* Posts by LucreLout

3039 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Jun 2014

UK MPs to off-payroll workers: Delay IR35 reforms until 2023? You wish

LucreLout

Lets take a moment to look at the low hanging fruit of creativity which we haven't applied so far.

Holidays become offsites (One of my contractors is still trying to crack Australia despite annual trips going back a decade). That he happens to hail from there is pure coincidence, as is the fact that his family farm is there.

Holidays become training courses - One of my guys takes 3 weeks off every year and goes abroad with the family - he just does one cert a week at each end of the holiday. All employees you see.

The first 2 years at an employer mean on top of the mileage claims you can expense your train ticket - one of my mates does this and he comes down to London from the east mids every day. Hell, my ticket costs 350 notes a month and I get nothing for that because HMRC think I might want to go back into London on a night for leisure!!

We've not looked at structuring yet, where your onshore company buys services or equipment through an offshore provider, located conveniently in a tax friendly jurisdiction.

Club access - golf, social etc are easily obtainable through your company before taxes become due.

We're not even getting close to a grey area here - its all legal and firmly so.

If we want to go grey we start looking at director loans, corporate financing across a web of companies owned by relatives, etc

I've a former colleague with a lovely range of boss suits with his corporate logo embroidered very discreetly on the cuffs, which is a corporate uniform, along with the hermes and churches.

Charity donations, when either you benefit from attending the functions, or where you might even run the charitable trust yourself.

Then we can look at where you keep you corporate IP (Holland is apparently efficient for tax reasons and might work for You Too).

We haven't looked at business development grants, we haven't looked at R&D deductions, or corporate investments or a whole host of things.

Up to this point I personally know someone engaging in each of the above, so making out like contractors don't do this is simply not going to wash.

Then we can go dark, balls out evasion from there or even straight up fraud, which is not something I'd engage in professionally or personally, but lets not pretend it isn't happening and that the losses to the tax man aren't real. I'll not detail how this is most easily done for reasons which should be obvious.

LucreLout

Also, even if what you say on this is correct

It is and doesn't even scratch the surface. The effective tax rate most of my contractors pay is 23% and that's on a solid six figure sum. For a PAYE on the same comp, even maxing out pension contributions etc you're looking at paying at least 45% - very close to double the taxes.

it's still not true that the employee "paying several magnitudes the tax the contractor pays"

And yet it is.

PAYE on £50k turns over £4,860.00 in NI and £12,358.20 in income taxes. Now, I don't deal with payroll taxes because they're not helpful when you're dealing with £xxxx Bn internationally, its all magicked away with bonds, equities, loans, etc and some globe spanning chicanery. I'll be happy to see what payroll errors I've made as this is literally my first attempt at the calcs.

Contractor on £50k:

2 x mileage is 0.45 * 20000 = £9k tax free leaving £41k to disburse

2 x lunch = £7 * 5 * 48 = £1645 of costs moved onto the company so tax free, leaving £38,355 left.

2 x high spec laptop / tablet / phone rotating each year = £7k of cost moved onto the company leaving £31,355 open to tax.

2 x phone bill £60 * 12 = £720 moved onto the company and £30,635 left.

Utility bills, broadband etc will see that down to about £30k (I'll ignore home office deductions etc).

You'll note, however, that I haven't paid a single penny in taxes so far and I've already knocked £20k off any potential bill before doing anything creative or before employing the kids.

Employers NI will become due on each employee at about 13.8% but only on earnings over £8424 per employee. A further 12% employee contribution will be required. Personal allowance is £12500 per employee before 20% tax kicks in.

2 x PAYE of £8424 = £16848 out with no NI and no IT to pay, leaving £13152 on which tax might be due.

Corporate taxes are due at 19% on anything we don't hide or pay out, but that is lower than IT and we have 2x tax free dividends yet to use so.....

2x 2000 = £4k with no tax due to employee, and just £760 paid in taxes and only £8392 left potentially taxable.

I'm running out of time to complete this calc, so lets keep it simple and dividend the lot.

CT = £1594.48

Divs = 6797 / 2 employees so £3398.76 each which fits inside their TFE allowance so no further tax is due.

What we've got to date is the following:

CT: £2354

IT: 0

NI:0

Cash: 27645

Food and utilities are part paid, tech is paid, plus you get to make on resale of 3 year old kit.

I've not employed the kid, and I still have wriggle room if you want to drop the tech rate and pay a little more tax in order to have more cash.

