Financial & Travel Musings

The problem wth social security benefits is that people generally just assume that they’re entitled to a whole bunch of things which, on the whole, they won’t be able to get or at least not in quite the way that they expect to get them.

For instance, you probably “know” that the social security system is an integrated one. It isn’t. Each benefit that you are entitled to is almost always administered completely separately from every other one. Thus you won’t get a single social security payment but will normally get a number of separate payments on different dates if you’re entitled to multiple benefits.

Moreover, when you claim, you’ll generally find that the knowledge about benefits in general is quite limited. If you claim unemployment benefit those people won’t know much about the additional benefits that you can claim for your children. For example, if you are entitled to income based job seekers allowance, you’ll also be entitled to a whole range of benefits including child benefit, child tax credits (really a benefit), free school meals, a uniform allowance for the children and housing benefit. In addition to this you are entitled to other things such as support for education and training costs and things like reduced cost admission to museums.

Don’t assume that these entitlements will go on forever though as some have stringent requirements applied to them.

Popularity: 4% [?]

When you’re British you basically assume that America is just a large island off the coast of Ireland and one that is clearly very similar to Britain.

Of course, it’s similar in terms of language and, largely, in terms of general culture too. But it isn’t exactly the same, nor is it just like one would consider a frontier off the coast of Scotland.

Most notably different is sales of things like barska scopes. Gun shops are a whole retailing category which basically doesn’t exist in the UK and the “right to bear arms” is something that is profoundly alien.

On the other side of the coin, travel agents barely exist in America in comparison to the vast numbers spread across the British countryside.

Popularity: 3% [?]

I was just watching a rerun of One foot in the grave which was made in the 1990s and it’s amazing how different it is in some aspects from series that would be made these days.

The most striking thing about it was what seemed to be product placement yet wasn’t because it was the BBC. Or at least, one assumes that it wasn’t explicit product placement. Not an episode goes by without one product being named repeatedly throughout the show. It’s more striking because these days even labels from trainers have to be removed (often at considerable expense) before they can be approved for use in a show.

Older TV shows from the 1950s would feature Black and Mild cigars as celebration events for the arrival of a new baby yet these days smoking isn’t allowed at all in hospitals and would be seriously censured in a maternity ward obviously. That’s a particularly noteworthy different in shows made in the 1950s though, oddly, not in those made earlier.

Popularity: 3% [?]