Fic: Lives Are For Living. (5/35)
Aug. 18th, 2013 06:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silver_sunTitle Lives Are For Living. (5/35)
Fandoms Torchwood/Being Human crossover fic.
Characters/pairings Andy Davidson/Tom McNair. Other Torchwood and Being Human characters will appear later on.
Word count: This part 2000. (Total posted 9250 /65,000)
Rating This part all ages. Later parts adult.
Contains Mentions of depression/anxiety. Mentions of past canon character death. In later parts canon level violence, graphic sex, Andy's homophobic mother. Spoilers for Being Human (UK version) up to series 5 episode 3, and for Torchwood up to Children of Earth.
A/N: Crossover with Being Human. Technically a CoE fix it as it's set in the same 'verse as Finding Ways To Smile Again (although that isn't apparent until about 2/3 the way through the story). Follows on from Break and Breakaway from Tom McNair's POV – which is where it breaks from Being Human canon.
Summary
After being pushed out of the police force following the events of Children of Earth, Andy Davidson tries to build a new life for himself in the deep in the Welsh countryside.
Tom McNair walked out of his old life after realising it wasn't what he needed.
A chance meeting would take their lives in directions that they had never expected and bring them love that they'd not thought they'd find.
Starts here: http://the-silver-sun.livejournal.com/214504.html
Tom had left as the evening shadows had started to get longer, taking his pack and its rolled up tent out to where the fields met the woodland a few hundred metres from the side of the farmhouse.
Andy found it made the house seem strangely empty without him, despite the fact that Tom had only been there a couple of hours and was, with the exception of his Aunty Edith's solicitor, the only other person to have ever been in the house with him.
From his bedroom window Andy could just see the faint light of a torch or lantern as Tom finished sorting out his tent. It was dry and warm night, the near full moon lighting up the valley. It was, Andy thought, the perfect weather for sleeping out under the stars. Yet part of him wanted to go down to the tent and ask Tom to come back to the house. The other wanted to join Tom out there under the spreading beech trees, sit around a camp fire with a few bottles of beer and talk about nothing important until the sky started to brighten with the dawn, as he'd done with friends as a teenager.
Not that he'd seen any of them in years, those friendships had slowly drifted away after he joined the police. The awkwardness that people seemed to have being around a police officer spilling over into the times when he was of duty, conversations becoming generic, guarded and dull, until they had slipped away altogether. There was reason that for a lot of people in the police their friends also tended to be in the service as well or at least a closely connected one.
Turning over in bed, Andy looked up at the beams in the ceiling. He was tired, but he knew that there was no way that his mind was going to switch off just yet. Not wanting to think about his own life, or lack of it, Andy turned his attention back to Tom.
Tom who was definitely distracting and fascinating. Tom who seemed so nice and who maintained an almost painfully naïve sense of trust despite life having dealt him a spectacularly bad hand. Growing up in a van with only his dad, moving from one place to another with nowhere to really call home and no friends or family to turn to when his father was murdered. And now he was homeless and jobless with nobody in the world who apparently cared about him or missed him.
Andy rolled over again just in time to see the faint light by Tom's tent go out. Sighing, he got out of bed and went back through to the living room and sat down at the table. He couldn't let Tom go without at least trying to help him.
Employing somebody to help him renovate the farm and turn it into a campsite had been something he'd considered, but having a group of builders there or haggling with contractors wasn't something that he'd felt ready to do. Tom was different though, employing him to do a few odd jobs for a few hours a week until he sorted himself out somewhere to live and maybe a full time job seemed like it would be something that would be good for both of them.
The settlement or more accurately bribe, he thought bitterly, that he'd been given for leaving the police had been very generous, a pension and cash lump sum as if he'd completed a police officer's standard thirty year service, rather than the ten years that he actually had. With the farm being his outright, and with no mains gas or electricity to pay and the water coming from a spring there was only food, council tax and the associated costs of keeping the landrover on the road. He could live on it for a long time as long as he wasn't too extravagant with it.
A lot of the lump sum was set aside for jobs that Andy couldn't do himself, like having a new septic tank fitted for the toilet, more toilets for people camping there, solar panels for the house and when it was finished the barn as well, a new back-up generator for when it was wasn't sunny enough for them to work and the costs of paying contractors to fit it all. It would all be money well spent though or at least it would be spent once he actually got the farm to a stage where he could get it all fitted.
With so much of the money already allocated he knew he couldn't afford to employ Tom full time, but something like twenty hours a week, plus free camping and free food he hoped would be enough to tempt him to stay for a while. Tom's lack of address meant that him having a bank account was unlikely, so it would have to be cash in hand. Not strictly legal, Andy knew, but after the couple of years he's had he's quite happy to ignore certain parts of it where it's not actually hurting anybody.
The worse that could happen was that Tom would take offence at being offered work like he was a charity case and leave. Andy would be no worse off than he already was if he did, but he knew it would be a very long time before he stopped worrying about Tom if he did.
The clock showed a quarter to three before Andy had finished looking through all his bank statements and costings paperwork for the renovation of the farm. Exhausted, but satisfied that he could afford to employ Tom for at least a couple of months, Andy finally went to bed.
x-x-x
The sun was only just above the horizon, the early morning sky still streaked with the colours of dawn, when Andy woke. Yawning and wondering if Tom had managed to get a better night's sleep in his tent, Andy when through to the living room.
After a couple of attempts at lighting the range which seemed even more resistant to his efforts to get a fire burning than usual, Andy gave up and lit the camping stove. Coffee made him feel slightly more awake and after a couple of cups of it and some breakfast, Andy decided it was now late enough to go and see if Tom was awake.
Tom's tent was pitched in slight hollow at edge of the small wood that bordered the edge of the farm, the branches of the trees spreading out above it. The tent looked like it had seen better days, the material faded and most of the seams repaired with gaffer tape, but Andy suspected that it was still waterproof as Tom had seemed quite capable to when it came to practical tasks.
