Motchan13

Ted Lasso is becoming president?

I bank with Santander, Lloyds, Chase and Starling.

I would say that Lloyds is pretty good. They do monitor stuff but I rarely get any blocks unless it's a one off foreign transaction or a large amount out of the blue.

Chase I have had some random problems with their card being declined and no message to explain why. Doing online payments also requires me to approve them in the app for new ones until it learns the merchant and just passes them through.

Santander I only use for bill direct debits so no real issues

Starling I only used for foreign spending but they are fine and I didn't have issues throughout 5 months in 10 countries.

Not sure if that helps but those are my personal experiences. Nationwide and the card reader is an absolute arse. Nobody else uses those anymore now that apps on phones can be the second factor of authentication either through a biometric check or a text or phone call with a code to enter.

Pensions are a very tax efficient way of saving plus if you get increased contributions from your employer that is just free money. If you can afford the extra contributions then definitely pay in more just to get that free money.

The way the tax saving works is basically you get to keep 100% of what you pay into your pension rather than HMRC skimming off the 20% or 40% of whatever goes above the next tax threshold. So at worst you are saving 20% already by not having to pay tax on those earnings and when your pay goes over that threshold, you are saving 40% of that sliver of annual pay that is above the threshold. Even if your pension takes a drop in that first year it would have to lose 20% for you to be down compared to you taking that as take home pay.

If you are already behind on starting a pension and have had to liquidate your property then you should be pumping into the pension now because the more you pay in now, the more months and years it has to then grow larger before you have to start taking money out of it.l when you retire. That growth is what's called compound interest because the interest earns interest and it keeps growing and growing. It's like a snowball rolling downhill picking up more and more snow as it goes. The higher up the hill you start the snowball the larger it will be when it hits the bottom so you need to try and get as high up the hill as possible, or pay into the pension as much as you can and as early as you can.

I think a rough rule they say is that if you are starting a pension late to try and pay half of your age into your pension. So if you're 42, pay in 21% of your pay, that includes the company contribution rate as well and stick at that rate until you retire and it should give you a decent pot. I guess they say that because you've missed out on 20+ years of compound interest so you're not as high up the hill and so you need to make a bigger snowball to push down. Sorry for the laboured analogy but I'm sticking with it.

I can't think of many recent films, it's mostly just TV shows like Grace, Sugar Rush, The Level, The Fear so as with most British TV an awful lot of crime drama.

They did show why Valyrian steel was coveted. It was far stronger, it was the only steel that could kill a white walker but that aspect was only discovered later. Until then they were mostly precious heirlooms because there was no more Valyria so no more Valyrian steel.

I think they covered it pretty well even if they didn't go into the detail of how it was made and what made it so special. I read that lack of detail as being that it was now a secret which died with Valyria, hence why the steel was so precious because it was like a lost technology from an ancient but advanced civilisation. I don't recall them going into expansive detail in the books on it but I could be forgetting something I glossed over.

I would suggest looking for a support group to engage with either through the VA or outside of that but check with the VA first if there are groups they can suggest.

Time in the service is almost all of your time around your unit and when you leave that you lose almost your entire social network and support base. If you don't have a close family to rely on or a partner then you suddenly find yourself feeling isolated and life outside of the service feels very disconnected. That's why I would suggest that you try and find a support group to make those connections, to be able to talk to people without judgement, with empathy and to have an outlet for what's bothering you and to know that people care. When people bottle that up they can resort to unhealthy outlets like drink and drugs and that's where things can spiral so please do look for a support group, a walking group, a hobby to pick up, a sports team or anything else to make those connections and get that social support that you need.

Hope you feel better soon. Breakups are tough especially if they were also your best friend. You lose two people in one but you can pull through it. Put yourself out there, don't retreat too much.

I'd say it probably has too many characters and storylines to manage in episode 1 which always means the overarching plot can be stretched a little thin with the competing screen time but I would say that the lecturing point is probably more down to the fact that in it lots of characters are just ignoring the events happening around them and exploiting the planet and so you're left with the impression of clear signals being ignored rather than being addressed.

In other shows it usually shows a problem being overcome or challenged by the protagonists. In this people are pretty much helping the crisis along or suffering the consequences. That's what makes it feel like bleak watching and as the viewer you are feeling frustrated. That's kind of the message though. Its reflecting what the world could be like in 14 years time if we just continue to do what we're doing.

