Book Review - All Lee Child's books
For this month’s company newsletter I was asked to review a book I have read recently. I decided to review all of the wonderful Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child together as I honestly can’t separate out all the characters and plots.
I hope you enjoy.
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April 28, 2008 |
Category » culture
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Taxman cometh...
So sad, but I think we will be leaving the UK in the next year or so, all because of Alistair Darling’s new “non-dom” tax changes. Even though the details have not been published and the IRS in the US hasn’t commented, it clearly is going to cost me and my family more money to be in the UK — and we believe unfairly.
Here is why…
Currently non-doms only pay tax on UK income. This is changing. The UK is going to move to world-wide taxation for non-doms living in the UK for seven out of the last ten years. However, there is a £30,000 a year levy that you can pay to remain taxed largely as we are now, on a remittance basis. Since this applies to all non-doms over 18, it means that my family would have to pay £60,000 to avoid paying worldwide taxes.
Since this is very near our combined pre-tax income its unlikely we will do this unless our tax bill from non-UK taxes ever approached £60k (say received income of £150,000).
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March 18, 2008 |
Category » life in the UK
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Brown Meals
My wife used to be a “non-adventurous home eater”. The one thing we could always agree on was golden brown, or just brown meals were usually delicious. Over the years we have massively expanded that to other colours and flavours, but occasionally, often mistakenly, we have one of our old brown meals. And when we do, we almost always recognise it as the immediate comfort food that it is and make a joke.
The one pictured is Bubble ‘n’ Squeak and pork Schnitzel.
March 16, 2008 |
Category » on food & drink
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Josh Ritter: All grown-up!
It was foolish of us really.
We went to the Cambridge Folk Festival in 2004, not intending to see Josh, but as these festivals go, you end up seeing a lot of people you don’t know.
Josh came on stage all by himself. He looked about 20. He had curly hair, a beat up guitar, a dark suit, shy on the mic … but played for an hour with the energy and sound of 10 people.
He blew us away.
I immediately bought all his cds and we listen to the often. But somehow we just don’t buy that many cds here and haven’t bought is last two albums. So we were more than a little surprised when we arrived the the Shepherd’s Bush Empire to see a setup for an eight piece band.
We were even more surprised to see him walk on stage. He cut his hair and looked a foot taller (impossible I know) and certainly wasn’t shy anymore. All the new songs and and many of the old ones where redone to fit the expanded band. But it was good — really good. He even added to Harrisburg an section of a Modest Mouse song that I love (Tiny Cities Made of Ashes) but is pretty obscure. He did play a few older tunes and a few with a smaller set of back-up.
Definitely catch him if you can.
November 23, 2007 |
Category » culture
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