Dressed in the same rather tatty shorts and vest that he'd been wearing the previous day, Tom was sitting on a tree stump, his back to him, while he warmed his by a small fire. The fire was burning brightly in a carefully dug and stone edged shallow pit, his battered camping kettle and mess tin style pan apparently full of porridge carefully propped over the flames.
“Mornin'” Tom said standing up, not seeming startle at all that Andy had walked up behind him. “Hope you don't mind me using bits of wood out of there.” He gestured to the woodland. “There's a fair old bit of fallen stuff in there that if you get it cut up proper and stacked to dry it'd be right good on that fire up at the house.”
“I've not even looked in there,” Andy said truthfully. It was enough work getting the farm sorted out without having to think about woodland management or whatever it was called. “Take whatever you need out of there, ”
“Thanks. You really sure you don't mind though?” He asked, concern edging into his voice. “Only I don't want you be short come winter. I mean you could probably sell some of the stuff, like they do at garages sometimes in those string sacks, if you wanted to maybe get some coal instead.”
Tom was far more practical and knowledgeable about the things that needed doing, Andy thought, than he could hope to be for until he'd spent at least a year on the farm, probably making a complete idiot of himself half the time because he hadn't got a clue what he was doing. Certain now that he was doing the right thing, Andy pushed ahead with this plan.
“Actually I've been thinking,” Andy said hoping that he didn't end up sound too pushy or desperate, the last thing he wanted was to drive Tom away by being too weird. “It's a lot of work to get this old place turned into a camp site and yesterday made me realise that maybe working on it by myself isn't a good idea, and you did say that you weren't in a hurry to get anywhere. So would you be interested in working here? I could pay you for say twenty hours a week, plus free camping and food. I mean if you want to, that is.”
Eager and earnest, Tom smiled as, without a pause, grabbed Andy's hand and shook his enthusiastically. "Course I do. Yer won't regret it. So what you need me to do?"
Relieved that Tom was staying, but still tired after only having a couple of hours sleep, Andy decided that he wasn't going to be working on the barn and risking making an idiot of himself though another mishap caused by a lapse of attention on his part just yet. Doing a few small jobs round the house and then going back to bed and trying to get more sleep sounded like the best plan. “No, I've got a few other things to go. Any way, you'll want to get your camping gear sorted out and maybe take a walk down to Rhayader to buy anything you need, as you won't really get a chance tomorrow.”
"Do ya need me to work on Sunday then?"
"No, Monday will be fine," Andy replied, hearing the hesitation in Tom's voice. Tom didn't seem like the type to observe organised religion, but so much about Tom seem contradictory. Perhaps his family had been religious? Maybe that's why the tattoo was a cross rather than skulls or some so called tribal design. Thinking that his mother would be nodding her head in approval at the young man right now, he said, "There's a chapel down in Elan Village or a church in Rhayader. If you want to go."
Tom frowned and then said, "Do you think I should? I mean is that normal like round here?"
And there was that undefinable strangeness again, Andy thought. Why was Tom so concerned by trying to do what others would call normal? "I just thought that's why you didn't want to work on Sunday. It seemed like the most likely reason."
"No, it ain't like that," Tom started to put his trainers on. "It's just some there's some other stuff I really need to do, so I might be a bit late on Sunday morning, and I didn't want you thinkin' that I didn't want the job, 'cause I really do."
Andy decided it was none of his business what Tom needs to do, even if he was a little curious about what it might be, given what he'd said the previous day. "Okay, Monday it is then. If you need anything just come up to the house, like if you want cook or use the phone."
"Thanks." Tom smiled again like Andy's given him something amazing. "I bet this place'll be great when you get it all done up."
Andy looked out across the sunlit valley. “Do you know, I really think it will,” he said, finding that for the first time he could really see himself living and working there rather than just surviving.
Part 6: http://the-silver-sun.livejournal.com/218004.html
Note.
The knowledge about how pensions are calculated from the job I do in real life, but for anyone interested the figures would be (in Andy's case) roughly half of actual annual pay for the pension, plus three years worth of pay lump sum.
Fandoms Torchwood/Being Human crossover fic.
Characters/pairings Andy Davidson/Tom McNair. Other Torchwood and Being Human characters will appear later on.
Word count: This part 2000. (Total posted 9250 /65,000)
Rating This part all ages. Later parts adult.
Contains Mentions of depression/anxiety. Mentions of past canon character death. In later parts canon level violence, graphic sex, Andy's homophobic mother. Spoilers for Being Human (UK version) up to series 5 episode 3, and for Torchwood up to Children of Earth.
A/N: Crossover with Being Human. Technically a CoE fix it as it's set in the same 'verse as Finding Ways To Smile Again (although that isn't apparent until about 2/3 the way through the story). Follows on from Break and Breakaway from Tom McNair's POV – which is where it breaks from Being Human canon.
Summary
After being pushed out of the police force following the events of Children of Earth, Andy Davidson tries to build a new life for himself in the deep in the Welsh countryside.
Tom McNair walked out of his old life after realising it wasn't what he needed.
A chance meeting would take their lives in directions that they had never expected and bring them love that they'd not thought they'd find.
Starts here: http://the-silver-sun.livejournal.com/214504.html
Tom had left as the evening shadows had started to get longer, taking his pack and its rolled up tent out to where the fields met the woodland a few hundred metres from the side of the farmhouse.
Andy found it made the house seem strangely empty without him, despite the fact that Tom had only been there a couple of hours and was, with the exception of his Aunty Edith's solicitor, the only other person to have ever been in the house with him.
From his bedroom window Andy could just see the faint light of a torch or lantern as Tom finished sorting out his tent. It was dry and warm night, the near full moon lighting up the valley. It was, Andy thought, the perfect weather for sleeping out under the stars. Yet part of him wanted to go down to the tent and ask Tom to come back to the house. The other wanted to join Tom out there under the spreading beech trees, sit around a camp fire with a few bottles of beer and talk about nothing important until the sky started to brighten with the dawn, as he'd done with friends as a teenager.
