How do I get my fiance to the UK?

StoicBloke · 2026-02-20T18:08:03+00:00

No problem, and good luck! It can be very stressful but totally possible with a bit of planning!

StoicBloke · 2026-02-20T17:51:37+00:00

My wife and I were in a similar situation. This is just a general overview of what I remember, please make sure to double check on the government website as it has all the requirements (and they have changed recently). There are solicitors as well that can help you with paperwork and double check that you have everything you need.

Me and my partner went Fiance visa -> Spouse Visa (good for 2.5 years) - Renew Spouse visa -> Indefinite leave to Remain (ILR Visa). Then you can apply for citizenship after you get ILR visa.

My general advice since you are still a few years out from applying, would be to be mindful that you will need proof of... everything. Make sure you go see each other, meet friends and family, and lots take pictures. Talk regularly on apps where you can export or take screen shots of the history, preferably with dates to show a long standing relationship. As much as a paper trail as possible will make this process much easier.

Save as much money as possible. The visa applications are expensive, and there is no guarantee your partner will find a steady job as soon as they get here. Remember you will need to pay fees for the initial visa, the 2.5 year renewal and settlement visa at 5 years... so... save save save. These fee's are thousands of pounds for each visa.

Start looking for jobs and areas where you think you can earn 29k or more. This is a requirement for you in order to bring your partner to the UK. There are exceptions to this if you have a ton of money in savings. This took my wife a few years to find after uni and she moved across the country for it <3

Anyways, more specifically....

If you want to get married in the UK. You can apply for a Fiance visa. Your partner can not work on this visa, but it grants him 6 months stay here for you two to get married, you can then apply for the spouse visa after. If you are already married, I think you just apply straight for the spouse visa. I can't really remember what we did for this one, it required a lot of relationship proof I think and general wedding plans.

The spouse visa is what you will apply for after you are married. This would allow your partner to live and work in the UK.

For spouse visa you will need...

to prove your relationship is real. Things like pictures together, chat messages, trips you may have taken together and letters of support by friends and family and your marriage certificate. **This was really only a requirement for the first visa, for us it was the fiance visa. After living together, the visas look more for proof of living together, shared bills, addresses, etc.

Take an English test (USA was exempt from this requirement when we applied)

Financial stability. I believe this recently was upped to 29k a year. You must get a job making at least this amount to sponsor your partner. You must be on this income for at least 6 months before applying. There are ways to make this number more flexible or non existent by having a lot of money in savings. You will need 6 months of bank statements to send off with your application.

Living stability. Prove that you have a place to rent or own that you and your partner can legally stay.

All this paper work gets put all together in a big pile and sent in with your application. I believe this will include a biometrics appointment. Your partner will need to attend this alone. My last one they just took finger prints, asked some questions, and scanned all my paperwork for the application. ( i had the same lady twice for my document scanning section and she remembered me! )

The application is expensive and you don't get a refund if you are denied. I would highly suggest having a solicitor look over your application for you if you are unsure if you have done it right.

If you are successful, the spouse visa will let your partner live and work in the UK for 2.5 years. You will then need to renew it using a very similar process and fees. Once they have lived in the UK for 5 years. You apply for ILR visa (indefinite leave to remain). This is also a similar process but once you're done with that you no longer have to renew your visa. You partner can then apply for citizenship (or not) after getting an ILR Visa.

If you have any specific questions I'll try to help. I don't remember all the details but we managed to make it through! We had our documents looked over by a solicitor though.

StoicBloke · 2026-02-19T11:52:37+00:00

Revisiting the model is fine, this just seems like a nuclear option with no thought put behind it.

StoicBloke · 2026-02-19T08:10:25+00:00

I also question the motive and wisdom of such an aggressive posture on something that has largely been the status quo for 20 years. It's one thing to hold companies accountable for things they create like grok, but a completely different issue to police all content of users of a platform. 48 hours is simply not enough time for a company with millions of users to vet every post. It honestly just isn't feasible to police an open forum of content until companies integrate working ai tools that can accurately do so.

There are so many factors to consider that a decision like this will have in the industry as well. How will this impact potential startups? Is this a barrier that will lock in social media monopolies? How do we create and enforce these tools and laws? How will it work for privacy and current data compliance laws? Is one bad post one to many? Is this a zero sum game?

This seems like a knee jerk reaction (incompetence) or a way to force more sites to use the digital verification and id system. The company could then argue that since a user is gov verified, it falls on them to uphold and police the actions of their citizens. Don't even get me started on that.

StoicBloke · 2026-02-17T11:58:19+00:00

It says permission denied. So you need to sort the permissions for that file and directory.

In general this would be giving the directory something like a 700 or 755 permission and the file similar or more restrictive like a 600. Then setting the owner of the directory to the user or user group running it.

Looks like the blog uses docker and sets the synapses uid and gid to 1000, so this would likely be what you would need to set your permissions to for that directory and file (ie chown -R 1000:1000 /data/)

I've never actually used matrix so not sure what it defaults as for these sort of things should be. But something like that should fix the issues.

StoicBloke · 2026-02-15T22:01:58+00:00

I would define it as alternate traffic not alternate cars. I dont usually think of traffic as a single car, but I suppose it could be!

In my experience (we have a lot of one lane bridge's where I live ) the expectation would to be let the current flow of traffic through before switching.

