Posts by LucreLout 3039 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Jun 2014
I think it should be treated as a separate issue from getting paid differently for the same job
Qualifications, working experience, and ability should be used to determine pay, not job title. Two people can have the same role, but no two people will be doing the same job of it.
Salaries for the same job should diverge. How could they not?
If your bank is absconding with your money and not letting you have it then you should probably be taking legal advice.
It's actually not without precedent. IceSave (remember them) did the same trick when they were going bust - froze out UK and other international customers to preserve enough cash for the Icelandic customers to draw out theirs.
A cashless society works until you realise it prevents any realistic run on the banking system without a massive gold spike also accompanying it. The problem with that is the bid/offer spread on retail level physical gold (sovs, krugs etc).
Or third party attack?
Trust me, all of the banks on that list have technology management and a great many staffers so thoroughly incompetent that they would require no outside assitance for such fuckups. Mines no different.
Banks do technology bigger, not better, because they have the same afflictions as the rest of the world - too many MBAs, far too many technology managers that don't understand technology, and no realisation whatsoever that in terms of having a future, they must be a technology company first and a bank second.
Definitely a shock
It is, and it's a very sad day. Obviously I loved all their big hits, but must admit to being a little unfamiliar with many of their songs (heavy metal was/is more my thing).
Sadly, suicide remains the biggest single killer of men under 50, and divorce, as seems to be the underlying reason here, remains one of the biggest triggers. Surely the time has come to reorganise the family courts and realign divorce proceedings such that they are not conducted in the adversarial manner of the rest of the legal system.
Oracle job titles are things like "Individual Contributor level 5"or "Manager level 3"
No idea why you got downvoted for that description of Oracles "lovely" job titles....
However, an individual contributor level 5 might find someone with 5 years experience, 15 years experience, and 25 years experience in the same role. To say they're all doing the same work to the same level is pure fantasy.
Theres a lot of research around job performance, but the two factors which overwhelmingly influence job performance within a role are experience and IQ. Obviously, that's for a given level of drive, because if you're smart and lazy and have been such for a long time, you're quite possibly going to get out performed by someone with a bit more oomph.
HOW? The thing's only the size of a car...
Yes, and the same is true for cars. Several Km of wiring in them.
"For example, many aircraft, automobiles and spacecraft contain many masses of wires which would stretch over several kilometres if fully extended."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_harness
The judge identified a likely legal cost bill of £1m, but the QC attempted to limit it to a derisory £20k.
Lets say I had £1Bn, and you were suing me in a way that I would lose it. My legal bill would dwarf £1Mn..... You're talking about a legal bill of less than 0.1% of what it might cost me to lose.
Given that the courts have previously found it reasonable for a legal bill to be more than 10 times the amount under dispute, this chap can think himself lucky he's not facing a claim for several billion in costs.
Everybody seems to be in agreement that the way VAT is collected in this instance is wrong. He's using this case to make it right.
Right & wrong aren't helpful words when crafting an arguement. They don't mean whatever it is you think they mean to anyone else reading this.
We do need that tax money though. If too much money flows away from a country without being taxed at source then there will be trouble ahead.
Need is subjective also. We need the private sector to generate profits. We need them to retain and distribute those profits such that the economy functions.
Tax is already at generational highs in terms of percentage of GDP collected, and has gone so far round the Laffer curve that any further collection attempts yield a lower amount of tax collected in total. At this point, we need either economic growth, which you cannot tax your way towards, or we need more efficient public spending, or both. What we don't need, because we can't actually have it, is a greater percentage of GDP taxen as tax.
If I were the judge, I would find in favor of the plaintiff, but only award him £1, and then declare the Uber is on the hook for (%VAT) of all fares collected in the UK, along with all retroactive taxes, fees, and penalties from day one of their UK business.
Judges dislike nothing more than being overturned on appeal; it goes to their competency. Any judge agreeing with your view would be overturned.