Not that he'd seen any of them in years, those friendships had slowly drifted away after he joined the police. The awkwardness that people seemed to have being around a police officer spilling over into the times when he was of duty, conversations becoming generic, guarded and dull, until they had slipped away altogether. There was reason that for a lot of people in the police their friends also tended to be in the service as well or at least a closely connected one.
Turning over in bed, Andy looked up at the beams in the ceiling. He was tired, but he knew that there was no way that his mind was going to switch off just yet. Not wanting to think about his own life, or lack of it, Andy turned his attention back to Tom.
Tom who was definitely distracting and fascinating. Tom who seemed so nice and who maintained an almost painfully naïve sense of trust despite life having dealt him a spectacularly bad hand. Growing up in a van with only his dad, moving from one place to another with nowhere to really call home and no friends or family to turn to when his father was murdered. And now he was homeless and jobless with nobody in the world who apparently cared about him or missed him.
Andy rolled over again just in time to see the faint light by Tom's tent go out. Sighing, he got out of bed and went back through to the living room and sat down at the table. He couldn't let Tom go without at least trying to help him.
Employing somebody to help him renovate the farm and turn it into a campsite had been something he'd considered, but having a group of builders there or haggling with contractors wasn't something that he'd felt ready to do. Tom was different though, employing him to do a few odd jobs for a few hours a week until he sorted himself out somewhere to live and maybe a full time job seemed like it would be something that would be good for both of them.
The settlement or more accurately bribe, he thought bitterly, that he'd been given for leaving the police had been very generous, a pension and cash lump sum as if he'd completed a police officer's standard thirty year service, rather than the ten years that he actually had. With the farm being his outright, and with no mains gas or electricity to pay and the water coming from a spring there was only food, council tax and the associated costs of keeping the landrover on the road. He could live on it for a long time as long as he wasn't too extravagant with it.
A lot of the lump sum was set aside for jobs that Andy couldn't do himself, like having a new septic tank fitted for the toilet, more toilets for people camping there, solar panels for the house and when it was finished the barn as well, a new back-up generator for when it was wasn't sunny enough for them to work and the costs of paying contractors to fit it all. It would all be money well spent though or at least it would be spent once he actually got the farm to a stage where he could get it all fitted.
With so much of the money already allocated he knew he couldn't afford to employ Tom full time, but something like twenty hours a week, plus free camping and free food he hoped would be enough to tempt him to stay for a while. Tom's lack of address meant that him having a bank account was unlikely, so it would have to be cash in hand. Not strictly legal, Andy knew, but after the couple of years he's had he's quite happy to ignore certain parts of it where it's not actually hurting anybody.
The worse that could happen was that Tom would take offence at being offered work like he was a charity case and leave. Andy would be no worse off than he already was if he did, but he knew it would be a very long time before he stopped worrying about Tom if he did.
The clock showed a quarter to three before Andy had finished looking through all his bank statements and costings paperwork for the renovation of the farm. Exhausted, but satisfied that he could afford to employ Tom for at least a couple of months, Andy finally went to bed.
x-x-x
The sun was only just above the horizon, the early morning sky still streaked with the colours of dawn, when Andy woke. Yawning and wondering if Tom had managed to get a better night's sleep in his tent, Andy when through to the living room.
After a couple of attempts at lighting the range which seemed even more resistant to his efforts to get a fire burning than usual, Andy gave up and lit the camping stove. Coffee made him feel slightly more awake and after a couple of cups of it and some breakfast, Andy decided it was now late enough to go and see if Tom was awake.
Tom's tent was pitched in slight hollow at edge of the small wood that bordered the edge of the farm, the branches of the trees spreading out above it. The tent looked like it had seen better days, the material faded and most of the seams repaired with gaffer tape, but Andy suspected that it was still waterproof as Tom had seemed quite capable to when it came to practical tasks.
Dressed in the same rather tatty shorts and vest that he'd been wearing the previous day, Tom was sitting on a tree stump, his back to him, while he warmed his by a small fire. The fire was burning brightly in a carefully dug and stone edged shallow pit, his battered camping kettle and mess tin style pan apparently full of porridge carefully propped over the flames.
“Mornin'” Tom said standing up, not seeming startle at all that Andy had walked up behind him. “Hope you don't mind me using bits of wood out of there.” He gestured to the woodland. “There's a fair old bit of fallen stuff in there that if you get it cut up proper and stacked to dry it'd be right good on that fire up at the house.”
“I've not even looked in there,” Andy said truthfully. It was enough work getting the farm sorted out without having to think about woodland management or whatever it was called. “Take whatever you need out of there, ”
“Thanks. You really sure you don't mind though?” He asked, concern edging into his voice. “Only I don't want you be short come winter. I mean you could probably sell some of the stuff, like they do at garages sometimes in those string sacks, if you wanted to maybe get some coal instead.”
Tom was far more practical and knowledgeable about the things that needed doing, Andy thought, than he could hope to be for until he'd spent at least a year on the farm, probably making a complete idiot of himself half the time because he hadn't got a clue what he was doing. Certain now that he was doing the right thing, Andy pushed ahead with this plan.
“Actually I've been thinking,” Andy said hoping that he didn't end up sound too pushy or desperate, the last thing he wanted was to drive Tom away by being too weird. “It's a lot of work to get this old place turned into a camp site and yesterday made me realise that maybe working on it by myself isn't a good idea, and you did say that you weren't in a hurry to get anywhere. So would you be interested in working here? I could pay you for say twenty hours a week, plus free camping and food. I mean if you want to, that is.”
Eager and earnest, Tom smiled as, without a pause, grabbed Andy's hand and shook his enthusiastically. "Course I do. Yer won't regret it. So what you need me to do?"
