* Posts by LucreLout

3039 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Jun 2014

Spare some change, guv? UK's CCTV regulator pitches for £100k budget increase

LucreLout

How much can it cost...

..... to waive through yet another request with "If its not the bogs or the lasses changing room then of course you can have another camera"?

If the nuclear materials regulator was half as permissive as the CCTV folks, I'd be glowing in the dark by the time I got to work.

(sorry folks, I'm making a point not being scientifically accurate - learned much about radiation over the years from fellow commentards!)

Brit police's use of facial-recognition tech is lawful, no need to question us, cops' lawyer tells Court of Appeal

LucreLout

Re: Mask

Damn! Now you've given me a good reason to wear a mask!

I have a Priti Patel face mask, for this and other reasons.

LucreLout

Re: This is legislation which affects everyone, immediately and continuously

It should not be decided by a judge as to whether the legal framework exists in which it can be used, but rather a citizen wide vote - and a non-vote counts against it

Sorry, but that's a naked attempt to queer the pitch and you know it. You're trying to assign the votes of those that don't care enough to vote tot he outcome you desire. Conventionally non-voters are considered to have sided with the majority, not some pre-ordained outcome you're trying to get.

I think we both know the winning side in any straight count will be for CCTV and monitoring, because people are scared, they're ignorant, and they assume there's no downside for themselves. Kids these days want to be watched, by anyone and preferably everyone. We'd get outvoted in a second because the young not only don't care about their privacy, but they actively want the opposite.

LucreLout

Re: Keep a straight face.

If the tech actually worked, then the very nature of what it is meant to do makes it more intrusive. You have CCTV that can track everyone whose face it captures. How can that be anything but more intrusive?

It's not more intrusive, its simply more efficient. They already have a CCTV operator that can track your every move, what this does is automate and industrialize it.

I can see it now some plod has a grudge against someone, partner playing away from home, feed their image into the system to track where they have been.

There's easier databases to do that with already and properly serious consequences for abuse which is identified often enough to be a deterrent.

LucreLout

Re: UK police use of facial-recognition tech is lawful, no need to question us

While we don't have any right to privacy on the street

While I agree that you are broadly correct, there are limits to this.

Lets take an ordinary sex pervert (me here after) and a hot as a thousands suns 23 year old blonde (Blonde here after and man do I hope I have the e no e thing the right way around). I walk past Blonde in the street and think "nice, I quite enjoy looking at her" and figure since I have an hour to kill, I'll follow her about looking at her, because she has no right to privacy in the street, right?

Ok, so far so creepy, but lets expand this. Lets decide that I think Blonde is someone of interest to me (say as an extra curricular shag or whatever) but that Blonde doesn't actually know I've decided this. I then take to following Blonde about for a few hours a day, day after day, because, well, I can.

Now we've gotten really rather creepy, but wait.... I'm not that kind of creepy, I'm worse. I decide that I really want to know more about Blonde so I start doing reverse google searches on photos I've now taken of her face, and I start trying to eaves drop her phone conversations and steal glances at her phone to try to put a name to the face. I then optimize my enjoyment of what I'm doing by following her instagram, twitter, facebook, etc etc because I like automating stuff and now I don't have to walk around. Maybe I automate extraction of exif data from the images and throw that at a map, just for fun. My fun, not Blondes.

That right to privacy has to interrupt me somewhere down the line. Or it should. My behavior here isn't what we'd consider normal, right? The only thing Blonde did to attract all this surveillance, monitoring, and investigation was walk past me in the street looking nice.

And yet, swapping out the sex pervert for a CCTV operator and you substantially have the same thing now. Throw that into a searchable database and its the same as me setting up a whatsapp group so my mates can also appreciate Blonde.

I understand that the state is exempt from a lot of things for a lot of reasons, but we should all have some level of privacy on the high street, even if only after a sensible number of days has expired. I mean, had CCTV been ever present in my younger days, the searchable database would throw up some seriously dubious fashion choices on my part...

Activity undertaken by the state should be understood at the public level. Every tourist in America is photographed and fingerprinted at the border - you accept it when you enter. In their defence, they're completely open about that and the data they retain, so why aren't our police?

You'd think lockdown would be heaven for us layabouts – but half the UK has actually started 'exercising more'

LucreLout

Re: Snowflakes....

a lot if younger folk are sharing accommodation with other people, and have restricted room for working from home

No different to sharing your house with your family. Working from home usually requires a laptop or other PC which don't take up much space.

I asked if she was back in the office, and she said no, she was at home, a flat shared with three other people and only one ethernet socket - in the living room.

Plug a wifi router in then? I mean, if all you try to achieve are problems then you'll make your life very hard. Try to find solutions instead.

Additionally, lots of young people have children and no separate work space.

Its not just the young - I have young kids and no separate workspace, or in fact workspace at all. I'm camped in the dining room, which is the main thoroughfare in my house.

It is nearly impossible to work in those conditions.

I'm calling BS on this. I'm managing fine, and so are my fellow Gen X colleagues with kids at home.

I mean, yes, I do get disrupted during the day, but as I'm not commuting I simply throw a few extra hours at work over the day to keep productivity high.

Its all about mentality. I see challenges to be overcome on my way to victory. Too many young see made up microaggressions, insurmountable problems, and would rather wallow in defeat than strive to win.

If it sounds harsh, well, it won't be half as harsh once the last of the wave 2 boomers retire and gen x join them on the beach; you're going to have to solve for yourselves because we won't be there to fix it for you in the future.

LucreLout

Re: Snowflakes....

Are you OK Glen 1? Are you having some sort of problem today? Only the first half of your ranting screed of a response has nothing at all to do with my post to which you seemingly responded.

Your apparent defence against being a snowflake is to rant about wokiness while referencing a bunch of things my generation and the ones before fought for and won, and that yours had handed to it on a plate.

Lets move on to your second half, which is at least tangentially connected shall we?

its called market forces. The managers didn't have to say yes to those demands, but they did.

They do if they wanted to recruit anyone. When the tide goes out however, you see who is swimming without trunks, hence the traditional RIF no longer applying. Gen X should be about to get cut silly in the post-covid pull back, but so far to date its the overpriced millennial's facing the executioner. I know and have explained why that is. You disagree, so why is it you think it's happening? Try to be rational rather than emotive.

The trendy coffee/wine bars spring up because its where their market *is*, not the other way round.

And yet you're still wrong. Camden, Clapham, Angel, etc etc were all cool and trendy before any millennial every set foot in them. Brixton has been up and coming since before I was born, not because the first millennial's moved in.

Spoken as someone who has obviously never lived in a house share.

