CHI-BAY

I used to be an avid buyer and seller on Ebay, the place that helped you get rid of unwanted stuff and earn a few pennies at the same time but I’ve recently noticed that this market place is not quite the place it once was.

Maybe it’s just me but has anyone else wondered why most sellers now appearing on the platform are not your neighbours but instead hail from the Far East? My partner and I have re-named the website ‘Chi-Bay’ since it is now swamped with cheap Chinese tat.

Interesting that some sellers claiming to be from the UK have either an address that looks like an ancient alphabet or are definitely not from near Macclesfield as stated in their blurb.

Funny how those same sellers claiming to be from the UK whose adverts quote a delivery timeframe of around 2 days always have delayed items because let’s face it, objects shipped from the other side of the world can’t arrive in 2 days’ time unless they’re coming by Tardis.

It’s also those very same sellers that entice you with discounts or invite you to submit offers for their products but then turn down every single one, including those that might be 50p cheaper than the advertised price because they they’re not really interested in letting you bag a bargain.

Searching for stuff has turned into a quest worthy of Sir Ranulph Fiennes. The platform’s search criteria, now about as useful as a chocolate teapot, flags up everything on the Best Match category that bears little resemblance to what you are looking for instead of offering products that are nearer, cheaper and fit more closely the search criteria you’ve input. Is this how AI works?

Not only has Chi-Bay literally morphed into Aladdin’s Cave but the platform’s cut of your takings has stealthily crept up since they decided to elbow out Paypal for payment processing and now muscled in on courier deliveries. Unless you are selling something which generates a nice bit of pocket money after commissions, it really isn’t worthwhile going down this road to Mandalay anymore.

There are plenty of other platforms out there that let you advertise items for sale that don’t take commission such as Gumtree, Facebook or Nextdoor and this makes them an attractive alternative to Chi-Bay. There’s also the wonderful Freecycle website where you can simply donate stuff to anyone who might find a home for it.

Another nail in the Chi-Bay coffin is tax. Some sellers must now declare and pay taxes on earnings that exceed a certain level per year. This threshold is part of the 'trading allowance', which applies to income from various online activities so beware if you do have a lot of clutter to get rid of as you may unwittingly fall into a tax trap you didn’t know existed especially since I think the website is now obliged to grass you up to the Revenue.

Interestingly, there’s conflicting online info on the topic of tax and online selling. Here’s what the Revenue has to say on the matter:

Angela MacDonald, HMRC’s Second Permanent Secretary and Deputy Chief Executive Officer, said:

We cannot be clearer – if you are not trading and just occasionally sell unwanted items online – there is no tax due.

As has always been the case, some people who are trading through websites or selling services online may need to be paying tax and registering for Self Assessment.

So, if you just dabble occasionally to get rid of a bit of tut then you should be OK but if you’re operating as a dedicated online business then expect a knock on your cyber door from the Tax Man.

In the meantime, let me check my Watch List as I’m keeping a beady eye on a hand operated meat mincing gadget so I can turn my freezer full of venison chunks into burgers and meatballs.

What everyone wants on Ebay

Aha!  There's been a further development with my cheeky offer asking for a £1.50 discount on the price of this mincer.

Firstly, the seller came back with a counter deal offering me a discount of ...... 10p.  Ridiculous!  At which point a succinct reply from yours truly affirming that 10p off was not considered a discount but an insult to legitimate buyers.  Not to be deterred, I sent in a second offer halving my original requested discount to 75p off the purchase price which the seller immediately accepted.

Happy days but not quite as I discovered a few days after the auction completed when the seller kindly dropped me a line to inform me that their mincer was not like the picture featured on their advert but in reality would look like this:

Not as advertised

And to add insult to injury, my item would not necessarily be sent in any sort of packaging or contain all the attachments featured in the original advertisement such as a tool to enable you to make sausages.  Hmmm - definitely a product not as described or as depicted in the advert.

I eventually received a box covered in foreign writing with no English translation containing the meat mincer parts which were not difficult to assemble and appeared complete.  I have yet to test it on my diced venison so whether this purchase is the bargain buy of the century remains to be seen.

Buyer beware or 买家自负 (mǎijiā zìfù) as they say in Chinese.  Yep, this deffo applies to Chi-Bay as all is certainly not what it seems to be.

