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PerfectNumber's latest comments
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17th Jul 2022
PerfectNumber commented on:
I don't want a Smart phoneMe neither - I'm too fond of losing phones. I'll have to get a paper confirmation of my Covid booster status if I want to travel abroad but otherwise, why? I don't want to answer cold calls anyway. Before I reitred, I was a techer & tutor, & didn't want calls whilst i was working antway. Now, what work I do is from home - either way, I give my landline except for eg my bank or Paypal when they call my (mobile but so not smart) phone for a confirmation number - and I think there's ways round that. Freinds text me occasionally, on my trusty old basic Nokia, and I do the same back. That's it.. And think of the money we're saving! PS I don't have a tablet either.ViewDate:
4th Feb 2022
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4th Feb 2022 PerfectNumber commented on:
Online names - how do you choose yours?Another Spurs fan! We all need to stick together, to have each others shoulders to cry on :(ViewDate:
4th Feb 2022 PerfectNumber commented on:
Online names - how do you choose yours?Oh - I love that poem - what a great name to choose.ViewDate:
4th Feb 2022 PerfectNumber commented on:
Funeral - what would you do?Yes, I did go in the end - my lovely offspring (who had to take time off work) also came. I am happy she is resting in peace now.ViewDate:
7th Jan 2022 PerfectNumber commented on:
Prejudice and AgeismIronocally, it can work the other way - I look 10 years younger than the 66 I am (it's only genetic, not good behaviour!) When my doctor took some blood samples, she told me my liver function was well under par, and did i have an alcohol problem? When I had a phone comsult with a nurse postlock-down (so she couldn't see me), she was puzzled & said I was fine.! (I sit on the floor when we're out of chairs, too - my daughter's fiance asked if i was OK - but then he doesn't know me that well yet.)ViewDate:
11th Dec 2021 PerfectNumber commented on:
Should people have their passports removed for using drugs?And then there's people traffickers, parents who kidnap their own children, or who flee to another jursdiction to avoid potential prosecuton here. (I appreciate there's an awful element of 'closing the stable door' here - but the law is supposed to set out what is acceptabe behaviour, as well as dole out punishment.ViewDate:
11th Dec 2021 PerfectNumber commented on:
Should people have their passports removed for using drugs?Why for using drugs paticularly? Drink-driving, violence, domestic abuse, fraud etc etc etcViewDate:
11th Dec 2021 PerfectNumber commented on:
Did the punishment fit the crime?When corporal punishment was abolished, those I knew who were teachers at the time thought it was wonderful & would talk of how children/young people would be terrified of being sent to the head. But that was *because* they had just come out of the era of corporal punishment. Now, as yoou say, & it's for loads of reasons & a lot to do with rubbish parenting, too many children have little discipline, little respect for their teachers & are more than happy to disrupt lessons, to the detriment of their fellow pupils. But you can't bring corporal punishment back - it would be abhorrent to almost all of today's techers to administer it. Wish I knew the answer.ViewDate:
11th Dec 2021 PerfectNumber commented on:
Did the punishment fit the crime?I was a goddy two-shoes _ i never even had a board-rubber thrown at me by the mad Y2 teacher. But i also worked a s teacher for 20 years before retirement, and justice at many schools stinks. At the school I worked a longest, you got an automatic detention for talking in the corridor (like excitedly discussing the lesson you'd just had), but, despite my advocating and advocating it, not for being in the cloakrooms without permission (thieve's charter). After i retired , i volunteered at a school where the headmasterwas a friend, up until lockdown. The difference - the peace. He is not a tyrant, he insists on consistency, and has re-layed out the school to reduce (you can never remove - there's always the loos) opportunities for unseen mis-behaviour. It can be done, but it so often isn't - and unfairness in childhood can stick with you forever, which is why it's so important for schools to be fair. You have my sympathy.ViewDate:
11th Dec 2021 PerfectNumber commented on:
Your experience of retirementCOVID has messed up a lot of my retirement plans (to do with volunteering, not travel and yo-ho-ho. I am doing what I can for whom i can, and, like the rest of you, trying to accept we are all in limbo right now.ViewDate:
5th Nov 2021 PerfectNumber commented on:
