yegnold

Thanks for accepting my club request Cliff!

Already ran through every comparison site that springs to mind, direct line, hsbc... all with and without the other half. Best quote is £1900.

With an imminent move from an A rated postcode to an E rated postcode I am facing a hike from £780 insurance quotes to £1900 insurance quotes, just because of the postcode. Anyone live in Cardiff area and have reasonable insurance, if so what Company? By reasonable I'd be happy at £1k tbh. My details: 21, cohabiting with partner, 4 years no claims bonus. '04 fabia vrs with leather seat modification Thanks

Did he drop you off in town in the fully leathered up Range Rover Sport?

I work in full time employment Monday - Friday, 9-5pm with an hour of breaks per day. Further to that I do approximately 15 hours freelance work a week, so probably about 50-55 hours in total

Great job Cliff TBF if anyone spends time looking so closely at your wheels as to notice the slight imperfections... then they can't be that interesting and I wouldn't worry about what they think tbh. Nice work.

Yes

They supply handy handgun ammo in the form of popcorn chicken too!

I'm saying that it is morally questionable, not legally. At the end of the day, people earning enough money to enter the higher rate tax bands are earning enough money to pay tax. The problem with this country is as soon as people hit those kind of salaries, they start thinking they can live a life of luxury forever. As soon as some slightly hard times come along they refuse to give up their BMW 5 series, 5 bedroom detached house which they borrowed money in a 100% joint application mortgage for, etc. It amazes me that some people can get by as a couple both earning 12k a year pre-tax, with no complaints. But others, earning 40/50/60k have the cheek to complain about how much tax they're paying. I would understand if the higher rate tax applied to the whole salary, but it doesn't! What's the complaint? I understand paying only what you need to, but going out of your way to avoid paying tax that you probably should? Pfft!

Here's a novel idea for you, maybe if so many people didn't engage in tax avoidance, the tax rises wouldn't be as necessary?

From memory they are listed as class 2 contributions http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/working/intro/class2.htm That is, I get a flat rate of £31.20 a quarter regardless of how much/little money I have made in self employment

I'm in this situation and have been paying tax on my self employed earnings for the last 4 years through the self assessment scheme Something that bugs me and I;m not sure if it quite right is I get a quarterly N.I bill of £31.20. This ALONGSIDE the huge amounts of national insurance I pay on my salary. Should I really be paying those N.I contributions, and can I get them back if I shouldn't be? My profits every year in my self employment are *well* below £5000.

I think that their algorithms/risk assessments say that if you are in a cheaper car then you are less likely to care about it and therefore more likely to whack in to the side of an AMG Mercedes in a car park or something. Remember, you're paying primarily for the risk of hitting another (likely considerably more expensive) car rather than protection of your own car. I certainly treat cheap/valueless cars with much more caution on the roads than ridiculously fast BMWs etc. Generally if you've got a nice car you care about it and will exercise a little caution...

Tim, you can use the onscreen "instantaneous mpg" readout as a rough indication as to how lead-footed you are being, even if the figures are inaccurate Biggest saving economy wise, instead of braking for corners, just let go of the throttle 3 or 4 seconds before and let engine braking slow you down, during this period you will be burning no fuel whatsoever. And indeed, don't labour the engine! 6th at 50mph, unless on a flat or slight decline, is too high a gear and will be costing you more than if you are in 5th! Was on average getting 55 or 56mpg with a fairly standard but smooth driving style last summer.. Never been able to touch that since mind, getting closer to 48 or 49 thesedays. Think cold weather isn't helping.

It might just come off with a clay bar you know! Wash thoroughly beforehand obviously.

I'm having one last swing at customer services by sending a physical letter to their complaints department. After that I will give contacting more directly a go, and after that I will just throw a passive paddy and complain about them all over the internets.

