₦airaland Forum

Anyone else get the feeling that Meghan and Harry have been treated far harsher than Andrew, both by the royal family and the general British populace?

Every other day there’s a hit piece in rags like the Mirror, Telegraph etc about Meghan and there’s even a thriving cesspool of a subreddit dedicated solely to attacking Meghan.

I wonder why. Lol just kidding - actually, I don’t.

HustlaOfLagos:
Out of curiosity, these tests can get you into schools like Eton? I'd appreciate your response even though I never born

ukay2 - replies appreciated too

Thanks in advance

Lol no. Eton is by money and connections.

Not the one you asked, but they are tests for grammar schools. They’re academically selective so the perception is that they provide higher quality education compared to state schools without needing to pay private school fees.

Found this hilarious. You will, too: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DMa-AbsOPqg

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DObsRoMjzGZ/?igsh=MTc1NnZ6ZmZ5azM3dA==

https://archive.is/W9ahu

Violent, lawless, broken Britain? The facts tell a different story

“The populist narrative of a migrant-driven crimewave is catnip on social media and oil to the wheels of Reform. But it is so far from the truth that we’re in danger of losing sight of the country we live in.”

HustlaOfLagos:
Hmm, I thought one could claim back the IHS fees even if not in HC as you are switching from one visa to the other? It says here -

https://www.gov.uk/healthcare-immigration-application/refunds

"You’ll get a full immigration health surcharge (IHS) refund if: you’re applying to extend or switch your visa in the UK and have paid the IHS twice for the same period"

I am not in HC at all

maybe marry someone in healthcare?
Just kidding o

Yes, that's the general one:

This is what I'm referring to: https://www.gov.uk/apply-immigration-health-surcharge-refund/tier-2-visa-medical-professional

HustlaOfLagos:
..And here I am, feeling guilty as I am trying to test the market and see what's good after 1 year LOL

Did you have to pay sponsorship costs each time? That is the only reason I considered staying till after 2 years but with the way the UK is, best to enjoy yourself and at least earn well before they change rules again

Yes, had to pay application fees plus IHS each time. Been a chunk each time. Good thing is - if you or your spouse are in health and care (the industry, not the visa), you will be able to claim back the IHS fee installmentally.

I only felt guilt in the first place because it was a fairly small (by employee numbers) outfit but next couple of places have been massive organisations so much less personal.

HustlaOfLagos:
I do have the feeling that you will not be tied to an employer after the initial 5 years if that is implemented. This allows you some freedom and job switching without getting an ILR since the goal is to prevent access to benefits.

I mean, that is the sensible way to go about if but then, UK politicians may have other ideas

Honestly if they do this I would have zero problems with it. I genuinely understand the concerns about benefits - it’s not only immigrants they’re trying to cut benefits for after all, also citizens and even old people. The whole benefits system is broken. And also, logically, if you’re a skilled worker you shouldn’t be in need of benefits as such, except if a mishap of some kind occurs.

BUT, being tied to sponsorship for 10 years? That, I cannot bear.

I’m on my third sponsorship now in less than 3 years and while I’ve made substantial jumps in earnings each time and am in a single digit percentile of earners at <30 so have lots to be thankful for, but I know it’s still less than I would be earning without the hindrance of sponsorship, and that gap will only continue to widen.

Jamesclooney:
What are the actual alternatives bro? Not some vague aspire to perspire speech. Should I go to Canada? On what visa? USA…again on what visa? Etc. I’m actually being open to hearing other ideas. I know a lot of people are in my boat, so doesn’t have to be specific to me.

USA on EB2 or EB1.

EB1 might be preferable if you're more advanced in your career but for most people already doing well in their careers EB2 is attainable with a few months of work to prep, and it's even better for a family because the lag time between submission > approval > priority date becoming current gives enough breathing space to put affairs in order before leaving the UK.

The USA jobs market is much stronger and you'll get paid a lot more if you have a solid profile, ceteris paribus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez1cn8d28_8

Niko Omilana at the ‘Unite the Right’ rally.

NosyNursy:
It’s the full story. That is the tax, pension and NI deduction from my payslip.

No. That cannot be the full story.

Paying that much in PAYE means you’ve been earning substantially more elsewhere since this tax year began (I suspect this is additional bank work you’re doing in addition to your main job because this is certainly not anyone’s full time earnings per month).

Alternatively, something major is wrong somewhere.

Again, if your tax code is the 1257l you would pay 0 tax on this income. That’s not my opinion - it is the law.

