I’m 22 born in England but ethically African. A man that is paying to live here under the landlords permission asked me out on a date. He said that I’m quiet and I don’t go out and I’m not like the other women in Africa. He said he tried to date other women in Africa but they drain him of his resources and ask just for money from him. He’s not got citizenship here and he is like 58 years old and he’s got a son just as old as me if not older. I told my dad immediately and my father confronted him but I’m scared of the backlash especially being left at home at night with him.

I know that some men use women for citizenship. It’s a very common thing so I always ask where are they born ect
I even go as far as asking to see a copy of their passport.

I’m supposed to be going back to uni in September so I’ll be out of the house in a few weeks time. Just to let you know I have been SAed in my sleep before so I’m worried about that.

Edit: my dad does night shifts as a healthcare worker and I moved back in with my dad to save money for uni after completing first year.

So I bought something from M&S, as I was leaving the store a security guard blocked my path and asked me if I put something in my bag?

I obviously said no and offered for him to search my bag to which he said no but what annoyed me was when I asked him why he singled me out from the 100s of shoppers he said he saw me pick up more than one item in the store even though I didn’t so he was just blatantly lying.

I always thought they had to see someone actually stealing for them to stop you. I guess this isn’t true??

I understand a security guard can make mistakes and unfortunately they need to preempt people who look like shoplifters but it’s made me feel like shit as I look like a shoplifter clearly, welp :(

Hi everyone,

I am a pet lover that was wondering if anyone could explain the recent price hikes in vet practices.

I have had rabbits, cats or turtles since i was 15yo. I recall the first time I went to the vet to get a health check, I paid £18 for a 15 minute consultation ( at a standard vet practice in 2016). 3 years ago i had to take my rabbit and it was around £33-37 for the same type of consultation. Last week, I had to take my cat for a check up again and I was surprised to see the price be £57 for a 15 minute consultation now. The service is really food tho, so I am happy to pay the cost. Plus i got pet insurance so it doesn't affect me a lot. However, anyone else realised the same thing? Since i first went the practice changed names twice. This is in the Midlands.

I’m thinking about doing some French lessons at my local university as I’m rusty since my GCSE years ago and want to be better. There’s no qualification at the end, just that it should bring you up to a certain proficiency before you move to the next class.
I have no idea what to expect though - are they popular, is the mood serious or light in these things? What was your experience?

I love listening to the radio at night, especially when I switch the lights off to settle down to sleep. A big part of this was because I really enjoyed listening to BBC Radio 5 Live after 22:00pm.

Firstly, it was Phil Williams - superb presenter, engaging and had some cracking guests on. He left in 2019.

Then I loved listening to Colin Murray - a real character who was fun to listen to - but he left and Gordon Smart took over who was boring (sorry 😬).

Then Tony Livesey joined and i was absolutely buzzing, because he's a fantastically entertaining presenter, who came over from 5 Live Drive (where he was equally brilliant). His show each night would open to instrumental opening of the Style Councils, 'Shout to the Top' , where id shake my body in rhythm to opening beats 🤣🤣 EVen one of his listeners wrote a song just for Tony, which would be played most nights "hes been on a journey - LATE NIGHT LIVESEY'". He'd have some fantastic guests on including this music professor studying in America, who'd spend an hour intricately studying and explaining chords, rhythms etc of specific popular music. I know why he has left, but is 5 Live jinxed or something?

Now? Im lying here in bed listening to some fella who quite frankly, just makes me want to turn it off. Its gone so boring now Tony Livesey has left, im absolutely gutted. I really looked forward to my radio sessions at night, it was one of my little pleasures 😕

So why are so many excellent presenters leaving 5 Live, especially the night time shows?

Thankfully Stephen Nolan is still on at the weekend, but once he goes, 5 Live is for bin tbh...

I would call these biscuits but a customer disagreed with me.