You might not like what Uber does; you might not like how Uber does it; but what Uber does is neither illegal, nor does it attract VAT. It's a ride booking service for independent contractors who may or may not be VAT registered and able to issue such receipts. There's no requirement in law for a cabby to register for VAT unless his turnover is something like £80k+.
Changing the law to target a handful of companies is all well and good in theory, but in reality, the companies you'll cripple by doing so will end up being none of the ones targetted and not companies you had a problem with.
it's about someone standing up for "right" and big business using massive legal bills to try and stop him taking it further
It's actually about someone wriggling on the hook while being given a taste of his own medicine. "Right", much like "fair", or "moral" is an entirely meaningless fungible concept.
It sounds like they are deliberately loading up the legal fees - nah, one barrister isn't enough, lets use 5, sort of thing - in an attempt to frighten him off
Which is a tactic he is almost certain to have engaged in himself as part of his profession, only in those situations the QC would be working for the big boys shafting the little man.
Having been on the reciving end of such behaviour (£xx,xxx counter claim from a FTSE 100), I'm well aware of how stressfull it is; even when you win it takes a psychological toll. As someone that has climbed to the very top of his profession, I'd expect a roll call of people screwed over by any QC to read like the bumper book of baby names, and as such, I must confess to a small amount of schadenfreud.
Personally, I'd like to see some rigid cost capping implemented in the legal system, such that fighting your corner doesn't come at the expense of your house, but the entire legal system is working night and day to prevent that happening.
Shocked? Not in the least sadly.
I actually am.
Now, I call everyone a f***ing monkey when they mess up. Its a reasonable alternative to cowboy. However, there is simply no excuse for calling anyone a lazy n******.
I don't do PC nonsense and decline to engage with the diversity agenda because it's just BS. However, terms like the one above are out and out racism and I simply can't believe that someone would use them in a professional setting and that colleagues would simply allow it to happen. I wouldn't, and I would expect from my collagues that they wouldn't either.
Given that with a very few exceptions (Blair for instance) there are plenty of Conservatives who could probably buy up every single Labour MP
The entire shadow cabinet are millionaires. Millionaires in a party that is supposed to represent the working classes. If wealth is a problem, it's a problem there first.
LucreLout - with your level of empathy, you would make an excellent assessor for the DWP if you want a new career.
I work. I've always worked. All of my friends, including those with what are commonly considered disabilities (no legs etc), work and have always worked. I have collagues who have come from all over the planet and found work in a language that is not their own.
The simple fact is that many of those not working are not working only because they don't want to.
Almost everyone is capable of some level of work. Call centers require very little physically. Warehouse work requires very little mentally. There's almost always some work that can be done by individuals; they just need to recognise that. For those that can;t work, we rightly have the welfare state, but they rightly need to prove they can't work, rather than simply asking us to trust them.
If nobody used the welfare state as a hammock rather thana safety net, there'd be no problems. Unfortunately, that isn't the real world. It just isn't.
@Simon b-52
Of course your money shouldn't be wasted on piss takers and there are always those willing to try it on, but believe me that you're lucky to not have endured what this process often does to genuinely sick and disabled people.
I signed on once, for less than 2 weeks. The people I had to endure on either side of the counter led me to a vow that I'd never again have to sign on. 25 years later, I've made sure that remains true.
@Ac
Never hear of folk moaning that the winter fuel allowance is non means tested
Retired people get winter fuel allowance. You normally retire at the end of a working life. Rather different to wlefare, no?
"disability benefit fraud" when the reality was it was statistically insignificant (well below 1% of all claims)
Citation needed.
There have been many articles about these so called assessors putting people to work that really shouldn't be working, terminal patients, patients with late stage cancer.
The small number of affected people undoubtedly have a hard time, but you're talking about an extreme minority of claimants.
They aren't being extremely careful they are being malicious and the reason they get away with it is because they con you into thinking you are paying for it
No, I really am paying for it. There's no magic money tree, no matter what your union rep may tell you. All tax comes from the private sector workers to pay for the public secotr workers and any welfare given. It's just a simple economic fact.