Are you living where you always wanted to live?Yes and no. At the moment, we are living within commuting distance of London - we both moved to London to work after Uni, and met at work. Our house is far too big for us, but, having married & had kids late, we have both kids basically still at home. One works in the theatre, and the other is probably going to live in America. And the house is used as office space for certain voluntary organiations, so we're not over-housed in the taking-up-too-much-of-the-housing-stock sense, but the cleaning & repairs & decorating get me down. If/when the kids decide what they want to do, I look forward to moving to a small flat. I like London, but my husband doesn't, and I'm less fussed, so I expect we'll go somewhere much cheaper and split the profit betweenn the kids & our future care-home needs. I',m a church-goer & a mrembre of various organisations, so I'm sure I'd make friends anywhere, and the other half likes to minimise socialising anyway! (Oh - and before anyone points out hte problem of *stuff* when downsizing, the house is full of empty furniture that I don't want to get rid of yet, because of now knowing what the kids want to do, and if they'll want any of it - they're not having my great-grandmother's writing desk, mind!!)ViewDate:
5th Nov 2021 PerfectNumber commented on:
My Mother's WillSorry if this is obvious, but, before you start writing cheques, you need to find out what the net estate is after death duties. You should also have some legal documentation if you do give away large sums of money and die within 7 years, there may be further inheritance tax that they have to pay on the gifts. I can see your mother was probably emotionally exhausted when she re-made her will, but I also think it was unfair on you to mke her will this way - she obviouslt valued you, quite rightly, above your sisters, but it would have left everyone happier if she had named the 3 of you as residuary legatees in set proportions a:b:c. Can I use this dilemna to ask others on the forum noty to make a will this way - Gilly is obviously a generous soul, but such wills can create issues either way. When my gran died, she left everything to my dad to divide up as he saw fit between us 4 grandchilden. What he saw fit was to keep every brass farthing himself. I don't begrudge the money - none of us are badly off, but neither was he, and I do begrudge the meaness.ViewDate:
5th Nov 2021 PerfectNumber commented on:
Executor and BeneficiaryHi - I am also only talking from experience. My husband and myself wrer joint executors of my mum's will, and, as her estate was quite simple, we applied for and got prbate ourselves, without any use of a solicitor (it helped we already had a joint bank account. However, I was also joint executot with a friend of my dad of his will, which was rather more complicated (though no animosity was involde), and we handed all the paperwork over to a solicitor, who got grant of probate for us, with monies in and out going through a special account set up by him for that purpose, which is a normal thing to do. If you hold all the certified death certificates, there are scads of things your brother should not be able to do eg dealing with banks, pensions and HMRC. Even simpler things like gas & electricity need photocopies of the death certificate. I totally agree you need professional help, but do check what solicitors are likely to charge - some will charge by the hour of work, and some a % of the estate, and with a comparatively large estate, which wasn't that complicated, but with certain complications I was not happy to deal with myself, so that suited us better. Though in your case there sounds like a chahce of a row, so any solicitor may hedge and want payment by the hour anyway. My sister recommended our solicitor yes - do ask friends for solicitor recommmendations. Good luckViewDate:
9th Apr 2020 PerfectNumber commented on:
Personal Carbon FootprintI see this is over a year old - I've only just arrived, so apologies for the delay! We all need food, and we all need to keep warm - it's ridiculous to expect individuals to punish themselves to reduce their carbon footprints. I do not know your personal spending habits, but small activities that shave a little (no pun intended) off: buy clothes (if you need them) secondhand, keep your dwelling a little cooler, don't buy new furniture or household goods (unless your existing ones have ceased to function, of course). Having said that, many of these calculators allocate you a fraction of the carbon cost of every bus and train you take, which is absurd - they would be running whether or not you got on them, and (once this lousy pandemic is over) we need more public transport to reduce car use. And do listen to this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000fgcn - Prof Myles Allen on carbon emissions - towards the end, he says we should not expect to reduce climate change by asking individuals to be more ascetic - real change has to be systemic, and government & industry led.ViewDate:
