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From an ex-taxman's perspective, the crazy thing was to think that you could ever distinguish essentials from anything else for tax purposes without endless guerrilla warfare at the margins. Friends of mine spent years struggling through the courts over whether "Jaffa cakes" were cakes (zero-rated) or biscuits (standard-rated): the answer, for what it's worth, is that they are cakes.

I have always said if blokes had periods ,prices of those essential items would drop. It's a man's world. And no I am not a feminist.

opas wrote:I have always said if blokes had periods ,prices of those essential items would drop. It's a man's world. And no I am not a feminist.

Whether prices drop is entirely down to the nous of women. Have you tried Amazon:whenever I buy razor blades there, they try to sign me up to a regular order every month at a significantly lower price? I have never coughed because I make my blades last forever, but if my needs were more predictable, it would be an excellent deal.

Lol, that is such a typical bloke answer. Regular!!! One has to buy the damned product when needed.

Blokes can grow a beard and trim as necessary. I am sure your wife/ lady friend will agree with me. Life gets better as one gets older .....!!!!

opas wrote:Lol, that is such a typical bloke answer. Regular!!! One has to buy the damned product when needed.

Blokes can grow a beard and trim as necessary. I am sure your wife/ lady friend will agree with me. Life gets better as one gets older .....!!!!

But the need to shave for us blokes just continues. And it is pretty much a need. I tried to grow a beard once, but couldn't cope with feeling dirty and itchy. No doubt that wears off over time, but you still continue to look, almost always, like a self-satisfied jerk.

Men with beards almost always look like self-satisfied jerks.....
so therefore.....
men WITHOUT beards do NOT almost always look like self-satisfied jerks.
Discuss...

sue and paul wrote:Men with beards almost always look like self-satisfied jerks.....
so therefore.....
men WITHOUT beards do NOT almost always look like self-satisfied jerks.
Discuss...

People who are in fact self-satisfied jerks generally look like self-satisfied jerks. The fatal thing about beards is that they make you look like a self-satisfied jerk even if fundamentally (somewhere underneath all the hair) you are not.

Obviously this a touch subjective on my part. But my old dad, who wasn't otherwise one for sweeping philosophical generalisations, always taught me that there's generally something wrong about men with beards. It's obviously not perfectly accurate: but if you just want to do a first rough sift, with minimum expense of time and effort, I've found it works well enough.

Prat .No offence to your dad.

They're a funny thing though, beards, aren't they? I'm not talking from personal experience of course but designer stubble and a bit of a beard looks good on cute young men, and even cute older men, but as soon as you get past a certain age and a certain width, it just looks unshaven no matter how you package it. I wonder why? I don't actually have an answer to this.....just musing.

I must be in a minority as I love beards on men. George Clooney looked amazing with a beard then he is pretty good without one too.

Enough about beards. Let's talk about tattoos. Now that's something that should be VAT exempt.

Brilliant, VAT. from essentials to Tatoos, don't forget the nipple piecing or vagazzles! Just what the world needs on its VAT free list.

Now that is something I could talk about! Tattoos not the things on Opas' list

p.s. what is wrong with being a feminist?

Yuk!

Hubby has a few and I don't really like them,one of my daughters had one done secretly cos she knows my thoughts on them.Some of my UK friends whinge they are skint- then go and have another inking.. Your body ,your choice , but don't wait for me to gush and say how lovely they are.

Owens88 wrote:p.s. what is wrong with being a feminist?

Nothing , I just have hairy legs and pits cos I'm lazy

I just let my 18 year old daughter read this, she is histerrical laughing.Her comment is if you want to use a razor to shave your face 2 or 3 times that's your choice, one can only use feminine hygieneproducts once..

Owens88 wrote:p.s. what is wrong with being a feminist?

Nothing at all. Who said there was? I'm reluctant to say I'm a feminist - it smacks too much of "I feel your pain". But to misquote Jimmy Carter, I have committed feminism in my heart.

opas wrote:Prat .No offence to your dad.

Don't worry. You'd be forty-odd years too late for him. And i am not sure he was entirely serious. As the clché goes, some of his best friends wore beards.

Kate wrote:They're a funny thing though, beards, aren't they? I'm not talking from personal experience of course but designer stubble and a bit of a beard looks good on cute young men, and even cute older men, but as soon as you get past a certain age and a certain width, it just looks unshaven no matter how you package it. I wonder why? I don't actually have an answer to this.....just musing.

I think it's entirely a matter of convention. In a generally clean-shaven society, wearing a beard tends to signal that you think you are a bit special (or a jihadist: a whole other issue, but likely to intensify "beardism").Either because you think you look better, or more virile, or at least more interesting, in a beard, or because you are above such considerations. In a generally-bearded society, it's the other way about.

Some people have sufficient "glamour" to rise above that - "cute young men", George Clooney - but most of us don't.

I say "tends to signal" because I have no idea why people actually choose beards (except a couple of people I knew, long dead, who were badly injured world-war bomber crew: for them, I think it was essentially an act of courtesy to those around them). But I think there is a natural tendency for people to "over-interpret" such things: we are hard-wired to assess people by their faces.

Lol. My hubby has sported a beard since about 1986 - the reason? He earned his HGV licence , getting up a 3 or 4 am he would probably cut his throat shaving, if I hadn't stragled him for cleaning out a razor at that hour. I encouraged him to keep his beard cos on the occasion he did decide to shave it off for a holiday he looked younger than me and our daughter cried cos she didn't recognise him!

Holidays are interesting. When I was a bureaucrat, and people used to take a whole month off in the summer, it was a bit of a game to guess who would come back with what.

My boss at one time used to have the most ludicrous comb-over, and came back without it, but with a beard. I admired him enormously for losing the comb-over, but a bit less so for gaining the beard. It made him look as if his face had been turned upside down.