Do you think your taxes will come down if they scrap the benefit system?
Probably not, but they will go up if they make it more generous.
demonising everyone on benefits is not going to help
Being asked to prove your financial and medical situations as they relate to your claim for my money is not demonising. It's entirely reasonable, fair, and proportionate.
The reason they don't use a GP to determine if someone is fit for work is because they know full well assessing someone on whether they can pick up a box or walk more than 50ft is going to get more people off benefits than actual qualified medical opinion on whether someone is fit for work.
Its hard to see how someone that can carry a box for 50 feet is not capable of some work. There's an argument that terminal people shouldn't have to work, but that is emotive more than economic. We'd have to look at how much everyone is willing to pay for that, because there just aren't enough bankers/high earners to support further expenditure.
it's not like that at all because if it was there would be no need for food banks, charities
Food banks get used so much because thats the economically correct thing to do. Get the free food there and spend what you would have spent on it elsewhere. It's just basic economics or game theory.
Charities waste almost all the money they're given on themselves. Oxfam probably spent as much on hookers as it did on poverty, and that's before we get to all the 6 figure salaries. The charity sector isn't what you seem to think it is.
Then again most people think they spend the money on fags, booze, flat screen TV's and play stations.
Given that a lot of claimants DO spend their money on such things, you're going to need a different argument. Pop into any wetherspoons on a monday at about 11am and you can marvel at your tax disappearing.
If your claim is that welfare claimants don't have flat screen TVs you're going to end up looking stupid, and I'm fairly sure that isn't your intent.
They currently use custom assessors so they can sidestep a proper medical opinion and cut peoples benefits.
Given the article states that doctors often feel pressured NOT to provide the data required by the DWP, from whom else should they seek it?
"Peoples benefits" are made entirely of "other peoples taxes", so its entirely appropriate that the DWP is extremely careful about what money it gives, to whom it is given, and for what purpose. It's my money being given away so I want that done with due care and with evidence based decisions where possible.
that's an easy one to solve, just need eternal economic growth.
Why would economic growth not be eternal?
In it's purest sense, growth is things we've dug out of the ground, things we've made with what we dug up, and things we've learned that add value to our lives. There's no specific reason for any or all of those processes to stop, thus economic growth can be considered eternal.
Also sprinkle a nice dose of inflation on top to devalue the debt
Well, yes, that is the only true purpose of inflation. It devalues the money you have thus encouraging you to invest it or otherwise to spend it. It makes the states debt smaller, but also makes positive debt (what you borrowed to invest in growth) smaller thus encouraging more investment and so more growth.
If the private sector was intent on acting with fairness we wouldn't need GDPR.
Yes, because we all know the public sector never loses condifential data, or gets it wrong. FFS.
if it isn't explicitely against the law, it's fair game to try whether it's moral or not
According to whose morals? I place no higher regard for your moral judgements than you do for mine. I trust you see the problem here?
So regulate. Make laws and enforce them
Agreed. Just don't expect the law to deliver what you consider "fair" or "moral". It might be using the next guy in lines definition for those words instead.
That is the only thing that will protect the people and keep things fair.
Define fair. Fair, like moral, is one of those lovely words that makes everyone feel all warm and fuzzy, but ultimately don't actually mean anything.
the final deal was one of the largest ever tax breaks that New York had given to a company
What bigger company should NYC give the largest ever tax break too?
Now, if your argument is that there shouldn't be any tax breaks, that's fine, it's not an argument I agree with, but at least it makes some sort of sense.
And Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was to get his own helicopter pad
This is where things start sounding like envy rather than reason.
That figure is more than the federal government spends on housing, education, or infrastructure.
And here we've slipped straight into politics, which is all too often the opposite of reason.
without drawing up sweetheart deals and giving them political backing, America's corporations will simply go elsewhere and take their jobs and investment with them
Whatever your feelings about life in a competetive environment, the reality is that in a competetive environment, you have to compete. Real life doesn't do paticipation medals.
