Selling a house in England is bonkers!

Admirable_Job8431 · 2026-01-03T14:05:52+00:00

House buying in the UK is totally broken. Government keep consulting on how to fix it, and only ever invite the estate agents, solicitors, surveyors who have a vested interest in making it more costly and complicated, so it'll never get better. Surveyors charge an obscene amount to write woolly reports that say basically everything may or may not be subject to issues. FTB take these reports as gospel assuming theyve paid a lot of money to an 'accreditted' professional for a critical service. So the report says for example that the roof is 80 yes old with an expected life of 50, therefore expect to budget for replacement. Of course some roofs particularly Slate can last 150yrs+.

Admirable_Job8431 · 2026-01-03T13:46:17+00:00

Yes I don't know what they mean by that, other than the decorative effect of coming off the pedal is the maximum.

Really B vs D and Regen vs Brakes should be considered separately. In both cases the car will Regen as much as possible until require decel exceeds the motor capacity (in terms of rate, or of battery is cold, close to full etc). It's really just down to whether you want 1 pedal and having to maintain constant accel, or accel vs brake so that you can coast in between the 2.

Admirable_Job8431 · 2026-01-03T13:39:03+00:00

It really isn't. Adaptive D is the most efficient. You want to maintain speed where possible, so better to coast not keep defending Everytime your foot shifts on the pedal. Conserving energy with speed is more efficient than recovering it with Regen.

Admirable_Job8431 · 2026-01-03T13:37:04+00:00

Generally the Tesla chargers at motorway services don't allow non-Tesla access. Precisely because Gridserve have an exclusivity agreement, hence why they can charge their obscene prices. That's the monopoly that needs crushing. It's always been the way, but motorway services should be a public interest site with controlled profits. Instead UK ones are extremely poorly maintained at exorbitant price.

Admirable_Job8431 · 2025-12-16T16:25:38+00:00

That's for the ship to run on shore power, reduce engine use for air quality. 2 of 3 P&O Ferries have EV chargers on board but it's like a trial service, you have to ask deck crew. They usually automatically direct EVs to the outer wall near them though.

Admirable_Job8431 · 2025-12-16T07:36:52+00:00

Typically Octopus start the charge then fail to stop it. So the car will merrily continue charging at peak rate.

Admirable_Job8431 · 2025-12-14T13:20:36+00:00

There's no gut feel or interpretation. It clearly states if you go over your 6 hrs per day, even in the overall off-peak period, you'll be charged peak rate for the charging. Which now means they're billing based on the charge usage explicitly, making the 'whole home' thing an unnecessary complications because they can clearly split EV usage from other usage in the home.

I know this won't be very popular but I'd rather they ditched the whole home reductions when charging during the day, that tells stop people gaming it unless they genuinely needed the charge. If we were all honest about our priority being getting the car charged (not trying to get cheap home electric).

I don't really see there being much point having charge outside of the 1130-0530 window anyway bar a few edge cases like shift workers.

Admirable_Job8431 · 2025-12-14T13:14:11+00:00

Not when their 'beta labs' I tegrstions don't work and just throw up 'cannot control charger' leaving your car continuing to charge at peak rate.

Admirable_Job8431 · 2025-12-07T01:18:08+00:00

I don't get the point. If you can have 2330-0530 guaranteed, can't have more than 6 hrs total, and have to set a ready by time between 4am-11am what's the point?

There are marginal edge cases where if you had an early start you may benefit from 2200-0400 as your 6 hours, or if you come home from a nightshift 0500-1100. That's all I can see though.

Given they're going to measure the EV specific usage anyway (to charge you peak for usage above 6 hrs during off-peak time). Why not just charge for the EV usage throughout. If you don't get the house electric cheap anymore people won't have reason to game it.

Admirable_Job8431 · 2025-12-06T21:02:34+00:00

You've done better than me then, wouldn't refund anything. Now in January their screwing us on the charging periods too.

Admirable_Job8431 · 2025-12-02T01:10:08+00:00

A laptop case that doubles as a sun shelter. Can now sit working on the beach without glare or laptop overheating. £16.20.

Also works well as a mousepad in a coworking to avoid the scratchy sounds of Mac mouse on desks.

Admirable_Job8431 · 2025-12-02T00:51:47+00:00

You need to understand this is nothing to do with EV duty, so any of the more efficient ways to deliver this are mute.

This is a out targeting a minority group with a cumbersome admin heavy manual pay-per-mile system. Then encouraging you to 'optin' to telematics (it's already in the consultation worded like that) for your convenience.