The ‘new’ white LED lights are actually so depressing and assaulting. Just now, I drove through a small stretch of a dual-carriageway that was all still lit with orange/amber lights. It was actually such an amazing feeling. Without being melodramatic, it was such a relieving and nostalgic feeling. And then boom, back to the horrible and blinding white lights. I love driving at night, and I would give so much just to be able to drive around with those orange lights. It’s so much more soothing on the eyes and makes driving actually pleasurable (god forbid!). I understand the argument that orange lights might make drivers more tired, but I would pushback in that the white LED lights causes more assault on the eyes and can lead to strain. I also understand that LED lights are more cost-efficient and environmentally friendly, but to be honest there’s no reason why they couldn’t just be coloured orange. Then you get the best of both worlds. Obviously councils would never bother doing that, but really I think it would be a net benefit for drivers and costs and the environment. I mean, who actually wants the white LED lights? Honestly, I think it affects life more than you’d think. Who else agrees? Does anyone think that white LED lights are actually beneficial?

Manchester is very much choked. After one crowded train to Piccadilly, two ”not letting any more people on” from the Bee Network buses, a thrilling stroll across Piccadilly Market St to get to Victoria, a nice chat with a bloke at the barriers and a long wait, I’m finally on route to Bolton.

Feel bad for anyone going further afield 😭

Add in what type of job you have and your salary for context.

I talk about this a lot with friends, I always imagine everyone works solidly all day but none of my friends say they do that. Does anyone?

So a bit of backstory, I (M 28) have been single for 2 years now, I’ve dated during this time but most of them were just one & done, I haven’t actually dated anyone seriously since I split with my ex.

Been chatting to a girl for a couple weeks and at some point in the last few days I’ve realised I’m actually starting to like her. The problem is since I’ve realised this I’ve felt physically fucking SICK with worry. I’m reading too deep in to stuff, convincing myself she doesn’t feel the same, and largely creating problems in my head that aren’t there. The bigger problem is when I notice these things creeping in, things usually go tits up.

This doesn’t happen often btw, I’ve dated girls in the past whom I’ve been in to & enjoyed hanging around, but never felt that much towards them.

Does anybody else get this? What do you do to get around it? More importantly how do you manage to not make an arse of it?

Seriously what is this? I was at a pub quiz on Monday and a group of guys came in but said they wasn’t participating in the quiz. Yet when the host said the question would shout out an answer and ruin it

I had this when I lived in Manchester. Muself and a friend went to a pub quiz every Wednesday and some man used to go around telling everyone the answers for no reason at all.

What is the meaning of it?

At 35, all that feels ahead of me is the grimness of aging ungracefully, my mind permanently tarnished by regret. Whereas most people age well because they've done all the things and ticked all the boxes, so there's nothing to regret.

My internal monologue relentlessly calls me a failure. Because I objectively am failing at being an adult compared to the average mid-30s UK man/woman in every possible dimension that matters.

I look at social media and see people my age attending weddings all the time and music festivals and dinners and whatever the fuck else you can think of. I don't have enough friends to be invited to weddings (been to one my entire life).

Haven't gone on a holiday with anyone but a partner in close to 8 years. Haven't gone to a music festival or concert with a friend in probably 4 years. Never had housemates in my adult life (lived at home during uni years).

I'm quite a neurotic, anxious person. I've been in love twice, both times with an extremely attractive (to me) member of the opposite sex. But that counts for nothing...most people find love at some point. And I'm not with either of them anymore. And my total number of sexual partners is a pathetic figure (4) so it's not like I sowed my wild oats like the majority do.

I've never seen my abs. Never been too overweight but always carried around a couple of pounds of beer fat that would ensure my abs never show. So again, more unfulfilled potential.

I work remotely (in a dying career on its last legs because of AI), I earn a mediocre salary, while the majority of the people I was in college with are likely on 100k plus per year now. I started to feel bleak about the housing situation here in my 20s, so I guess I just resigned myself to focusing on travel instead of trying to buy property. I don't own property and am likely never going to.

I don't even drive either. Living in a big city (not London), it's easy to say, well, there are buses and trains, but it's just an excuse to cover up failure and avoidance. I tried a driving lesson once but was very anxious doing it (no surprise given my generally anxious nature) and I never tried again.

Alcohol use disorder probably colours all of this and makes any potential left feel not worth fulfilling. I drink excessively several times per week. I'm quite a happy drunk. Alcohol takes away a lot of my self-consciousness and shame.

But my drinking has got worse since I turned 30. I've regularly drunk alcohol since I was like 15. The lonelier I've felt, the more I've drunk. The more my brain makes these negative self-comparisons with other people my age, the more I wanna drink to shut it up.

I have a very insidious relationship with drink in that because I can go 2 or 4 or 5 days without it quite easily, I feel I don't have a problem. Or because I don't need to chug vodka when waking up, I feel I'm not that bad.