Spoken like someone that last lived in a shared house 2 decades ago and is still close friends with is former housemates. If yours don't like you, well, that might be for a reason, no?

Young folk are more likely to be in hospitality or retail than any other industry.

The age group you've defined as "the young" are mostly in continuing forms of education and as such many will not be employed at all, those that are will likely have been bar work or waiting tables. That citation of yours however provides no evidence at all to refute the statement that those working in hospitality or retail are a tiny proportion of the young. They're dwarfed by those in education.

Show me a student that doesn't have a job today, and I'll show you someone who is being bankrolled by their parents.

Some are, some aren't. A lot will be part supported by loans and part supported by mam n dad.

In conclusion, your worldview seems to be of someone who doesn't think the world has changed in the last 30 years. It has.

I know - I built a lot of the change I wanted to see.

Your view seems to be of someone born yesterday, who expects that because his parents didn't ever tell him "no" that nobody else should, or that you can't just have what you want right now because you're worth it.

it's not just "young people" with these newfangled viewpoints

Its not a "new fangled viewpoint", its a full blown incarnation of doublethink. Do I side with the lesbians, or the transexuals? Do I despise discrimination in all its forms, except against the old because I hate boomers? Its symptomatic of not having the experience or the intelligence to think through a viewpoint properly, based on facts rather than emotion, and then being prepared to change your mind when the facts change.

You've a lot of growing up to do, and unless you let go some of your empty headed ideals, you're going to find it a painful process, or worse still end up like Jeremy Corbyn. A bitter, failed old man, with nothing in his life but might-have-been's and hatred of the successful for no better reason than you never had the drive to join them.

LucreLout
Pint

Re: Bending the elbow

Bending the elbow

is a form of exercise. I've definitely upped my number of reps.

Weights & measures.... its like weights & cardio, but without the sweating.

LucreLout

Re: Snowflakes....

You're being wilfully silly here.

Partly yes, partly no - there is a real problem with the young just being far too fragile for life, which is entirely self inflicted by their own dumbass behavior. If the only adversity you've ever faced is some made up "microaggressions" and as a result you've turned out soft as clarts, well, you're going to have to toughen up because you have no other options - we simply can't support you in your fantasy world when reality bites.

The real reason the young are doing worse during lockdown is that they're more less likely to be able to access furlough

You're going to need to supply some evidence for that view because....

as gig workers, students etc

Most Uber drivers are over 25 as are most Lyft drivers, most deliveroo, most gig workers in fact. and since you can't be furloughed from not having a job, putting students here was just plain silly.

more likely to be put on furlough if eligible

Yes and that is for many reasons. One of which, in software development at least, experience matters an awful lot more than what the young misconstrue as "talent", leading to their generally having demanded salaries way in excess of their actual abilities. Where once some oldster like me would have been given the bullet to preserve a team of 3 or 4 younger engineers they're working with, now you only get to save 1.5 to 2 of them, and they can't manage the same workload as an experienced developer so its cheaper to get shot of the young.

more likely to be living in cramped city centre housing

By their own choice and doing because they want to be able to walk tot he bars and coffee shops and work rather than have to take the train for example. So whose fault is that really?

more likely to be sharing with people

So they have their own little community already then. They're complaining why?

less likely to have a garden

But much more likely to have a whole range of city center parks to go play in.

less likely to be able to work from home

That one you'll need to explain because it makes no sense - the ability to work from home depends on the job not the age of the person doing it. Sure, some sectors such as hospitality do have a lot of young staff and are down the swanny, but that's a small proportion of the young.

LucreLout

Snowflakes....

For 18 to 24-year-olds, 36 per cent reported being irritable "quite a lot" and 8 per cent "all the time"; 30 per cent said they were distressed "quite a lot" and 31 per cent said they were upset "quite a lot". The over-65s were much more chilled. Only 10 per cent said they were distressed "quite a lot", with very few saying "all the time" for any of the listed negative feelings

Lets just reformat that a little:

18-24 36% irritable a lot - so 3 x more likely than the boomers

65+ 10% irritable a lot

18-24 30% distressed quite a lot - so 30+ x more likely than the boomers

65+ ~0% distressed quite a lot

18-24 31% upset quite a lot - so 31+ x more likely than the boomers

65+ ~0% upset quite a lot

So broadly speaking the young aren't coping and the old are doing just fine. It turns out then that sitting about in some coffee shop circle jerk inventing genders, dreaming up ways to be oppressed, and generally moaning about old people doesn't prepare you for life. Who knew?

Your country needs you to sit on your arse and watch telly - I mean, you're not being shipped to the trenches, you're not being conscripted into the army, you're not even being asked to do a hazardous job. You're practically bloody immune to Covid and your moaning about it more than those in the death zone.

Sorry kids, you're going to have to toughen up a little because you just don't have any other actual options. It's no good moaning about the boomers when your generation can't even handle staying home for a few weeks - you can still spend endless hours writing garbage on twitter and faking up a lifestyle in instagram, while pretending to influence your followers (who are mostly just dead accounts set up by bot networks anyway), or just stream yet another box set on netflix. You won't make it through your peak suicide years (35-45ish) in anything like your current horrifically incapable lifestyles.

which goes to show what ... getting a gold-plated pension can do for you, right Baby Boomers?

I think you'll find today's public sector workers still get the same solid gold pensions they always did, with just one or two of the smallest tweaks thrown in. It's the rest of us that are still suffering Gordon Browns first act as Chancer of the Exchequer.

LucreLout
Joke

Re: "course the entire point of meditation is to not move around and just relax"

Actually, the point of meditation is supposed to be working towards enlightenment. Stasis and relaxation are merely means of entering a state where the mind becomes more receptive.

Oh really? And here's me thinking the point of Yoga is to give crafty 20 something guys a limitless supply of bored 30 something housewives to play hide the sausage with. Consider me enlightened.

LucreLout

Re: Self-selecting survey

Locking down in the Scottish Borders .... has severely reduced our alcohol intake

Does not compute. Have you failed to have sufficient cases of Scotch put by in case of zombies? What were you bloody thinking?!

I could go for probably about 10 years before running out of whiskey, maybe 20, but after that there's various shades of vodka knocking about and some miscellaneous bottles of cocktail ingredient stuff.

You can't drink toilet roll chap!

When one open-source package riddled with vulns pulls in dozens of others, what's a dev to do?

LucreLout

Easy and yet ...

...the author completely overlooks the problem of scale.

The problem is easy to express. Software development today typically makes use of packages from online repositories. A developer sits down to create a web application and starts by installing libraries from npm.js (more than 1 million JavaScript packages to choose from), Maven (for Java), NuGet (for .NET) or PyPI (for Python).

