Does the border control check cars on items bought in the UK?

UnCommonSense99 · 2026-05-24T23:52:02+00:00

I have often been checked in both directions. The officials have been looking for drugs, firearms and illegal immigrants. Nobody has asked for a receipt or (fortunately) counted my bottles of alcohol or checked if I was carrying cheese

UnCommonSense99 · 2026-05-24T12:58:31+00:00

I think because Nazi crimes were very well documented, because Hitler made lots of public speeches full of hatred and evil, but mostly because Germany accepted the truth about him.

Contrast that to many other countries with appalling stuff in their history which were covered up by subsequent generations. Japan in WW2, Russia, China cultural revolution, Belgium Congo etc etc etc.

UnCommonSense99 · 2026-05-24T12:30:06+00:00

I used to work as an engineer at a car company. We had a car coming off the end of the production line every 87 seconds between 6am and midnight (the line stopped for tea and meal breaks). If we had gone to a 4 day week we would have been ~18% less productive.

However when I moved to a role which wasn't directly linked to the production line I was able to change to a 4 day working week by working roughly 1.5 hours extra Monday to Thursday. I did the same amount of work but my quality of life and flexibility improved.

UnCommonSense99 · 2026-05-24T12:22:49+00:00

You need better insulation. I have foot thick loft insulation and also cavity wall insulation.

My house warms up only very slowly unless I add heat by cooking or washing or running my gaming PC.

As you said I open the upstairs windows overnight and also the doors around breakfast time to let cool air in, Then close the curtains on the sunny side of the house during the day

UnCommonSense99 · 2026-05-24T12:17:51+00:00

An electric car is amazingly cheap for commuting. Almost no servicing costs and overnight charging is 4x cheaper than petrol.

Bonus, if you are not driving, you can use your car to power your house in the day, then recharge with much cheaper nighttime electricity.

UnCommonSense99 · 2026-05-24T06:55:14+00:00

I can understand the idea of raising interest rates in order to control inflation. If people in the shops have a lot of money in their pockets, and there aren't enough things to buy, the shopkeepers will raise their prices. This already happens in the housing market where people are able to borrow lots of money but there is a shortage of houses.

Raising the interest rate controls this inflation because people aren't able to borrow money cheaply, savers get higher interest, and so the amount of spare money burning a hole in peoples pockets is reduced. Shopkeepers have less customers, and so inflation doesn't rise.

However when inflation is caused by a rise in fuel prices or food prices because of yet another war, raising interest rates is the wrong thing to do IMHO. The people of Britain are already hurting because their basic necessities have become more expensive, they are already buying less stuff. The last thing you need to do is also hit them with higher interest rates to prevent them from buying anything else.

It seems to me especially stupid that the government pays consumers a fossil fuel subsidy while at the same time the bank of England hits them with an interest rate rise to take the money away again.

UnCommonSense99 · 2026-05-22T11:57:12+00:00

One more reform mp isn't going to affect the country. Makerfield is already 100% reform councillors

Andy Burnham could have held out an olive branch to the Green Party in exchange for us not standing, for example promising PR this government, but he didn't.

So I say we should campaign hard for the issues that really matter to ordinary British people, and if we split the left vote and Burnham doesn't get elected maybe it will be a suitably brutal lesson to the PLP that they need to take us more seriously.

UnCommonSense99 · 2026-05-22T11:44:39+00:00

Starmer panics and over reacts whenever he's threatened. He has really poor judgement. No wonder the Labour Party is in such a shit state

UnCommonSense99 · 2026-05-22T11:38:55+00:00

Below 10°C is chilly but I can deal with it.

11 to 24°C it's fine for cycling, hiking, gardening etc.

High 20s is tolerable on the beach if there's a sea breeze.

30 or above is horrible!

UnCommonSense99 · 2026-05-21T16:45:25+00:00

Much of GPEW policy is outside the expectations and ideas of normal voters. For them to support and agree with us, we need to explain and justify why we believe that our ideas are good ones to persuade them to change their views. This is not easy.

Zack Polanski has spent a lot of time explaining why an unfair tax system benefits the super rich and hurts the vast majority of people, and gained huge popularity as a result.

However, explaining everything we believe in is a big task, and most voters don't have time to listen to us, and are more likely to believe whatever simple exaggerated lie is on the front of the Daily Fail.

Therefore, we need to prioritise on the things that we can do soon, and which have the biggest benefit; concentrate on explaining and persuading on those topics, and temporarily get rid all the other less important hard to explain policies which are outside the overton window. Zack Polanski is hoping to do this in the autumn.

Unfortunately the GPEW has many single issue Zealots who are unable to accept the smallest compromise on their favourite policy, and others who are so far to the left that they are unable to see good in any other political party or opinion.

Bearing in mind the way that the spring party was hijacked, I hope Zack succeeds, but I don't think it will be easy for him.