Show the full thing let’s see your tax code and the deductions.

NosyNursy:
Taxes.
PAYE & Pension

Pension is not a tax though, is it?

You can choose to cancel your contribution at any time (although of course that would be a massively foolish thing for anyone to do).

Anyway, this is definitely not the full story because you would pay 0 PAYE if that was truly your full earnings per month. NI contributions would also be negligible.

Overall, I’m a staunch believer that the UK is not overtaxed. Everything we benefit from (even though we cannot access benefits lol) needs to be paid for - infrastructure, security etc - and it’s very middle of the table compared with many other countries with similar systems: https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/06/27/uk-workers-tax-wedge-infographics/

The ironic thing about this Kemi episode is that in the coming years she’ll be a (maybe “THE”) textbook example of a Glass Cliff scenario, despite all her protestations about her identity and its role or lack thereof in her career.

In fact, I’m going to periodically check this Wiki page about the Glass Cliff to see when she gets added to the examples: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff

elengine:
Normally I should not engage in this kind of conversation but I can't just help.

Please don’t, bros. You, and this space, are better than this.

AlphaUno:
Hello house,

Property type New build (semi detached)
Property value £293,995
Deposit 10%
Term 24 years
Rate 5%
Work visa Less than 5 years more
Length of stay : Close to 4 years.
Lender : Principality

Back story : MA with RSC said we got refused by Barclays - they want 15% deposit - and one other lender.
- Something tells me MA doesn't have my interest @ heart ,as they were introduced by developer.
- I researched and found lender has a 4.98% rate with £1,350 product fee and 5 years fixed but MA chose 5% rate with 2 years fixed for us.
- Got us a £269/m full coverage Insurance
- with BOE's base rate @ 4%, I know 5% is high but my credit score / report is reading fair on Experian.

Questions
Anyone has any review on RSC ?

Can I get a better deal in mortgage rate (4.5% preferably) and lower insurance premium?

Any recommendations as per MA ?

Firstly and most crucially, that rate is higher than what you can get elsewhere eg Barclays.

Secondly, £269 is absurdly high for insurances (I'm assuming this includes life and income protection and critical illness - all reduing cover?). Analyse which one you'll really need e.g. you may not need income protection depending on what the sickness absence policy is where you work. You may also not need life insurance. Even if you do, you wil ALWAYS get a better deal by yourself. Start from the comparison websites.

Also, how come your MA chose a term for you? That's odd. Normally they would discuss with you and let you decide.

Given your profile, I'm not sure why Barclays would refuse you. I've just looked at their criteria and there's no restriction on people on visas in terms of new build or not as far as I can see (I'm not a expert so I may well be missing something).

In any case, what you should do is get another MA. This is too big a decision for you to stay with an advisor whom you're not sure is working in your best interests, out of politeness or whatever. The first mistake was in engaging the MA recommended by your seller but you can still remedy that by getting another advisor to doube-check whether you can get from a Barclays or somewhere else with a lower rate.

gabiomoesu:
Amazing stuff. Haha

Don’t you think this conversation you’re having is better suited for DMs?

Ogonsbaba:
Please, i got an interest rate of 4.46 from Barclays bank. Is it advisable to go for 3 or 5 years fixed??

The conventional wisdom for an ‘immigrant’ is typically to go for 5 as that gives some stability and also because the fees you’ll pay for the initial deal and for remortgages often cancel out the reduced interest rates of shorter terms.

I’d caveat with my own experience though, because we would have gone for 2 years if we had figured this : we recently put a chunk of funds into a conversion/renovation, and the value of the house has increased substantially as a result (confirmed by a surveyor) but our fix was for five years and while we could break the mortgage, it’d cost quite a bit in early repayment fees.

In short, if you’re going to be doing work to increase the value of the house, consider going for two years so you can benefit from the increased value sooner.

Goke7:
It’s a foretaste of what is still in the offing when Reform gets into Downing Street though the blow back will eventually regulate it. The current template in the US is what has actually emboldened every thing, will be interesting to see how the midterms elections go next year to see whether things can still go in the reverse if not then we are in it finally for the long ride.

And we should all prepare for the gaslighting about how whatever is happening is not racist; and even if it is, it’s because of “underlying causes”, from those that can’t see racism being faced by others but can hallucinate gender discrimination from thin air when it concerns them.

ReesheesuKnack:
‘good’Enoch

😄😄 believe it or not, it was purely a coincidence. I was reading the news (it broke yesterday I think) and thought to come here and see if anyone had posted it.