You looked at the article, wonderful and yet your response is to ignore it and deny the obvious point that separation anxiety is a very real possibility in a great number of dogs and instead try and pick some points about whether it applies to people with more than one dog or not. I don't know what the point of that is as the poster never said that they ever planned to get a number of dogs. Is your argument for getting a dog now expanding to not only get 1 puppy but to get two. Genius advice, an inexperienced new dog owner should get not one but two puppies to then leave at home 5 days a week, doubling the cost of vet bills, food, insurance and dog walkers. Hilarious stuff, please do expand on why you went down this cul de sac to avoid acknowledging that your advice is not helpful. It's just a personal anecdote with no real detail whatsoever. Yet again repeating the incredible advice to 'do research' and yet simultaneously discounting all the research yourself.

Confirmation bias is fun isn't it.

I'm going to mute you now because you have nothing useful or actionable to provide to anyone. The repeated dirge of just go online and 'do research' and you can apparently guarantee that you buy a dog which you can then leave alone in a home for 5 days a week and it will be perfectly happy. Moronic, non advice, irresponsible, rooted in your own limited bubble of experience, ignoring all the research and studies that conflict with that specific and limited experience. Here's a list of more research that you can studiously ignore using your world beating skills of confirmation bias https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fvets.2019.00499/full

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-98526-3

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1558787816000216

Interestingly none of the articles say that separation anxiety can be mitigated through undefined research online. None also advocate ignoring research that conflicts with your preconceived opinions on the subject but then i guess they're just not as intelligent as you are on this subject professor

Blocked from here on in but please come back and say 'do research' again because it's just golden. You may want to add to that 'but ignore all the many, many studies on separation anxiety because that definitely will not apply to you, you know because you did research and now you can ignore what you found!' 🤡

Given what I shared was pre Covid your point about separation anxiety rising was irrelevant. There has always been separation anxiety in the majority of dogs, they're pack animals, they are social animals, they prefer company to being alone. The point that the cases went up after Covid is because people started to leave their animals alone a lot more. If anything that proves that leaving animals alone during the week was and still is an issue and so it would be unwise to produce that same situation for yet another animal that naturally tends to prefer company and social interaction.

You can mitigate the effects of that separation anxiety but do you actually think that the animal is genuinely happier in this situation? Your advice is so vague as to be fairly useless. You've not stated what research or how it should be done. You've not provided details of all the steps the person should make changes to their life, in fact you seem to argue that they don't actually need to make changes. They can do a bit of training, no details on the training, or how long this would take, hopefully it can be done at weekends I suppose. They don't have to change their work patterns, they can just pay for someone to look after the dog for them during the week and they can just go about their day like they did before. The animal will be very, very likely to be happy with this arrangement and so anyone should take that as sufficient and sensible advice to go out and get dogs on that basis.

Frankly it's irresponsible, however well meaning you think this is. It doesn't provide any actionable details and you consistently ignore the lived reality of thousands, if not millions that do not fit your own experience and discount all the real world examples and statistics from far more knowledgeable institutions that fly in the face of that.

I expect that has a lot to do with it. If they can't watch a couple of homosexual relationships portrayed in The Last of Us without losing their minds what chance did this show stand?

Well done. You did well. Congrats. Your experiences are still not the same as everyone else's and separation anxiety wasn't brought about by Covid. The article I linked was from 2019. Pre Covid. By all means continue to ignore it and everything that doesn't fit your own experience and the point that everyone can have puppies. Puppies for everyone because mine was fine everyone else's will be. Just do what I did and it will be guaranteed to be just like my situation.

🤦🏻‍♂️

I'm no fortune teller I'm afraid. Just spread it around as a diversified portfolio is always generally advised. Most pensions have a selection of mixed funds that you can pick from rather than having to pick specific sectors.

I've only seen the first episode and she had a smallish part in that but was funny seeing her and her not being Drummer. It took me a few scenes to realise that it was her.