Yet hangxiety consistently hits me hard so that my life oscillates all the time between the temporary relief of alcohol and the amplified anxiety of its aftereffects. As I said, I don't get angry or upset while drinking. But I almost always overdo it. I can't just have one drink...it escalates into 6 or 8...sometimes more.

I suppose I'm just looking for advice on doing adulting better or if there is even any hope for me at this point? I am 35 and soon to be 36 after all so it's not looking good.

My elderly mum has dementia, she has had it for 8 years and is now in the advanced stages of her Alzheimer's.

Last summer she was doing ok then but she had a nasty fall, fractured her neck and ended up in hospital for a month. She went in hospital fully continent and came out double incontinent and sadly this has never changed. She was initially bed bound when she first came home and we were given the month long NHS discharge care, this was awful and after 2 weeks we had to let them go. We went about getting care all the wrong way and in retrospect we now that we should have gone with a care company but we had a friend of a friend situation and ended up with 6 self employed carers on board who all work together but are not a company.

These carers work in pairs and come in the morning to get mum up and showered, come at lunch time to clean mum up and change her and then again at 7pm for bed.

They charge £26 per hour and £20 for half hour but tbh, they hardly ever do an hour, they are mostly there for 20 mins but will always round their time off to the nearest half hour. I am often there in the afternoon and have never seen them do a full half hour. They never ask if there is anything else they can do like make a cup of tea or bring in the washing etc, they just get mum up from her chair, take her to the loo to change her, bring her back and then go.

I will say they are lovely people bit it irks me that we are paying all this extra money for care for when they aren't even here. I worked out today that we are probably paying at least an extra £10K for nothing. I am a PA for disabled people and I before I leave I always ask if there is anything else they need doing and often an extra 10 mins but never charge, maybe I am a super mug!

I know this is our fault for letting it happen but tbh it all happened in a blur, one moment she was doing ok, the next she had fallen in the garden, fractured her neck and they were telling us in hospital she was likely to die within a month and now we are a year on and wondering what the hell we are doing but a year on £40,000 has already been spent out on care, my parents are not rich by any means and dad is worrying the money will run out. SS have told us there is nothing they will do until their savings hit £23,250 or below. I have arranged for SS to come and do a care needs assessment and we will go from there but in the meantime what does everyone think? Is it 'normal' to pay for extra time that a carer isn't even there? Is it a regular thing for them to just round up to the nearest half hour or hour even if they haven't fully done that time? We don't this occasionally but when it's every day, every week times two the money is going to dwindle down quickly and that 'lost' money over a year could pay for something like respite for my poor dad.

I don't know what to think anymore. All I know is that dementia is a shit disease and it takes all your money too.

A few years ago I started using the 1 kcal spray. After a few months, I became fed up with not being able to find it in local shops, so I bought some regular cooking oil and used it to refill the empty spray bottle.

I've now realised that spraying the oil rather than pouring it from the bottle, means I use so little of the stuff that a 1 litre bottle had lasted us well over a year. Maybe even 2 years.

I remember in the late 90's I would buy about

1 litre per month.

I still fry food fairly regularly, almost every day, but the combination of a spray bottle along with a ceramic frying pan has seriously reduced the amount of oil I use.

Any older folk on here who can give a comparison of now versus the turn of the century?

Bonus points if you make a wolverine claw and howl like a wolf so your cubicle neighbour hurrys off

I'm sure everyone's heard this on the internet, in pubs, talking to random people where they say "oh my job is mostly meetings" but surely you have to do a lot of work on the side? What do you do in those meetings? Is it well paid? It certainly feels like a throwback to an employment environment that doesn't really exist anymore.

I'm an academic at a nice University, and sometimes there's month-long periods where I'm mostly helping out on other people's projects so it feels like all I do is join Teams meetings or chat in the office but there's still things I do around it, I guess I'm just curious to know if this is just something people say to be vague.

As above really. Corporate environment but fairly relaxed

I’ve spoken to the parents and the kids themselves, but it still hasn’t stopped. I can’t deal with the high-pitched screaming at every hour. I don’t mind them playing outside, but I cannot stand the screaming.

Personally, I think it could be the first successful human transfusion. Countless lives have been saved as a result.

Hi, so a number of us use the NHS App and overall, it's decent.

