Crazy Cambridge HR stuff

I ran into two wacky Cambridge money related things which I felt like sharing.

First I got this email from the Cambridge HR department:

There were some changes in 2008 to the UK tax regime for individuals whose permanent home is overseas. You may well have heard news reports or seen media coverage concerning a new £30,000 annual levy for individuals who are non UK domiciled (domicile is best described as the country where an individual is regarded as having their permanent home which may not necessarily be the country where they are living from year to year).

You have been identified as a University employee who may be non UK domiciled i.e. who may have their permanent home overseas and who may only intend to work in the UK for a limited period of time.
...

Needless to say this freaked me out. It ends up that it only affects people from outside the country who are planning to live in the UK longer than 7 (or 9) years and who have foreign income as wall as UK income. It also seems like they are going after the rich types mostly. Since that is not me, I don't have to pay it and thus will not be living on the streets soon.

Second, I found out that the Cambridge/UK redundancy policy is downright cruel. For non-UK people, redundancy is like severance pay. It is 1 week for every complete year of employment. Quite literally. If you worked 2 years and 364 days then you get 2 weeks. They do not round up. In a hard economic time like this it is a heartless policy that could only come from greedy bureaucratic number crunchers. The bottomline is to make sure your contract lasts from start date to end date.

That's enough money fun for now.

St. Catharine's May Ball

There are a few fancy events in Cambridge which seem to be integral parts of the University and College culture. The common ones are punting events on the Cam, College formal dinners, and Evensongs. These all pale in comparison to the uncommon ones, the May Balls. These are extravagent affairs which last all night long and have live entertainment, games, food and drink.

The St. Catharine's May Ball was no exception. The theme was Narnia this year and there were people in character to greet guests as they arrived. There were 5 main stages on the Catz grounds with live music running on all of them for much of the evening. Some of the other notable things included: belly dancing, ice skating, fresh donuts, fire juggling, mechanical bull riding, unlimited drinks, lots of music and dancing, and a huge variety of foods from pizza to pig roasts to ice cream.

Some of the highlights for me included the tarot card reading (not that I believe in that, but I wanted to try it, I got a princess of swords card which means I need to cut out something, possibly obeying laws, I forget), the acapella band from Oxford (great show), the chocolate fountain (yummy), and the juggling where I got to participate and had a bread stick knocked out of mouth (and I was not even hurt). We whimped out and left around 3:30 am but the ball continued until 6ish at which point the survivors picture was taken (or so I hear). I was sad to miss that but Becky was not feeling well so we will have to catch that next time. It was certainly a night to remember and one of the many bonuses for students at Cambridge University.

The Eagle Pub

I went out to the pub with some coworkers Friday night. This is sort of the common thing to do as far as I can tell since all pubs seem to be packed on Friday nights. We went down to The Eagle which is one of the most well known and central pubs in Cambridge. This one is particularly famous for hosting World War 2 pilots and being the place where Watson and Crick announced the DNA double helix. It is a nice pub with a fairly relaxed atmosphere (not unsual really) but is pretty crowded. I would say this is a must see for visitors to Cambridge. It is typical english pub sized so there is not a whole lot to see but it is worth stopping in for a pint.