I'd have thought you could have saved considerably more money than was being offered in bribesincentives, both in property costs and salary costs, by setting up shop in the big empty bit away from the coasts.
Sure, it'll be a lot cheaper, but can you get the skills in the volume required? Unfortunately there's a reason why high skill enterprises tend to cluster together.
"Traditional" residents of San Francisco don't seem to get the same breaks in their accomodation costs.
"Traditional" residents probably already have rent control in SF.
Objecting to high skill high wage employers moving into an area because they require skills you don't have is, ultimately, just the politics of envy.
So he is banned from owning a gun for 2 years, and 1 month before the end of the ban is so desperate for a gun he makes one himself and then gets arrested again.
Yeah, you just can't legislate for that level of stupid.
Given what amounts to a very temporary ban on his ability to own a gun, I just can't see the wisdom in circumventing it - if you're that desperate to fire a weapon, grab a flight to Mexico/Europe and do it legally.
4 more weeks and you can fill your boots / gun rack.....
If a country's judiciary, legislature and (non-police/military) executive are a bunch of evil corrupt murderous bastards, and 'freedom fighter' action against them WILL be against civilians.
The military, civil defence (police, nhs, fire etc), judiciary, civil serve etc are all organs of the state. People on a bus are not. People in a shopping centre are not.
While there's no once size fits all definition, the whole "one mans freedom fighter is another mans terrorist" schtik is just lefty doublethink and lazy politicking, as opposed to a reasoned view.
Whether they were freedom fighters or terrorists depends on which side of the fence one stands
No it doesn't. That's just vintage lefty doublethink.
Freedom fighters target the state while terrorists target the civillians. Bombing civvies makes you a terrorist in every case no matter what your ideals or how deeply precious they may be to you.
whereas back in the day they were calling him a terrorist
Well yes, because Mandela WAS a terrorist; he cofounded the MK FFS. They killed at least 130 people, most of whom were civillians, and most of whom were black! Whatever he became later in life he became after he was a terrorist.
This leftist revision of history in order to lionise those they adore is as demented as it is dangerous.
Our grandparents are probably spinning in their graves at 10k RPM...
My grandparents fought. Unusually all survived, though my grandfather bore the camp tatoo and physical scars until the day he died, never having spoken of events during the war. My grandmother never forgave the Germans or the Japanese; she simply couldn't move past it.
They would have loved AI. The potential medical advances, labour saving, and entertainment value would have been worth it to them.
If you could top all of that with the idea that we could have fought the Nazis remotely, they would have been all for it. Having the best ideology simply doesn't cut it when the rubber meets the road - you need to have the best equipment, the best technology, and the best logistics.
I'm the first of my family line not to serve. I hope no future generations of my line will have to. Ultimately, that is going to need the best technology, because as the French Resistance proved during the war, the alternative to high tech is low tech and low tech is people.
I don't see why under any circumstances I should involve myself
Working for your employer on projects they assign you is your job. Sorry, but you don't get to pick and choose what work your employer assigns you - thankfully you are free to pick another employer.
I've no problem working on weapons technology and have done so in the past (my involvement was admittedly very meta). In the unlikely event the payload for the product is ever used, it'll make all drone deaths seem like a rounding error on a rounding error. In the meantime it keeps our country safe and prevents civillian deaths because we can't be invaded conventionally.
You can't project your ethics onto your employer - you can't even project your ethics onto your friends or family. Your ethics, however derived or deeply held, are not my ethics and my ethics are not those of the next man. It's one to the main reasons why companies and people do things you consider to be unethical and why you do things others think are unethical.
Drones kill people, without trial or in some cases without any evidence of wrong doing.