£17218 / £2354 = 7.314 times the taxes. Now, you can munge the numbers around to your hearts content, but you will ALWAYS find that the PAYE taxes due are MULTIPLES of the contractor rate unless you pay the maximum taxes possible. Nobody actually does that. But then you already know this. Pay a little more and get an NI stamp, if you wish, but do note that some contractors implement the above structures and then go on to claim in work welfare benefits, so there's that to consider too.

You just don't want to agree because "tax avoider" isn't how you want see yourself. That is how most of society sees you though, no different from Amazon, and that is why you're going to get taxed at a prevailing rate akin to an FTE.

Source of rates and deductions (because I'm not at work and don't have access to my usual data/software, plus we don't work on the employee level).

https://paulbeare.com/2018/08/14/an-overview-of-uk-payroll-costs/

LucreLout

Tax free mileage: I used to claim this, but then so can any employee when travelling to anywhere that is not their main place of work.

Contractors don't need receipts so most just claim the full allowance (x2 because of the spouse).

However, again AFAIK an employee can declare this on a SATR if he's travelling somewhere other than his main place of work.

Yes, but you count your place of work as your home even when its actually the desk next to mine. I don't get to do that.

Work equipment: Yes, too right that's tax deductible. It is for someone's employer too, and AFAIK also for an employee on a SATR. As long as it IS work equipment, if not you're breaking the law.

Nope, because it can be used for purposes other than work, according tot he tax man, even if it isn't. No contractor I know uses their home PC for work, because they don't work for BYOD companies, nor do they need their mobile phone to be on the company.... all of them do so though, including the wifes kit.

Wife on the books: If the wife is actually doing a job for the company then why shouldn't she be paid the going rate for this? If she isn't, you're breaking the law.

Popping to the shops for stationary is about as much work as most contractor spouses do. The difference is that nets a base rate salary, dividends, expenses for her lunch, mileage, and her gadget bill too.

Son on the books: Again, if he's actually doing a job and being paid something commensurate with that job, this is (and should be) acceptable.

Yes, but all he's doing is tweeting occasionally and managing the facebook page. Neither are tasks that actually need doing, and even were they required, they can be done in his own time the same way I'd have to were I to have such media profiles.

Everything you talk of is either legitimate (both legally and morally correct) or illegal.

Its all legally correct but its certainly not morally correcy unless we allow PAYE to average out the Mrs tax code, the kids, and put half their life on the tax man too.

The illegal stuff is not a "tax advantage of being a contractor", it's tax evasion

Nothing I have described is specifically illegal unless its only done to reduce tax. Otherwise its peachy for a contractor, but none of it works for a PAYE.

You're making the Amazon argument all by yourself, yet next time it crops up you'll be there banging the drum for them to pay more too.

You and I both know you're talking your book. You & I both know this doesn't even begin to bottom out all the tax advantages of being a contractor, which is why none of you pay yourself enough to get close to my tax bill despite often bringing home another 50% on top. I've been working with and paying for contractors for decades, so you might be doing a good job of convincing yourself (that lefty cognitive dissonance again), but you sure aren't convincing me. Far more importantly you aren't convincing HMRC and you're nowhere close to convincing the general public.

LucreLout

How is this even close to "paying several magnitudes the tax the contractor pays"?!?!

Because you've missed an awful lot of things off the calculation and you know you have.

Where the tax free mileage claims? Wheres the incidentals for lunch? The work equipment? The PluralSight sub etc etc etc. That's before the wife is on the books doubling down on the tax free earnings allowance, the mileage and other expenses. One of my guys even has his son on there as a social media consultant. That's before we even think about getting creative anywhere, such as board meetings in warmer climes.

You can call it whatever you want, but what the rest of us call it is tax avoidance, and the public call it not paying your fair share. You know there's massive tax advantages in a LTD company and so do I - I do this for a very lucrative living at a very high end bank. Now, I have no moral, ethical, or other problems with tax avoidance - I do it myself - but FFS man up and accept what you're doing instead of trying to play some holier than thou shell game.

LucreLout

Both contractors and Ltd companies have a significantly higher level of risk

No they don't. When banks make cuts backs we reduce the rate paid to contractors by 10% and cut 10% of the FTEs. The latter is more risky.

lower level of guaranteed benefits than employees

On paper they do, but that word "guarantee" doesn't mean what you seem to think it means. Employment rights only matter a jot if you are willing to go to court to enforce them. The problem with doing so is that you are very likely to make yourself unemployable in doing so. I've never worked for a large company that did not have a tick box for "Have you ever sued a previous employer for any reason?". They're not asking so they know to give you a pat on the back.

the relative tax and NI rates reflect this

No, they don't.

Its no good the commentards on El Reg getting their panties wet over public spending cuts to balance the budget, while simultaneously decrying paying a rate of tax that everyone else already pays. Someone has to fund the deficit spending and that someone can't just be PAYE again. Contractors are going to take a sizable hit this time around.