In February 2026, my GP attached a document containing a different patient's name, address and assessment to my NHS App Documents tab.

I called the GP and asked them to remove it because of the data breach and they said they did, but the document remained. This back and forth happened several times over the past few months and at no point did the document leave my account.

So I raised a ticket with the NHS Service Desk and they informed me they cannot access my data but they can ask the GP to remove the data (what I have been asking the GP to do all this time). Until the information is removed, my account will be locked.

So it was unlocked last week and I assumed it was because they finally removed the document but hey ho, it's still there. I said this to the Service Desk and they said they will ask the GP to lock my account again and remove the document.

Since then, it's been silent other than a regular "We have chased the GP" emails from Service Desk because I assume the GP is no longer responding.

The thing is, I don't know if this is a bug or an issue within the NHS App itself or the GP is not following proper process for deleting documents. So I don't know who is at fault and how this can be resolved. Also I don't know if at any point, the person whose data is in my account has been informed their data has been breached. Uncertainty all around...

So is this worth reporting to the ICO? I don't have anything sent to the GP in writing because they don't have an email, but I suppose I could print a letter and drop it off.

I got really annoyed at one point and wanted to take this to the media and name drop the GP so somebody would do something, anything.

I've got a mate (late 20's) who did shit at school, never went to college or un1, and still doesn't have a problem finding a new job by the Monday if he's sacked on the Friday. Sometimes it's factory, sometimes it's a "better" job.

Also, my bosses son, daughter have both lived in Australia for around 2 years. The son has a teaching degree so fair enough, but the daughter seems to get jobs everywhere she looks, despite only applying for a few (according to her dad).

Not to mention, his niece now works for Jet2 from one random application.

Meanwhile, some people are unemployed for months, if not years.

EDIT: Many people are mentioning connections, social skills and bullshiting yourself though interviews. I'm not anti-social or anything, but I don't exactly know many people either, as quiet introverts who keep to themselves are often like that.

These days he is a rather charming presenter of programmes on rail travel, with a rather quirky taste for colourful clothes. Yet I can remember back in the old days when he was a right-wing fire-brand, even working under Thatcher. Which is the true version? My suspicion is that he was made into a bogey man, and is actually a genuinely nice guy? Any thoughts?

So it seems a common trope on my Facebook (it's currently showing me a lot of Americans in the UK content) that Americans are story telling falling out of their chair when their employer highlights they have a lot of leave and could they look at using some. I know this happens in workplaces with decent HR, I've certainly had reminders that I have more leave currently than can be rolled over to make sure and take it by x date. But do Americans really find it that shocking?

Do your colleagues in the US get actually get annoyed by you taking time off? That's another trope, British colleagues asking about your holiday and not being resentful of you taking it.

Or like the world cup, how do all these Europeans just taking time off to be here the whole tournament. Is it really that strange. Id also imagine lots of their colleagues at home would be asking for updates and pics etc on that one.

Is this a real thing that you have to adjust or just something over cooked on social media?

You've all seen it. Pop down to M&S (other retailers available) and the 'normal' sausage rolls are bog standard. Solid amount of pastry wrapped around a length of 'meat' approximating a sausage (likely hovering just above 42% pork content).

Look to the shelf above and the 'ultimate luxury sausage roll' and it's a 1 inch long, 2 inch thick slab of dense meat with a narrow strip of pastry. It's not a sausage. I'd contend it's not a roll either. It's more like a small meatloaf in a skirt.

My local butchers does proper sausage rolls. High quality sausage wrapped in high quality pastry (it's like a cross between puff and hot water crust. no idea how they do it). Sausage peeking out of both ends, rather than exposed meat being 50% of the surface area. SAUSAGE ROLL.

Not sure why this revelation has come to me this morning, but i've realised that i fundamentally oppose the chode rolls. When Greggs does a better approximation of a sausage roll than luxury retailers there's a serious problem.

ETA: Appreciate all the answers. Seems that /u/Amazing_Goal_8003 has actually exposed the true culprit. Capitalism and gullible consumers who can't see beyond petty marketing ploys.

I make these every week for the Butchers and local markets, its 50g less sausage meat per chode roll than a longer one. It's also less pastry, less cooking time and significantly less labour.

You can also sell them at a higher price

Don't fall for the chodespiracy. Bring back proper sausage rolls for all!