LotusLeftLotusRight

My first HMRC post. Just got my latest payslip and the tax code has changed slightly to my detriment. Log onto my HMRC Gateway account to check and for some reason they have reduced my annual personal pension contribution value since last month, even though my regular monthly payments have not changed for years. Despite searching, I could not find a way of questioning this on-line. Lots of other queries can be dealt with but not this. So I reluctantly phone the HMRC help line. Haha, it was like a TV comedy sketch show. It relies on voice recognition when asking you specific questions to direct the call to the correct human. Now I have a neutral English accent, but it could not even recognise words like “tax code” or “yes”. Eventually I answered the same questions using the key pad, whereupon it told me that all of their operators were busy and disconnected the call! Cheers for wasting my time.

That last point didn’t make any difference to my case in Germany. I parked in the other direction because my RHD driver’s door would have been tight up against the hotel wall if I had parked the “correct” way. Anyway it was only a quiet village road with a line of vehicles parked in front and behind me.

“Stop the clock!”

I remember driving a fully loaded Kenning hire van in one day from Staffordshire to Lake Constance back in the mid 1990s. Upon arrival I parked on the road outside the little village hotel I was staying at. A few weeks later I got a fine from German police for parking the van in the wrong direction! WTF. What difference does it make, whether a parked van is pointing left or right? I never paid it.

Err, so what?

Sally Nugent’s older than me! Unlike me though, she seems to look better each year. Just an observation: two thirds of my life has been lived under a Conservative Prime Minister.

Dear old Diane does like to get her face in the papers. It used to be mildly amusing. Now it’s just pathetic.

Knowing that you’re going to lose the election, you can announce all sorts of policy nonsense. Take the National Service one: apparently it would be 40% funded by clamping down on tax avoidance. Surely clamping down on tax avoidance should be an ongoing policy, not something new to help fund a new policy programme? If by some miracle the Conservatives did win, the time scale for full implementation of this would be by the end of the next Parliament, so 2029. Therefore the people who it would affect are currently 13 years old. What say do they get in deciding this? None.

Porsche? I could understand BMW due to the engine connection, but not Porsche.

Looks like The Daily Mail might be getting ready to jump ship, so that would be the final nail in the Conservative coffin. Despite the Boris rant at the top, I can’t remember a Labour promoting front page on the DM before.

JLR fail: they’ve put the cars in the wrong positions for the photo.

Struggling with the “private Hannah plate” 🤣

Same goes for the occupants.

If you see red you are a person of above average intelligence. If you don’t, I’m afraid you’re one of life’s dimwits.

Admittedly Copper is at an all time high price, but you ain’t going to get much out of a charger, for all the risk and aggro involved.