A contractor bringing in 50k gross and an FTE bringing in 50k gross have such disparate bottom lines, with the FTE paying several magnitudes the tax the contractor pays, which leaves nowhere to hide and little sympathy from most voters. The difference becomes even more marked once you gross over 100k in each employment type.

To the public, you are Amazon. You're not perceived as paying your fair share. Sorry if that upsets, but that's basically why you're going to get walloped for tax next year.

Far-right leader walks free from court after conviction for refusing to hand his phone passcode over to police

LucreLout

Re: Would never have happened in my day

grounds for dismissal must be due to individual action, not due to association with one or another group.

It should be, but that wasn't how it worked for the police members of the BNP. The same standard should, if the equalities commission determine labour is institutionally racist, go on to apply to them, and for the same reasons.

"But that's my party" shouldn't really be your primary concern. It shouldn't really be a concern at all. They (labour) were my party once too.... Things change. They lost their way. What has been done cannot be undone.

LucreLout

Re: Would never have happened in my day

On one side we have a tiny and almost inconsequential Right-wing bogie-man who is a member of the public, on the other we have massive confirmed dereliction of duty driven not by character failings but by Left-wing political ideology, in the police force itself. Why are we focussed on trivialities?

????!

FFS.

Ok, look, this bit:

we have massive confirmed dereliction of duty driven not by character failings but by Left-wing political ideology, in the police force itself

Is absolutely spot on in terms of the problem and its underlying reason for existing.

But the rest of the whole paragraph is the same vintage whataboutery that lefties love to indulge in. Its wrong when they do it and just as wrong when you do it.

LucreLout

Re: Would never have happened in my day

Moreover, Tommy isn't interested in the race of the offenders.

Personally I find that totally unbelievable....

The issue is not who is breaking the law

I'm far from convinced by this part....

the fact that those who are supposed to be enforcing the law are not doing so because of the race and/or religion of the offenders

This, however, seems fairly indisputable now.

There were five or six police officers waiting to take Tommy away from the court. That seems excessive - one would have been enough

Quite likely the others were there for his protection. Wouldn't look good if a terrorist offed him on the six o'clock news, while in police custody.

There were people making policy decisions based on race. It just wasn't Tommy.

That anyone makes decisions on race in this day and age is totally unacceptable. How can you write the first sentence, then follow it up with the second??? Its precisely this kind of mental gymnastics that has landed labour under investigation for institutional racism.

LucreLout

Re: Would never have happened in my day

Although I agree with the sentiment that just being a member of a political party should not be grounds for dismissal; being a racist is (and should be) grounds for dismissal.

And yet as Cedric points out, people are not sacked for being members of the Labour party. A party which is openly hostile to Jews, under investigation and almost certain to be found guilty of being institutionally racist.

Just let that sink in for a moment. The labour party. Investigated by their own equalities watchdog. Going to be found guilty of institutional racism (at this point the EC find them guilty or they forever destroy their own credibility).

Literally the labour party will belong next to the BNP in the spectrum of political acceptability, next to the BNP in terms of racism (its already only the second party ever to be investigated for institutional racism). It seems to me impossible to be a labour voter, party member, or union member of an affiliate and not be seen to be a racist. The entire party is going to have to go, which in terms of being an effective opposition is probably for the best, because they'll never be able to reconcile their "thick northerners" and metro elites anyway. Besides, "For the money, not for the Jew" was a terrible electoral slogan.

Your suggested course of action above WILL mean that all members of labour affiliated unions, all members of the labour party, will have to be sacked because they're all racists once the equalities commission report comes back. There's no special unicorns here, so if its good enough for BNP members (and I very much think that it is) then it's going to be good enough for labour members too.

We can't be against racism except when its "the right king of racism". Labour need to own this and they need to be shunned by all until they do. Racism is wrong. No ifs no buts.

Mealy mouthed apologies won't cut it - why is Corbyn still an MP & party member? Why have there been no mass expulsion of the Corbynite racists? That's before we get to the labour & PIE noncing shenanigans which have never been properly investigated or rooted out. Rotten to the core, the lot of them.

UK.gov splashes out on 40,000 new devices amid COVID-19-fuelled homeworking boom

LucreLout
Joke

Enterprise McAfee Total Virus Defence.

Does that run on XP? Joking... wish I was....

IBM cuts deep into workforce – even its Watson and AI teams – as it 'pivots' to cloud

LucreLout
Pint

Best of luck

Good luck to all the soon to be ex IBM staff. It's not a great environment out there just now, but this will pass and things will get better. Higher quality employers will find a need for you shortly. In the mean time, at least its summer(ish) so outdoors will be a bit more pleasant.