9th Apr 2020 PerfectNumber commented on:
Looking for distraction ideas from all that is going on in the worldCould you use the time to learn something new? It's amazing what's on the net - I'm learning basic Romanian (don't ask!), but type anything from sewing to nuclear physics, and there'll be someone out there with blogs or videos to guide you.ViewDate:
9th Apr 2020 PerfectNumber commented on:
What is the most useless object you have ever bought?After dealing with my late father's estate, which I'm convinced aged me at least 5 years in the 2 years it took, I bought myself a couple of expensive 'rejuvenation' electrical facial gadgets. Did I open the boxes other than to read the instructions? I did not. Thank goodness for Freecycle.ViewDate:
21st Mar 2020 PerfectNumber commented on:
Scam emailsSpam emails are deliberately mis-spelt and written badly. If they were written well and correctly, spammers fear too many people to cope with could reply. It has nothing to do with education - it is to limit replies to those who, through their own lack of education, special needs or neurological dysfunction (so sorry to read jennilinn's post), do not realise this and answer/open links anyway.ViewDate:
21st Mar 2020 PerfectNumber commented on:
Times tables & education todayI am all in favour of children learning times tables. Before retirement I taught children labelled 'Gifted & Talented' - I don't like that as a label; as far as I'm concerned, they were 'Mrs P's groups. I used to lament out loud that I couldn't tie their hands behind their backs to stop them using their fingers for arithmetical operations. I also pointed out that, the slicker they were with number bonds & multiplication, the more of their brain they had left over for actually thinking about the problem/conundrum as a whole. I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding Kim8, but i have encountered 2 ways of learning times tables - there was a fashion that still makes me shudder where the teacher would move their hands along a ruler and the children would chant 7, 14, 21 etc - that seemed a perfect way of ensuring they could never calculate 6x7 without using their fingers. If you learn '1 7 is 7, 2 7's are 14 etc', 6 7's are 42 should just pop out in an instant. Learning tables to the 12's though, apart from the threat mentioned above of yet another test, is just weird. We learned them because there were 12 pennies in a shilling. 11 and 12 times tables actually aren't too hard (7's and 8's still hold that pole position), so it was never worth grumbling about. What I did really dislike abut that era was the emphasis on the L6 at KS2 - which was basically the brighter kids at the top of Junior Schools spending a year learning secondary school English & Maths - I won't point fingers, but most people with an interest will know whose watch this happened under. It was part of my decision to retire - my off-syllabus lessons had to be replaced by L6 lessons, so our brightest kids left knowing how to use a semi-colon and multiply 27 by 13 without a calculator (and I will point a finger here, as it was parents who were so anti-calculator) but not who Socrates was, or how to create fractals or Mobius bands, or how Ancient Civilisations did their maths, or etc etc. I will say now, the maths syllabus, under a different watch, is being turned round - with children still having to do their basic arithmetic but also to combine that knowledge with logic and lateral thinking to solve problems and puzzles. Oh, I feel better for having said all that!!ViewDate:
21st Mar 2020 PerfectNumber commented on:
Just joined so I'm introducing myself.Hi I'm Katherine, I early retired from teaching at 60 (I'm 64 now) but until all this hit, I was busier than ever. I volunteered at a local school, ran a Sunday School and did various other jobs at church, and have been running a large (1000 entries) local speech and drama festival, which couldn't have its grand finale, which would have been tomorrow. *Sob* I'm setting up a virtual Sunday School, pacedly Spring-cleaning, sorting out and packing away the festival stuff, considering whether I will volunteer to still go the the school I volunteered at if they need an extra pair of hands. And if I get through all that, I will have no excuse not to start creating the website I keep being told I should set up! Popping in here will definitely become one of my 'coffee break' treats.
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