The pothole season and the council report card
Frost turns cracks into craters every winter. Report them well, claim with care, and read what your council now has to publish about its repairs.
Lead column
№ 18
14 November 2026
The subscription you forgot about gets a new set of rules
Easy to start and hard to stop is about to become a legal problem. The catch is that the new rules only cover subscriptions taken out from January.
Somewhere on your bank statement there is a payment of £7.99 that you no longer recognise. It might be a meal kit you tried in March, a fitness app you opened twice, or a streaming add-on that came free with something else and quietly stopped being free. The good news is that from 1 January 2027 new UK rules start to make these… Read the column →
This month’s columns
All columns →The parcel was delivered, apparently
Delivered, says the tracking page. Not here, says your doorstep. The shop owns the problem until the parcel is in your hands.
Half price, compared with what?
Black Friday is on 27 November and the crossed-out price is about to work overtime. A short guide to reading a discount like a sceptic.
The contactless limit was scrapped. Your card did not notice
The regulator let banks set their own ceilings. Most chose to stay at £100, and the useful change turned out to be control in your own app.
The rail fare freeze has a sell-by date
Season tickets and commuter returns stood still for a year. Nobody has said what comes next, so it is worth doing the sums now.
From the letters page
“Please keep writing about the receipts. My pockets cannot take another winter.” A reader, Durham