Relieved that Tom was staying, but still tired after only having a couple of hours sleep, Andy decided that he wasn't going to be working on the barn and risking making an idiot of himself though another mishap caused by a lapse of attention on his part just yet. Doing a few small jobs round the house and then going back to bed and trying to get more sleep sounded like the best plan. “No, I've got a few other things to go. Any way, you'll want to get your camping gear sorted out and maybe take a walk down to Rhayader to buy anything you need, as you won't really get a chance tomorrow.”
"Do ya need me to work on Sunday then?"
"No, Monday will be fine," Andy replied, hearing the hesitation in Tom's voice. Tom didn't seem like the type to observe organised religion, but so much about Tom seem contradictory. Perhaps his family had been religious? Maybe that's why the tattoo was a cross rather than skulls or some so called tribal design. Thinking that his mother would be nodding her head in approval at the young man right now, he said, "There's a chapel down in Elan Village or a church in Rhayader. If you want to go."
Tom frowned and then said, "Do you think I should? I mean is that normal like round here?"
And there was that undefinable strangeness again, Andy thought. Why was Tom so concerned by trying to do what others would call normal? "I just thought that's why you didn't want to work on Sunday. It seemed like the most likely reason."
"No, it ain't like that," Tom started to put his trainers on. "It's just some there's some other stuff I really need to do, so I might be a bit late on Sunday morning, and I didn't want you thinkin' that I didn't want the job, 'cause I really do."
Andy decided it was none of his business what Tom needs to do, even if he was a little curious about what it might be, given what he'd said the previous day. "Okay, Monday it is then. If you need anything just come up to the house, like if you want cook or use the phone."
"Thanks." Tom smiled again like Andy's given him something amazing. "I bet this place'll be great when you get it all done up."
Andy looked out across the sunlit valley. “Do you know, I really think it will,” he said, finding that for the first time he could really see himself living and working there rather than just surviving.
Part 6: http://the-silver-sun.livejournal.com/218004.html
Note.
The knowledge about how pensions are calculated from the job I do in real life, but for anyone interested the figures would be (in Andy's case) roughly half of actual annual pay for the pension, plus three years worth of pay lump sum.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-08-19 01:44 pm (UTC)I envy you your UK knowledge. I'm constantly googling and researching to differences in UK and US terms/laws/life etc... and nearly always coming up short! One time I spent nearly two hours looking to see what standard vacation days were given in the UK.
Can't wait for the next chapter!
no subject
Date: 2013-08-19 09:51 pm (UTC)I'd be in the same situation if I was writing fic for American based series. I still do loads of googling for things for fics too (the last long fic I wrote with Andy as a main character I needed to know about shortwave radios, how long it would take to walk from Cardiff to Southampton (a port city on the south coast of England) and where the main TV transmitter is in Cardiff). Google maps is so useful, as I've only been to Wales a couple of times - once to Cardiff for two days for a Torchwood fan meet-up in 2007 and once as a college student back in the mid 1990's for a geography field trip to the Brecon Beacons.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-20 12:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-20 12:28 pm (UTC)Bradford itself has a fairly poor name in the UK for being rundown and a bit of a dump. And in a way that's true, the city never really found a replacment for the all the jobs that went when the woollen mills stopped being profitable in the 50s and 60s and closed. So there are lots of derelict mills in the city, a massive hole in the ground where they were going to build a new shopping centre but money ran out (it's been there for 6 years now) and unemployment is above the national average, some areas are very poor (in the area of Bradford I live in one of the primary schools (children aged 5-11) had nearly 60% of the children on free meals because their parents either have no work or only just earn minimum wage. - I was looking at school stats as my son starts school in september next year). This is true though of a lot of area in the cities/big town in the industrial centre of the UK (which is roughly the central third of the country).
This post is getting quite long and rambly now, but yes there are some lovely bits of the UK and some not so great ones too. Also if you've got any questions about odd British stuff that google doesn't seem to know/or just is too vague to google I might be able to help.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-20 06:00 pm (UTC)As I've researched I've found so many differences between the UK and US... especially in the area of social programs. Here in the US, the quality of the school district will vary from town to town which is proportional to the property taxes. Like if you want to move to another area, you investigate the school district to see what kind of education your child will get.
Thank you so much I may actually take you up on that :) I actually hate looking certain things up. When I stumbled on the UK government page about sick leave and holiday entitlement... I freaked out. 28 days of paid holiday is practically unheard of here. My workplace only gives 14 days, and only after 5 years of employment. One of my coworkers just left on maternity leave but it is unpaid. Many of us have been working for this place for years and have yet to receive a single pay rise.
Oopse, you went on your ramble and I went on mine :) haha, sorry! Disgruntled, overworked American employee :(
no subject
Date: 2013-08-20 07:46 pm (UTC)Although technically we get 28 days paid leave a lot of companies here is include the statutory holidays like Christmas, New Years day in that holiday allowance - so while you might get 28 days, because of bank holidays etc you actually only get to pick 20 of them.
Also this rule only applies to people on full time permanent contracts. If you work on short term contracts (less than 3 months) you don't get any sick pay, paid holiday, maternity etc - they company will say they make up for it in you pay by giving you say 50p over the minimum wage. I've worked for a few of those in the past. 3 month contract renewed every 3 months - they get a full time employed with none of the costs of a full time employee.
One things I've sort of half got from watching some American shows is that some? companies give their employees an allotted number of sick days per year. I always wondered how that works, is it the maximum number and go over it you've got to have a really good reason or be fired? or is it this is the number you can take before having to take in doctors certificates to say why you were off? or is getting a sick note not something that is done in the US?
