It seems the Inland Revenue are constantly in the press nowadays highlighting their errors and mistakes and how the tax payer is soaking up the burden for their own mistakes.

For 2 years in a row they have got their Tax Credits wrong overpaying countless numbers of people and have written off millions of pounds as they have been unable to collect the overpayments from everybody.

Who pays for this? We do. As tax payers we are now paying for their mistakes which leads me to the question, are they trying to raise extra taxes by other means?

This year I received a fine of £100 for supposedly not filing my tax return by the 31st January 2006 deadline. Now I know this wasn’t true as it was hand delivered to the tax office and when I queried this they confirmed they had received it on the 31st January 2006. “So why was I fined” I asked, “don’t know” was the reply and the fine was duly written off.

My girlfriend was also fined for not paying over stamp duty to the Inland Revenue in time when she purchased a house. She was fuming as this is all dealt with by the solicitors. She had to take the time to get proof that the cheque was sent in time and indeed cashed before they would write off the charge which they did.

Now how many people would bother to query these instances and simply pay up because they have been told to. Is this a ploy for them to generate more revenue or just another case of their incompetence?

Well I am pleased to say that I have finally left TalkTalk Broadband and I definitely won’t be going back to them anytime soon. I could have got my broadband for free with them but I’d rather pay for something and get a good service that I can rely on.

Talking to TalkTalk support has been a waste of time and money and the people I have got to speak to either don’t know what they are doing, don’t understand their own systems or simply don’t care. Even yesterday when I called them to say my broadband wasn’t working they couldn’t tell me whether or not I was still connected to them  and suggested I report it as a fault.

It turns out I had been disconnected and BT hadn’t emailed PlusNet to tell them my migration had gone through. Entering my new login details to my router got me connected straight away.

The first thing I noticed is the speed. Although I have still to get an increase of my connection from 1Mb to 8Mb the whole internet just seems to have come back to life. Surfing the internet is so much faster with PlusNet even at these low speeds and I can’t wait to see the further improvements when I’m on 8Mb.

I chose PlusNet over others as I noticed they had topped the customer satisfaction charts at uSwitch with 92% and they didn’t tie you into any long term contracts. Who wants to be stuck into 18 month contract with anyone?

Any company who is also prepared to do a no cost 30 day trial have to be confident of their own services too and that was the point that finally clinched the deal. I had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

If you’re fed up with your broadband provider then check out PlusNet for yourself. They do up to 8Mb connections from only £9.99 a month. Although there are free deals around, the saying “You get what you pay for” springs to mind.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the road works contractors gave as much thought to the publics safety as they do there own?

It’s bad enough when they pack up for night and leave the signs up when there aren’t any road works being carried (The boy that cried wolf?) but when you are working on a busy main road with a 60mph speed limit in a dip wouldn’t it make sense to put signs up before the dip in the road?

Imagine you are driving down the road at 60mph and you go over the brow of a hill only to find a queue of traffic stopped at the temporary traffic lights 50m in front you? Well that happened to me yesterday and although I was able to stop in time I sat in the car for what felt like an eternity waiting for the traffic to move before someone came haring up over the hill behind me and crashed into the back of my car.

Now I know the contractors have probably put the signs out exactly how they are supposed to which is fine if you are on a straight road with clear line of sight but don’t you think a little bit of common sense should be used and give people at least a chance to slow down a bit knowing there could be a problem in front of them on a piece of road they cannot see?

I got an email from EasyMobile yesterday to inform me that they are to introduce a minimum call charge of 1 minute on the 1st October 2006 effectively meaning that the minimum call charge will now be 15p if you’re not calling another EasyMobile user.

This is a massive increase and I wonder if they are going to remain competitive? The main reason why I chose EasyMobile was that they charged by the second and if you were only on the phone for 10 seconds, you would only be charged for 10 seconds of usage.

I’ve been very happy with EasyMobile and found their customer service to be excellent but I think I may need to change supplier.

T-Mobile on a similar PAYG scheme are now charging 12p per minute with a minimum call charge of 5p. Their data costs are a lot more attractive too with unlimited data for a £1 a day compared to EasyMobile’s £3 per Mb. The only downside is if you call someone on the same network it still costs 12p per minute whereas with EasyMobile it only costs 3p per minute although that offer ends on 31st December 2006 and there is no telling how much it will cost after then.

The thing that annoys me about all these mobile companies is that I’m sure they make all their plans confusing on purpose so its impossible to compare between them. Unless you make the same amount of calls, texts and data usage every month you are just guessing and hoping for the best.

Well I eventually got through to TalkTalk today and got to explain my problem and that I still hadn’t got my MAC code.

To my surprise the guy on the phone confirmed I had ordered it more than 28 days ago and said “I’ll get you a MAC code within the hour and call you back”.

Well, you can’t argue with a statement like that but I did wonder whether I would ever get the call back. I’m pleased to say a couple of hours later he did ring and I’m now in possession of the elusive MAC code. Whether it works remains to be seen but I will be positive and take them at their word and use it later today.

It just goes to show that they can generate MAC codes easily enough if they want to.