Beer, because everything is better with beer. Except driving.

Microsoft announces official Windows package manager. 'Not a package manager' users snap back

LucreLout

Yet more proof that MS invent nothing, perhaps it is time to start doing unto MS what they did to their competition?

They have no competition. I mean, sure, there's Amazon in the cloud, and Google for search, but outside of AWS and Google search there's no competition for MS anymore. Oracle is dying and almost dead, Sun are dead, IBM are.... whatever the hell IBM are now. Who really is there?

Linux & iOS will never be real competition for the desktop. Open Office has been around for decades and is no competition for Office. Java is toast and hasn't been competition for .NET for at least 15 years now. All the various flavours of IntelliJ/Rider etc are no real competition for Visual Studio.

Whatever your views on their corporate behaviour, they've won. There's nobody left standing to do a damn thing to them. The entire ABM war is lost.... there's just a few troops out in the jungle not realised the war ended a long time ago.

Beer rating app reveals homes and identities of spies and military bods, warns Bellingcat

LucreLout
Joke

Re: Anyone in a sensitive job: do not use social media

I'd be suspicious of why you didnt use it and immediately set loose some autonomous drones to track you and find out everything about you!

FFS. Talk about overkill. Just ask your wife. -------------->

LucreLout

Re: For any one in a sensitive job.

For any one in a sensitive job.

I'd say about social media:

1) Never use it, any of it, ever.

FTFY.

Former Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman calls on UK govt to legally protect data from contact-tracing apps

LucreLout

Re: The PIE lady knows best

that really is not safe for work or for home

Quite.

To save others googling, there are persistent allegations regarding how closely aligned senior labour MPs and union barons were with nonces throughout the 60s and 70s. There's no credible denial that they were in the same circles, only more recent attempts to distance themselves from their historic friendships.

While the red arrows will undoubtedly fly, anyone googling the issue will find extensive links and statements that if we're being realistic show how politely I've summarized the issue above.

LucreLout

Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

We have people who think the Nazis were left wing? Really?

The greatest evils always come from the left. Nazis, Pol Pot, Stalin, Chavez, etc

The cognitive dissonance required to be a left winger has always been astounding, which is presumably why as people grow up they tend to stop being socialists.

LucreLout

Re: Oh what a tangled web we weave!

A fine change of tune from Labour after clamouring for years for every scrap of information on the general populace they could possibly get their grubby little hands on.

Indeed - such joys as ANPR so they can track vehicles, web surfing storage via those little black funboxes in every ISP etc etc.

Thankfully under the last lot of commie clowns, labour lurched so far to the left that Hitler would have recognised them as a party he could work with, complete with their institutional hatred of Jews, that they've made themselves a total electoral irrelevance. Nobody has to care what the fool Starmer has to say, much less the has been Harperson; out of his depth as DPP, out of his depth as leader of the opposition, nobody needs to let him run the country to see how out of his depth he'd be there too.

I'm ashamed to have ever voted for them, and so should you be.

OnePlus to disable camera colour feature with pervy tendencies in latest flagship smartphone

LucreLout

What's the point?

I'm pretty sure the pervs will simply migrate to photoshop and / or training ML models.

I get why a company wouldn't want to build a perv-setting into a device, but I'm assuming this filter has uses beyond see-thru-ing, for want of a better term.

Indonesia imposes 10% digital services tax

LucreLout

I can predict that the UK will have 2 rates of consumer VAT, one for online and one for bricks and mortar based purchases

Amazon would simply move the point of sale to collection from locker, and much of their problem goes away. For doorstep deliveries you're going to find it much easier to tax the courier than the digital firm.

Shooting the messenger with a blizzard of downvotes ain't gonna change the facts.

LucreLout

Why can't they pay a fair amount of tax?

They already do, it's just their definition of fair and yours differ.

While its deeply unpopular on the left, it remains that fair means different things to different people and absent a universally acceptable agreement on what fair is, those that favour high taxes will continue to think its unfair that those taxes get avoided, while people that favour low taxes and a smaller state will continue to avoid the taxes because they think the tax rate is unfairly high.

Taxes in the UK as a share of GDP are close to the highest they've ever been, so in terms of fairness, any zone of possible agreement is this level or below.

More automation to suddenly look like a jolly good idea as businesses struggle through coronavirus crisis, say analysts

LucreLout

it's a post-capitalist society

There aren't any post-capitalist Utopian societies possible. Getting from capitalism to such a state would take a very long time, and as fewer people are needed and less money is in circulation as a result of reduced employment through automation, you would inevitably reduce income from the state for having a child. Quite possibly this wold reverse and you'd need a licence to have a child, which would be taxed to pay for things.

