I'm heading home, doing 125

[venta]

This morning on the way to work it appeared to be Weird Roadworks Day.

Firstly we passed an ordinary roadworks sign, to which had been appended an extra, yellow placard reading "RAGWORT CLEARANCE". Which seemed slightly strange. Why do we care what they're clearing ? Why have they told us ? Is ragwort particularly dangerous ? It ragwort clearance sufficiently common to merit its own signs ?

(Actually, a bit of googling suggests that the answer to those last two questions might be yes. Assuming this is the variety of ragwort in question, then it's actually quite poisonous.)

About two days ago, an extra section of the A4074 suddenly turned into a 30mph limit. While wishing to get to work as sharpish as possible, I did have to concede that it was a sensible place to put a 30 limit. (For those that care: that section of road by the Wallingford roundabout, where there are all the small junctions). Pelting along smartly at 60, rounding a corner to find a car in the middle of the road waiting to turn right isn't ideal, and probably has caused a fair few accidents there.

Today, the second team of workmen we passed were industriously shrouding all the shiny new 30 signs in black plastic, and taping them up. I can't really think of a sensible explanation for this - unless someone's found some sort of bye-law loophole, and discovered that the correct bit of red tape to allow the placing of the signs has not yet been circumnavigated.

This morning, while constructing my morning toast-and-evil, I paused to read the advert on the lid of this week's I Can't Believe Some People Can't Believe It's Not Butter product. The prize they're offering is "a year's salary", capped at £20,000. If you can produce a pay slip, they'll match your salary up to that value. If you can't, you get £15,000.

So, basically, if you're earning a good salary, they'll give you lots of money. If you're not, they'll give you less. To them that hath shall much be given.

Does it strike anyone else as a rather bizarre offer ? The only reason I can imagine they've done it is so they can use the very weak "bread head" slogan, thus in some way tying it in to butter.

Comments

[wimble.livejournal.com]

I've heard a couple of things on the radio about road changes: don't know if they're related, but they're in the approximate area.

One was 10mph advisory signs, due to surface relaying. The warning signs appear a day or two before the work starts. Maybe, in this case, they've had to put the work off longer, but it's cheaper to cover the signs than remove and replace them?

The other was that some work is going to be done to reduce accidents (and overtaking) on the Dorchester Bypass, and some associated hill. I think they said the B4173 (certainly *not* the A4074, but presumably there's a connection). I wasn't listening closely enough to know more, I'm afraid.


For the money question: if you're earning less than 15,000, and "can't" find a payslip, do you still get the 15,000?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Large chunks of road (I think on the B4173) do have 10mph advisroy signs up at the moment, but they're sort of slightly shite, cardboardy-looking, tied-to-a-handy-tree sort of signs. As you'd expect for surfacing work. The 30mph ones are over a very short stretch of road, in a different place, and are proper grown-up signs with their own posts and everything.

I could have easily believed that the 30mph thing was being done to reduce accidents; it's the undoing after only two days that foxes me.

if you're earning less than 15,000, and "can't" find a payslip, do you still get the 15,000?

If you're earning less than £15,000 and can find a payslip, then, since they have no other way of verifying your salary, I think you don't deserve the £15,000 :)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

It strikes me as particularly pointless to cap at £20000 too. That's a respectable salary, but hardly huge. So "Win a year's salary" just ends up sounding like a really lame lie. "Win £15000" might have been better PR !

[venta.livejournal.com]

They're also offering minor prizes of a month's salaray, capped at £1500 (or £1000 if you can't find a payslip).

Their whole promotion is clearly angled towards the salary idea. I guess some guy in marketing thought it was Real Cool, or summat.

[wimble.livejournal.com]

It's better than "Win a year's celery".

I don't like celery.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

To be fair about the 'butter'/salary thing, I presume this wouldn't be affected by either National Insurance or Income Tax? I'm pretty damn sure they couldn't charge you NI on it. As for Income Tax, I'm not sure how competition prizes are viewed by the tax office, but it doesn't strike me as 'income' as such.

If that's so, then a prize of £20,000 actually represents what you would get after tax from a salary which I can't be bothered to work out properly, but would probably be more like £25,000 p.a. (possibly more). So less stingy, on that view.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I didn't think it was necessarily stingy - just that it seemed odd that you could win more money if you had more money. And it was also just a bit strange in general.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Yes, sorry - I think it was one of your commenters in fact who felt the cap was a bit low.

I agree the 'have more, get more' set-up is strange: certainly not a very socialist principle!

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

National Lottery winnings are untaxed, and I think the same applies to winnings from gambling or gameshows.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much what I figured.

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

I can confirm that.

I also growl at the Guardian for the use of "gameshow" in its style guide, and praise the Times for the use of game show in its own. Between het Graun's vote, the Times' vote and my own vote, game show as two words gets the majority decision.

Mind you, you're going to keep writing it as one word just to annoy me now, aren't you?

[bloodnok.livejournal.com]

Find a horse owner and ask them about ragwort; for horses it has a cumulative effect that will eventually result in liver failure. Apparently fresh, live stuff tastes so foul that they won't touch it, but dead/in hay, and Dobbin will happily munch armloads of the stuff.

On the flipside, it's also a vital habitat for one or more species of bug, and therefore food for various other wildlife, and rather essential unless you fancy wiping out a few other species. The choice is yours.

It's amazing what you can learn doing the washing up to R4.

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

That's what you'd expect me to do, but you know I'd work that out, so it must be a bluff, and you really do want me to write it as two words. So I shall write it as oneword just to annoy you. Hurrah!

[venta.livejournal.com]

...So you can clearly not choose the wine in front of him.

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

Getting back on topic, the BBC ran an awful elimination quiz, "2000 to 1", culminating in a grand final on 1999-12-31, which offered the winner a year off work plus double their salary, with (I think) the chance to go round the world and do exciting public-spirited things as well to celebrate the new (not-third) millennium. My old mate (boss) Trevor Montague came second - as he was self-employed at the time, it would have been interesting to see what rate they would have paid him at.