Posts by Velv

"That Apple’s remote/location-flexible work policy, and the communication around it, have already forced some of our colleagues to quit."

Were they employed as remote workers or were they employed before the pandemic and worked five days a week in an Apple office?

I can understand many people have benefited from emerging working conditions, and long may access to flexibility continue, but to claim Apple's "return to normal" has forced you to quit brings out the worlds smallest fiddles.

Many people are required to be on site to do their job, I'm sure many would love flexibility but that just can't be the case for so many jobs. Three days a week is a reasonable compromise from five days a week, if you don't like it, you can resign, but don't try and claim you've been forced into it. I know plenty of people who hated being forced to work from home and are desperate to get some time back in an office.

Scaramouche will you do the Fandango

The Government having found that the OneWeb it purchased couldn't be used to provide the replacement GPS service after it lost access to Galileo, has now found a different sucker partner to sell the services to.

"£93,000 - £120,000"

"Contract subject to negotiation; the role can be arranged on the basis of permanent appointment, loan, secondment or fixed-term assignment for a minimum of two years where it is in the mutual interest of the candidate and the Cabinet Office."

So you can negotiate yourself outside IR35? Anyone spoken to HMRC?

You don't pay at the point of use for NHS services in the UK, which does bring up the old adage, if you're not paying for it, you're not the customer, you're the product being sold

"If you could go back in time and say one thing to your teenage self:"

Become a corporate lawyer.

I seriously wonder just how much money both sides have pissed against the wall on this one, and an agreement over a one off fee for supplying the patches would have been tiny in comparison.

This leaking Taishan Nuclear Power Plant, the one EDF designed and built for the Chinese. Would that be the same design they're building at Hinkley Point and featuring in the BBC Documentary?

Mouse Balls

Ah, someone's spent too long looking through the IBM FRU list since the infamous mouse balls memo of the 80's

"the group is now known as the “GoTo Group” "

Ironic given that going nowhere is going to be the norm...

Another Government fudge to make a perceived problem worse rather than better.

Tax should be objective, a strict set of rules that can be clearly followed to determine any tax liability. All the government keeps doing is adding more subjectivity to the process thus expanding the exploitation of workers.

The tax structure in the UK is no longer fit for purpose and needs to be substantially replaced. But no government will do it because they know it will expose the exploitation of the lower paid today in favour of saving the higher paid money.

Not that I trust Cummings, but his assessment of Hancock seems not only reasonable, but probably understated.

"As originally planned, they had to inform their GPs of their wish to do so by 23 June, around six weeks following the programme's announcement."

Clearly nobody from the department of Health has attempted to contact a GP for the last year, they have been rather busy with other things.

There's two very strong components here:

1) analysis of this data is highly likely to provide new insights into many diseases and conditions and could move health care forward by an order of magnitude; and

2) I don't trust anyone who is not currently in the loop to have access to this data.

For me, 2 overrules 1 at the moment

At the very least there needs to be a pause and review of what is taking place and who will be given access. It certainly appears to have been progressed in a clandestine manner if not in actual secret to keep it from the public. Just another step to the privatisation of the NHS, something most of the public do not want.

" just last week the USA warned it believes that digital services taxes disproportionately affect its tech companies"

You can't have it both ways.

Either those companies are American in which case the Americans can tax them, or they're Bermudan, Liberian, Cayman, etc. Get you're own house in order, you can't have American tech companies using offshore facilities to reduce tax and increase profits while at the same time preventing other countries from leveraging fair taxes.

"paid employees without the employment benefits"

No, its pay in lieu of benefits. How you spend the money (holiday, health cover, pension, critical illness, gym membership, etc) is entirely up to the employee, and you are an employee whether that's as a direct employee of the end client, an agency employee, or an employee of a Limited Company who pimp your services to the client and pay you minimum wage.

I don't agree with the way HMRC has written and implemented IR35 to capture the different structures of employment, but lets be accurate about what those structures of employment are.

Sadly he'll be punished more for the fraud on HMRC than on the NHS, HMRC don't take any prisoners.

End to End

"EncroChat was founded in 2016 as an encrypted instant-messaging service and was said to have been favored by criminals as a communication tool until 2020."

OK, so just let me get this straight. Criminals aren't using the mainstream Social Media apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, et al, but prefer to use dedicated channels of encryption on far more obscure services.

So why are we focusing efforts against WhatsApp, etc? Is it because the Government isn't overly worried about the hardcore criminals, they really just want to spy on everyone?

IP, Trademarks, Design Rights and International Laws haven't stopped the Chinese producing their own version of Western products up until now.

While they may have been purchasing HDDs and other components from US companies up to now, does the US think the Chinese won't just copy the products instead of purchasing, a trivial task given many of the US products are currently fabricated in China anyway?

By 2025?

There isn't a whelks chance in a supernova that's achievable

"It's free and always will be."

Yeah, and as per the law Ryanair have a way to pay without adding any payment fees as long as you're using their approved Credit Card. All others cards add a fee which is orders of magnitude above the cost of payment processing.

The Art of The Deal

I tried reading Trump's The Art Of The Deal. It's long. really long. It's got 29 Chapter 11s.