You can't objectively compare packages in NuGet with packages in npm. A typical NuGet dependency graph may go a few levels deep but it'll usually terminate there. A typical npm dependency graph can go between 10,000s and 100,000s of layers deep and pull in gigs of code. Its like comparing an itchy nose to being shot in the face with an elephant gun loaded for rhino. With proper frameworks like .NET or Java you can achieve an awful lot of work very quickly just using the vendors own packages, whereas with JavaScript you can't.

Secure computing is anathema to JavaScript, so if its on your list of requirements, then you simply can't use node - it would require a total redesign of npm and the JavaScript language specification before you could ever hope to make it secure as its all insecure by design.

How many times now has a node package gone stale because the maintainer has gone to jail? Died? Got bored? The damage is impossible to calculate and your ability to update a package for a known vuln depends on a maintainer often 100s or 1000s of packages deep doing some work first, and so on up the stack. JavaScript is a great language for teaching kids to code, but once you seek to be a professional you need to learn a professional language.

Fintech biz Wirecard folds into insolvency like two pair against a flush. Good luck accessing your chip stack

LucreLout

Re: He could hardly be acting alone

It's difficult to believe that only one person in the company would be aware that the numbers were not real.

Indeed. The level of outright fraud here requires a massive degree of complicity on behalf of the staff, or career ending ignorance on a gross misconduct scale on the part of those same staff.

Its much like your Mrs deciding you're going to live the lifestyle of the Rooney's, only without any actual income to support it - you'd probably reasonably notice your position wasn't backed up by anything real, right?

LucreLout

I have some sympathy for the Icelandic government’s position, as I suspect the liabilities were larger than they were able to cover.

That being the case they shouldn't have allowed their banking sector to grow so big, and I say that as one who works in the City. There's no requirement to have an open ended balance sheet, and the Icelandic government could readily have bought protection for themselves in the form of a CDS or other such instrument.

You can't take the profits then run from the losses while allowing your own citizens to effectively draw out other countries money, which is what Iceland and IceSave did. I have no sympathy for the Icelandic government because the situation was played for and got, and they deserve to continue paying the higher price for their bonds than they would otherwise have done had they not defaulted on their obligations.

Big Tech on the hook for billions in back taxes after US Supreme Court rejects Altera stock options case hearing

LucreLout

Just out of interest, what would it take to convince you you were wrong?

Well, after 4 years, hows about a single real world reason why anyone would want to remain in the rEU?

There are no economic arguments you can advance because you lost them years ago, so give us just one actual reason to want to remain. One tangible benefit to most peoples lives. In 4 years of asking, no remainer has ever been able to come up with one, so go ahead, break the mould. Have an actual reason that you want to remain that isn't based on being a frieghtened little racist europhile, and we can take it from there.

You won't have a reason though, remainers never do....

LucreLout

Remainers have given many many good arguments for staying.

Name one then!

The economic arguments advanced byt he various remain campaigns have been rubbished both by all credible economists and by factual experienced reality every year since.

There has been no good argument for leaving.

If you ignore for a moment all of the economic benefits of leaving, then for a starter you would have:

Freedom from the ECJ's willful misinterpretation of the ECHR to allow terrorists to fight deportation for decades while inciting murder on our streets.

Ability to sign our own trade deals (7 years to do a deal with Canada - 7 years!!)

I'll stop there for now as its clear to all you don't have an argument on these grounds

Less protections for the workers.

And yet every single major protection enjoyed by workers was already in place before we joined the rEU, and nobody has proposed changing the legislation much less actually set out to do it. You're making stuff up or regurgitating propaganda spoon fed you by your union rep.

No tax loophole fixes

The rEU is WHY so many tax loopholes exist. I work in a division dedicated in its entirety to industrial scale tax avoidance and I can tell you for an absolute certainty that leaving or remaining will have flat dead zero impact on our business. We will have to restructure a few trades because we're leaving and that makes it marginally harder to avoid taxes than remaining in, but the effort on that has already been done.

Hell even the strongly held racist argument isn't based on facts.

Yes it is. Remainers are racists who seek to prioritise the access of white people to our economy over those of a darker skin colour. Leavers want to trade with the whole of the world, not just little europe.

The EU is seen as an economic threat by Russia and the USA.

No it isn't. The EU is seen as a joke by Russia hence their annexation of the part of it not in NATO. The USA are far more focused on the challenge of competing with China and the rest of Asia than old europe which is economically less relevant every year.

Japan will never give us a deal like the one the EU has. Nor will anyone else. Economics 101

Dreaming I see. Go do economics 101 and report back.

You're the one who said that England was equal in power to the EU. That's what I was laughing at.

I was being kind and assuming you'd not be so deluded as to consider the rEU our equals. The whole think is a ticking bomb ready to explode. It won't be here 10 years from now, not in anything like its current form.

Anway, Scotland will leave the UK, followed by Ireland, and the Wales.

No they won't. Scotland can't afford to leave the UK, they'd be bankrupt in less time than it takes you to tie your shoelaces.

England will be the last to rejoin the EU, but they will.

There's not going to be an EU to rejoin. It's over. The whole world is laughing at you and you still don't see it.... frightened little europhiles. You're a joke. Without google I can pretty much guarantee that you, like 99% of remainers, can't even name all the rEU presidents much less state in a nutshell what they do.

You want to remain only because you're frightened of change. Its why you've STILL not been able to think up a real world reason to remain after 4 years of trying. You lost the argument, then you lost the referendum, then you lost a couple of elections, and another vote, and still you don't see that you're on the wrong side of history. The future is laughing at you.

LucreLout

You are in for a shock. In 10 years time, we'll be back in the EU, and using the Euro - and that will all be due to the arrogant little englander brexiters.

10/10 for trolling, 0/10 for accuracy. There won't be an EU to be part of 10 years from now. At best its 50/50 if they make it through next year.

At least you admit "England";s arrogance. "Equal" partners? Nowhere near.

I'm sorry, but if you think Scotland or Wales are England's equal then you're positively delusional. If you think the failing and shrinking rEU is going to stop shrinking in terms of global relevance then I have a bridge you may buy.

There's no guarantee the UK's future will be bigger than its past, but we can 100% guarantee that if we remained in the rEU it would have been significantly smaller. The rEU is less and less relevant on the world stage in terms of economics - its share of global GDP has been dropping off a cliff for the past 2 decades. Von der Lyin' and the demented Belgian are no part of solving that, nor is the deluded Frenchman capable yet of grasping that the money tap is turned off. It won't be long before they have more presidents than members..... Is it 5 now, or do they have 6.... its all just so forgettable.

