Posts by Sir Runcible Spoon

Re: An employee for tax purposes

If you are getting paid as a freelance contractor running your own Ltd. Co. then sure, all holiday pay/sick pay is down to how you manage your company accounts - totally agree.

However, if you are suddenly deemed an employee of the client and forced to pay tax accordingly, all the extra money to cover holidays/sick pay has just suddenly disappeared into the tax-mans coffers and no-one pays you when you are off sick/on holiday.

It will be the end of contracting.

Re: It's more complicated than that

One of the main areas I focus on regarding being IR35 compliant is my working relationship with the client.

During the period of the contract they can tell me what work they want to be done, but they don't get to tell me how to go about doing it. I also don't present myself as an employee to others (so mandatory company signatures in emails are amended accordingly).

Also, if the work is project based and the contract is tied to the delivery of that project (i.e. the contract ends when that piece of work is completed) then that helps with ir35 status too.

Basically, don't act like an employee - act like an outside consultant who is helping them out for a fee and you should be good (I hope).

The main issue I have with ir35 is the complete lack of guidelines from HMRC as to what is considered compliant and what isn't.

This helps them in two ways. 1 - it allows them to make it up as they go along and 2- prevents anyone from setting up their business relationships so as to be compliant.

In my book that simply makes it a con-job and a total money-grab from people who are, by definition, not backed up by a large organisation and so can't mount an expensive legal defense.

You only have to look at all those 'ir35-compliant' public sector contracts that suddently appeared when they started losing contractors hand over fist when the recent rules were introduced. Totally hypocritical - if they can look at the working relationship and ignore the worded contract, how can they suddenly deem positions that were not compliant to be 'compliant' just by decree/changing the wording of the contract.

The bottom line is that they want all the money, but don't want to endure any consequences themselves from this legislation. They are acting like fraudsters imho.

Re: "brilliant brains" at tech companies

They use that phrase as a kind of psychology.

They *think* they are, but in reality the people who this is aimed at are quite capable of realising this childish tactic for what it is. The sad part is that the politicians are so stupid that they think the tricks that work on them will also work on people with a brain.

When I was quite young, I was forever being told how clever people thought I was, yet that didn't stop them criticizing me for making different decisions than they would have made in my situation.

On one hand they understood that I was a fair bit cleverer than they were, but on the other they refused to accept that I could make more intelligent decisions than them. One of life's little quirks I suppose :)

I would have thought 'No more secrets' was more applicable :)

Re: People

That's just it, there is no technical issue.

It's a bit like demanding your tea be served as a 100 degree Celcius ice-cube.

Re: Don't load third-party scripts

@Veti

"Or 4. Accept that the occasional breach is part of your normal operational costs. "

Except that it's your customers who are paying for it. That option bespeaks a really shitty attitude towards the users of your services.

Re: Cant win...

Use a local proxy to cache all your remotely collected scripts. Have that proxy run a comparison check against the last known good version for all external scripts.

If the code changes, don't update the cache until it has been signed off as safe, at that point you can update your 'known good' version and carry on serving it to your clients.

Ok, so if there's a problem with a valid script and it needs to be updated then that fix might be delayed until you can sign off the update, but that's a lot better than taking the chance of feeding your customers compromised scripts.

This avoids the need to micro-manage all the scripts internally, but injects a safeguard against compromised remote script updates such as the one in this story.

Or does that sound too hard?

Re: Yes... but...

*ALWAYS* put your own firewall in behind the outer one (whether your own or ISP provided) and ensure they are different makes.

Turn off everything you don't absolutely need as well, most especially remote management from the WAN!

Re: Draytek

My normal play-kit is enterprise level stuff, but even there I've occasionally had to deal with Draytek firewalls.

Whilst it took a bit of working out I managed to get my head around their limitations and get them secured in a similar manner to a full-on enterprise firewall - VPN's, ACL's encryption domains etc.

So for home users they are probably as close to business-grade devices as you are going to get for the price - just be aware that you need to dig under the bonnet a bit to make sure it's actually doing what you think you just told it to do via the GUI - there were a few little gotcha's that I came across in the order of processing (such as NAT/ACL's and enc-dom's etc.).

Re: Bugs Bunny girl...

And not forgetting Kim Basinger when she was cartoonified in Cool World.

It's amazing how well that film hasn't aged* :P

*Brad Pitt looks like he just left infant school, whereas these days he looks like he's had 150 years sucked out of him by 'The Machine' in Princess Bride.

Re: "With over 15 million job applications being submitted on LinkedIn every week, "

I've occasionally noticed people I've worked with taking credit for projects that I delivered :)

Still, there's no conflict as I don't put any such details on LinkedIn.

They [Twinings] also don't seem to have realised that they have distanced themselves from any kind of sense of humour whatsoever.

Good on Poundland for not bowing and scraping with some kind of pathetic apology. Apparently someone still has teabags in this country.

Re: Joint AIdDVenturing for Secret Sensitive Missions

how would you like to Proceed in the Process?

Well now, that's a loaded question in pretty much every sense of the word. Once upon a time I would have envisaged towering infernos of righteous indignation, but age and wisdom have provided me with additional perspective and babies do not like to be ejected from their bath with little or no notice, no sirree, regardless of the quality of the water therein.

I believe I am still endeavouring to understand the process of in-situ water purification. Not ideal of course, but far healthier for all than the alternative. Of course, if gloves were to be removed and areas of sand cordoned off etc. then events might just take over. At that point a lot will depend on the sturdiness of the sand upon which I have built my house.

As for opportunities abounding, the usual dragnet of likely suspects most likely, although I haven't ruled out speculative fishing expeditions. I like the spot in the pool under the trees, where it's cool, but you can't avoid detection by the determined fisherman.

Re: Joint AIdDVenturing for Secret Sensitive Missions

It does seem incongruous to me the degree to which our brothers and sisters on this Earth, people of good nature, simply fail to recognise when they are being hoodwinked.

Re: An Abiding Achilles Heel Delivers Opportunities to Jointly Exploit @Sir RS

such tools are not exclusive to them alone

Such is my hope. For some reason I am reminded of the bathroom scene in 'Fight Club', but in my head it takes place in a datacenter instead.

Re: An Abiding Achilles Heel Delivers Opportunities to Jointly Exploit

However, never before has a ruling elite had such tools of recourse to apply to those who would oust them from their comfy chairs.

It must needs be done, but the price? It is, of course, unavoidable and so must be borne. Every action taken to mitigate the risk seeming accelerates the process. Who on Earth convinced them that being Kings of the dunghill was better than being Princes of paradise?

The sooner people start thinking about themselves and not others the better. What people take to be selfishness is simply short-sightedness. The truly selfish understand that we are better served as individuals the stronger the whole.

Re: Too secret

That's an excellent question.

I'm going to hazard a guess at no, but they should. Which probably means they wouldn't want me anyway.

Challenging deeply entrenched assumptions and pre-conceived ideas should go hand in hand with an attitude of doing things properly. When the policy no longer serves the endeavour, then it is the policy that should be changed, not the endeavour.

Sadly it is all too often the case, in my observation, that it is the tail that wags the dog.

Re: Too secret

But that deficit and deficiency is easily remedied with new gutsy blood added to stock/right proper hires into the Doughnut's Magic Circle.

None of the posts I've been sent details of paid anywhere near the going rate, imho.

I think Tony Blair wins the 'worst PM since Thatcher' award, and by a comfortable margin.