CORNER SHELVES - DRY BUILD

In an ideal world, you’d cut your timber as per build plan then assemble your unit in situ, fettling as you go to arrive at a perfect fit thus reducing the tears and tantrums that form part of these projects. (Mostly mine!)

But we don’t live in an ideal world. It’s double the challenge making a bookcase for a room that’s over 90 miles away with no way of checking you’re on track as you go along. Hey, that’s the fun of it – right.

To help get heads round the design plan particularly as there’s the issue of the unused ‘dead zone’ that forms part of the corner then we’re going to dry build the first bookcase, dismantle it for painting then re-assemble it when back on site. Bit of a faff but easier to transport without a van.

The 'dead' zone where the two units meet

What's this dead zone?  Well the dead zone is the spot right in the corner where the two bookcases meet.  Rather like a zombie date night but with less carnage.  If you were to just put two units together at a right angle there would be books tucked into the far corner which would be hard to get at.

To get round this issue, we've inserted a third long upright piece approx 20 cms from the edge on this wider unit.  This third leg can then be used to block off the dead zone so that all books can be accessed from front of the shelf.  That's the theory, now let's hope it works in practice.

Clear down the dining table – here we come! It’s the only thing long enough to support the tall side panels which are over 2 metres long so its TV dinners whilst we huff, puff and blow the house down in a bid to create our own Frankenstein bookshelf monster. God, it’s a heavy bugger!

Dry building the first unit

Now let's take it apart again

STATE PENSION AGE REVIEW

New month and I’m feeling decidedly waspish. There’s definitely something of the angry hornet in my general demeanour at the moment so look out. Bzzzzzz! BZZZZZZ!!

Britain is soon to become a nation of waspi people if the Government get their evil way as it has recently embarked on a review of the state pension age much earlier than the next one was due. The other half shows as much interest in the subject of retirement as a digestive biscuit floundering in a cup of tea which always surprises me seeing as how he’s inching closer to the big 6-0 day by day. Retirement should be at the forefront of his thoughts.

As I understand it, the current state pension age for everyone is 66 years of age but in April 2026 this goes up to 67 years of age. It was due to remain at 67/68 years of age until April 2044 but since the Government is flat broke then my guess is that is now highly unlikely. It’s simple – pensioners, like gold plated toilets, are just too expensive.

Now for all of us who are on the cusps of retirement then listen up as a state pension age review could be very bad news. Very bad indeed. Just ask the Waspi women whose retirement plans were left in financial tatters last time these goal posts were changed.

Let’s take my own situation as an example. I’m 62 so as the rules currently stand, I would be due to claim my state pension when I reach the age of 67 in 2030. Naturally, like millions of others, I have no intention of working through to the bitter end so an employment escape plan is already percolating.

Due to ingrained super scrimping habits and having paid into a couple of defined contribution pension schemes during my working life then if I really wanted to, I could probably take early retirement any time from my next birthday onwards as according to my calculations I have just enough put by to bridge a 4-year gap between giving up work and claiming a state pension.

However, if the Government suddenly introduces any changes to the state pension age earlier than the year 2030 then I may have to keep working or scrimp a bit longer if I want to take early retirement because the funding gap will have grown like a rampant petunia.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, now let’s think about life expectancy for women in the UK which statistically stands at around 83 years.

If I retired at 67 years of age then dropped dead at 83, I’d have enjoyed a state retirement period of around 16 years. BUT if life expectancy doesn’t increase and all successive Governments keep pushing out the pension age, my paid state retirement period will get shorter and shorter until like the dodo, it ceases to exist altogether.

State pensions are in danger of becoming the Christmas Club all workers pay into that never pays out.

Of even greater concern are other alternatives being bandied about in the media as suggestions to defuse the Government’s ticking pensions timebomb, suggestions such as means testing state pensions. Lord forbid that horror should ever come to pass before I retire!

Just imagine - you’ve spent a lifetime of toil, paid all your taxes plus saved a few pennies for the rainy retirement day, then WHAM! Here comes the candle to light you to bed then along comes a chopper to chop off your head. It’s bad enough that Fiscal Drag is dogging your senior steps like a rabid hyena but if pension means testing is introduced, you could be penalised AGAIN. Doing the responsible thing may leave one exposed to receiving either a low or no state pension at all. There’s no incentive for saving.

