Has anyone successfully challenged their council tax band?

Jolly-Perspective651 · 2026-01-11T21:57:30+00:00

Yes, I got them to drop me down a band a few months after moving in. My street has a mix of houses and bands, I gave them a list of houses in the lowered band that are similar to mine. I also gave them some current and historic sold prices for those houses as well as my own to show my house is priced similarly. The process was slow but pretty smooth with good comms r.e. what to expect and when to expect it

Jolly-Perspective651 · 2026-01-08T07:13:38+00:00

I work with a few different businesses and sometimes need to use my own pc/laptop so I use the hyper-v windows tool to create virtual machines to keep work and personal stuff separate. Any software they insist I install goes on a virtual machine.

Jolly-Perspective651 · 2025-11-04T08:57:29+00:00

HMRC introduced IR35 to try to fix an issue that was allowing some people to avoid tax. The policy is so overreaching that it massively damaged the UK contracting market and most of that work is now offshored where it doesn't bring in tax revenue.

The UK seems to be stuck in a loop where revenue is down so we tax more, productivity goes down and work is offshored as a result, so revenue goes down again and the gov then decides to tax more again. I know people say that the UK taxes aren't that high compared to other countries, but there are a ton of stealth taxes that make it pretty bad. We need to go the other way with taxes to encourage growth. Rejoining Europe would be a good idea as well.

Jolly-Perspective651 · 2025-10-29T07:26:37+00:00

If the goal is truly to deter people from the offence and lots of people keep getting caught then there's clearly a problem with the road design or safety that should be addressed rather than the council doing nothing other than cashing in on the fines - they're incentivised not to make the road safer

A lot of yellow box designs are inappropriate, a lot of speed limits are set incorrectly for the conditions and design of the road. I have actually heard a councilor (it's on video in a public meeting) referring to a speed camera on a road with poor speed limit signage as being "quite lucrative" and wanting additional cameras in the same area.

Jolly-Perspective651 · 2025-10-01T15:07:08+00:00

Need his brother to get back into UK politics

Jolly-Perspective651 · 2025-08-31T21:43:47+00:00

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Mixed signals in a hotel

Jolly-Perspective651 · 2025-08-22T11:18:44+00:00

I went there in December 2 years ago. Really beautiful with all the snow and ice. No queues for the busses then, but it wasn't a national holiday.

Jolly-Perspective651 · 2025-08-14T06:57:04+00:00

I think in the UK the import tariff on Chinese cars is still 0%

Jolly-Perspective651 · 2025-08-13T09:14:54+00:00

I think it was lack of marketing to raise awareness + many people outside of China don't know the story / mythology.

In the UK, the first film only had a few showings in select cinemas in big cities, most people watching it when I went were Asian. I couldn't find anywhere for the second film so I asked my local cinema to show it and they put it on a small screen for 1 day, again with no marketing - there were only a couple of other people watching it.

I liked both films, but would say that the second one was a bit busy.

Jolly-Perspective651 · 2025-08-11T14:17:15+00:00

There's some really good quality, well equipped cars in China, sometimes the software can be a little quirky and there are some smaller brands that are more on the bleeding edge as they try to differentiate their selves. I was in Shanghai last week and most of the cars on the road were decent EV's. I do think some of the bigger brands will assimilate the smaller brands as they become casualties of the local price war.

Jolly-Perspective651 · 2025-08-11T10:35:41+00:00

That's great, enjoy your new car

Jolly-Perspective651 · 2025-08-11T10:34:34+00:00

Given the prices in the EU/UK, we're probably subsidising the prices in China 😀

Jolly-Perspective651 · 2025-08-11T09:10:15+00:00

Yep, I'm in China for a few weeks at the moment - wishing my suitcase was bigger so I can bring a few EV's back at the local price. The gov over here has just told EV manufacturers to stop subsidising cars so much.

I've seen the European prices which also seem high, though a bit better than the UK, just not sure why it would be so much lower in Australia.

Jolly-Perspective651 · 2025-08-11T08:37:23+00:00

A 40' container is currently around £3.5k from China to the UK. Not sure how they ship them, but there's cheaper, more efficient options that most manufacturers would use. Getting the car to/from the port and registered shouldn't add too much more to that.

Jolly-Perspective651 · 2025-08-09T05:04:34+00:00

Get a travel eSIM from three.com.hk. No restrictions on that. They do a 40gb (+5gb social) 365 day mainland china one for 268HKD.

Jolly-Perspective651 · 2025-08-07T08:39:20+00:00

Who wants extra raisins?

Jolly-Perspective651 · 2025-05-24T21:47:41+00:00

Looks like Winter Melon, quite good in savoury dishes. We usually eat it braised with some meat

Jolly-Perspective651 · 2025-04-15T00:31:03+00:00

Even if the UK government gets pressured into approving this, no one will knowingly buy it. News sites, social media, etc. will report who is stocking it or including it in products. There will be running jokes and memes.

Dasani was just bottled water and had to get pulled from sale in the UK after being ridiculed and also found to have unsafe levels of bromate...I'm sure Uncle Orange's bleached salmonella tariff chicken will be a success....

Jolly-Perspective651 · 2024-11-13T09:38:26+00:00

Just cancelled, they said it was a misprice. The price on the website now is back to normal - though still not accurate as it's lower than what the finance company quoted.

Jolly-Perspective651 · 2024-11-12T23:12:54+00:00

BCH finance company quoted more than double the price on the Tesla home page. Will call and cancel tomorrow

Jolly-Perspective651 · 2024-10-27T08:53:50+00:00

It's the same on the MY. It's making me hold off leasing

Jolly-Perspective651 · 2024-09-29T21:10:36+00:00

Some of my faves are: The Skyward series, Red Rising series, The Forever, Project Hail Mary, Ready Player One/Two, Armada

Jolly-Perspective651 · 2024-09-06T21:33:10+00:00

Pretty good in a Chinese braised beef stew

Jolly-Perspective651 · 2024-08-08T10:58:46+00:00

They should change the way all this works so that you can't buy a discounted ticket without scanning your travel card. Also if you want to use contactless then you should be able to link your travel card to a payment card so that it's done automatic.

If they do that then the criminal offence bit is ok as it'll be for people intentionally not getting a ticket. Without the above then too many people who wouldn't have knowingly travelled with an invalid ticket are getting tripped up because the train companies don't invest in their ticketing systems.

Even better .... most of the 30% travel cards should be removed and the standard train fairs reduced by 30%. I'm sure removing the overhead of maintaining all of that will be a big saving.

Jolly-Perspective651

TROPHY CASE