The result is the plebs stop breeding. The family lines of those unable to support themselves disappear into the history books. Eventually there become fewer and fewer families left to enjoy the benefits automation and sooner or later they get wiped out by something they didn't predict, like a virus.

Of course, none of that would happen because of the lump of labour fallacy. People displaced by progress don't usually do nothing - in that the miners & dockers were an exception - they usually move to another job further up the value chain. New professions emerge all the time, and people move to fill them.

There's no future in which people do nothing in return for everything. Capitalism is as close to Utopia as we're ever going to get.

Papa don't breach: Contracts, personal info on Madonna, Lady Gaga, Elton John, others swiped in celeb law firm 'hack'

LucreLout

Lawyers follow the instructions of their clients, even down to means used.

I was only obeying orders is not a good line of defence. If that's actually your thinking then you are the problem in the system as opposed to a useful part of it.

Like professional sportspeople, they want to win, and they want to do it often and decisively.

The law exists to stop people sending the boys round or showing up and exacting justice for themselves. That's its only purpose.

If lawyers can't "win" without damaging the opponent then they should accept the loss. Simply ploughing on when damage is being done to the other party is unacceptable, particularly when the other party has the significantly better case and you're really just hoping to bluff them off the pot by causing as much stress as possible by filing high 5 figure claims for costs (preallocation) for a matter the claimant was trying to resolve in the small claims court.

The problem comes from a system that allows huge dissimilarities in representation.

That is part of the problem, but unless you remove the scum from the system they'll simply find another way to attempt to "win" at whatever cost to the other side.

So far I've never met a lawyer that was any smarter than they were moral, which is why I keep handing them their ass when the law isn't my profession or my education. Quite how it is possible to attempt to enact a flagrant injustice in a brazen attempt to win at all costs and not end up automatically disbarred is beyond me.

It's time judges had the power to ban solicitors and barristers egregiously pushing a meritless case whose only possible victory lies in intimidating (for that is what it is) the victim with threats of large cost claims. The alternative is that we remove legal protections such that the litigant in person may legally show up at the solicitors home and intimidate and harm them in return - it would focus minds appropriately.

There's a reason lawyer is consistently the most hated profession next to estate agent.

LucreLout

Picking on lawyers doesn't seem the wisest move.

Yup, but not for the reasons you gave.

Lawyers spend all day every day utterly ruining peoples lives with an endless mountain of legal paperwork and bullshit billing at eye watering levels. They're amoral scum.

I'd rather piss off a hitman than a lawyer. The hitman will either go to work or let the matter go. Lawyers never let the matter go, they just plough on endlessly billing until a judge orders that they stop.

I've had to take companies to court on three occasions now (not a lawyer) and on each occasion I've handed them their ass. That doesn't mean their dogs of law didn't cause me a lot of needless and undue stress along the way. There needs to be much better protection for individual people against solicitors acting on behalf of corporate clients.

Penny smart and dollar stupid: IT jobs slashed in US, UK, Europe to cut costs – just when we need staff the most

LucreLout

Re: tldr

If you want your remote company to work, you need IT.

You do need IT, nobody is arguing against that, the question is how much IT you need.

Do you need to spend more on InfoSec because some people now work from home? No. My bank already had everything in place to facilitate this, so there's no free lunch coming in terms of larger spend on InfoSec. We don't need more devs, hell, we don't even need more systems guys, because we've dumped dev & cert and tooling such as build servers into the cloud now for anything new, with only prod running on prem.

His entire premise is weak and ill though through, which casts real doubt about how much faith to put in his consultancy when it comes to security, where thinking things through properly is a pre-requisite.

LucreLout

Re: tldr

Security company does report saying not enough being spent on security.

Yup - classic "spend more, preferably on me" ranting.

Meanwhile most of the business world tries to work out if their business will survive another month.

Yup. Those feeding on the public sector will mostly be fine - recessions only happen in the private sector. A great many businesses will not survive the next 24 months, almost no business will survive the next 24 months with current staffing levels.

From the article:

"It beggars belief that businesses are slashing IT staff at a time when digital skills are so critical for delivering effective remote working systems," said Andy Harcup, VP at security biz Absolute Software, in a canned statement.

IT staff are expensive. There's a huge recession coming. Costs will get cut across the private sector. How does anyone realistically expect that won't result in fewer IT staff? I'm not sure he's thought through his position here, and that doesn't reflect well on his company.