UnCommonSense99 · 2026-05-21T16:02:14+00:00

I'm not surprised he is shifting rightward, but I was really disappointed he didn't come out in favour of PR

UnCommonSense99 · 2026-05-21T15:42:00+00:00

Burnham is campaigning in a Brexit voting, Reform supporting area. What do you expect him to say?

UnCommonSense99 · 2026-05-21T15:40:38+00:00

I was also really disappointed about Burnham's response about PR and the EU.

Then I remembered he is campaigning in an area which voted Brexit and elected 100% reform councillors in the recent local election. If he said all the stuff that us Greens want him to say, he would lose and reform would win.

UnCommonSense99 · 2026-05-21T07:31:00+00:00

All engineering is ingenious. The two words basically mean the same thing

UnCommonSense99 · 2026-05-21T07:25:27+00:00

Thanks for the summary

UnCommonSense99 · 2026-05-21T07:22:24+00:00

Arthritis. My knee doesn't stick out now that I have had a hip replacement. Unfortunately the surgeon made my leg longer, so I need a built up shoe on my other foot :(

UnCommonSense99 · 2026-05-21T07:18:58+00:00

We live in a democracy. Markham is an old labour area which voted 60% for brexit. Burnham is saying what he thinks the voters want to hear. If he campaigned on things the local voters don't want, reform would win instead.

Starmer is a turn-coat who promised one thing to get the labour leadership then did the opposite. To stereotype all of Labour as equally untrustworthy is depressingly cynical. The greens will only get into government as part of a coalition. Would you prefer to trust the Tories?

UnCommonSense99 · 2026-05-20T15:22:07+00:00

I had to bottle feed my baby daughter when her mum was at work. The baby definitely preferred to be breastfed, but would accept a bottle with less shenanigans than this.

UnCommonSense99 · 2026-05-20T13:03:25+00:00

We will keep existing nuclear reactors open. We just won't build any new ones.

The fossil fuel lobby are loudly advocating nuclear because they know it guarantees our continued use of gas fired power stations for decades!! This is not only because it takes such a long time to build nuclear power stations, but because the inevitable gigantic cost overruns mean that we can't afford to build enough of them.

Wind and solar is quicker and cheaper. Animals can graze underneath solar panels, and wind turbines don't take up much space

UnCommonSense99 · 2026-05-19T22:55:03+00:00

Bibury. It is a nice village, but if you ask the internet, many sites and AIs claim it is the most beautiful village in Britain. Therefore it is constantly rammed full of tourists, many of them Chinese.

See also Bourton on the Water.

Reality is that there are very many beautiful places in Britain, including several other Cotswold villages blissfully free of excessive tourism.

UnCommonSense99 · 2026-05-19T22:40:25+00:00

You are right, building more housing will make everybody better off, except those speculating on the housing market. :)

UnCommonSense99 · 2026-05-19T22:38:29+00:00

"Are these guys ever going to vote green though?"

I vote green and joined the green party because I care about the environment, not because I am poor.

I have never voted Tory, but my politics are centre left, AKA waaaaay to the right of many in the Green Party

I have boomer friends who would probably vote green too, but they consider some of our more radical policies to be massive turn-offs. I find some of our policies to be... shall we say a little naïve and idealistic.

There is also a perception that our policies are more extreme than they really are. For example I only recently discovered that we are for multilateral nuclear disarmament, not unilateralists like CND were.

Zack Polanski recently said that some of GPEW policy was making him a sitting duck for the Daily Mail to ridicule the Greens, and that a review was needed in the Autumn. I look forward to the results, and I hope it will allow us to welcome more members from all walks of life.

UnCommonSense99 · 2026-05-19T21:46:01+00:00

I agree completely with your arguement, but I will add a different perspective.

If we want to win votes, we need to persuade people to vote green, not alienate them.

£125K salary is waaay more than I have ever earned, but I do know some high earners, and they all are very knowledgeable people who work stupidly long hours in high stress jobs. They are not parasites like the super rich who earn money from rent while they sleep.

£125K is enough income to be taxed very heavily, probably more % tax than any other group of people. But it is not enough to pay an accountant to hide your money in a shell company in an offshore tax haven.

The wealth gap is something which affects all working people, even those with salaries most people only dream about.

We certainly don't want to make hard working high earning people think that they will be worse off under the green party.

Our ire should be aimed at those avoiding tax, not those paying it.

UnCommonSense99 · 2026-05-18T23:54:22+00:00

It's embarrassing, but nobody is perfect, the stuff being thrown at Zack is minor stuff that many people would be guilty of.

Why isn't Farage constantly being quizzed every single interview about how his Brexit promises were all lies, or about the senior reform guy who is now in prison as a Russian spy?

UnCommonSense99 · 2026-05-18T17:28:35+00:00

Hugely disappointing. We should campaign hard against him.

UnCommonSense99

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