And yet still, still 4 years on from the vote, no remainer has been able to give one single good reason to be part of it. Not one. They lost every economic argument years ago, so there's only the social side left, and for 99% of the population that was always irrelevant to their lives.

LucreLout

Public sector workers provide public services.

That places no requirement on us to massively over pay their pensions.

Without them you would be paying a lot more for privately provided services

Not remotely accurate. Private medical care is much cheaper than the NHS and so much more effective. As is private ASU insurance, and a private pension. Thus we could dispense with everything purported to be covered by NI in one stroke.

Private education is still operating whereas state education is on a nice gap year for the teachers, and thus incomparable.

The vast array of public services that are outsourced would be much cheaper to contract directly (think bins etc) as we'd not be paying the massive overhead for all the administrative ball gazers, or tax collectors to make that work.

The only areas of public service that are actually cheaper to provide in bulk via nationalised configurations are infrastructure investment * management, and the military. So about 1/10th of actual public spending. Most of the rest is waste and inefficiency.

Without them I'd be paying less tax and less money for better service provision because the focus of the public sector is primarily as a means of income provision for public servants rather than a means of provision of services to the public. It's rotten to the core.

LucreLout

I think you missed the point. The USA had an income tax rate of over 50% for top-earners for over fifty years - and it was over 70% for twenty of those years.

One of us is, yes, but it isn't me.

You can have a tax rate of 100% if you like, but if nobody is paying it then you're not raising any revenue.

The entire offshore tax avoidance industry ballooned during the years of sky high tax rates in America and the UK, with the result that an awful lot less tax was raised than would have been the case with lower rates.

And that period just so happened to be one of the best periods of economic and social growth for the USA.

You're overlooking the end of two critical events World Wars 1 and 2 which is leading you to completely misunderstand the data and its meaning.

Nor have I heard of any significant numbers of rich people fleeing other countries which have a higher income tax rate than the UK.

As I've explained before, the people don't flee, their wealth does.

In fact, many of the countries with higher income tax rates (e.g. Ireland, Germany, Slovenia, Israel, France, Sweden, etc) are generally considered to be highly prosperous and to have an overall better quality of life than countries with lower income tax rates.

Same rubbish as elsewhere in the thread and already dispensed with in some detail. You;re wrong, your world view is wrong, and you understand nothing whatsoever about taxation.

It's almost as if paying taxes helps to maintain and build the country's infrastructure, and therefore create more opportunities for wealth generation...

We spend vastly greater sums on non-jobs like diversity co-ordinator and administrators than we do on infrastructure. It's almost like you don't understand anything about how the economy works.....

I don't know enough about taxes

I agree, you don't. Which rather begs the question on why you hold so strongly on to such batshit crazy views as you express here. Maybe go and learn a few things first then form opinions based on that rather than whatever emotion feels good at the time, yes?

Money handed to the rich stays with the rich. Money distributed further down the chain goes back into the economy and helps to spur growth.

Wrong on both accounts, so lets add some economics to your reading list right after taxation.

> my current tax rate is around the low 30's and my projected tax rate with professional advice would be around 7% with another 20% lost in fees ... the state will lose over £30k in taxes annually

That suggests that £30k is around 5% of your annual income, which in turn implies that you're earning around £600k per year and paying around £200k per year in taxes while having around £400k - or over £1000 per day - to spend on your lifestyle.

You're going to need to add mathematics to that reading list right after taxes and economics, and hell, lets put critical thinking right into the fourth slot shall we?

What it implies is that in attempting to take another 1% in taxes the state would lose 25-27% of my tax rate or about 75% of the tax it takes right now. I would then lose a further 20% of my earnings in fees for an overall dead weight cost of 27% vs the 43% target rate you'd have been aiming at by increasing higher rate tax by 1%.

And without wanting to sound like I'm trying to be negative or score points, I genuinely do have a question: does your lifestyle actually needs that extra £30k in annual income, or is this all purely a matter of principle?

There's two separate issues at play here. Firstly and most importantly is the matter of principle. I can see no morale case to continue paying extortionate sums to the tax man every day when I see the money wasted hand over fist on jobs that don't need doing, and paying for people to live broken lives on welfare, or for others that could put a lot more effort into their working lives but simply choose not to do so. Penalizing those of us that made and make sacrifices to become successful to prop up those that could have done the same but chose not to is extremely unethical.

Secondly, my income is tied to my profession. I get access to a money purchase plan where I can contribute up to 40k per year maximum and save no more than £1.2M in total. Now, that's exposed to stock market risk, and many plans just lost 40% of their total worth between february and april. It would produce a maximum income of around £36k per annum, and requires a hell of a lot of saving to get there and you'd need to be in a senior pay grade to make it. Oh, and the government keep delaying what age you can take it so now I have to work another 8 years over when I started the plan, and that's likely to rise too.

Contrast that with basically any teacher whose pension will paste that, risk free, for a part time job with 3+ months holiday, and early retirement options that see them done by the time they're 50-55. Or any council or hospital head or judge or head of department whose pensions in payment are several magnitudes of that, gold plated virtually non-contributory, and totally risk free.

So what do people do, well, much of BTL property investment is attempting to produce an annuity like income stream (the rent) that you can take when you're ready to retire, not when some spiv in the the civil service decides you get to retire while he's still planning to go in his early 50s.

And you think tax avoidance is an ethical problem? No, tax avoidance is a bloody economic necessity for most of us in the private sector. To see nothing of the morally reprehensible system rigged in favour of public sector workers to the detriment of the rest of us.

LucreLout

Re: A small contribution to countries' Covid-19 costs...

I guess the question is, how much is enough?

If I could mirror the earning power and pension arrangements of the highest paid public sector worker in the land, that would be enough. That, however, is very nearly £500,000 per year I'd need to earn every year, and it'd have to be risk free and a job for life. I'm nowhere near that and I never will be.

Now, I'm happy to have the whole public sector converted to pay as you go pensions so we can all see the truly epic cost of this, and allow fair comparisons with the private sector, as well as harmonized tax rates (public sector pensions are a massive tax advantage over private provision due to the actuarial fraud in the calculation of market value for each year accrued).

If its not enough for the public sector, don't come crying that its not enough in the private sector. So same question now for the public sector - how much is enough?

LucreLout

Re: the SALE is in teh UK

It is possible though, at least for consumer goods. One can close almost all of the loopholes and make it a lot harder to do it.

Only if you close your eyes and wish away transfer pricing,

1) All sales are booked at the physical location of the purchaser.