IBM to GTS staff: Not volunteering to leave with a redundo cheque? We'll give you a helping hand

LucreLout

Isn't this the way it works anywhere? Organization decides it needs to reduce headcount, so asks for those who want to go to throw their hat in the ring.

No. One of the banks I used to work at provided no volunteering opportunities. Redundancies were always the lowest performing 10%, assessed and cut at least once per year even during good times, and simply more rounds of that if costs had to come down.

I had a discussion with an asshole boss I was trying to get away from and HR, and they basically told me I was so far ahead of my then pay grade in terms of performance that I effectively had a job for life, but knowing I wanted to leave, it was going to be THAT job for life. They weren't bluffing - I thought they might be and called it, and I still had the same job 2 rounds later, so I had to walk with nothing.

Author of infamous Google diversity manifesto drops lawsuit against web giant

LucreLout

The people who get excited about others fired for tweets and saying things in Western countries today would be reporting jokes to authorities or informing about hiding Jews if they lived in the Stalin’s Russia or Germany when it was ruled by National Socialism.

They are Extremely Socialist, as the phrase goes in Germany.

LucreLout

Re: Evil sexist

Google made a policy that states that, essentially, no statements regarding diversity which may possibly lead to disagreements, arguments or social upheaval within the business, will be allowed.

Were that the case the wokies would similarly not be free to push their agenda, and yet they clearly are. Publicly so too.

If he had problems with the policy, feeling that it was too 'PC' for his, well, "conservative values", then he should have either quit, or not taken the contract in the first place with such a "progressive" thinking company.

The law doesn't work that way.

a rule Damore agreed to follow during his hiring.

You're making an assumption and a claim for which you have shown no evidence. Does this "rule" predate his employment or does his employment predate the "rule"?

Damore shot his mouth off against a policy that exists to prevent friction between workers.

No it doesn't. The policy exists to push an excessively politically correct world view that has nothing to do with the business, core or otherwise. The way its being abused is the tyranny of the far left over all other world views.

The woke agenda is morally bankrupt, ill thought through & impossible to reconcile (which is why the trannies and lesbians are battling), and counterproductive. Its never been a good idea, and any sane person would decline to take part. Just hire the best person that turns up for the role and you'll get statistical diversity because balls or breasts, black or white, gay or straight, none of that is the least little bit relevant to coding. It just isn't. Playing games with arbitrary and irrelevant categorization of people is not going to make your company culture stronger, quite the opposite.

None of the women I've hired, none of the black guys, or the gays of either gender have been hired to improve my diversity. They all stand on their own skills and efforts as the best person to come for the role. Same for the white guys. Stop trying to divide people so you can set them against each other. If that upsets you then you are the problem, not me, and not my teams.

LucreLout

Call them bastards or morons or something. I think you'll find people will get offended, but strangely enough, they'll consider it's your fault, despite having the choice whether to get offended or not.

I'd just think you were funny, or perhaps mentally impaired, but I wouldn't get offended.

Unfortunately the things people are choosing to get offended about aren't even as robust as being called names, its reached the point where people choose to get offended if you don't choose to recognise their made up gender (singular they's come on down). Where people choose to get offended if you don't choose to recognise their made up sexual preferences (pansexuals I'm looking at you).

There's no limit to what some snowflake might find offensive or choose to be offended about. Literally there's no limit. So, in the words of WOPR, the only way to win is not to play. So while you might choose to be offended that I didn't choose to play the latest round of your newspeak word games, that really does remain your choice. And if you do choose to be offended, I'm really not too sure why you might then think that was my problem to fix for you.

LucreLout

When there is no relevant evidence of the alleged gender differences and the purpose of the allegation is to defend a gender imbalance in the workforce it's difficult to describe it as anything other than sexist.

And yet, unless and until the intake and graduation levels of Comp Sci type courses is evenly mixed, the workplace balance among engineers cannot be so. Distorting hiring practices to game the outcome is more or less what Damore was complaining about, even if he chose to go a little off-piste in constructing his argument.

Unusually, the imbalance between genders garners no concern when its jobs the middle classes look down on, like bin man, because it is almost entirely men that do that job.

LucreLout

As for being offensive, you can offend *someone* with just about anything these days, people say "I'm offended" like it means they have some kind of rights that mean you have to change what you say.

Offence can be taken but never given. It's always a choice to be offended. I'm frankly puzzled why people who choose to be offended make out its so terribly bad, then go right out and choose to be offended all over again.

Seriously kids, grow up. Just grow up.

LucreLout

Yes, because calling out someone for being an offensive, sexist dick is evil.

Its been long established that very little of what it is reported that Damore said is actually what he said. Which specific bit do you disagree with, and why?

