Polar Bear

Keith has owned his house since 1980, so he has various options for the valuation date, and he lived in it as his primary residence for most of that time. So, while the sale is definitely liable for CGT, by the time he's included all the relief and exemptions he's entitled to, the final liability is likely to be zero or close to zero. Though as I said, that is an estimate based on the information given. An accountant who specialises in these transactions would help him claim everything he is entitled to to minimise tax.

I'm no expert, but I'd guess it's a type of ganoderma.

The Kz gov is currently restricting access to many Kz sites from foreign IP addresses. They do this from time to time, and it's got a lot more frequent since the Ukraine-Russia war. I can't even check my work email without a VPN this week.

Name aside, they are a great little airline. It was founded and run by a small group of pilots, techs, ground crew and other airline workers, not a big corporation. When they first started, they literally repainted the aircraft themselves and refitted and decorated their own offices. Then, they had to slog it out with unprofitable routes because the established airlines blocked them from getting anything more desirable, but they stuck with it and made a success of it. Eventually, the gov had to give them access to better routes as well. Also, I used to fly with them in Kz, and I had trips booked when COVID hit. As soon as they cancelled flights, they automatically refunded everyone's money. It took me over a year to get my money back from big-name airlines.

@Keith5588, you're welcome. I am not a professional by any means, but I know my way around the current UK housing market pretty well, so if there's anything I can help with, please just ask. I also do most of my admin myself, but I have given up with our UK taxes. It's got so complicated now, and HMRC is brutal, even over small genuine errors. It feels more and more like they are trying to catch people out so they can fine you, rather than helping you work out what's due to be paid in the first place. With regard to scams, it tends to be individual agents who've gone rogue. Working with a well-known local firm is your best protection.

The state pension is not a benefit. It's a contribution-based allowance that we specifically pay into. National Insurance payments are deducted from our salaries automatically. The rate is currently about 13% (If you are self-employed, overseas, etc., there are options to pay voluntarily as well). This is separate from, and in addition to, income tax. NI payments go towards specific contribution-based allowances (state pension, jobseeker's allowance, maternity allowance), but there are additional criteria sometimes, e.g., voluntary payments don't qualify you for job seeker's allowance. So it's more like a mandatory investment into a pension fund. Contribution-based allowances are not means-tested. If you have made enough NI contributions and you meet the criteria, you are entitled to them. If you've paid full NI for at least 35 years, you are entitled to the state pension. If you don't have 35 full years, you get a pro-rata payment for what you did pay. There are other means-tested benefits available to pensioners, but the state pension is different.

Going only on the details you have given, it's unlikely you will have to pay any CGT. You get Private Residence Relief for the time you lived there, plus additional months at the end. (The gain is calculated monthly). Then there's the £3,000 CGT allowance. There are also various things you can offset against the chargeable gain. There are also different valuations you can use. However, you do have to declare it even if the eventual charge is £0. More importantly, you have to make the declaration, submit your CGT estimate, and pay it (if anything is owed) within 60 days of completing. (The completion date of the sale is Day 1). You can do it all yourself and submit it online if you are comfortable with that. (I let my accountant deal with it.) HMRC doesn't mess about with this, so make sure you get it done on time. With regard to agents, it very much depends on the area, but having bought a couple of UK properties recently, I would say go with a long-standing local agent. When you call them to discuss it, make a note of how easy or difficult it was to get hold of them, whether they called back when they said they would, etc. In general, they are more responsive to sellers than buyers, so if you feel they are leaving you hanging, they will likely do worse to interested buyers. The online agencies were a nightmare to deal with. If your buyers can't arrange a viewing or get the information they need because no one ever replies, it may well cost you the sale. They are cheap for a reason. I don't think there is much to be gained from having multiple agents anymore. If the listing is going on RightMove, people will see it. It was different when you had to go round estate agents in person and see what each one had available. But you can negotiate sole agency for a short period (say 6 months), giving you the option to switch if they haven't found you a buyer by then. Finally, there is, unfortunately, a somewhat common scam. An estate agent takes a property on, it hardly gets any viewings and no offers or stupidly low offers. This goes on for a while. Then they say they know a cash buyer/investor who might be willing to buy it. No promises, but they can ask for you! As luck would have it, the 'investor' just happens to be in a position to buy immediately for a low price. Of course, they are all in on it and share the profit. If you feel like you are being pushed into something like that, it's almost impossible to prove, just switch agents. Good luck!