Lets say it costs Lout (Bahamas) £100 to make a widget. They sell it to Lout (Caymans) for £1000, Lout (Caymans) sells it to Lout (UK) for £1100 and Lout (UK) Sell it to you for £1200. How much tax do you think you captured with your scheme? Not much, is the answer.

2) Tax is paid on gross revenues, not profit.

Congratulations you just made an unemployment spike the like of which Jeremy Corbyn could only dream of.

Literally almost every business in the land would be toast. Profit margins for some industries are so tight you'd lose whole swathes of cultural and economic activity forever.

3) Debt, loans, etc., are not tax-deductible. Even if we are not trying to do anything else, I want this one to screw over debt-fuelled buyouts.

Good luck with that. Now as well as all the low margin businesses you've killed with your second suggestion, you've just seen every major company in the land cease trading in or with the UK. You now have no private sector employment and so can afford no public sector employment of any kind nor any welfare. You've literally killed the country out of spite and jealously - you must be a labour voter.

Of course, the successful people you started off wanting to tax will just leave for less hostile places and you'll be literally back to subsistence farmin in your garden to try and survive another winter.

LucreLout

On the other hand, a very small delta change (e.g. a 1% income tax rise) would have very little direct impact on those earners, and result in significant extra revenue for the country.

It'd raise nothing. You're assuming we won't just avoid it, when it should be obvious by now that we would. Further, there comes a point beyond which avoidance ceases to be retail level and starts to move more towards the professional end of the spectrum where it costs money to avoid the taxes, but less money than paying them (where my division operates). When people move to that end of the spectrum you end up losing most of the taxes they were paying already all for that greedy extra cut.

Let me give you a very simple example of why cutting taxes works. Do away with the tax free earnings withdrawal, and instead of getting 67% of nothing, you'd be getting 40% of another £25k. Nobody is going to pay it, we just avoid it by working less (buying more holidays from the company, exploitation of the cycle to work scheme, working fewer hours or days etc etc).

I'm running out of road for avoiding the taxes we have because I've maxed out the retail end of avoidance and am verging on requiring professional structuring - my current tax rate is around the low 30's and my projected tax rate with professional advice would be around 7% with another 20% lost in fees. It's not worth it right now but another turn of the screw and it will be. I'll make money from it but the state will lose over £30k in taxes annually. Alternatively I can get into the more gambling end of retail avoidance with SEIS, VCTs and EIS schemes, but unless you live in that world (and I don't) then it can be cheaper to just pay a tax pro.

LucreLout

Why should society provide you with security? I would put a list of tax-dodgers on a website, together with their addresses, and point out that they no longer will be protected by the police, so rob them if you fancy it.

I pay for it. Yours too. You're being silly, but lets indulge your delusion for a moment anyway, just for giggles....

Happy to just pay for my own security if that's where you'd like to go but don't blame me when you suffer the consequences though - half of men are below average strength, fitness, and combat training. I might be knocking on in years now, but even at 50 I'm still confident I'm in the top half, though lower down than 30 years ago. Many people in finance have a robust background rather than a silver spoon.

You're also assuming the people meting out the justice and recovering my property will be domiciled here, when there's really no reason for that. I'd only need one witness, who could be my neighbour, and a pre-agreed contract with some unsavory offshore types - in your scenario someone would emerge to fill that need thanks to the wonders of capitalism.

Be careful with your post-civilization fantasizing, because the only groups that do well in it are either the men with the shotguns or the men paying the men with the shotguns - in your post you're neither of those. Don't assume the successful will simply sit back in passive compliance with your wishes - we didn't get to being successful that way.

They cannot stop people robbing you either, or they go to prison

Spoken like a man with no clue how hard and how long you have to try to get sent to prison, even assuming you get caught, and that is far from certain.

Make sure the consequences for the first scrote in line a severe enough and the line evaporates. It's easier to pick on a softer mark instead, you for instance. Word gets around, list or no.

It's time we started really dealing with people who want to live in society but don't pony up through being a tosser, rather than having no money.

It's time we realized that the single greatest cause of their having no money is themselves, time we stopped pitying them and allowing them to live broken useless lives, and forced them to get up and make something of their day. Take responsibility for yourself man.

Frankly there's a limit to how much I'm willing to pay for you to have your least little whim fulfilled while your greatest challenge is how to wile away another day of idleness. Its time you grew up and stood on your own two feet instead of mooching off the successful. We don't owe you a damn thing.

LucreLout

because society helped them there.

When I was studying long hours late at night I didn't see society there with me.

When I was training long hours late at night I didn't see society there with me.

When I was working long hours late at night I didn't see society there with me.

In fact, society has done literally no more to make me a success than it has for all those people that didn't bother to lift a finger to help themselves. I could have sat back, watched dancing on the stars with ice in the jungle book like everyone else did and society would have done exactly the same things towards that.

Society has therefore played no greater part in successful people being a success than it has in failures being failures. Your whole argument is a massive non-sequitur and a triumph of emotion over reason.

LucreLout

Re: the SALE is in teh UK

If your customer is in the UK, your SALE is in the UK. Doesn't matter where your servers are, where your head office is, where your corporation is.

It doesn't work like that. It never has and it never will.

Lout (Cook Islands) sells the widget to Lout (UK) who resell the widget to you at a small markup. Most of the profit on that transaction exists between Lout Cook Islands and Lout UK, and so becomes taxable in the Cook Islands. That's the very very basics of what is called transfer pricing.

That is before Lout (UK) pays its financing charges to Lout (Lichtenstein) from who it has loans. Interest on debt is not profit and so not liable to taxation. That is a very basic overview of what is called structured capital.

The ownership of these entities may be transparent in some cases, and obscured in others. for instance there are several places in the world where I can quite legally own a company and you cannot determine that it is me that owns it. This is called corporate structuring in the most basic sense.

"You" can't legislate beyond your border but "I" can trade beyond it and in many places simultaneously.

LEGISLATE, get rid of VAT and state that the sale is located where the customer PHYSICALLY resides and all that tax avoidance goes out the window.

No, it doesn't, not in the real world. While I have some sympathy with your idealism, it is borne of ignorance I'm afraid. There's nothing you or any commentard could conjure up that my department couldn't work around in seconds, minutes at a push. There's nothing HMRC could ever enact that isn't already backstopped or could not be worked around.

Absent a global flat rate tax system the only option where corporations are concerned is to make the tax rate low enough that the avoidance isn't worth it, and preferably to do so before the avoidance begins as unwinding these things can be costly and time consuming.

I know that isn't the answer you were hoping for and that folk here have a tendency to shoot the messenger, but the sooner you accept it and incorporate it into your thinking, they happier you'll be, and the less fanciful your world view will become.

