Tax tax blah blah blah. It's not often that it's worth paying all that much attention to jibbery Government statements on tax and the like, but now and then it's something to get excited about. The Poorhouse has nothing against tax as a concept, being a great fan of at least some variants of the welfare state, but the amount of money squandered away into pointless, even harmful, stuff by Governments is something of a deterrent to the joy of giving. So it's nice to get a brucie-bonus back.

This month, gang, if you (as a UK worker) earn between £6035 and £40835 per year, check for a bonus £60 in your wages! Whoo!

Things are worth different amounts of money. Shocking, the Poorhouse knows. But as a measure of this, consider the measure of "monetary density" as defined over at evilmadscientist.com.

"Normal" density of a substance, as all you GCSE science-educated people will know, is mass divided by volume. Lead is more dense in this case than say feathers. But what about in terms of monetary density: value in currency over mass?

Haven't we all had that embarrassing phone call with tech support? "Hello user, please tell me your password so we can proceed.". Aside from some rather immense insecurities that often come with such a request, it seems that in at least 77.3% of the time, the password you have to go is something to the effect of "[COMPANY YOU'RE SPEAKING TO]-is-shit-01". Best, of course, done when it's the helpdesk of the company you "loyally" work for. Well, it'd be awkward if you cared, the Poorhouse guesses.

Apparently, some people do.

From yesterday's rabid tabloid campaign to a different campaign, this time by the hater's favourite newspaper, the Daily Mail. Only the really exceptional thing is that the Poorhouse actually supports this one. Having just 2 minutes ago eaten half of a 2-course meal made for four himself, an addiction for moneysaving expertise and an inherent hatred of the larger type of corporation, this was a born winner.

So here it is: "Shoppers 'cheated' as supermarket brands downsize". Yes, it's true, and not just old men moaning about stuff, food has got smaller recently. In size, that is, not price, what with UK food inflation having hit a record 13.7% last month.

Tax, never a dull moment where that's concerned right? Actually something has caught many UK tax-payers attention in recent time, and quite rightly so - the abolishment of the 10p tax rate.

It's far too complicated to go into, but the deal is that when you earn up to X amount in the UK, some of your pay will be taxed such that 10% goes to the Government rather than for your personal pleasure. Above that value to a point, any surplus money gets 22% taken by the exchequer. For no earthly reason Gordon Brown et al. have decided it's a good idea to reduce the 22% to 20%...and pay for it by eliminating the 10% rate. This might all sound like inane complicated numbers, but really this is a properly unfair move that even an idiot can see hurts the poorest in society.

These days with more mobile working, more business travellers and an ever greater need for those at the top to steal what could be their employees' wages to fund their restaurant / mistress / coke habit there are a serious number of expense accounts around. These, for the un-initiated, are what one charges business expenses to in cases where you aren't expected to pay for them yourself, which should be in every case that is vaguely to do with non-recreation.

For the more lowly peons, such as the Poorhouse, the whole company credit card idea is out. Rather one has to take on personal debt then claim it back. This is a bit annoying in some ways so it pays to try and make the most of the opportunities for personal profit.

You all know how much the Poorhouse loves his Quidco, and a few other cashy-cashback sites. If he couldn't steal gain a profit of 1% of his other-wised expensed train tickets per transaction, the world would be a sad place. To be serious though, you can rake in serious money in the world of cashback.

Kathryn, from a site called giveortake.com was kind enough to drop the Poorhouse a line. She runs a site in many ways similar to quidco. You do the whole click-through-links-to-retailer business, and you get 100% of the commission, minus an annual £5 fee. Where it is slightly different though is a) Amazon is on it (2.5% cashback at time of writing) and b) the "give" bit of "giveortake" refers to the fact you can choose to donate your cashback directly to charity through it.

As you'll have heard, the UK Government in recent times has loved throwing around bits of extreme valuable and confidential data about us, its mere citizens, to the four winds / identity thieves ([1],[2],[3],[4] [5] amongst many, many others.

This bothered quite a few people, but not, it seemed that should-be-the-most-annoying-person-ever but sadly is sometimes really quite funny real man that is Jeremy Clarkson. Well, not at the time anyway.

Social networking, dotcom profitery and boobies. These are cornerstones on which the modern web is built. So imagine the Poorhouse joy upon discovering myfreeimplants. Ohmygod. Leveraging bits of the Facebook et al. model of chat, pictures and fantasies of all sorts of poking but repackaging it in a way that has an undoubted profit model for itself, the site exists to let women get bigger breasts via surgical implants for free. And men get...erm..."interaction with real girls".

No hard-hitting news, medical or otherwise, has come to the attention of the Poorhouse's massively insightful and genius-like brain today. This is probably mainly because he was semi-conscious working very hard most of the day. No matter, instead you can have some random ramblings, just like the Poorhouse in real life.

Firstly, how to beat Marks and Spencers currency exchange passport rule and no doubt breach international security. Imagine the situation: you need to change your currency quickish so you can get out of the country speedily. So you go into M&S' Bureau de Change and ask for £50 worth of Euros on your debit card. They say you need your passport to do this, but because you are a normal non-insane citizen you do not carry it around with you. What to do? It's raining outside, and you don't want to catch a chill.