Posts by DavCrav

Re: @DavCrav

"On top of this, senior legal professionals advised that they were legitimate and legal, so many of those who weren't forced into them thought that they were a safe and legal way to minimise their tax burden."

HMRC have said they weren't for at least the last eight years. (That was the first link I clicked on that found legislation tackling these schemes in 2010.) They were obviously at least a bit dodgy. Nobody can seriously, with a straight face, think that paying more or less no tax on earnings was fully legit. I mean, be reasonable here.

You people who think closing the EBT loophole is terrible of HMRC need to sort yourselves out. Did some people get defrauded by their tax advisors and employers? Yes. The people you should be angry with is them, not government.

This just proves that the far-right no tax bullshitters were lying all along. "We pay no tax, we think it's legal, government should change the law if they want us to pay tax." Government changes law, at latest 2010. "Think of the children!!1! Oh, and the teachers and social workers!"

Re: @DavCrav

"HMRC have been aware of these schemes for over a decade and they had been declared under the HMRC DOTAS process. HMRC chose not to do anything about them. They are now not chasing the scheme providers, but the individuals who were signed up to them, many of them unaware of the arrangements or accepting the claims of the scheme providers."

Bollocks. EBTs were the subject of loophole legislation since at least 2010. It's just that the legal rulings and multiple appeals have taken this long. So HMRC have been saying 'this is tax fraud' for at least eight years of that decade. Now there are legal judgments that say 'yes, it is tax fraud'. Pay up.

Re: And care workers, supply teachers, couriers...

"And care workers, supply teachers, couriers...

Yes, you heard right.

A lot of minimum-wage and zero-hours workers have been forced into these and similar arrangements so their employer can avoid/evade national insurance and similar."

You see, when I do Google searches for employee benefit trust and courier/teacher, I find no examples. I'd like to see an actual, named example of such a thing. Until then it doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned.

And at any rate, HMRC says they are going after the company at first instance, and then if the company folds it's pushed onto successors and then the employees. So sounds like supply teachers that I can't find any evidence exist are off the hook, unless the school doesn't exist any more.

Re: Isn't it bad?

"If a law is impossible to follow then it is a bad law"

It's not impossible to follow, as it requires you to stop doing something rather than to do something, like your straw man does. Close down your business is quite easy to follow actually, just you won't like it.

It would be impossible for a tobacco company to follow a ruling that bans tobacco without closing, but that wouldn't in and of itself make it a bad law. Laws that force certain businesses to close or vastly reduce in size happen regularly. Normally it happens because we consider the effects of the business to be deleterious enough to require their cessation. For example, Viagogo might well be hacked to pieces soon because it is flouting consumer protection laws. The result of the reduction in FOBT stakes to £2 will cause betting shops to close. The opinion is that the harm that the businesses cause outweigh their good, so they are forcibly changed by law.

Social media is ripe for such regulation. At the moment social media causes massive harm to society, but gleefully runs away with its piles of cash the moment that anyone tries to press them to solve the problems they have created. Facebook is going to be forced to change its business practices at some point, probably soon.

It seems quite possible that glysophate will be banned, or its use severely curtailed, over the next few years. Putting arguments over the science to one side, and assuming it was actually found to cause cancer, should we allow Monsanto/Bayer to continue to sell Roundup, because not doing so would harm their business?

Re: Erm

Oh do fuck off with your free man of the land arch-libertarian Ayn Rand bullshit. Governments are necessary, especially in Europe where they do nice things like look after you when you are ill. Yank (among others) piss-takers are jeopardizing the whole of our welfare state, and we don't want to end up like you.

Re: Unanswered questions..

"Wouldn't it be awful if the GCHQ part did coin mining at the same time. "

Awful for you, sure. I mean, unless you like prison.

"Lewis Hamilton is easily the most unlikable British sportsman/tax avoiders/evaders."