We don't get an allocated number of sick days we can use here as everyone is supposed to aim for none. Obviously that's not really practical, but if you're off for more than a couple of days at a time you have to get your doctor to sign a form to say why you still can't come to work, and if you're off sick with something where you might be able to still work if they made a few changes - like you've broken your leg, the doctor is required on the form to tell the employer that you might be able to still come into work if they can give you a sitting down job for a while or for a bad back to get a special type of chair etc.
So although we get paid sick days (if it's the kind of job that gives it), if you use more than a few in a year you expect to have a meeting with you manager, who if you lucky will give you a warning not to be ill so much and put you on notice that if you take more than a certain number in the next year/6 months you'll be fired or if you're unlucky it'll just be being fired. Some supermarkets are notorious at sacking people because they been off sick for more than 2 or 3 days a year, but they know with unemployed being as it is there are plenty more people desperate for the job, so they won't be looking for staff for long.
Legally people are allowed to take their sick days off as holiday if they want to keep a low number of days off sick on their employment record. In practice it depends what sort of mood the boss is in when you phone as to what really happens.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-21 12:24 am (UTC)We don't have the long term or short term contract thing here in the US. When you get a job, you're either full time or part time. There is also "contract" work done by the hour but that's another ball of wax. If you are a part time employee aka under a certain number of hours per week (at my job it's <30 hrs), then you get nothing. No sick no holiday no personal no nothing.
Legally, here in the US, you cannot be fired for being sick. You can file a wrongful termination lawsuit against your employer. Whether or not you get paid sick time varies from company to company and job to job. In some salaried, full time jobs you will accumulate sick time through the year ie by the time you get to the end of March you have say a day or two. Some companies, when that year rolls around you get all your sick time in one lump which kind of screws you if you get sick right off the bat - you use all your days and then you're up shit's creek.
A good job here in the US will give you like 3-5 days of sick time, 5 days of vacation and 3 personal days. Some companies will dock your pay for taking more than your allotted time. Some will allow you to use holiday/personal time. My husband has a chronic illness and has to go in for medication infusions every 6-8 weeks. That's 8 sick days a year he has to take, which is over his allotted 5. Plus, if he gets sick (and since he's immune suppressed that can very easily happen) he dips into vacation and personal time. My husband, however, works at an excellent job with excellent benefits. His boss has no issue with him taking time off and using more vacation/sick/personal time than he's technically allowed. Sometimes a decent employer will allow you to do something like that... it will generally come back to bite you when it's time for your annual review and raise. I know that my step-mother in law has not received any sort of pay raise due to all the time she has taken off for personal issues.
I, however, work in a shit job. I'm paid by the hour. If I become ill, I am required to find coverage for my shift. If I miss work more than one day in a row, I'm required to get a doctor's note. My job is fairly low paying and for a lot of my coworkers it's a difficult decision. Many of them cannot afford to pay for medical insurance and we don't have an equivalent of the NHS here. So if they take off for being sick and are required to go to the doctor to get a note and they don't have insurance, it could possibly cost them their entire day's pay just to get that piece of paper... so many of them just drag themselves into work sick.
We do have forms of state/federal disability for long term issues. There is also now the Family and Medical Leave act, which (if your employer has more than 50 employees) allows you to request 12 weeks UNPAID leave from work so you will not lose your job. Unfortunately, the law stipulates that they have to have A job waiting for you when you get back... not necessarily YOUR job. A friend of mine at work lost her job that way (sort of). Maternity leave is not required here, at all. So most employers put it under the FMLA. When my friend returned from having her daughter, she lost her job in the ophthalmology department and was shoved into the emergency department working the overnight shift with me. Now she's got a toddler and an infant... and working the overnight shift. It's a nightmare for her but, she's the breadwinner and she needs her job (again, it seems that employers everywhere take advantage of that).
Taking a lot of time off for any reason is highly frowned upon by employer and coworkers alike here even if it's for a legitimate reason. Another friend of mine at work was put on bed rest during her pregnancy and when she came back, she was not popular with management at all.
I don't know if the attitude is prevalent over in the UK but here in the US, the "live to work" idea is what is expected. You're expected to be happy to stay late, give up your free time, endanger your health, miss your children's big events all so that you can dedicate your entire life to your job.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-21 07:18 am (UTC)There's a big thing here at the moment with people complaining about the unemployed, in the 'they're lazy, they should get a job' sense. Completely ignoring the fact that there are (officially) about 2.8 million unemployed and about 750,000 vacancies - mostly part time and low paid, if the job adverts in the papers are representative of what really available.
The thing is not everybody who'd unemployed can get unemployment benefit. If you are under 18 you can't get it, even if you leave school at sixteen (although soon you won't be able to, you'll have to either do two more years at school or go on a vocational course - such as hairdressing or building). If you are under 21 you get a reduced rate.
Even if you are over 21 if you are married and your husband/wife earns more pay than you'd get for 30 hours at minimum wage a week they don't get any as their spouse is supposed to support them while they get a job.
If they've had a continuous full time job for more than a year before being made unemployed they can then claim unemployment for 6 months regardless of what their partner earns, after that they won't get anything if their partner earns to much. Not that it's a lot of money even if they do get it - it's the equivalent of 10 hours work at minimum wage (And there are still people who think it should be less.) They also have to report weekly to local job centre and prove they are applying for jobs or they'll getting their money stopped.
My family are in the situation where I work (because I had the permanent job) and my husband stays at home with our son. He'd been on short contracts before son was born and I was earning more than minimum wage, he so wasn't entitled to get any money. So we manage on my pay because child care costs are so high. Once he's old enough for school next year my husband will start to look for work again.
There isn't really the same live to work culture over all, it does exist in some jobs, but not really in others. I think it's because a lot of companies employ lots of people all on part time posts were you only work your fixed hours. Reason being it costs them, the employer, less. As below a certain level they don't have to pay national insurance contributions for you (national insurance is paid on all jobs of more than about 15 hours a week - and pays for the state pension and NHS). So it's actually cheaper for a company to employ three people working each working three hours a day than it is to employ one person working nine hours. It's not really in their interest to let you work more. Workers are generally considered disposable as there are often about 15+ people applying for a job at any one time.