There was a huge fire in the animal section of Chatuchak Market this morning. By the time firefighters got it under control, it's estimated that over 1,000 animals had died. Some owners/staff sleep above their stores, but they were all able to escape. The only good that can come out of this now is if it's never allowed to reopen. https://thethaiger.com/news/national/devastating-fire-at-chatuchak-market-destroys-118-shops-and-kills-1000-animals

Thanks for the info. I'll watch out for it. The topic is nothing new. Biological Exuberance by Bagemihl was published 25 years ago. It was a core university text in animal behaviour courses, and it cited hundreds of studies going back decades. Back then, the main theory was that there were higher levels of homosexuality in species with high-need offspring, with homosexual adults 'nannying' or adopting the offspring of others to increase overall species survival. But then Black Swans also have a surrogacy system, and male-male pairs are by far the most successful at raising offspring, so that might have changed over time. I'm interested to see what the current theories are.

It's asking for your Skype password to confirm the transaction. Depending on how you set up your Skype account, it might be your Windows password, but there should also be an option to reset your password. That would probably be the easiest way to fix it.

I went about 10 years ago, and it was pretty popular then. We were booking stuff more than 6 months in advance and couldn't always get our first choice because things were booked solid.

This is the list I came up with, based primarily on direct flights and flight times to make weekend trips viable. We are working our way through it. The Maldives was a surprise for me. It's a 4.5-hour flight, and the local islands are beautiful but really cheap if you can live without booze for a weekend. There are the resorts, too, obviously, if that's more your thing. We also just got back from a few days in Indonesian Borneo. City Country Time Airline Phnom Penh Cambodia 01:10 Vientiane Laos 01:10 Yangon Myanmar 01:20 Hanoi Vietnam 01:55 Nanning China 02:20 Dhaka Bangladesh 02:30 Kolkata India 02:30 Kuala Lumpur Malaysia 02:30 Singapore Singapore 02:30 Kolkata India 02:30 Kunming China 02:40 Bandar Seri Begawan Brunei 02:45 Royal Brunei Hong Kong Hong Kong 02:45 Shenzhen China 02:45 Macau Macau 02:55 Guangzhou China 03:00 Chengdu China 03:00 Colombo Sri Lanka 03:10 Chongqing China 03:10 Paro Bhutan 03:15 Bhutan Airlines Kathmandu Nepal 03:15 Gaya India 03:20 Changsha China 03:20 Chennai India 03:25 Lucknow India 03:25 Shantou China 03:25 Manila Philippines 03:30 Jakarta Indonesia 03:35 Wuhan China 03:35 Kochi India 03:40 Bengaluru India 03:45 Hyderabad India 03:45 Taipei Taiwan 03:50 Xian China 04:05 Hangzhou China 04:10 Shanghai China 04:25 New Delhi India 04:30 Male Maldives 04:30 Zhengzhou China 04:30 Ahmedabad India 04:35 Jaipur India 04:35 Mumbai India 04:35 Lahore Pakistan 04:40 Beijing China 04:55 Islamabad Pakistan 05:10 Seoul South Korea 05:30 Karachi Pakistan 05:35 Osaka Japan 06:05 Muscat Oman 06:15 Abu Dhabi UAE 06:30 Dubai UAE 06:30 Sharjah UAE 06:30 Ulaanbaatar Mongolia 06:30 MIAT Mongolian Airlines Almaty Tokyo Kazakhstan Japan 06:40 06:40 Tashkent Uzbekistan 07:00 Uzbekistan Airways Doha Qatar 07:10 Riyadh Saudi Arabia 07:30 Bahrain Bahrain 07:40 Kuwait City Kuwait 07:45 Jeddah Saudi Arabia 08:30 Melbourne Australia 09:10 Adis Abba Ethiopia 09:20 Amman Jordan 09:30 Royal Jordanian Tel Aviv Israel 09:45 EL AL Israel Airlines Nairobi Kenya 09:45 Kenya Airways Istanbul Turkey 10:00 Vienna Austria 11:30 Oslo Norway 12:00 Norse Atlantic Zurich Switzerland 12:00