He is a twat, yes. But easily the most unlikable? I guess you have forgotten about such glorious sportsmen as John Terry, Joey Barton, and of course Ched Evans and other criminals.

I suppose you meant easily the most unlikable British sportsman except for footballers. The competition is thinned out considerably now, but I reckon I can still find someone brutally objectionable.

Re: Hamilton is a twunt of the highest order

"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irina_Sebrova - 1008. A couple of other people in her regiment are in the 900-es, but AFAIK she is the only person to cross the 1000 combat sorties (most of them bombing) boundary."

Thanks. I found information about the Night Witches on my first look, but not her in particular. Probably because the articles don't explicitly say GOAT, a search for which I assume only shows articles of Messi.

I'm not sure that comparisons with RAF bomber records are fair. It seems to be comparing apples and oranges, because with the attrition rate of RAF bomber crews, I reckon it's mathematically more or less impossible to reach 500, never mind 1000. I was reading about 60% losses after 20 sorties. Even at 60% losses after 50 sorties, to reach 500 is a 1 in 10000 chance (easy with that many pilots), but to reach 1000 is a 1 in 100m chance.

I'm not saying she didn't do it, I'm saying that Soviet and Allied records don't seem to be comparable.

Re: Hamilton is a twunt of the highest order

"To put it bluntly, as long as a woman is holding the all time record for wartime bombing combat sorties (WW2 to be more exact), I do not see why a woman cannot be a F1 driver."

I'm trying to find out who this is but cannot. There were plenty of female pilots in WWII, but I couldn't find any record holder (male or female) either for combat sorties, or more specifically for bombing sorties, which were much more dangerous.

Re: What a knob

"That was probably his point;"

Then he wasn't making it very well, because he said it to HPE employees, not Liberty Global, or whoever it is that owns F1 nowadays.

Re: There are alernatives...

"It's a perfect analogy. Someone, doing something obviously unauthorized because it's "cheaper" to the end user, then getting upset that the original company will not support it. Install a Volvo 2.3 in your Buick in America and see if GM, or Volvo for that matter will support a warranty..."

It's a terrible analogy. If you are going to use a car analogy, swapping out an engine would be like replacing the chip or the screen, and not covered by warranty. Apps would be like tyres and wiper blades. Say Ford invent a special wheel nut that only they can unlock, and have placed them on all their cars. You go to a garage and pay for someone to fit new tyres, but have to pay 30% of the bill to Ford, for the licence to use their new equipment to unlock the nuts they invented to stop you. Would you be happy? Do you think that would increase the cost of tyre replacements? Answer: yes, of course.

Re: Sergeant at Arms

"I'm fairly sure they aren't armed either, unless you count a ceremonial mace which opens Parliament."

Just mentally noting that if ever Michael Heseltine is made Serjeant-at-Arms, I should steer well clear.

Re: Was wondering when you'd cover this

"That would have been fantastic if USA had the same clause in their constitution as EVERY EUROPEAN country which has one (no comment on the one that does not)."

I don't know if it's possible, under the UK constitution, to place international law above domestic law. It would be utterly incompatible with Parliamentary Sovereignty, as whichever Parliament signed such a constitutional bill would see it struck down by the next. So Parlimentary Sovereignty would have to be removed. That's the central doctrine of UK constitutional law, and so that would, more or less, be considered a revolution.

Re: Not Government

"Strictly speaking this isn't the UK government doing this, rather it's the UK Parliament. The distinction is important."

It is the UK government doing it, just not the UK Government, which is the name for the executive branch of the UK government. The other two branches are of course the legislature (UK Parliament) and the judiciary, which as far as I can tell doesn't have an official name as such, but consists of the Supreme Court, the Senior Court (subdivided into Crown Court, the Court of Appeal and the High Court (which is itself subdivided into the Queen's Bench, Chancery and Family Divisions)) and Subordinate Courts.