From the article:

James Damore, the one-time Google developer who infamously suggested his bosses' diversity rules made it impossible to voice some opinions, has dropped his lawsuit against the internet titan.

Well, on this he certainly wasn't wrong.

I'm not making any comment that men make better devs than women, because in my experience it isn't true; The main indicator of ability remains experience rather than any other individual factor. That said, I could readily accept that gender a difference is possible, and it may just as easily come down in favor of the girls as the boys.

Absolute equality over a range of variables (race, gender, etc) isn't a realistic world view. Sorry if that upsets you, but it just isn't. Google have that very wrong, along with the rest of the PC brigade / Wokies. Women will be better at some things than men, men will be better at other things than women, so it goes. Pretending there's no difference isn't morally or ethically defensible.

Uber, Lyft struck by sue-ball, no, sue-meteorite in California after insisting their apps' drivers aren't employees

LucreLout

Re: Meanwhile (according to the BBC)...

That is correct, but IT contractors generally get paid a lot more and financially benefit by not being classed as an employee

And while that may feel important to you, it isn't of the slightest relevance legally. "It's OK your honour, we don't think they're employees and it doesn't matter because we pay them a lot" is not going to work in court.

while Uber drivers and other gig economy contractors generally get near minimum wage

Well, yes, but they've chosen an occupation that is very near automatable, to the point that most of the country can do the job. Choosing a low income role instead of a high income one doesn't alter the legal status of the role one iota.

So the arguments are identical, but the view is different depending on how much money you make.

No, the arguments are identical. The last bit is emotive again rather than factual.

If Uber drivers were paid a lot more, you would not hear many of them arguing to be considered employees.

Most of them don't argue that they're employees - other people argue for them and often against their wishes. I've met some Uber drivers while travelling on business, and none of them wanted to be an employee - I do ask every ride (admittedly I only use 3 or 4 of the things a year). Much the same as my local dial a cab company - none of their drivers are employees and none of them want to be.

So while I understand that you feel you points should be relevant, they aren't, I'm afraid. Emotion is no substitute for reason, no matter how emotive you are.

LucreLout

Re: Meanwhile (according to the BBC)...

At the end of February, Uber said it had approximately $10 Billion in cash.

But goddess forbid any of that go to their workers.

That's kind of their point though, isn't it? They don't see the drivers as their workers. Their workers are the tech bros in Cali / elsewhere, not the cabbies in London or wherever.

If I sign up as an Uber driver I can choose my own hours, choose my own equipment (car, suit/jeans etc), choose my work days, choose who else I work with, choose who else I work for, choose within reason my primary working location - there's a lot there that I can't do in my actual employment at the bank.

The flip side is that if as a contractor for Uber I choose to work only for them, work regular days, regular hours etc, then yes it starts to more closely resemble a job rather than a contracting gig, however, I chose to make it so, not Uber. Even in the most extreme cases it isn't substantially different to the IT contractor position of insisting they are not employees.

Tom Cruise to increase in stature thanks to ISS jaunt? Now that's a mission impossible

LucreLout

Re: Sending Cruise is easy...

Sending Cruise is easy...

It is, but there's an old rule you should keep handy for these situations: Never trust a man who breaks up with Nicole Kidman.

Surprise surprise! Hostile states are hacking coronavirus vaccine research, warn UK and USA intelligence

LucreLout

Re: We're talking medical research, not nuclear launch codes.

If ChAdOx1 works, AstraZeneca have stated they'll produce it at cost.

Sure, but the cost is a very fungible item. Companies have two kinds of staff - billable and non-billable. Billable people are an income stream for you company (Traders in finance, Devs in software companies etc), non-billable people don't (System Admins, HR etc).

Given my company apparently needs the non-billable people to run and running has let us produce this thing we're giving away at cost, I might be tempted to proscribe 100% of my non-billables to the cost of production, thereby massively increasing the revenue percentage of my other billables that are working on something else.

It makes my company a lot of money either way, and you get whatever I'm handing out "at cost".

Now, I'm not suggesting AstraZeneca are doing this or would do it, I'm sure they're positively lovely people through and through, so they have no need to let lose the dogs of law.

LucreLout

My thoughts precisely. We'd want to share any means to halt the virus with the whole world, there's no good reason to keep it to ourselves.

Put aside the emotive stuff for a minute and look at who benefits.

The first fully vaccinated country will have their economy working faster than the last country to get properly vaccinated. Trade with other nations will have moved from those slower to roll out the vaccination tot hose quicker to roll it out.

Yes, the global economy does need everyone to get this, but its the sequencing you see. That matters financially, and we're talking big numbers here, really big. Nobody is giving away the cure until their country is sure it can secure and apply sufficient doses be fast out of the starting blocks.