Cats and dogs often get fat after they are sterilised because they are more hungry but need less food. The specialist food is high protein and low fat for extra bulk with reduced calories. I've never bothered for a dog, I just cut their food intake down, and they soon adapt. But cats are a lot more demanding when they are hungry, so I can see why people would try to avoid that. Royal Canin and Happy Cat are both widely available in sterilised format. These are the sites I usually buy from, but you can also use them to get the search terms in Thai. https://kingkongpetshop.com/product/royal-canin-sterilised/ https://tailybuddy.com/search/sterilised This is a seller on Lazada with Happy Cat sterilised. (I've no idea if it's a good brand. I've just seen it in stores.) https://www.lazada.co.th/products/happy-cat-14-i5150439562-s21763871241.html? Be careful with Lazada though, I've stopped buying dog food from it because I had a couple of bags that were fake.

I don't know how easy it would be to find here, but in the UK, I used old carpets or rugs turned upside down as weed suppressants. They last much longer than plastic. But they are easy to come by in the UK, and not so common here I think.

Boiling water will kill weeds faster than vinegar. It's pretty much instant for the leaves, but you need to wait a few minutes for it to soak into the soil. Neither will kill the root system of deep weeds unless you dig the ground over so the liquid can make contact with the roots directly. You can also make a vinegar, salt and boiling water solution, but you risk contaminating a wider area with the salt if you aren't careful, and as it will still only kill on contact, I've never seen the advantage over just using boiling water. Covering it with clear plastic will just create a polytunnel and encourage seeds to germinate. If you want to cover it, use thick black plastic to heat up and destroy any seeds on the surface without letting light through. If you laid the plastic down a few days before you would preheat the soil and help to dry it out, which would make boiling water more effective below the surface.

The BBC is reporting that the death was a '73-year-old British man who likely had a heart attack'. https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-69044396

There are lots of online services that will send a fax for you. My bank says they won't accept them, and it has to be a proper fax, but I still use them, and the bank staff don't seem to be able to tell the difference (or they just don't care.) I use Pam Fax https://www.pamfax.biz/ but there are plenty of others.

I watched it on my laptop and took a screenshot of the QR code at the end.

Have you checked the toilets to see if one is constantly running? If the valve isn't cutting off properly, the overflow just goes into the pan, so it's easy to miss. (The same thing can happen if the flush valve isn't closing properly, but then the tank will be empty when you want to flush it, so you usually notice that.)

Have you tried Berrer? https://www.berrerbrand.com/หมวดสินค้า-10-ยีนส์-=-หมวดย่อย,118

It works out to an increase of about 5.8% for each year you defer. https://www.gov.uk/deferring-state-pension/what-you-get

Denied boarding

Not this route or airline, but I've been pinged at the departure gate for document checks after an online check in, once to confirm I had a visa and once for an onward ticket. I had the paperwork with me both times, so there was no issue, but I assume I would have been denied boarding otherwise.

How much do you usually transfer? You can only send less than 50k THB per transaction to Krungsri. Wise will only send bigger (up to 2 mill) transfers to Bangkok Bank, Kasikorn and SCB.

I've seen this one get recommended to Brits specifically for not being American-style, but that's second-hand info, not a personal recommendation.