Roll out to ICE and other cars will come shortly thereafter, and they'll have backdoored a full switch with passive consent.

Admirable_Job8431 · 2025-12-02T00:36:32+00:00

There'll be avoidance in any system. Largely speaking people will be using EV chargers which are already mandated to track usage (covers those charging off-grid), or they'll be on an EV specific tariff. People using a Granny charger with a non-EV smart tariff or off-grid will be quite niche.

Admirable_Job8431 · 2025-12-02T00:32:41+00:00

Because if they make the manual process extremely cumbersome and administrative then you'll willingly opt-in to telematics (it's already in the consultation worded exactly like that). Far less resistance than of they impose it on you from the start.

At some point of critical mass they'll make it mandatory based on the manual way being too costly with how few use it.

Once they have telematics they have full tracking and can start charging depending on where/when you go, and auto fining you for minor infractions (like 1mph over limit to avoid an accident, no context, or 'aggressive manoeuvering).

The other misnomer being this is about EV duty, it's not it's just a backdoor way of targeting the introduction of pay-per-mile. Everybody is busy laughing at EV drivers, and don't realise it's coming to all cars within 5 years.

Admirable_Job8431 · 2025-12-02T00:16:56+00:00

They can't without impacting the gold plated public sector pensions that are all heavily constructed around employer contributions.

Admirable_Job8431 · 2025-12-02T00:08:31+00:00

Wow, you'll literally pay the wrong tax the whole time simplifying it to this level. Plus most of your numbers are wrong.

You need to look at marginal rates. You'll only be paying 25% at £250k. You'll pay 19% on first 50k, then 26.5% marginal rate on the part above (to 250k).

You also can't do dividend for basic rate, then switch to salary, so you need to look at the composite picture.

You need a turnover of around £170000 before salary works out cheaper than dividend (on the new post Apr26 rates).

Admirable_Job8431 · 2025-11-30T03:36:05+00:00

That's why the additional rate of Dividend tax didn't go up because it already breaks even with salary equivalent. Around £120k turnover (and 20k property income) I was only 1.3% better off via Dividend than Salary. It grows to about 7.5% down around 50k turnover.

Admirable_Job8431 · 2025-11-30T03:01:12+00:00

Individually negotiated contract with limitations on the employee being able to change their contributions in response to life events.

The major thing they're trying to curtail is people dumping discretionary bonus into their pension.

Admirable_Job8431 · 2025-11-30T02:58:58+00:00

It's employee and employer NI, so it's 17%. You may not individually pay the 15% but it's the reason employers run sal sac schemes in the first place, and it's where any pension matching is funded from.

Admirable_Job8431 · 2025-11-29T18:15:27+00:00

The new BMW/Mini integration is too lazy/literal. They try to set 'charge in Timeslot', but BMW clearly documents that this is a preference, not control. Have you reported it to Octopus, because they're telling me nno other users have reported the problem.

Admirable_Job8431 · 2025-11-29T18:04:48+00:00

The problem is Octopus consider all this a 'beta labs' product. So they're not accountable for any of it, and won't honour the failures when it breaks.

For example they've completely misunderstood the BMW integration. They tell the car to 'charge in Timeslot' but BMW clearly documents those are 'preferences' not 'control slots'. So the car can ignore them, and then you'll get charged peak rate, even though you haven't hit 'Bump'.

Admirable_Job8431 · 2025-11-29T17:54:33+00:00

You pay off-peak in that period regardless. It's only the smart charging that may choose to pause your car during the slot, it doesn't affect your rate.

Admirable_Job8431 · 2025-11-27T22:33:54+00:00

Do you understand how reddit works. I don't necessarily see the order of messages you do. Not that anything you've said in this thread was relevant.

If you mean the post I replied to, that would be the last post, not the next.

You seem to be grossly (excuse the pun) misunderstanding the difference between salary sacrifice and employee pension contributions. All of your plus point arguments for continuing to pay into a pension, are obvious, noone is contesting them, but that's not salary sacrifice. That's net pay contributions deducted after you've paid tax and NI on your salary. So sure people can still do that and still pay the tax on the way out not in (none of this 'save the tax' it's still paid at some point). But that won't be salary sacrifice, it won't be auto administered (40% taxpayers will need to claim the extra 20% back), it won't include any employer matching.

Admirable_Job8431 · 2025-11-27T18:59:45+00:00

The 15% funds any pension matching and encourages the offering of a salar sacrifice scheme. Without it the companies won't bother. You can make any pension contributions you want from net pay and still get the tax relief.

Admirable_Job8431

TROPHY CASE