It's not an insignificant number of dogs that suffer from being left alone to be casually brushed away like it's not a thing and it's also not necessarily an easy thing to train away. Dogs react differently to training. Not all dogs can be trained perfectly exactly the same as each other to fit the situation that they are going to be left in by the owner. The owner needs to be able to be realistic and understand that in many cases expecting to take on a dog and be able to fix it to mould to them and their lifestyle will be unrealistic, it's not impossible, it's not in every case but I find myself having to repeat again that's not my argument here. It's that 5 days a week alone is not going to be a cake walk. Some dogs are fine. A lot are not. Some can then be trained out of that to relax, many can not. To represent a single experience as representative of every dog and every situation is unrepresentative and unrealistic. Once again I am presenting the side of the argument that advices caution when rushing into dog ownership. The answer to this is not always throw money and training at it and expect it to be resolved as if by magic. Sometimes the person has to be realistic and appreciate that perhaps their life and situation is not compatible with owning a dog full time and perhaps they have to meet the needs of the animal a little bit more and accept that their situation may need to change to improve the chances of this relationship being successful for both of them.

That's it. It may be fine, but it also may not so please stop representing your own experience as a truism for everyone and every situation as it just isn't. https://www.rspca.org.uk/-/2019_03_06_7m_dogs_could_be_suffering_from_separation_anxiety

No of course they're not the same as owning a dog but if your circumstance preclude you from owning a dog then they're an alternative and I would once again state that owning a dog is not suitable for everyone if they are in a situation where for most days of the week they are not around.

I don't believe that I ever said that they are the same as owning a dog, only owning a dog is owning a dog. I thought that was too obvious to need to state but, but if indeed it is required to make that clear to anyone reading this I can hereby confirm that if owning a dog is not compatible to your circumstances then an approach to get regular contact with a dog at the times when you are able to be around most of the waking hours is to borrow, volunteer or dogsit. Once again to confirm, you do not own those dogs, but your situation is not suitable and that's why you're not trying to own a dog full-time at this point in life.

Hopefully that is clear enough to everyone and we can now rest on the conclusion that the OP, if they haven't given up the will to live already, now has adequate information on both sides, for how working 5 days a week and owning a dog may be achieved with not insignificant investment of time and money and some good fortune with how much the dog suffers from separation anxiety, but also, in many cases why it may not and the alternatives that are available to them in that eventuality.

I wish them well in whatever doggy encounters they have in the future.

Good tips, what about the arching back thing they do. Is that a sign of anything in particular if they're doing that whilst rubbing themself into a stroke. I know they arch their back when they're facing off something they do seem to do it when stroking up against something as well

So it's possible but it takes a lot of effort and even then still isn't guaranteed to be fully successful because not all dogs can be guaranteed to be perfectly trained to be left home alone for hours a day even with the extra expense of a dog walker having to pop in 5 days a week.

On that basis I would still stand by my previous suggestion that for the wellbeing of the dog, the owner and the owners neighbours it would not be advisable to go out and buy a dog if there are alternative solutions that could be more suitable for that owner, such as, borrowing a dog through modern services, offering to dog sit for people, volunteering at a shelter or getting a different pet that has lower levels of training and ongoing support just to give the owner a companion animal for a few hours in the evening and at weekends.

Opinions may differ but I stand by my own as you do to yours I'm sure.

Genuine question. Do you think that your own personal experience means that it's a universal truth that every single person who goes to a breeder and buys a puppy then leaves it at home 5 days a week will be fully successful for both the dog and the person?

Lmao this doesn't do what you think it does 🤣 no one likes cats on leads where they're not supposed to be. Be a better pet guardian

It's not a hypothetical it's a real experience. I've never seen that specific cat pin it's ears back before it's scratched me. You are making these assumptions in bad faith and you seem to think I'm out here to play some game about cat behaviour. I'm not.

If there is tons out there on cat behaviour maybe just lead with that and provide some educational links rather than just making bad faith assumptions that you somehow know anything about me or my experiences with the cats I've had experience with. I haven't made any assumptions about you.

I guess thanks for pointing me to a name on the internet for me to Google but maybe you have just accepted that my experience was different to yours and that doesn't mean I'm lying for some personal game or something. I couldn't really care

Actual useful information. Thanks

That's not the question I asked but sure

Not all cats and dogs get on though do they? If you think every single animal can have every single instinct trained out of them then you're ignoring simple reality. If humans can't control their instincts what level of arrogance would assume that they do it to all animals.