When I saw your message I decided to emulate the style as a joke.

Lol. I’m not invested in any Labour Party politician enough to feel the need to hold brief for them, especially when they’re clearly in the wrong as in the news you posted.

I outlined the specific reasons why I advocate Labour on here. There’s nothing more to it than that. If I wanted to do whataboutism, I would point you to Nadhim Zahawi, erstwhile Chancellor and then Conservative Party Chair who failed to pay taxes, lied about it repeatedly and deployed SLAPPs to attempt to prevent the news from being reported. The whole thing was so bad that his lawyer has now been sanctioned to the tune of pay £310,000 by the SRA. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jan/29/nadhim-zahawi-sacked-tory-party-chair-tax-affairs-rishi-sunak

I love to say ‘I told you so’ 😄

Remember when I told everyone that this woman is a liar and a grifter?

Well, here you go: https://archive.is/vvuaP

Truly a CONservative 😉

April2525:
Hi please advice Which career path should someone Currently on a fiancé visa follow when they eventually get the spousal visa and can work.

1) health care Currently has a first degree and 4weeks internship experience in a Nigerian hospital. The option of enrolling in the 2 year preregistration nursing degree seems promising although the tuition is not going to be easy may have to work as a care giver to fund tuition and with support from spouse it maybe rewarding at the end.

2) digital marketing Has working experience and skills.

3) teaching has experience and skills.

With the last two would pursue a masters degree in line with these career paths.

Please give your advice with reasons especially as regards financial rewards.

Don’t go into digital marketing unless you have very advanced skills and the experience at a high profile company to back it up (not skills like Canva design and post scheduling. I mean things like deep analytics, managing complex ad funnels and advanced CRO).

The early to mid level jobs in that field are gone and are not coming back.

I don’t know much about teaching or nursing but I’d say there’s a good reason why many people go into nursing. They are always in demand and have the flexibility to work and earn more at will. I don’t think teaching has such flexibility.

ReesheesuKnack:
The refund is backdated to 2023.
In 2023, you had not even applied for a UK visa. Infact, in that 2023, you probably hadn’t considered japa-ing to the UK.

How then are you eligible for refund? A refund covering a period you were in Africa?

Make it make sense

To be fair to our dear senior nurse, it appears the message was a direct copy of what was sent to him (presumably by his landlord) and the message acknolwedges some of the recipients might not have been tenants from Dec 2023.

Rock86, you stay in a HMO, right? The rule is that landlords are liable to pay for council tax for HMOs but some get the tenants to pay instead. It appears your landlord has been caught (I doubt they volunteered to begin paying as they seem to be implying), and the council is now billing them and refunding you. You don't have any obligation to pay them a penny out of it and there's nothing they can do to get you to pay them anything.

Practically though, the fact that you'd be paying council tax yourself may have influenced your rent being lower, and you may also want to be mindful of the relationship (they might not be able to force you to pay but you probably don't want to be feuding with your landlord), so you may want to chuck a few quid their way as a goodwill gesture.

Here's a similar scenario: https://www.justanswer.co.uk/law/pyz62-lived-hmo-paid-council-tax-directly.html

Bumzz00:
Hi Everyone,

I need advise from gurus and well experienced people please.

I currently work in a local NHS with an annual income of £29907 before tax, due to increase to £33000 before tax in few months. I currently do not spend a penny on transportation with free staff bus available to and fro work and i enjoy as much flexibility as i wish to have with a daily commute of about 30 mins to and fro. I save quite a good amount monthly and spend even more less on feeding and housing cost about £700-£800 monthly.

I recently got a job offer in central London with a salary of £42000 before tax (a more senior but similar role as my current). By my rough calculation transportation monthly will cost me roughly £607.42 monthly excluding feeling and other misllc and daily commute of about 3hrs to and fro

Now i am confused if i should take the offer or not. Saying Local or commuting to the city.

Stay in your current role, unless there are compelling reasons why that other one is better, beyond finances.

For an increase of 9k salary with added transport cost of 600+, my rough mental back-of-napkin math says you’ll actually be keeping less of your pay when you factor in the incidental expenses that come with working in London. When you factor in the time you’ll spend commuting, you’re definitely earning quite a bit less per hour and losing time you could have spent upskilling and preparing to get a job with a much more substantial salary increase whether in London or out.

