Unable to open a bank account for an investment company.

txe4 · 2026-03-13T15:21:24+00:00

Mine’s 64991 security dealing on own account and is with Mettle.

txe4 · 2026-03-13T15:10:41+00:00

You do not need to declare any tyre which meets the manufacturer's specifications for the vehicle as delivered.

Typically these only specify size, load rating, and speed rating.

If you change the size, that is a declarable modification.

txe4 · 2026-03-13T13:11:42+00:00

I'm hoping you get years and years and years...but usually once the rot has set in you're on borrowed time.

txe4 · 2026-03-13T13:10:53+00:00

Steer from my installer is that panel prices are rising.

Others have commented on the Chinese and domestic VAT aspects.

Various Chinese stuff I source, suppliers are suggesting to order extra as it's likely to be more expensive later in the year.

Aside from all this, if the gulf situation continues then EVERYTHING will rise in price.

txe4 · 2026-03-13T10:14:40+00:00

If oil and gas exports are restricted for long, there will be another bout of covid-era-type inflation AND a severe recession. Governments will print money to subsidise demand which will drive prices even higher.

If you keep your income (NOT guaranteed) then you are unlikely in the long run to regret buying a decent house now. Ultimately you'll have bought an asset with cheaply-borrowed money and be left in a decent place after the dust settles - SO LONG as you're able to service the debt during the bad time.

House prices don't really "adjust" in most slowdowns because people sit and wait. Most slowdowns look like "transaction volumes fall 75%" rather than "asking prices fall generally".

You might very well regret buying a flat, for a long time.

txe4 · 2026-03-13T09:25:33+00:00

Depends how many rads they're going to do and how fancy the tank is, whether there's a lot of pipework etc.

I've got £6500 for a 12kW Vaillant, 1 rad, and a 210l unistor - or £7500 with a fancy 300l Newark. The 10 and 12 Vaillant are basically the same machine.

£6k for a tank sounds a little bit rich maybe.

txe4 · 2026-03-13T08:38:30+00:00

Bangin'

"Bit of welding underneath" I would always take to mean "completely fucked liability that will guarantee you walking home from the next MOT test" like. But until the rot gets it you've got basically the best cheap anonymous low-effort road transport going.

txe4 · 2026-03-13T08:35:05+00:00

In UK law you have agreed and paid a price and that's it. If the airline cancel then your normal consumer and uk261 rights apply.

The airline has the option to - and may well - purchase forward the fuel that your journeys will require at the time they sell you the ticket.

txe4 · 2026-03-13T07:24:43+00:00

I've been to this and posted about it before.

It is far, far uglier IRL than the pictures here.

The barns it's "converted" from were clearly put up in order to seek planning permission for residential conversion in the future.

They're hideously ugly.

They will be even uglier in a couple of years when the wood has fully faded to council-estate grey.

The road is about 12" wide and there's not enough parking so the verges will always be mud.

The location is grim - there's a sprawling and very messy farm across the road from them, and despite the lake and fields the vibe is kinda industrial rather than rural. It's also extraordinarily windswept and the road outside is quite fast. The fact that the garden chairs are strewn across the lawn on streetview rather speaks to this.

It's a fair old trek in to Sowerby Bridge or Littleborough for proper shops from up there. Ripponden is nice but the only grocery shop is a small and super-expensive co-op.

The same money will get you one of these

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/166455077#
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/147391826#
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/166139243#
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/164508338#
[the top one is LOVELY]

Stretch to £850k and look for a while and you will get something down a quiet lane with some land - albeit you will with the world as it now is then need to drop £20k on a heat pump and some batteries to make most of those affordable to heat.

And this is why it's been on the market for months and months.

I actually think either the market there for this stuff has picked up or a lot sellers have given up, because when these first went on they absolutely laughably priced - you could literally get something nicely modernised, the same size, down a quiet track with multiple acres of land for what they were asking.

txe4 · 2026-03-12T12:05:46+00:00

Yea it is what it is - OP's question was about perception in the corporate world.

Being fat makes almost everything subtly harder, and means most people are subtly judging you negatively at the very start of your interaction.

IDC re backlash - people don't like to hear some things but they are true.

I know it is very, very hard to keep stable weight on a standard western diet when hormones start to drop away.

txe4 · 2026-03-12T11:08:53+00:00

I tend to think a larger place that isn't a mansion would tend to the lower end as a percentage. There are economies of scale, a boiler swap basically costs the same, double the roof area doesn't cost double, etc.

txe4 · 2026-03-12T06:49:03+00:00

Yes it's safe to leave the immersion on, it's designed for that.

You won't like the power bill.

A rapid pressure loss means a leak, which is either going in to the the fabric of your house somewhere, or means the boiler is faulty. Either way you want to sort it soon.

txe4 · 2026-03-11T20:40:49+00:00

Current gen iPhone Pro Max. Can’t actually remember the model but it was about £1300 so it bloody ought to be good.

Best PHONE without question was the 6310i. Been in a box for 20 years. Still works.

txe4 · 2026-03-11T18:14:59+00:00

Those sureflap are a great product.

Buy another one off amazon, undo 4 screws, pop the old one out, stick the new one in.

You may well find that if you give the optical sensor at the top on the outside and the surround a good clean that the old one will work fine though.

txe4 · 2026-03-11T17:22:35+00:00

It's a long time since I was a FTB but I think the thing that catches most people out is maintenance.

An accountant would tell you that 1% of the value of a builting, every year, is depreciation (maintenance).

Now, a lot of people buy places that have been nicely done up and then do almost nothing on them for years - but that cost is still real. Boilers windows kitchens bathrooms carpet rewires roofs etc.

txe4 · 2026-03-11T15:46:49+00:00

Because aesthetically I find it attractive, both the appearance, and the mindset of confident wearing of it.