Should the state pension be means tested? On the one hand I can see how this might be an attractive solution for a cash-strapped Chancellor but on the other hand, I can’t see how this would be fair to millions of hard-working individuals who have already paid tax or NI on their earnings yet still managed to put a few pennies aside for their old age. Simply put, it would be nothing more than a Stealth Wealth Tax by any other name.

Perhaps a better way of encouraging everyone to fund their own retirement would be to set up a RISA – a dedicated Retirement ISA which would be funded by individual contributions plus a state contribution in the form of a reduction in either tax or NI for individuals signing a waiver to voluntarily opt out of state pensions rather like we did with SERPS several decades ago.

I appreciate the Government currently pay top ups into the LISA (Lifetime ISA) but not everyone is eligible to open these accounts. A RISA could be available to everyone from the moment they begin their working lives as a form of generating a tax-free income in retirement by forfeiting a state pension.

If the Government had any ounce of business sense, it could even link RISAs to stock market investments by making it a 50-50 account, half invested in cash and the other half in UK equities thus killing two birds with one stone.

Some people would be more than happy to opt out of state pensions altogether if they thought they would be paying less tax during their working lives and paying into a ring-fenced investment vehicle that funds their own old age and not everyone else’s as is the case with the current Ponzi-styled Government state pension scheme.

The biggest issue any Government will always face is not how to find the money to pay for pensions because a chunk of that will always come from workforce taxation but how to find the money to pay for the pensions of those who have never worked a day in their lives. A reduced birth rate or AI replacing the traditional workforce taxpayers isn’t going to help either.

Those with the broadest shoulders have *ucked off to Dubai, employed clever accountants to shift their wealth into special purpose vehicles to minimise tax or spent it all on coke and hookers. In contrast, my rather small and aging shoulders have reached the point where anything greater than a 5-year slog to retirement is now likely to bring about a complete spinal collapse. Flogging us all to death is NOT the answer to the great state pension dilemma!

Pay it or don't pay it is what I say but if you choose not to pay it then don't expect us all to keep paying for it!  I await the results of the state pension age review with bated breath. Let’s hope that like all these things, it takes longer than 5 years before any decisions are reached.

CORNER BOOKCASE

Word to the wise – always check the small print before you sign up for anything!

Ssshh, don't tell the kids but how we’re going to make a corner bookcase is anyone’s guess but we love a challenge, don’t we? What do you mean NO?

If Liz Truss can tank the economy in the blink of an eye then I’m sure that with a bit of thought, some scrap paper and a bucketful of tea, we can come up with a plan of action. It’s green for go, go, go!

Now in my addled mind, there’s 2 potential ways forward; we can either cut L shaped shelves or make two tall bookcases then butt these together.

The first path sounds like a complete major headache. The scope for build errors if L shaped shelves are not all identical is enough to put you right off. Keep it simple, stupid especially when your joinery skills are on a par with that of a napping sloth. Me thinks the easiest way forward is to build two units beginning with the one along the back wall of the alcove.

Lucky for us, it’s a three-sided alcove but we soon discovered that not only did the walls taper inwards but that only one of the three sides was masonry, the others are stud walls. I love that term ‘stud’ walls. Phwoarr! Sounds like something out of a builder bodice-ripper novel. Wonder what the opposite would be – wimp walls?

Mapping out the work area

To spice things up further, behind one of the stud walls is a cupboard containing a maze of pipes leading down to an immersion heater tank. Bugger! That means anchorage to the brick wall only on one side. Hmmm – will that be enough?

To make best use of the space and accommodate the growing collection of books amassed during my son’s short lifespan, the first unit will be fashioned out of 300 mm wide pineboard planks. We used the same width to make our bookcases and found that this size is good for most books plus allows enough empty space for all those dust-gathering knick-knacks everyone loves to accumulate.

Having measured every inch of the work area and identified the book sizes to go on each shelf, it’s ready, steady, pencil for a bit of technical drawing. Hours later, a build plan is devised complete with measurements.

Behold - a shelving plan is born

Now all we need to do is go timber shopping then spend the next few days priming, painting and varnishing – the perfect summertime sport.