LucreLout

For a country with the UK's size of economy (as of a few months ago) one or two wouldn't be enough and it's still within the scope of Ireland, Luxembourg etc.

We could go all the way to zero and just tax dividends and capital gains. We'd make far far more revenue as companies the world over headquartered here and required the use of expensive professionals to organise their accounts and comply with local regulations.

fear has been expressed by other coutnries that the UK could try such a tactic post-Brexit

In the event of a no deal exit at the end of the year, they'd be absolutely right. We couldn't simply sit back while the rEU tries to conquer us, despite committing to a deal before Brexit and now denying a common trade deal, we'd have to fight fire with fire and moving their companies here then taxing EURO denominated currency trades would sort that out in a flash.

Don't get me wrong, I'd prefer a deal, but we're not here to be punished by a smaller Europe, we're here for a fair trade agreement as equal partners. England doesn't fight to lose, and we'd prefer not to fight at all, but its up to the rEU to decide what they want to do - right now they're frothing at the mouth and spoiling for a fight so that's what they'll get. No tears.

LucreLout

Re: A small contribution to countries' Covid-19 costs...

Demanding more and more money to buy things you don't need is not normal.

Agreed. I long ago stopped working longer or harder for more money as the tax system is too great a disincentive once you hit the 67% rate due to tax allowance withdrawal.

Most people that earn good money don't spend it all buying things they don't need, they spend it buying assets to produce a passive income so they can one day retire and still buy the things they need. Most people in the private sector don't have access to a gold plated risk free final salary pension scheme or even a career average one.

To make the same pension a retired head teacher gets requires buying a massive amount of shares each year - truly eye watering amounts in fact. You need to build a pot of about £2 million to achieve the same thing. It's about £1000 per month net of taxes for 40 years. It won't fit into a private pension pot so you're going to need to save more than that due to being taxed on the second half of the sum.

You're assuming greed where you should be seeing prudent retirement planning.

LucreLout

Re: just a reminder

the Laffer curve has been rubbished by most economists

Most left-wing economists, yes. But then the left wing are to economics what astrology is to astronomy.

You'd think Britain made nothing in the 50s/60s/70s and we were only sat around scratching our asses.

For the 70s I'd be right - Sick man of Europe, remember? British disease, remember? Dead unburried etc etc

Sweden, Norway,Finland, in fact MANY other countries have much higher tax rates and have amazing innovation.

No, they don't. Tax as a percentage of GDP:

43.9% in Sweden

39.0% in Norway

42.7% in Finland

33.5% in UK

So about 10 to 30% in your very carefully chosen examples of very small nations with very high tax rates. There's plenty of failed states with much higher taxes such as Algeria on 64% or Afghanistan on 60%.

So lets have a look at a list of successful innovative countries with lower tax rates shall we:

Canada 31.7%

Australia on 28.5%

Switzerland on 27.8%

China on 20.1%

Singapore on 14.2%

UAE on 1.4%

So using your logic all you have proven is that raising taxes will turn us into Afghanistan, and cutting taxes could turn us into Dubai, or Singapore, or Canada, or Australia. That and that low taxes scale up in terms of economic size but high taxes do not.

Perhaps next time think through what you want to say and why before posting, because your view is clearly not based upon the facts you're hoping might support it.

One thing in common across all of the successful countries in my list or yours is that the tax burden is shared much more equally across society rather than being heavily reliant upon just 300,000 people out of over 60 million.

LucreLout

Let's keep it simple: turnover tax. Say 5%?

You'll get nothing from Apple for that. The order may be taken by Apple Dublin but the sale takes place with Apple Bahamas and the product ships from Apple China.

You'll get nothing from Google for that. The searches take place in the UK and that is where the advertising is viewed, but the sale of that advertising is in Google Cook Islands which is where the turnover then happens.

You'll get nothing from Amazon for that. The product may be viewed by someone in the UK on a website hosted in America, for a product sold in Sarl, Lichtenstein or some other EU tax haven.

In all cases the turnover in the UK arm is virtually zero by comparison to the revenues you're making eyes at.

There's nothing simple about a turnover tax, save for my local Bahamas based coffee shop - them you'd get, but the companies you're aiming for you'll miss by a country mile, and that's before people in my industry get creative with the corporate structures and accounting.

LucreLout

The Irish model is dependant on having a relatively small population and local economy.

No it isn't.

A decade ago global corporate profitability was $7.2 trillion. Its very probably double that in 2019. See the McKinsey report for details - I can't give you a link as its on our intranet.

Taking just 1% of that in tax would give an income of 72,000,000,000 to 144,000,000,000 USD. The UK's entire tax take is about £600 Billion. If the UK was competitive enough to earn just 0.5-1% of corporate profits that would be the only tax anyone would ever need to pay.

Corporation taxes are a bit like drugs in sport, once one person gets competitive about them, everyone has to do the same or they simply lose out. Ideological objections add no value, because they amount to saying "We've given up competing so we're all happy to pay much more taxes than we need to".

I'm fine with people saying "Lets not compete on corporation taxes" provided they also agree that they should pick up the tab. If you're looking at me to take up the slack then we have to compete for global revenues because there's only so much the higher earners can manage and we're already shouldering a massively disproportionate share of the burden.

The top 1% of income tax payers pay almost 30% of income taxes. You need only 300,000 people to move abroad or decide the stress and hours aren't worth it, and you have a funding black hole you can't fill. That's about 8% of the total UK tax take from just 300,000 people, plus whatever other taxes they pay. They don't even need to retire or move, they could just incorporate and disco, the tax disappears. The burden of taxation is dangerously overbalanced on far too few people and far too few companies - it's a massive operation risk with no possible plan B.

LucreLout

Re: just a reminder

They will hopefully lose market share to local companies who have to pay their fucking tax.

Local companies don't have to pay their tax. My local coffee shop is based in the Bahamas for tax purposes and its a single instance business, not a chain.

The only actual answer to raising taxes is to make it desirable to pay them, which means they have to be transparent, low, and unavoidable. Corporate taxes are and will always be easy to avoid. PAYE is less easy to avoid unless, again, you incorporate which is why contractors do so.

Taxes on utility bills are avoidable if its worth while enough, taxes on dividends are easily avoidable, capital gains tax is easily avoidable, and so it goes. Wealth taxes are the easiest of all to avoid.

Taxes that are harder to avoid but are to some extent reducible are VAT (spending less only gets you so far), property (there's only so small you'll make your house to avoid taxes on it), and transport (you can drive fewer miles to a point).