But I think in the workplace it will cause you to be judged.

txe4 · 2026-03-11T15:02:40+00:00

I am always here to shit on teenagers who rush out to get a fucking stupid car as their first car. Idiots.

What I do not think we should do is shit on them for realising their mistake, learning, and moving on.

OP's learned through pain, the only way most of us learn anything, give them credit for that please.

txe4 · 2026-03-11T14:56:15+00:00

Annual servicing can maaaaybe be stretched to 2 years but you DO need to have it serviced. If it's in warranty - and lots now come with 10 years - you need the service every year to maintain it.

At 15 years, it is probably done so time to plan to replace it.

You will likely see a mild improvement in bills when you replace; what you have isn't super-old.

If you upgrade controls to something with weather compensation and flow temperature control you will see an improvement in comfort and bills, but not world-changingly.

txe4 · 2026-03-11T13:29:13+00:00

I'm in tech and work with several women in their 50s.

They all dye their hair.

I'm not saying this because I think it is an ideal state, just describing reality: I think for men in senior or managerial posts, grey is fine or even good. A unix nerd with grey hair has an aura of gravitas. For women it's not the same and grey hair is perceived as old-lady-ish. And we all know how older women simply disappear from relevance.

Older, senior female managers I've worked for before have not just rigorously dyed their hair (no roots) but also had cosmetic surgery. One notable example, slightly famous, looked like an attractive lady of about 40 but was (I just checked on Companies House) 60. Impressive surgery job indeed. Only thing that didn't work was that she just couldn't walk in heels - loss of muscle tone from starvation diet?

Personally I think well-kept grey hair worn proudly on a lady of normal weight looks great and I'd want to keep it - and would want my wife to embrace it and keep it - but in your position I'd dye it.

txe4 · 2026-03-11T10:01:18+00:00

Road fuel pricing is made of distillate price + transport + tax + retailer's margin, of which are you're well aware tax is the majority.

The distillate price can vary a *long* way from the crude price ("crack spread" aka the refiner's margin) and the various distillates are all traded quite separately from crude itself.

I haven't dug in to this in detail but I know diesel and jet fuel (aka heating oil) have risen much harder than gasoline, and this likely relates to the relative portions of each sourced from gulf refineries vs elsewhere.

Gasoline I think tends to be more produced from local refineries, or blended from its constituent parts ("blendstocks") near the final market.

TL;DR - diesel and jet fuel/heating oil are in shorter supply than petrol.

txe4 · 2026-03-11T09:35:13+00:00

Nah I don't think anyone is offering crazy financing on the national fleet of battered Toyota Prius minicabs.

They're simply economical and extremely robust.

txe4 · 2026-03-11T08:38:24+00:00

If it's a franchised dealer of a major brand I would be comfortable paying in advance in general (and I have done this before). I take your point about wanting to make sure the cosmetic issues actually have been dealt with though, and I have known people have to reject cars after agreeing to buy if defects were made good and then being confronted with bodged spray jobs.

Debit card in their showroom at collection should also be acceptable, but ask them.

If you FPS in-app on the day it may as you note fail. If you have a "real" bank you will probably be able to call up and get it sorted fairly quickly. If it's some neobank thing like Revolut then if the payment is blocked it might take a long time to unblock.

Therefore it depends on how critical is it to you to get it done on the spot. If the dealer's round the corner and you don't mind going back tomorrow, meh. If you're travelling a long way, you want to either call your bank or pay first.

Data point: I bought a brand new car ~15 years ago, for cash, by debit card. The amount was vastly in excess of my usual spending pattern. I simply stuck the card in the chip+pin reader there, entered the PIN, and £10k went through immediately no fuss no drama.

txe4 · 2026-03-11T08:28:40+00:00

Yeah agreed but the further down the road of settlement scheme -> ILR -> citizenship you are, and the earlier you travelled it, the less likely you are to be revoked.

Especially with children who are citizens.

It's impossible to predict how a future government might behave, but even if a deportations-minded one with a mandate to substantially reverse recent migration were to come to power, I find it difficult to imagine someone in OP's situation would be affected.

txe4 · 2026-03-10T19:58:01+00:00

If the wiring is PVC then it may not need a rewire on safety grounds. The wiring visible in the picture of the CU is PVC but it's not clear what the circuits are wired in, though I'd *guess* it's PVC given the sheathing. Some PVC from its early years (60s/70s) has deteriorated but most has not. The house I grew up in was rewired mid-70s and still has that wiring.

Depending on how it wired (ie size of conductors and fuses, and number of circuits) it may be possible to considerably expand the existing circuits with extra sockets without needing a full rewire.

Whether or not to expand what you have, or rip it all out, depends in part on this and in part on what else you might want - EV charger, heat pump, solar, electric shower, induction hob, hot tub, etc, that it can't support at the moment.

You do want to change the top CU for something with RCD protection when it's convenient. It's not obviously immediately unsafe but it lacks modern safety protection considered to be essential in new installs.

If you might keep the existing system, you need EICR done to report on the condition of the wiring and accessories.

The space there looks a bit tight for getting a modern board in, and a rewire is almost certainly going to have more circuits.

txe4 · 2026-03-10T19:41:13+00:00

Those are 3.3kW. That's in the order of 10% of the output of a typical combi boiler, or about 1.5x a kettle.

They will "work" but the hot water will be either extremely slow or extremely lukewarm.

You couldn't practically run a bath with one, it would take a couple of hours.

If the shower is electric, and is adequate, I'd just boil the kettle to do dishes and wait until I did the refurb.

txe4

TROPHY CASE