You're going to find that on a battlefield, there are no trials. See someone from the enemy force (traditionally simply wearing the uniform of the other side counts), and you shoot them. The same thing applies if you're in a fighter jet, or a mall on the other side of the Atlantic piloting a drone.
drone pilot see a suspected ISIS member planting a road side bomb. *blam*
drone pilot sees suspected terrorist gathering. *blam*
You're getting irrationally hung up on the drone bit. If a pilot, soldier, or any other member of the armed forces sees a terrorist planting an IED or gathering for an attack it is expressly their job to eliminate those people. Forget the drone part because its causing you to miss the important bits.
Now, that's not to say mistakes won't be made, but the mistake would have been made from the cockpit of a jet or through the scope of a sniper rifle. It really doesn't matter that it was made in theatre or in Atlanta.
The only way to reduce civillian casualties in war is for combatants to wear clearly marked uniforms and for them to stay away from civillians. If the combatants dress as civillians and the civillians allow them to comingle, then both groups have accepted the increased risk of civillian casualties; you can't simply deflect that onto those being shot at or bombed.
They'd have to be within a few inches of hitting my knee with their pedal to make this viable; my arm only extends so far and I need to reach the cyclist before my arm is at full extension. Given the speed they're attempting to reach, that'll do too much damage to leave to chance.
I only fell the ones that come dangerously close - It's not like I'm out there knocking down every cyclist I see.
You may want to consider what happens if you badly injure someone by taking this course of action.
Nothing will happen - it's my right of way and they're hurtling towards me unable to take timely evasive action ensures that my self defence actions are justified and appropriate.
Had they given way where required, I'd not be able to push them off.
If they could take timely avoiding action, I'd not be able to push them off.
Were they a safe distance away, I'd not be able to push them off.
Sorry, but this will come down to self defence every time. If in the course of protecting myself the aggressor is accidentally inured, well, whose fault is that? The alternative of being crippled or killed by one of these clowns isn't appealing. Sorry.
Were you hit or nearly hit by one as a pedestrian?
This. Literally every single weekday in London. Usually on pedestrian crossings, or when the cycle should be stopping at red.
The law is pathetically weak in this area. As a result, I now simply push them off whenever they get too close. They don't much like the road rash, which is hopefully disincentive enough to ensure they pay attention and stop cycling at pedestrians who have right of way.
Speaking as a very careful cyclist, I can't wait for autonomous vehicles *which obey the highway code* to become the norm.
The irony is just too strong.
On my daily walk across zone 1 London, at best I see about half of cyclists stopping at red lights, often because the traffic has already began flowing across. At best I see about a quarter of them stop at pedestrian crossings when people are using them.
Sorry, but the average driver legally has to be trained to a higher standard than the typical cyclist. So you need to get your own house in order before bemoaning anyone elses.
Now, I will agree, the average standard of road use is appalling, but that spans the modes of transport, and while the typical car driver is abysmal, they are typically better than any other class of road user too.
If plod want to keep the evidance, they can make bitwise copies of everything, then return the hardware.
I'm not sure it's legally that simple. IANAL, but he was arrested because they believed the data ont he devices was not entirely his by right. Making a copy is one thing, but they have no right to return to him "my" data, or "yours" for example.
I commend Mr Love for filing the case himself though!
I'm saying that someone who is so "severely depressed that they're potentially suicidal" so not subject to Court process is perfectly able to take on the immense stress of representing themselves at court. I find that odd.
I make no comment on the first part of what you say, but the second part.... why assume it is stressfull at all? He wants some computers back - he can readily represent himself at lower court, and if the matter proceeds to the higher court he can instruct solicitors at that time or drop the matter. He's not on trial, and unless the matter goes tot he higher court, he's not even on the line for the oppositions costs.
Now, it may or may not be, that he lacks any real financial resources against which a costs claim could be made, thus his downside becomes very limited in order to make a point.
Bravo Mr Love - I have nought to say on how you found yourself before the courts originally, but on this occasion I have much respect for a young man willing to stand up for himself, and for refusing to be frightened by a legal system that has shaped itself to do so.