I recently had a similar dilemma (also a London role, and while it a substantial increase from what I was earning, when I factored transport + commuting in, the net increase was not worth it for me). Three months later I got my current role; still in London but much substantially higher pay than the previous offer and with a lower commuting requirement.

jedisco:
Another attempt at deviation.

So you said most opposition to your views here is angled on you being a woman and when asked to expatiate, you try everything to deviate it.

It's not difficult to see how people paint narratives and lean into stereotypes.

It is funny, isn’t it?

It was surprising to see someone who was so adamant about not seeing/understanding why people were speaking out against being targeted during the riots on the basis of their race (instead choosing to shift the issue entirely to “underlying causes” despite all the evidence that race was the core driver of the riots), suddenly begin to hallucinate about being targeted on the basis of her gender despite the lack of any of evidence of that, despite repeated calls to provide such evidence.

I guess the people who frequently pat themselves on the back about being ‘objective’ and attack others as ‘emotional’, often really are just projecting.

"There were an estimated 80,000 soldiers from Britain’s colonies including the Gambia, Ghana and Sierra Leone who sailed from west Africa to south Asia, initially heading to Burma (modern-day Myanmar) and joining the ranks of the 14th army.

Nigerians made up more than half of the west African soldiers deployed to south-east Asia after 1943 as part of the British army’s 81st and 82nd (West Africa) Divisions.

However, the allied commander Gen William Slim did not mention the African soldiers in his speech thanking the 14th army.

Dr Alan Jeffreys, the museum’s head of collections and research, said: “To put it in numerical terms, in the 14th army there were 340,000 Indian soldiers, 100,000 British soldiers, 80,000 African soldiers. That number of Indian soldiers only increased, it was a predominantly Indian army by the end of 1945.”

In Britain, the forces in south Asia became known as the “forgotten army” as the focus shifted to the threat of Nazism that was sweeping through Europe.

Beyond Burma, which opens on 16 September, features medal groups awarded to Indian and African soldiers, as well as photographs and artwork. There is a focus on the reality of jungle warfare, the transformation of the Indian army, eventual victory and the campaign that continued during the 1940s in south-east Asia."

Came across this exhibition. I'll be going to see it.
Sounds like it'll be very interesting.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/aug/14/london-museum-african-indian-troops-world-war-two-beyond-burma-forgotten-armies

There's also this : https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2015/aug/10/forgotten-army-world-war-two-west-african-soldiers-burma-video

lavida001:
You want me to leave so you can keep spewing your nonsense. Classic minion

Oya Oya you don catch me - I'm terrified of you. As you're here now I can't say what I want to say because I'm afraid of LavidaLoca.

lavida001:
First I thought it was just one of but it kept happening over and over again especially from the minions and Hypocritical pretenders.

I stand strongly with you.

But honestly you too read what I wrote and what you responded with? Where's the nexus?

I said it's not true that anyone is challenging you because you are a woman, and your response was to ramble about how you are not going to leave (I don't want you to and I have never said you or anyone should).

So how else am I supposed to interpret it other than that you made a claim, failed to back it up with proof, and to distract from that failure, decided to shift attention to a completely tangential point arguing against things nobody said?

[quote author=lavida001 post=136441043][/quote]I don't want you to leave.

I find you funny.

Zahra29:
Lol I deliberately said what I said regarding the woman comment. I clearly said "some", not "most" and certainly not "all", so I'm not generalising or stereotyping.

By the way, this is also nonsensical.

Repeating that you said "some" is meaningless when there's clearly no instance when your gender has ever been in issue in this thread. Unless of course you have had interactions with people off-thread where they have made your gender an issue.

But on this group? It has never happened, and I challenge you to show where it has. Name the people who are attacking you based on your gender so we'll all call them out as is our responsibility.

I can't just say some people who challenge me are doing so because I have curly hair and when someone says oh that's not true, nobody has ever said anything about your hair I then retort "oh but I said 'some people' so I'm not generalizing or stereotyping"

RodgersAkpafu:
What are you talking about for goodness sakes ?

Which part are you struggling to understand?

Zahra29:
Following the same reasoning, Kemi did Australia a favour by securing a deal with them. And the UK did India a massive favour by signing the recent landmark deal. The UK is evidently very generous. Lol

No. The only reason why it is being discussed in the context of being a favor is because YOU made it so.

It was as you you cited it as a way to disprove the claims of her animus against Nigeria.

It's not a big deal or a gotcha, it's just funny that you're compulsively trying to deny it when it's actually not neccessary.