It's a rubbish situation. The workers don't get a living wage and wouldn't be able to get sick pay or paid maternity leave. The economy suffers because people haven't got disposable income to spend on extras like days out etc, and the NHS and state pension suffer because they've got all these extra people to support who aren't paying in through no fault of their own.
The government's solution is of course to make people wait longer to retire (was 60, then 65, now 67, going to 68 eventually) and to make you pay for some NHS services, prescriptions for medicines, notes from doctors and anything at the dentist being the main ones. They won't tackle the businesses because all the people on these few hours a week jobs no longer count towards the unemployment statistics, even if what they're being paid isn't enough to live on.
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Date: 2013-08-21 07:20 am (UTC)So the real unemployment figure in the UK is much higher than the 2.7 million claimed (once you count all those who are 16-18, people who can't claim because their partner earns to much, those who are full time carers for a disabled partner/child/parent, people without a fixed address, and people who are too ill to work but not ill enough to qualify for disability payments, workers on zero hour contracts who are technically employed but aren't being given any hours so are getting no pay) the figure is probably closer to 5 or 6 million.)
There is a huge variation between the north and south of the country. With the a lot of the areas south of London/close to London having 2% to 3% unemployment, while some area in the north have 7% to 10%.
A lot of the problem is the country has been in recession twice followed by periods no growth for the last few years. Everyone is cutting back on spending as more and more of pay has to go on essential like heating, lighting, rent and food, leaving less to spend on extras which in turn means the economy continues to struggle to recover.
It will pick up again at some point, but it's feeling like a long haul at the moment.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-21 12:30 pm (UTC)I saw an article on how the Queen got in hot water for not paying a livable wage to some workers. The workers were paid minimum wage. The article knew how much a "livable" wage was. Over here, that kind of thing is never calculated (I think because the politicians don't want people on min. wage to know how screwed they are because the livable wage is so far from the minimum wage). NYS min wage is $8.75 an hour (about 4 pounds 62 pence according to google). I make $22 an hour. If I didn't have my husband's salary and benefits, I would be struggling and (like many of my coworkers) have to work two or three jobs to make ends meet. A friend of mine at work's idea of splurging was buying a Netflix account for herself ($5 a month). She can barely afford to buy food and pay for rent but doesn't qualify for any kind of government assistance.
We have the exact same thing going on here right now with unemployment. They judge the unemployment rate by who is collecting unemployment benefits but most of the people unemployed here aren't eligible for it so the number is way way off. In the US unemployment cannot go on indefinitely. The benefits last for two years after you're terminated from a job and actually it's a pretty decent amount of money - nearly full salary in some cases but that's because the employer has to pay it. While you're employed they pay "unemployment insurance", so that when you're fired, the insurance company will pay your unemployment benefits. But because it's such a great benefit, it's VERY hard to get. It's where the sick thing we were talking about comes in. If the employer writes you up a lot and there's a lot of notations in your file about poor performance or theft etc, you likely won't get unemployment. You do have to actively show that you are trying to find a job but it doesn't matter how much your spouse makes because it's all government money.
Child care costs are ridiculous here as well. In fact, when my husband and I have children, our plan is for me to stop working because I would just be turning around and giving my entire salary to a childcare worker.
The worst part with job loss here is the loss of medical benefits (if you got them in the first place). You can do something called COBRA, which means you can pay for your health insurance at the monthly rate that your employer was paying for you to have it. That can go on for either 18 months or 2 years, I don't remember. When my husband had to do that, it was nearly $2000 a month. Not really an expense you want when you're out of work :( Healthcare is a huge expense here. Without health insurance, my husband's medication infusions would cost us well over $5000. My friend had to declare bankruptcy because she landed in a hospital with a severe kidney infection without any medical insurance. The hospital bills were too much and she lost her home.
There is no government pension here at all. When you turn 65 you're eligible for medicare which is government health insurance. Pensions or retirement fund are offered through your employer. I guess the difference here is that my employer pays tax on me. I may be part time. I may make a small hourly wage, but my employer pays taxes on me and I pay taxes on my salary.
Every system seems to have its huge drawbacks! Interesting to see the parallels. We have the same complaint here about those on welfare and those who aren't. The people who work hard and make a living complain that those receiving government assistance are leeching off us and, sometimes, that's true. There are dozens of ways of cheating the system. For example, if I was a stay at home mother and I was not legally married to my husband, I would be eligible for all sorts of government assistance and money even though I really don't need it. There's also a huge illegal immigrant complaint here.
Question? Here in the US we have a social security number, basically a government ID number that's used for everything government related (our taxes, etc). Does the UK have some equivalent of that?
no subject
Date: 2013-08-22 10:23 am (UTC)It's used for the tax and national insurance contributions we pay on wages, getting any benefits (sickness, maternity, unemployment, old age pension, free school meals for your children etc).
We also have an National Health service number, but almost nobody knows what their one is and I can't think of any time when you'd be needed to know it. It's more something that doctor use as a reference on your notes so if your GP send you to the hospital for something they can make sure they got the right notes.
For pay over here the minimum wage here the rate varies by age.
Year 21 and over 18 to 20 Under 18 Apprentice(under 19)
2013 £6.31 £5.03 £3.72 £2.68
What is considered a liveable wage is £7.45 for most of the UK and £8.55 in London.
Even at 7.45 an hour you'd still only be on £14,334 a year, and given that even a very cheap 1 bed flat in a fairly run down part of town in a cheap northern city is about 50,000 and banks will only lend 3.5 X salary for a mortgage worth up 90% of the property value, they wouldn't be able buy a house, unless they'd saved up a reasonable sized deposit. Which is difficult as rents are high, often more than the mortgage payments on a house/flat of the same size. So young people often still live with their parents or once they've got a girl/boy friend rent somewhere together. Flat/house sharing with somebody who's not a partner isn't that common unless you are a student or are so down on your luck you are renting a room in a shared house with complete strangers sharing the kitchen/communal area if you've got one. In London the same flat would be more like £100k.