At over 40% of GDP, the state already consumes as much of the economy as can be obtained, and far more than is advisable if you actually want to spend money on public services. The more money left on the table for the private sector, the quicker and larger it will grow your economy, and the greater number of pounds will be had from tax revenues. We're too far around the Laffer curve to gain anything by raising taxes at this point - so the state will have to live on a budget, because its income is now effectively fixed; it can't rise until the economy grows and the economy can't grow if it tries to take more in taxes.

You can't tax your way into prosperity, no matter how hard you try or how upset that makes you feel.

US govt: Julian Assange tried to recruit hacker to steal hush-hush dirt and we should know – the hacker was an informant

LucreLout

Re: Just a polite request with an uncertain air of positive expectation?

Is it true observation and compliance with a D notice is discretionary and voluntary and not mandatory?

No, they're mandatory, hence observed when sent.

There's no way for assange to do what he does under the cover of journalism in the UK because it would never be permitted.

LucreLout

Just put him on a plane already

This could blow a hole in Jules' I'm-a-journalist-not-a-spy defense.

Journalists know what a D notice is and they observe them when so served. Clearly then, assange can't claim to be a journalist, not credibly anyway.

Among those who Assange was said to have directly contacted was Hector "Sabu" Monsegur.

This guy is fast becoming the gift that keeps on giving. Its just a shame he didn't realize what his kids meant to him before he became an asshat hacker, got caught, and then became a snitch. How many lives has he helped ruin?

I mean, I have no tears for assange - this is played for and got in every respect - but perpetually relying on Sabu to snitch is putting all their eggs in one basket. If he gets overturned just once for lying then all the cases are in doubt.

LucreLout

Re: Legal jurisdiction

Remind me why US law should extend to people (such as Assange) who weren't in the US or hacked systems in the US?

Why do you think it wouldn't?

Detroit cops cuffed, threw a dad misidentified by facial recognition in jail. Now the ACLU's demanding action

LucreLout

No manual check? They were right there!

“I hope you all don’t think all black men look alike,” Williams said he told officers during his interrogation behind bars. “The computer must have gotten it wrong,” an officer replied, we're told.

Ok, the computer got it wrong. It happens. However, it seems to me that there were a pair of police officers there that could have performed some sort of visual check against an image before arresting the guy.

I do want to take a moment to unpick what "all look alike" really means though... Lets flip the situation first so the usual suspects don't shit their pants over it.

Take a country with a predominantly black population with a significant white minority.... say south Africa. Lets say the criminal in the cctv is a white man, and a couple of black police come to my door.

Are they there because they're racist? Maybe, maybe not... The fact that they have identified a man eliminates half of the population. The fact that they have identified a man of the correct age bracket eliminates roughly another 75% of what remained. The fact that they identified a white man eliminates probably about 90% of whatever is left.

We've got quite specific quite quickly in that while that description may match 3% of the population, both I and the actual criminal are definitely in that 3%. Likely the computer has narrowed it further, to similar build or facial shape for instance, but there's no evidence of that available.

It should absolutely not be enough to arrest someone for without manually checking the pictures because it could be transparently obvious it isn't me just from a glance, and I have every right to expect them to perform the check before taking further action. They do, however, have every right to come to my door to do the check.

"When I look at the picture of the guy, I just see a big Black guy. I don't see a resemblance. I don't think he looks like me at all," Williams told NPR.

Regrettably, if the Shaggy defence worked then the prisons would be empty.

LucreLout

Re: "the guard didn’t witness the crime personally, was relying on CCTV footage......

You forgot ... "walking around with an offensive wife"!

We're all guilty of that Sir. Much as we love 'em now, they're going to be someones mother in law one day......

Sorry to drone on and on but have you heard of Ingenuity? NASA's camera-copter is ready to head off to Mars

LucreLout

Re: Why

Didn't they put in on the top?

Its getting carried on what amounts to a car. The car needs to land wheels down and balance, so you want as much weight as possible between the axles and as low down as you can get it while preserving your ground clearance requirements. Same reasons you do it on a good race car.

LucreLout

I can't wait to see the first footage of a successful flight.

I am stupidly excited about this given my general ignorance of the physics, astrophysics, chemistry, engineering, etc that has gone into this. We already have a car on another planet (2 if include the moon buggy), and now we're getting a helicopter.

One of the saddest realizations I had this year was how few more space missions and launches I'm likely to live to see (making it through another 30 years will be ambitious). There's just something epic about them all....

Russia returns to space tourism and offers a first citizen spacewalk

LucreLout

Trip of a lifetime....

... I mean, Greta will have a meltdown so that's a definite plus, and you're in space for 2 weeks actually floating about and possibly assisting with science n stuff.

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses... but not your H-1B geeks, L-1 staffers nor J-1 students

LucreLout

Re: L-1

What newly minted American STEM graduates are finding is that they are competing against H1-B workers who are willing to work at reduced wages and under strict contract requirements for many years in trade for a green card so that very wealthy corporations don't have to pay Americans competitive wages.

Yes, our American franchise has sky high starting salaries for STEM grads as developers. It's no exaggeration to say that starting salaries post taxes are considerably higher than mine, and I've got several degrees and decades of experience and I'm in a senior role here. This is caused by the pull of Silicon Valley and the high likelihood of being a millionaire after a decade out there.

H1B's are often used as a way to bring in volume, if not quality, because some developer tasks are mind numbing, and if you're paying a six figure starting salary then you don't want them doing noddy work, you want them adding value ASAP. With the visa you effectively have a worker committed for a 5 year stint and on a much lower compensation package, so in fairness it's a bit of a no brainer a lot of the time.

Unfortunately for America, the work won't go to onshore Americans, it'll simply come here where I can any skill level I like for a lot less money.

A memo from the distant future... June 2022: The boss decides working from home isn't the new normal after all

LucreLout

Re: New Normal?

If you are working from home you have to have appropriate facilities.

I wish - I'd dearly love a home office but we don't have space in this house.

Just substituting commuting costs for utility costs is only a benefit if your commuting costs (and time) are substantial.

I pay very nearly £500 a month for the train. Leaving the heating as high as is bearable and every light burning 24/7 will only use a fraction of that. So for me its a very substantial saving - its eliminated what was my 3rd biggest expense. (Taxes, mortgage, commuting, food....)

Try having a call when there are kids doing stuff in the background. Do you keep telling them to be quiet every time there is a call.

No, they just appear in the video call every now and again (mine and other folks). We find it less disruptive to acknowledge they're there - most are just happy to see other real live people at the minute. Occasionally one comes on the call for a chat to the attendees, and its waaaay quicker to say hi and ask about their day than wait for a parent to discipline them and handle the ensuing meltdown.