Access to justice? No, only for the wealthy.
There is no justice but that which we take for ourselves. Certainly there is none to be found in the legal system. Access to justice? Access to lawyers, maybe, but no matter how much you spend on your legal team, the law and justice have very little venn overlap.
There's a phrase even in legal circles: "A man who represents himself has a fool for a client".
Invented by lawyers for lawyers to generate more work for lawyers.
In none criminal small value matters it's perfectly reasonable to represent yourself. So far I'm 2 for 2 against some suprisingly wealthy company's legal teams (who were genuinely inept or suprisingly bad at the law).
In this case Mr Love isn't on trial and is simply seeking the return of some of his kit. I'd imagine it's a "f*** you" to those that tried him, or media generating showboating, as opposed to anything that will have a seriously negative impact on his life. He's got through 5 years without the kit and most likely has backups of any of his data he may have needed.
I imagine the aim is to attract a capable legal team pro-bono due to the media exposure, but if not, full marks to Mr Love for standing his ground on his own two feet and making his case. Just never ever do this in criminal matters!
16 seems like a vast amount of overkill for security - I'm pretty sure my whole street doesn't have 16 cameras in it yet.
I can only assume it was to enable the working spouse to watch baby's first steps or some such from wherever they were? Or for keeping a distant eye on an elderly relative in case of falls?
In my day your degree marks were nailed up in the town square for anyone to read (and in those days many graduates could read!)
Mine too - only they were sorted by grade and then alphabetical order of name, so you started at the top and gradually got a sinking feeling all the way down. If you got to the bottom before starting celebrating, then you weren't going to be graduating that year.
While I can appreciate it may have been embarrassing for those in the final segment, those leaving without a degree, there were never any suprises as to whose name you'd find listed.
In the same way having $137 million in cash would present a problem trying to deposit any significant amount into a bank.
You'd be suprised. Not pleasantly.
Take a walk through the right Swiss Canton with a big enough bag of cash and one of the banks will take it in return for a numbered account. They'll all claim not to, but there are well worn routes to achieving this.
Only an idiot would actually try the above though - much easier to use the yachts or casinos routes if you only have a couple of hundred million to move.
If this outrageous B.S. story was actually true and only one person held the passwords, then they deserve to be sued into oblivion.
What would be the point? Despite government insistence to the contrary, a court order can't beat the maths in modern encryption. If, and I'll freely admit it's a big if, the stroy as told is true, then they have no recoverable assets, rendering suing them pointless.
If, of course, its a fraud - either the guy has a fake death cert, or the wife has the decryption keys and he's really dead - then proving that seems to be challenging. I may very well have this wrong as I claim very little knowledge of crypto currency, but presumably the 'coins' in the 'wallets' are identifiable, and could be watched/tracked; any movement of any part of the 'assets' at any time in the future would indicate someone having access to the keys?
the roads are already congested with mobile homes driving around while people live in them, due to the housing shortage.
Yup - my self driving office / games room might not be the same physical size as my current daily driver. I'm more envisaging a living room on wheels.
My public transport currently takes twice as long to get to work than it did 2 or 3 years ago (train), so if I'm going to spend so long getting to and from work, then I might as well convert that time into something useful or enjoyable.
That's because I have been repeatedly assured that she never said "there is no such thing as society..." whereas I actually had a recording of the speech where she said it.
Yes, and mostly no.
What you don't have is a recording of Lady T saying "There is no such thing as society." Which is how the left present it ad-finitum.
What you might have, is a recording of Lady T saying "And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no governments can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours." Which is very much not how the quote is presented by politicking lefties.
I'm not sure which bit it is they object to, because she was absolutely right.
Or to encourage people to not own one of these but just use them as automated taxis, so once they arrive at work the car goes off carrying people around the city?
In the unlikely event these ever work properly (actually driverless), I'm kitting mine out like a home office & games room. Sharing it with last nights kebab sodden rutting yoot isn't going to be a thing I'm afraid.
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