It's hard to compare whether minimum wages are good or know without really knowing what they will buy.
For example here if you had a full time 37 hours a week job you'd get 14333 before tax and NI, people usually get paid monthly here, so 1194 per month. The tax of about £82 and National Insurance of £65. Leaving £1047. Rent of about £500, gas and electricity 100, water £20, TV licence fee 35. Car insurance and tax (assuming small car with an engine of less than 1.4 litres and a good no claims bonus) £75. 2 tanks of petrol (45 litres or 9.9 gallons) £120.
(Petrol and diesel is very expensive over here 1 gallon of petrol costs £6.30 or about $9.84)
By the time a person has paid all this there isn't really much left for anything other than food. It's very difficult to more than just survive on a single minimum wage job if you live by yourself. Supporting 2 people or even a family on it is very tough to do for more than a short period of time.
The price of fuel is one of the reasons we have so many buses over here. I gave up my car four years ago because it cost me £200 a month to run (tax, insure fuel) while I could get a county wide bus ticket for as many trips as I wanted each month for £45. A lot of people have done the same since the recession, the number of cars on the road has fallen by about 3% despite the population growing.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-22 10:37 am (UTC)Council tax is what we pay for things upkeep of the roads, the refuse collectors, road sweepers, police and fire, street lights.)
The tax we pay in our pay is called income tax and that is for paying for things at national level like defense or education.
National Insurance is what we pay to keep the NHS running and our state pension. The full state pension isn't very much, for thirty years contributing to the pension you'd only get £144 a week plus a free bus pass, and if they'd not got anything other than this they don't have to pay council tax.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-22 02:12 pm (UTC)It's very similar here. Rent here is generally monthly and in this area a crappy studio apartment in a basement will run you about $1000 a month if you don't want to be in an area where you could end up being shot which is basically your entire salary on minimum wage. My brother used to be a teacher in NYC, he pulled in like 50k a year and was still unable to afford to move out of my parent's home.
My husband is in an excellent salary job and we live in an expensive neighborhood. Before taxes, $130,000 is an excellent salary (and damned near riches in other parts of the country) but in this area its just enough to live. We have $14,000 a year in property taxes, $2000 in mortgage payments. Our electricity/gas is $500. My husband works for the local cable company so our television/internet/phone is free. Mobiles $200 a month. Car insurance (determined in this country by location and age and car type) is $250 a month. My car is leased (a mini cooper love that bloody car) at $500 a month. My husband's car is similar. Food is a massive expense. I spend about $400 a month on food, easily. Even though we make a good livable income... we have very little left over every month for saving anything.
They tax your car? Is it the petrol use? Here we have sales tax, so when you buy/lease a car that's when you pay tax but not afterwards. You pay tax on the petrol. Each gallon of petrol has taxes associated with it but it's worked into the per gallon price. Which is now around $3.50 per gallon. I always yell at people when they bitch about gas prices. I'm always like "Go look up what they pay in England... Do NOT complain!"
A lot of our buses here run on natural gas. Having a car on Long Island is a necessity. We may be a stone's throw from NYC but the us system is extremely poor out here in the suburbs. Once you get into NYC, a car becomes unnecessary and downright superfluous. Many people who live in NYC don't own cars at all.
Thank you so much for the information about the numbers! I tried looking it up and came up with absolutely nothing. Here, a social security number is three numbers, a dash, two numbers, another dash and then four numbers. It's used for everything. Actually, when I clock in at work? I have to enter the last four digits of my SSN. We guard that number like gold here. If someone gets a hold of it they can do all sorts of identity theft stuff... open credit cards... take out loans...
So fascinating learning about all these things!
no subject
Date: 2013-08-22 04:12 pm (UTC)So a new driver, age 18, who lives in a rough area and has to park the car at the side of the road because they have no official parking spot/drive might find their insurance cost more than a £1500 per year.
While somebody who has been driving for years, hasn't made a claim on their insurance, lives in a nicer area and had a parking spot/drive way might end up paying about £600 for the same level of insurance cover.
The tax we pay on the car is something called vehicle excise duty, it's a bit vague on what it actually pays for, it originally used to be for the up keep of the roads, but now it just goes to the government to be spent on whatever needs it. You have to pay the tax or your car can't be legally driven anywhere. You show that you have paid with the tax disc. Which is a small round piece of paper that you display in the bottom drivers side of the windscreen. Tax discs you you are covered to. So it will have something like 31-01-2014 meaning that you've paid your tax until the end of January.
You also have to have an MOT for the car. The MOT test (ministry of transport test) is something you have to do once a year for all cars more than 3 years old. You take it into the garage and it's checked to make sure it's still road worthy. If it passes you get a piece of paper to keep in your records for the car, if it fails you have to get the car fixed to a level where it will pass, as without an MOT the car cannot legally be driven.
Then if you want breakdown cover that's extra again, although this at least is optional. We have a number of companies over here but the main two are the AA (automobile association) and the RAC (Royal Automobile Club), basically you pay them about £120 a year and they will come out and try to fix your car where ever you break down. You have to still pay for parts, but if they can fix it labour is covered by the yearly fee. If they can't fix it they will either tow you home or to the nearest garage - it's your choice which. This is even true if home is a long way.
I was in a friends car once which broken down and we about 150 miles from home, and they (AA) came, looked at it, were unable to fix it, so they towed us the 150 miles back.