Finally having spent all day in the home-office, things one might have done in the evening that involved the computer are now a chore.

It stopped being my hobby when it started being my job. I mean, I love coding, and I do some of it at home after hours too, but working 12 hour days (finance) means I understand only too well your desire not to see another computer when home.

I can see the benefits, but it is not a magic solution for everything and the overall advantages can easily be very heavily weighted to either empolyee or employer.

I find that there are advantages and drawbacks for both - balancing competing interests is always a fine art. My main concern is the health and well being of my team - the bank is older than any of us and will be around long after we've gone.

LucreLout

Re: More Middle Manager insecurity

Even companies that have been doing this remote thing for a while can have a culture of "you're not green on Skype, you're clearly not working" ...

Oh there's way better metrics than that - github has tonnes of good stuff with pretty graphs, then there's the system logs, the story tracking tool, all sort of things. I've never looked at them though.

You might well be not working right now - you could have an appointment at the GP, or needed to go to ASDA, or you could just have gone for a walk. A courtesy message to the team that you're out for a bit is nice as it saves anyone wasting time waiting for you. Take breaks. I trust you. The work will get done. I honestly believe the work will get done.

LucreLout

Re: More Middle Manager insecurity

Middle Managers/PHB's wanting to transfer the Office to your Home and they want to be there with you, looking over your shoulder making sure that you aren't slacking/jerking off on company time.

I hope that isn't what my teams do, and if it is I certainly don't want to "be there with them". If I can't trust you to do the job when I'm not looking then I can't trust you to do the job. Fortunately, if you treat people as people, they rarely betray your trust. Those that do move on soon enough anyway.

They simply don't trust their teams to do the work to the agreed quality, timescales and spec.

My biggest problem is encouraging my team to take breaks and not to work excessive hours. It doesn't work in anything but the short term, and I would like to work with my crew for the longer term if possible. They're fantastic people, very productive, and we have a great working environment.

Micromanaging isn't managing, which is why any half decent manager will want to arrange skip level meetings, 360s, anonymous feedback etc. I respect and value my team, I don't fear them or what they may say to my boss, so all I've ever had back is a little constructive feedback and a steady as she goes message. I didn't set out to be a manager, it just sort of happened, so I want to stay good as a dev, but also be good as a manager - feedback helps me do that. Remember, very few people come to work with the intention of doing a crap job, even some of the PHBs.

LucreLout

Re: More Middle Manager insecurity

I have also observed that the only requests I have seen for video calls rather than just audio on Teams etc are from more senior people, both in terms of rank and age.

I'm old, and fairly senior, and with a face made for radio. I'm completely happy not to have the cameras on, but some of my lot prefer it, so mine is often on.

There are cultural sensitivities involved though, for instance some of my team wear headscarves to the office, but not always when at home. Mandating camera use requires that they and any female relatives that may stray into shot also wear a headscarf all day.... and its been a bit hot lately. Which is one of the main reasons I don't mandate them - mandating stuff is a dick move, the other is for the introverts who may find it uncomfortable (I know how they feel as I'm an introvert pretending to be an extrovert for the sake of his career and sadly yes that does work).

LucreLout

Re: New Normal?

Is there any evidence that these things help? Personally I find them depressing, disruptive and walk away from them wanting to kill myself.

Oh, I see. You may have been doing them wrong.

See, the "noisy bossy people" like to win, so I spend the whole day screwing up in ways I find entertaining but they find unhelpful as it costs our team points. Watching them stewing all day and trying not to lose their shit as I screw up the seemingly most trivial task in the most unimaginable way..... well, that just brings a smile to my face.

My boss isn't so stupid that he doesn't know what I'm doing, so he just puts me on a team with people he wants bringing down a peg or two. Everyone's a winner.... except for my team, of course.

LucreLout

Re: New Normal?

So how is that different from geographically dispersed teams? For example, on my team of 5 (plus two managers), I'm in Blighy, two are in New Jersey and one each in California and Chicago, with the two managers in NJ and Pittsburgh.

Yup - I've been thinking about the idea of the globalised startup (via github for instance) for a while, and fully expect that the pandemic will accelerate the pace at which this becomes seen as normal.

If you need to meet up a couple of times a year then just throw a dart at a world map and meet there. It might make bored board meetings fun.

LucreLout

Re: New Normal?

I don't agree necessarily with all the reasons in the article but I definitely think that WFH will not be the norm.

My biggest WFH problem is my younger staff - several of them are struggling phenomenally with the challenge from a mental health perspective. I don't know who will crack first - the departments biggest extrovert who suddenly has no real audience, or the wokest member of the team who seems to be in perpetual meltdown. Oddly none of my older team members are showing signs of cracking, though they may simply be better at concealing it, as one of my old giffer mates is struggling too.

The flip side will come when we do go back. People like me are doing fine - I adapted very quickly to lockdown, but I expect to adapt much more slowly to being back around people.... and I can't bear the thought of paying £500 a month to stand on the train again.....

Team building will just be done on "in office" days. I can't see us going back to 5/5 in the office - I'm thinking 3/5 will be the new office normal when the dust settles, though it won't be my call.

Commercial real-estate is toast. There's no way back for the large office buildings at Canary Wharf for example, not for quite a long time. People won't want to be in the office every work day now that companies and staff have realised they don't need to.

Its far more likely that any downsides for employees will come in the form of postcode weightings for salaries (leading to gaming the system via mailbox addresses), and rampant job relocation to cheaper areas - both domestically and offshore. How that gets managed is very much going to require creative legislation from the government because if the City moves the finance jobs and so taxes abroad, the UK can't afford the NHS, which doesn't bear thinking about.

LucreLout

Re: Will anyone remember what Yahoo was by 2022?

Pedant!

Hey NYPD, when you're done tear-gassing and running over protesters, can you tell us about your spy gear?

LucreLout

Re: Liar, she hit a traffic light

You've obviously never been to a football match. Controlling crowds with horses is standard operating procedure for UK Police every Saturday. And, those are peaceful crowds who aren't protesting, rioting or looting. (generally)

Quite. I've never understood the rampant hysteria around football violence. I mean it IS inexcusable, however it's always had fewer serious incidents per capita than the Notting Hill carnival, always fewer incidents than any of the 'protests' London endures from the usual left-wing mob. If just one week there was as much violence at football matches, football would be banned for life.

The problem people moaning about the police have, is that they don't like being policed. Well, unfortunately, people need to be policed, and the alternative to a trained, experienced, and organised police force is that we return to what we had before - sending the boys round. The absence of legal justice will lead inevitably to the rise of natural justice.