Re: Off to the tower with Zuck

"Whilst the sentiment here is somewhat appealing, I'm not sure you could make the case for trying someone for treason who isn't a subject of the country doing it."

Any person in the UK at the time of their act falls under the statute.

Re: Sovereign Power applied.

"The Serjeant at Arms could not have compelled Ted Kramer to hand over documents he didn't have."

Oh he really could, if he had reason to believe that Kramer had access to them, including online.

"Give us the documents."

"No, they are stored on a foreign server somewhere, under seal by US law."

"Here is Pentonville Prison. Have fun inside until you change your mind."

Re: How are these supposed to save energy

"The electric kettle has been replaced by using the microwave to heat a cup of water for a hot drink."

Kettles are incredibly efficient at boiling water, as long as you don't overfill them. A quick Google suggests that microwaves are only 65%-odd efficient. Thus you should be better off using a kettle.

Re: You need to work for the FCC

"Every day is a Pai day"

Is that how it's pronounced? I always assumed it was closer to 'pie'.

Re: Huh?

"" During the Field Trips, students will create their own digital projects and explore how they can think like an engineer, covering everything from coding and robotics to transport and the solar system."

Read."

I was being sarcastic because this initiative deserves it. It also deserves scorn, which I will now deliver.

Anything that can be taught in an Apple Store can be taught in an actual school. If Apple were even halfway serious about it, they could get one real-life engineer to go to the schools and talk to the children, and do all the creative stuff there. The children will be at school anyway for the rest of the day. Instead, we move all of the children, and whoever is teaching the course, to a different location that is ill-equipped for this sort of teaching, and do it there. This could be used as an example to teach the children about inefficiencies in the transport network, of course.

When universities do outreach (the real kind based on altruism, not the kind based on PR and trying to get kids to love your brand) we send people to the school. Sometimes we bring children to the university so they can see what it's like. Going to Apple laboratories might be interesting, going to a shop certainly is not.

You exalted me to 'Read'. I humbly suggest you 'Think'. Not necessarily Different, just At All.

Re: I'd rather visit

"I'd rather visit

<===== no idea how it got its head"

Given the direction you're pointing, it looks like you already have.

"In the meantime the rest of us are still trying to work out what the Year of Engineering actually is."

I'll tell you what it isn't: headed up by, you know, someone with the slightest technical or engineering background. The Minister for the year Of Engineering, Nusrat Ghani, studied Politics at the highly regarded University of Central England, worked at some charities, and then became an MP.

So no chance of her being of any use at all in this particular endeavour.

Re: Huh?

"No. If you had taken the time to read the source material *before* commenting you'd know it's just using the retail stores as a venue for projects involving coding and CAD.

Desirable skills to be sure, but maybe not as universally useful as reading up on topics.

Try doing so and see for yourself."

So it's a bunch of children sitting in a room, learning stuff from an adult standing at the front with a big board. Another brilliant Apple innovation there. Whatever will we call this new concept?

Re: Nothing. Nadda. Zip. Zilch.

"Which is done by appealing to them. That does not require they follow every brain dead idea of every foreign countries government, but by actually providing what the people want."

You mean the law? Yeah, it tends to mean that, actually.

"You assume by that the site is broken. Which leads to a big problem because under China's laws a lot of the internet is 'broken' and so all should be fixed to praise the Communist party?"

I bet you if you want to sell stuff to Chinese people, and even if you are just nearby, and the Chinese government tells you to change your website, you do it. For example, even places that don't sell in China changed the name of Taiwan.

And this is about actual real stuff, not the Chinese being twats.

Re: re: EU presence (or not)

"I'd find that highly unlikely, actually. About as likely as the Daily Mail having an office in the US."

It's exactly as likely. WaPo has a London office and DM has New York and LA offices. The NY one is

Daily Mail 51 Astor Place 9th Floor New York, NY 10003.

"All that the WP has to do is not offer the $6 subscription option to anyone in the EU."

Or the free one. You cannot tie a service to tracking.