash of Norman blood.
Another fact is that fuel prices are much higher in the UK. If the government reduced the taxes to the levels of the US, then I think you would see quite a dramatic reduction in food and other prices.
Finally, prices in the US do not include Sales Tax, which hits you when you pay. $9.99 on the label, can end up being $10.78 at the till.
As for post boxes, I am all in favour of them. The Royal Mail should make them compulsory and save itself a fortune. One no longer needs to have mail delivered right to the house. It is ridiculous to think that a postie has to drive/ride the length of a street to delver a couple of thank you letters or bills to those few people who do not do all their banking and communication on line. Most people work or are otherwise out and about all day. If every there were post boxes in every high street, it would be no trouble at all to pop down and pick up the mail every few days. If it is urgent, courier can deliver it.
An added benefit is that PB addresses retain your privacy and reduce the amount of junk mail and snoopers.
Hi Tina.
The UK rate of £6.08 is the new minimum hourly rate in the UK, but I don’t know if the US rate is the same figure. My figures which may or may not be accurate, it’s hard to pin down, are the average yearly income.
I haven’t had any reason to visit the US for the last ten years, and I have never lived there, but the figures I quoted were recent.
I agree that the UK is not the cheapest place to live, and certainly taxes are much higher than many places, but in the end, it depends what you want. I made the decision many years ago that I didn’t want to live in the US, or bring my children up there, but I enjoyed my visits.
Prices in France have been increasing steadily for a couple of years now. Suppliers there have also cottoned on to the trick of keeping the price the same, but reducing the contents.
The very first Lidl I visited was in Slovakia where they had the most amazing range of vodka
… as I was saying when I was interrupted, ranging in price from about 30p (paint stripper presumably) upwards. But I’m like Araminta and prefer Waitrose and delivery to the doorstep. I never did like Tesco and now find their prices are not that competitive.
I was amazed at Aldis. I had not been in it before this Feb. The wine was very cheap and tolerable for every day. alas no Waitrose further west than Monmouth, I believe they want to put one in in Brecon, I’ve never noticed one in Swansea either. I’ve always disliked Tesco, but there wasn’t much choice before the German chains opened up down there.
My estimate as of this Feb is that groceries are at least 5o% more in the UK, in fact everything is more with the marked exception of medical. That at the exchange rate of 1.55.
sheona they do the same trick here and in the UK I noticed, smaller amounts for the same money, bloody robbers!
As you say araminta it is a choice, but when you consider they would tax us at 40% in the UK and we pay only about 15% here quite legitimately it isn’t any choice at all! Plus the money goes so much further.
No doubt one will continue to patronise the airlines and go to and fro as needed.
One thing here, for a surcharge on the telephone for about $5./month I can call the UK for as long as I like for free on the landline. I hate skype, too echoey.
The law here is that one’s post be delivered to a mail box at the roadside which the postie can reach through the van window. This is to enable redundant posties to claim industrial injury benefits caused by lack of exercise at work.