Never Mind

Be glad you're not in Scotland - next year's council tax demand just arrived today. Up to £256 per month from £221 per month last year, a 15.8% increase for a band G house (admittedly after years of freezes). Combine that with the Scottish Government not raising the 40% tax threshold (like the rest of the UK), it's getting expensive!

I thought it was worse - household income upto 60k could claim child tax credit at one point?

Visited one of their outlet stores today, plastered with 30%, 40%, or 50% off on virtually all of the merchandise. Admittedly ridiculous starting ticket prices though. I'd taken along a 40% off voucher printed from their website, which was also applied on top of the in store discounts. Looking at the final prices on the receipt, it felt like I was robbing the place.Strangely, the store wasn't that busy and the other shoppers that I did see there didn't seem to be using an extra discount. Loads of stock/sizes available too. I wonder if people are suffering from sales fatigue? A sale used to wo

Average 24% swing from Labour to SNP in Scotland!

Overall turnout around 71% in Scotland vs 65% in England from numbers on BBC website?

One of my wife's friends used the leafleting tactic when she bought her house. She wanted to stay within a very specific area, and nothing suitable was coming on to the market. She targeted a range of houses she was interested in an got several responses. It worked for her, but the particular example in your post just feels like it isn't written by someone looking for a family home to live in, definitely feels a bit too 'professional'. Given the wide spread distrust of EAs and low volumes of family homes coming to the market (in my area anyway!) I'm surprised to not see more of this approach

Found this fountain of ISA statistics whilst googling to try to substantiate these claims of multi-million ISA owners. Various interesting stats dividing ISA subscription rates by year, gender, income bands, geographical region. Well worth a look. Also found this on the Telegraph How to save a million-pound Isa. All so easy in hindsight

Saw the same ad at the weekend immediately before Monsters University, that I'd gone to see with my 4 year old daughter. Sitting watching the ad in that context, with an audience mainly comprised of children and their parents, and given the animated 'child friendly' style of the ad, it felt like a form of indoctrination was taking place. It's a desperate attempt to try to restore confidence and trust in modern high finance by drawing parallels to simple banking/building society principles of old. I guess a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority wouldn't get anywhere as they are ver

A rather uniquely decorated bathroom in this place :

I'm going to reserve judgement until the exact details of this scheme are available (in the budget report?). I'm still sceptical of what the benefit will be depending on the tax treatment of the new payments. On the one hand, I'm glad that those in the old scheme can choose to continue or transfer to the new scheme, on the other, it's just another complication for employers and childcare providers to have to administer a myriad of schemes, all with different rules. It shouldn't be so complicated!

As has already been pointed out, this will be an increase in support for childcare where both parents work. To take my example, both I and my wife claim the maximum £243 per month (£2916pa) in Childcare vouchers. Tax relief for new entrants is capped at what a basic rate taxpayer would receive, so a saving of ~£583pa each (£1166 total), versus the new figure of £1200. There is no mention in the article, but I remember it being mooted when the scheme was first proposed that the 'up to £1200' may be per child. This is significant, as the previous limit remained the same regardless of the numbe

Some interesting information contained in 'The Grapevine' - Cramond & Barnton Community Council Newsletter, which got put through my door today. "Continued concern was expressed about the planning permission which had been given for the demolition of the Robert Lorimer house at 174 Whitehouse Road and its replacement by 2 blocks of flats. It was noted that the next door property had been replaced by a block of 7 flats, 5 of which were still unsold several years after completion. The council was seeking to increase the housing stock in view of forecast needs and this was, no doubt, a facto

Someone obviously thinks that the appearance of the front of this house may put off potential buyers, so try a couple of tricks to distract you; Main photo - 'I know we're selling a house, but let's make the focal point of the main picture a fancy car.' Last photo - No, the house didn't change colour, they've helpfully altered it to show you how it could look. LOL at the tiny text on the photo 'Image of house, if it were rendered, subject to Planning Consent' Rendering it must remove all the clouds in the sky too : House in Cramond Next time I need to sell, I'm hiring a Ferrari to park o

I can probably help you with this, having been through the pain of the application process myself. I had the 'application in the post' message from them, waited a week, no sign of anything, called them to be told 'we have no record of your application'. Tried again, got exactly the same message at the end of the application. Waited a while, nothing. Tried a third time, only to find that the application process took a completely different route around 6 forms in. My guess is that it silently failed on the first 2 goes. The 3rd application took me through an ID verification process that the o