Hello, you glorious beasts. 

This week in Bunce: 

🚨 How I reclaimed a grand in stolen wages from a dodgy boss

🌆 The time I worked for the AirBnb barons hiking London’s house prices

🇬🇧 Britain is unhappy (and poor) + free LinkedIn skills courses

P.S. Here’s a list of 67 companies that will give you a freebie or discount on your birthday.

Maybe your birthday is conveniently tomorrow. Who’s to say?

But enough of this balderdash—to business. 

Let me tell you… 

How I got £1k withheld wages back (spoiler: fear)

My boss owed me nearly a grand and was refusing to pay. But then I found a way to get it all back. 

TL;DR: Search Companies House —> find dodginess —> dangle dodginess in front of employer, and they realise it’s cheaper to just pay you.

Some context:

I was 22, broke, and working at a karaoke bar in Glasgow. 

The owner was a sleaze who paid in cash—never on time and usually less than he owed. 

There was little we could do. We were desperate for money. 

After all, that ‘we’ was a ragtag troupe of students, migrants with dodgy paperwork, a single mother, and an out-of-work “actor”. 

We couldn’t quit because then he’d never pay us back.

And even if I took him to court and won, bugger all might happen—small businesses in “financial difficulty” rarely pay up. 

But after 3 months, he still owed me nearly £1,000. And I was angry. 

So I started looking for alternatives. 

I googled his business’s name and eventually found his listing on Companies House (the official UK business register, which publishes the financial history of all UK businesses online). 

The business had been struck off the register 4 years ago. 

I searched for any other trading licenses he might be operating under but found none. 

In short, he… 

❌ Wasn’t paying National Insurance (NI) contributions 

❌ Had an invalid VAT number (I found this after searching here)

❌ Wasn’t operating a legal company. 

What I did

I arranged to meet him for a “little chat” about my unpaid wages. 

Where I casually floated the idea that he wasn’t registered at Companies House. 

He stared at me. Then laughed. Then stared at me again. 

The fact that I did some simple due diligence on his company’s legitimacy scared him. 

I had dirt, so I had leverage.

And lo! He duly transferred me all my owed wages with a passive-aggressive emoji-littered text thrown in as a tasty treat. 

In fact, he paid all of us. Which was a great result

This is what I learnt: SMEs are generally terrified of HMRC. 

Quite rightly. Unlike industrial tribunals, HMRC can send people to prison, take all their money, or stop them from running a business ever again. 

Businesses aren’t scared of you but they’re terrified of tax collectors. 

So get digging. 

(And then, once you and your colleagues get all your money back, put in an anonymous call to HMRC!)

I worked for the dodgy Airbnbs inflating London’s house prices

London’s galling property prices are made 10x worse by opportunistic ‘property management agencies’ gobbling up housing for Airbnb operations. 

The city took action in 2017, instituting the ‘90-day rule’, which outlawed letting any single property as short-term accommodation for more than 90 days in any 180. 

But this rule is largely unenforced and flagrantly flaunted.

I know because I (accidentally) interned for an agency rinsing £20k p/m across a dozen properties.

So how are these agencies evading the 90-day rule? 

In a move of unrivalled genius, they run MULTIPLE listings for the SAME properties.

1️⃣ They give the property a new name

2️⃣ Set the address to next-door

3️⃣ Take different pictures from different angles

And voila! Another 90 days to rent at Airbnb prices. 

It’s incredibly easy to spot.

And I struggle to see any plausible deniability for AirBnb letting this slide in the age of advanced AI image detection and pattern-spotting tech.

My boss would misleadingly pitch multi-listing to prospective clients as a ‘tactical listing strategy’ rather than a knowing abuse of the rules. 

And blind eyes get turned when you’re enjoying £4k a month from a property they’d otherwise rent to locals for £2k.

Neither landlord, agency, nor AirBnb have any incentive to comply with a toothless law. Too many people are getting rich to be idealistic here.

So, what to do?

The people of Barcelona fought against short-term lets and implemented an outright ban.

Which put 10,000 properties back into the ecosystem.

For context, there are 117k short-term homes operating across London (1 in every 32 residential properties).

Let’s see.

Extra Bites

• Companies are increasingly looking for AI skills and conflict resolution, so LinkedIn just made those courses free. 

• In a stunning turn, the UK is now the unhappiest it’s ever been. Fins/Scandis are the happiest, apparently.

• Poorest Brits are now worse off than the poorest people in Slovenia. Yeah, I know…

But it’s not all doom and gloom!

Mrs Bear, who makes her living as a professional tarot reader, apparently didn’t see this one coming.

Until next time, you glorious beasts.