How the hell do I get (well known mobile network provider) to get their act together? I am a longstanding customer with a well known mobile network provider and have not had any call quality issues in the 8 or 9 years I have been with them until November/December 2010, when I and about 10 other people local to this area got problems in that they would make a phone call and then not be able to hear anything in terms of audio in either direction. There is some mast-phone communication though, here's how I know: If I ring my home landline then the home phone will ring, but on my mobile I won't hear the 'ring ring' noise. When someone on the home phone picks up, my handset vibrates to indicate that the phone has been picked up. However, the landline hears no audio, and I on my mobile hear no audio. Making a second (or sometimes third or fourth) phone call will resolve the issue. This has been going on, like I say, since early December. I first thought it was just me, so left it and put it down to dodgy signal, but later found out that all people on our local mast had the issue, so here starts the story: I first reported this issue on Thursday 23rd December when I spoke to a lady who immediately escalated the issue to a high priority as I mentioned it was affecting multiple people and definitely wasn't just my hand set. I then received a phone call from the technical team on Sunday 2nd January, when I was away from home. They promised to phone back after 5pm on Tuesday 4th January. I never received that phone call so chased up with my original support lady via email on the morning of Thursday 6th January, she kindly called me back and left an answerphone message explaining that the technical team were investigating a fault. I then emailed the same lady on Friday 7th January with full details of a few calls I had made that were problematic as well as several other mobile numbers on this same network that are also experiencing issues in this area. I received a phone call from that lady on Monday 10th January when she explained that the technical team had found and fixed an issue with the mast on Thursday 6th January but that there was obviously still another issue as I had subsequently had problematic phone calls. I confirmed that other people have also had problematic phone calls. She said she would pass this to the technical team and try to get them to ring me that day. Unfortunately I didn't receive any phone call from this mobile phone company on Monday 10th January. Sent another email on 11 January describing another phone call that morning that had been problematic Tech team tried calling Mon 17 Jan at 10:33 and on Tue 18 Jan 10:33, both times left a message asking me for more information. I spoke to Kirsty in cust services Wed 19 Jan to try to give that information, she promised to call back and put me through to technical team on 20 between 5 and 6pm. This phone call was never received. Contacted twitter support team for this company on Thu 20 Jan, they said they would look in to it. No result. Called 9.30pm 20 Jan 2011,after demanding immediately to speak toa customer services manager I got quickly put through to a lady in the technical team, who was v helpful and took the required information down. Said it was still an open issue and that it is a priority. I reluctantly changed my signal to 2G only on HTC desire on evening of 24 January just to satisfy the front line support guys who always ask that question, tried to make phone call at 23:04 this evenign and still experienced the same issue i.e. just a high pitched electronic noise, no voice. Reiterated to twitter support team that my issue was still ongoing. The mobile company did, to their credit, refund me £30 for the last month's bill because I have not received the service I have been paying for. What I ultimately want though is my mobile service to be like it was before! Any tips on how I can get them to sort this out and stop cocking around? Do I really need to write a letter to their customer services HQ? I'm having to spend an awful lot of my time getting this sorted (and it still isn't by any means sorted), time which I should be spending freelancing and actually earning money! This is incredibly irritating and alL I want is a resolution!

Aye that would have been awesome. He did well to get that atom around like he did!

Nice project Cliff, hope it turns out as planned!

It's amazing how many times I have seen people go offshore for their web development projects, end up disappointed in service and/or the end product and have to get the product completely rewritten or audited by a UK based developer anyway, usually at inflated prices due to the project having been commented poorly (if at all, often in a different language) and effectively being handed over in a completely broken state....

Even when/if it is I will probably still proudly motor on in my completely standard looking vRS. Aside from the insurance which is still high (I'm 21) I can't think of a car that will be cheaper to run and as easy to like.

4%; delighted at that

But an Octavia with 260hp is nowhere near the car or the chassis that the Focus RS is. You're targeting too fast

Leave the window slightly ajar

I'm taking the 3 days in the middle of that week so that I have 11 consecutive non-working days for the princely sum of 3 days holiday allowance