Tabloid Edition

Tales from my past

There was a time when I lived in California, a great place to be for a reasonable amount of time but one that isn't quite all that it's cracked up to be. For example, the US (and even more so some parts of that great state) aren't quite the land of the free that they're cracked up to be. The police can be more than a little rule unto themselves at times.

I was driving around one day and was stopped and asked to do the roadside sobreity tests and then to blow into the bag. I did so and it registered me as being over the limit. Which was really rather odd for while I had indeed had a couple of beers (and yes, it was only a couple) there was no way, unles there's something seriously wrong with my liver, that that should put me over the limit.

So, it was off through the phone book (this was some time ago) in search of a Los Angeles DUI Attorney.

As it turned out there was something of a rash of cases going on in that area at the time. It seemed that the cops had been messing with the settings of the machines and thus that they weren't recording blood alcohol levels properly. Which is something of a problem for driving after a drink is not illegal: it's driving while drunk which is.

The attorney was able to show that I wasn't actually guilty of anything: for the police couldn't show that I was. The bad bit about all of this is of course that those who were caught in the same trap but didn't use an attorney weren't so lucky.

The $1,200 a month garage

Blimey, I knew that New York was expensive but seriously, $1,200 a month just to park your car?

And more if it's an SUV?

The monthly parking rate at The Empire, a condominium building on 78th Street and Third Avenue, rolled up to $1,200 on Dec. 1. The rate -- which may well be Manhattan's highest -- adds up to $14,400 a year. And parking an SUV or another oversize car costs an extra $100 a month. "It's gotta be the most expensive rate in the city," said an Empire employee. "That's more than I pay in rent." Empire rates also look to be about $250 more than those of the priciest neighborhood competitors, according to bestparking.com.

It's stuff like this that makes a mockery of having one taxation system for a place the size of the US. Or even one definition of poverty or wealth. Because any such single, national, system, doesn't take account of the different costs of living in the different areas.

Take, as an example, the fight going on over income taxes. Sure, yes, $250,000 a year as household income is pretty good going. But in New York City, certainly in Manhattan, that doesn't really add up to being "rich". Just as an example, a couple of public sector employees married to each other can get close to that sort of level: and I'm not talking about senior managers either. A subway train driver married to a bus driver will be getting up to that sort of level if they've both got a bit of seniority.

Rich does really rather depend on expenses as well as incomes....