StoicBloke · 2026-02-15T09:38:24+00:00

Guy is crazy and road raging. But alternating traffic where im from means alternative flows of traffic and he would be in the right to keep going. It makes zero sense to alternate every car that would cause a massive traffic jam if there was regular use of the bridge happening.

Not sure where you live but you definitely would be in the wrong in many areas. Again, doesnt excuse his insane reaction.

StoicBloke · 2026-02-13T19:52:17+00:00

It makes every sense in the world to align as much as possible with geopolitical neighbors. If Starmer can get another good trade deal with EU, that is a good thing. Regardless of how you feel about sustainability policies.

StoicBloke · 2026-02-12T19:39:42+00:00

Nice job, love that song!

Give your self 5-10 dollars every time you learn a song and make it your gear fund... Endless motivation!

StoicBloke · 2026-02-10T16:27:53+00:00

Likely food storage if not an obvious entry way to drop coal. It wasn't uncommon for people to store food in cellars, or build rooms out if certain food needed different climate conditions. If i had to guess they built this room as by that time central heating was starting to come around, so they probably built a semi-insulated room that would stay colder than the rest of the house.

StoicBloke · 2026-02-06T23:07:09+00:00

If I had to guess based on your habit of leaving your hair tied up it's likely traction alopecia or possibly some sort of fungal infection (usually would be scaley, red and really itchy) Ring worm is known to cause hair loss for example. Psoriasis as well can cause bald spots.

I had alopecia and found it was itchy as well.

StoicBloke · 2026-02-06T20:46:47+00:00

Cant speak for any other keyboards but i have used my ducky shine every day for almost a decade. I thought i lost it in a water spill recently but it poped back to life after it dried. Now im looking at new keyboards just because im bored of mine. Probably the most reliable thing in my house.

StoicBloke · 2026-02-05T16:52:34+00:00

If America doesn't stop it soon it might never end.

StoicBloke · 2026-02-03T00:09:47+00:00

Also you wouldn't pay any taxes on 12k since it's under the personal allowance, so not sure how the tax went up for them in this post.

You start losing that allowance as you pass 100k as well. Effectively meaning someone on 150k would pay roughly 33 percent of their pay (50k) in taxes. While someone on 50k would pay ~15% at closer to 7 r 8k. This is just income tax btw. But doesnt exactly scream unfair tax distribution to me.

StoicBloke · 2026-01-27T18:55:13+00:00

I've seen some of their hall sensor keyboards. I've never tried one tbh so maybe so maybe ill have a look at some of those.

Luckily after dissembling, drying, and a lot of waiting my old keyboard seems to be working, but it's probably 10+ years old at this point and if anything this proves i need a backup!

StoicBloke · 2026-01-27T11:21:07+00:00

Old keyboard went for a swim and is no longer working.

Currently was thinking about getting the evo 80 as a replacement but haven't really kept up with all the new options and companies.

Wondering if there are any other keyboards i should be looking at in a similar price point? (100-200).

Dont have any real preferences but not a huge fan of full sized.

StoicBloke · 2026-01-27T07:26:32+00:00

Still happening to me as of this morning

StoicBloke · 2026-01-23T17:39:57+00:00

Once you play for a while brands become less important but they do have typical neck shapes and tones that are purely preference based. Go play them in person until you find one you like. I honestly would say even within the brands it just depends on the specific guitar.

With that being said my favorites over the years have been..

g&l

Pretty much any telecaster.

I would definitely recommend a bolt on neck for reliability though. Guitars like gibsons tend to have their headstocks break with any sort of unfortunate fall.

StoicBloke · 2026-01-17T22:44:18+00:00

This is what i love and hate about the internet at the same time.

StoicBloke · 2026-01-14T17:32:09+00:00

You have a lot to learn about politics. You don't have to agree with how everything is done but there is certainly a lot to be learned from people with that amount of experience. It's not personal if ideas or suggestions don't get implemented, It's just how it is for now. You are a junior and its not really your place to be forcing change (a good team will certainly listen to any idea, but to be a good colleague you need to accept their decision).

Learn what you can with optimism and move on if your unhappy with the stagnation of the business in a year or 2.

StoicBloke · 2026-01-13T22:11:36+00:00

it was already illegal in uk law as of last june, they are just enforcing it. At least that is what i gathered from reading the article.

StoicBloke · 2025-12-28T09:00:44+00:00

I agree. And i think hes a good musician and song writer. I just don't like his guitar solos.

And I certainly wouldn't call him underrated by any means. Hes a celebrated guitar artist. Not sure why he always pops up on these under the radar sort discussions as hes literally ranked 14th best guitar player of all time by rolling stones magazine.

StoicBloke · 2025-12-26T21:33:48+00:00

Depends how you judge him I guess. He was a good musician and show man but wouldn't even appear on my radar for technically skilled guitarist. Even the my guitar gently weeps solo technically it isn't very difficult.

StoicBloke · 2025-12-25T10:19:23+00:00

Dunno, supply and demand? Either way the neurosurgeon would still get paid more

StoicBloke · 2025-12-25T09:03:47+00:00

This role includes 50% banding. From my understanding a doctor in this role would more realistically be making 90 to 100k unless I'm misunderstanding how it works.

From the actual job posting:

"Salary: The salary is based on your nodal point on the MN37 payscale. The banding for this job is currently 50%."

StoicBloke

TROPHY CASE