For things like pay, the job I work (and have for nearly 10 years pay £8.60 an hour.) I work part time, and take home 13,500 before tax. Now because this is considered very low to support a family on (there's me, my husband and son who'd nearly 4) I get what is called tax credits from the government, which is an extra couple of hundred a month to take us above what is considered the poverty line if you have children (the point where you earn less than 60% of the national average, it's 50% if you don't)
The stupid thing is the figure given as the national average income for the UK is actually more than most people earn - It's dragged higher by a few people on very high salaries. The national average is £26k, so the 60% is 15600 per year.
25% of all working people earn less than the living wage 15,500. All households who are entirely reliant on benefits will be officially under the poverty line.
Salaries tend not to be that high even for professionals. A police constable or firefighter will make between 21k and 35k depending on number of years service. A fully qualified teacher will make at most about 26k, while headteacher (the equivalent of a principle in a US school would make 45-60k, although would be more if they were at somewhere like Eton - a school where the fees run into the many thousands where the Royals send there sons to be educated). A shop assistant will be lucky to take home more than 14k even if they've been in the job years. A hairdresser about 15-16k, A care assistant will make about 16-18k, while a nurse will get about 25k. Even a senior doctor who runs his own practice will be unlikely to be on more than 60-80k, unless he's a top surgeon at a London teaching hospital.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-22 04:40 pm (UTC)All that aside, it's still a lot better than it was. I remember growing up in the 1980's, when there was a lot less welfare available and some of the people working for the local authorities had an interesting idea of what was essential or not - like heating or a washing machine.
Living in a council house with no central heating, going out to the woodland at the back of the housing development and helping my mum cut up fallen branches to burn on the little stove so we had hot water (we did have a gas cooker to cook on thankfully), my mum selling her jewelry to buy things for us and get cooker repaired. It was tough especially with my younger brother in and out of one of the big London children's hospitals because he needed a kidney transplant. Being home schooled because my mum couldn't risk me being at school when my brother was called in hospital, or bringing all the childhood germs back - things as simple as a cold often mean it was in hospital for days, my mum away with him and me sleeping on my grans sofa.
Writing this out makes it sound far worse it was or perhaps than it seemed at the time. We survived it and the council finally relented and fixed up some central heating for my mum and my brother when she became a pensioner a few years back.
Perhaps it's why I have a soft spot for characters who've had it tough.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-22 08:25 pm (UTC)Hmm, our road taxes come from everywhere. The property taxes on our home go for the local roads (maintenance and snow removal etc). State taxes from our salaries also go towards roads. Bridges and tunnels generally have tolls associated with them (though not always). The tax you're paying reminds me of our registrations here. According to NY state, my car has to be registered with them every three years. There's a sticker that goes on the windscreen. It also needs to be inspected to meet state standards every single year (emissions standards and road worthy just like with your MOT) even if the car is brand new. My mini is a 2013 but it needed an inspection and it will need one next year as well. Those standards vary from state to state though. There's also a sticker for this on the windscreen. There are often police check points set up randomly on well travelled side roads where the cops will slow you down and check your stickers. An unregistered car can't be parked anywhere except a private driveway.
That's hilarious... We have AAA for towing etc. Many car companies will offer roadside assistance but will only let you tow the vehicle back to their garage and getting your car fixed at a dealership is really expensive.
Most of people on government assistance in this country are still living below the poverty line. I don't know if it's the same over in the UK but there is a huge stigma here attached to government assistance. I wish I had statistics for you but I don't. Salaries here tend to be outrageous for some things yet not for others. A teacher at our local school district with tenure can make upwards of $80,000 a year... but a teacher in the inner city will make about half that. Generally the benefit here to being a policeman or firefighter is that, unlike the UK, after only 20 years of service you can retire with full pension and benefits. If you're working in NYC, you'll start out with I think around 40k per year. Physicians here make absolutely crazy money. A board certified specialist in a narrow field like a hand surgeon will make upwards of $200k a year. A veterinarian can expect half that. My sister-in-law is a shop worker (here we call it "working in retail" or "retail worker") and makes very little money. If she were an assistant manager or manager she could expect 30-40k.
When my husband and I were considering moving to the UK, I was looking up what my salary would be over there and if my license would transfer easily and the tax system confused me a great deal. Many of the job postings listed salaries but I was unsure how the taxes were removed etc. Here, taxes are taken out automatically, and at the end of the fiscal year we need to file to see if we owe the government (state and federal) more money or if they government owes us money.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-22 09:22 pm (UTC)Taxes are taken out automatically here too. We don't have to fill in anything at the end of the tax year (which runs from 1st April to 31st March rather than from Jan-Dec like just about everywhere else in Europe), the Inland Revenue/Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (which is the government department that deals with taxation and is usually abbreviated to IR and HMRC) sort it out and if they owe you money they will refund it straight back into your wages - this is often very very slow. If you need to pay them more tax they send you an invoice and you can either pay it in one lump sum or if it's a lot spread it out over the year by them collecting slightly higher tax from your pay each month until it's paid back.
National Insurance is also taken automatically.
Tax is paid on all earnings over £9440 at a rate of 20% so if you earned 20k you'd pay tax of 20% on £10,560. So the year's tax for a 20k job would be £2212.
If you earn over £32k you pay 20% on everything between 9440 and 32011 and everything over 32011 at 40%. People who earn more than 150,000 a year pay 50% on everything over this.
Most people in the UK don't earn enough to pay anything other than the basic 20%. Out the 30 million people currently working in the UK only 4 million of them earn over 32k. According to government stats on higher rate tax payers.
Anybody earning under 9440 a year doesn't pay tax. Anybody earning under 5660 a year doesn't pay national insurance either.
I mostly know these figures because I work for the local council pension fund, so we deal with this sort of stuff. Generally though you don't actually need to know how any of it is deducted as it all gets done for you. Although it's occasionally worth checking that the figures look right as HMRC have been known to get it wrong sometimes.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-09 08:00 pm (UTC)I bet Tom looked lovely outside his tent in the early morning <3
My resolve to ration the chapters is rapidly disintegrating :(
*g*