Assume every tax rate except for the “personal allowance” was increased by 1% to fund free train travel.

Would you be in favour of this?

I've not done the math for this (though did look up some stats for a Scotland specific post, and it seems to be feasible: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/44818305). So for the UK it may require a lower or higher increase (and to be fair my Scotland "calculations" were very rough and likely entirely wrong). This is more just a question about whether people would be in favour of something like this in general.

cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/44818223

Assume every tax rate except for the "personal allowance" was increased by 1% to fund free train travel. That would mean someone at the median annual income of £38k would pay about £254 extra tax per year ((38000 - 12570) * 0.01)

Would you be in favour of this?

Some numbers for context:

The government raised £17.1 billion in 2024.

The ScotRail revenue for 2024 was £351m (page 17).

So to offset the cost of tickets, the government would have to raise £351m which divided by the 2.46 million people in work would be an average cost of £140 extra per person collected per year, so I believe 1% may be able to pay for it comfortably, and even improve the service, to compensate for the extra demand on free travel.

Assume every tax rate except for the "personal allowance" was increased by 1% to fund free train travel. That would mean someone at the median annual income of £38k would pay about £254 extra tax per year ((38000 - 12570) * 0.01)

Would you be in favour of this?

Some numbers for context:

The government raised £17.1 billion in 2024.

The ScotRail revenue for 2024 was £351m (page 17).

So to offset the cost of tickets, the government would have to raise £351m which divided by the 2.46 million people in work would be an average cost of £140 extra per person collected per year, so I believe 1% may be able to pay for it comfortably, and even improve the service, to compensate for the extra demand on free travel.

I have a Chess.com account where my rating is 1500 in all modes.

I've switched to Lichess a few months ago, and been mostly playing Bullet 2 + 1. Based on what I've read, I would expect my rating to be around 1800, but despite (I believe) playing at a similar level, my rating is hovering around 1550.

It could just be me, maybe I was lucky on Chess.com to get that rating, but it seems everyone says your rating on Lichess should be around 200-300 more than on Chess.com, is that your experience as well? Has it maybe changed a bit?

Any idea what this is about? I doubt Proton has that many trackers, so I was thinking maybe the individual emails? But those would just be triggering when I click on links, which I thought Proton stripped anyways, and I wouldn't think /e/os would attribute those to Proton either.

Lets assume I have a lot in my pension, but not a lot a more accessible wrapper. Is it possible to get a loan from somewhere for a few hundred thousand that you start paying off when you are able to access your pension, which is also backed by the pension?

I found a couple resources such as https://generationmoney.co.uk/pension-loan-borrowing-against-a-pension-in-the-uk/ which suggest it "counts as an unauthorised payment and attracts significant charges."

However, I also came across other resources such as https://www.moneysavingadvice.co.uk/guide/should-you-secure-a-loan-on-your-pension/ which seems to say it's possible.

So is this a thing? Is it a good strategy, or are there high fees or other downsides that make it not worth it?