Like so many things in life, it isn't about what they should do, or what they could do, its about what they actually will do.

LucreLout
Happy

Re: Bullshit article based on bullshit press releases.

I'm sure he couldn't tell you what an APT is or does, even given two hours with Google and a packet of crayons.

I'm not the OP, and my "Sword of truth" is more like a "Dagger of hazy views", but I'll give this a whirl.

APT is Alpha Pro Tech, an American company specializing in building products and equipment.

Or it could be a word - meaning appropriate in the circumstances.

It definitely used to be a dodgy nightclub in the City. Allegedly.

You might have meant Advance Package Tool for software installation and removal.

But by far my favorite meaning would be [Sweet Home] Alabama Public Television.

LucreLout

Re: Bullshit article based on bullshit press releases.

Citing the Daily Mail and the US government as your source is a bit rubbish.

True, but it could have been worse and he could have cited the guardian.

When their science editor is writing to other publications (El Reg itself no less) begging for an agenda to push and to be used as "a mouthpiece" you know they have no scruples. Couple that with their own highly structured tax position while barracking anyone else who has even the slightest of structures, often yielding much smaller tax avoidance than the groans own setups.

They deceive their readership by pretending to take an ethical stance all the while they're up to their elbows in it, treating them as nothing more than idiots. Useful idiots, and unthinking cash cows.

UK finds itself almost alone with centralized virus contact-tracing app that probably won't work well, asks for your location, may be illegal

LucreLout

Re: And what about the people ...

This is very common in the over-70 set here in Northern California. Dunno about blighty.

My folks both have smartphones - my generation scattered around the globe, which means the grandkids are so scattered. While I live in the UK, I live at the 'wrong' end of it for tea with Grandma & Grandad. Smartphones just make it easier to stay in touch with video calling wherever we may be.

The older generations being technology phobic or illiterate is a fun meme for millennial's, but that's all its ever really been here in the UK.

UK COVID-19 contact-tracing app data may be kept for 'research' after crisis ends, MPs told

LucreLout

Re: No chance

sign up for the Tory party if you want a test, if you are in the Tory party you are apparently a key worker

Tinfoil hatted nonsense and you should be ashamed of yourself. You won't be, of course, because your sort never are.

LucreLout

Re: Well that's great confidence from GCHQ

Not totally secure, not even very secure, just reasonably secure.

It's NHS IT. What are you really expecting?

They've learned nothing since getting wrecked by malware last time - I still see lots of XP machines which are routinely left logged in, with their 2FA cards present in the reader, and open to whatever abuse anyone seeks to inflict.

Nobody ever loses their career over the breaches because like the rest of the public sector, there's no sanction for poor performance and nothing the public can do when other parts of the public sector (The ICO for example) go soft on them.

Lessons may be learned, but not until after heads have rolled. And they never do.

LucreLout

Re: Dreaming up barriers to adoption...

Trouble is that with a Tory government like this one - malice and stupidity are difficult to separate

The other choice was literally the worst government possible. Not just the worst choice on the ballot paper, but the single worst government imaginable. Corbynism. Sickening. Labour supporters should be ashamed of their small minded, economically illiterate, antidemocratic, racist little party.

Uber trials fixed-price hourly rentals for visits to the butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker

LucreLout

Re: The urban transport solution for coronavirus and afterwards

Think seriously about the issue. Public transport is HORRIBLE during a plague.

Public transport is HORRIBLE.

Nobody wins the lottery and buys themselves a new bus pass. They just don't.

Brit magistrates' courts turn to video conferencing to keep wheels of justice turning

LucreLout

Re: The elephant in the crown court

must be how to conduct jury selection with 40 members of the public while a jury is assembled

Reform this and simply do it by random allocation.

get the defendants into a court

Video link.

in some cases there could be as many as 20 defendants plus barristers plus solicitors

Video link.

ensure the mentioned right of the press/public to attend every day

Video link, again.

One aspect might be to guarantee a defendant a maximum 12 month sentence

I suspect there's rather a lot of the public sick to death of overly lenient sentences being applied already.

This could still involve legislation since the right to a jury trial is enshrined in UK law

Juries could attend over stable video conferencing.

Perhaps the use of specially created courts with very large courtroom areas, where all required members can sit in protected transparent booths

Being in the same room listening to two scrotes argue in front of a duffer adds little that can't be delivered digitally.

The legal system has resisted digitization for far too long already and its time to simply impose this upon them. It'll reduce costs and simplify proceedings, while making them more transparent to the public.

As Brit cyber-spies drop 'whitelist' and 'blacklist', tech boss says: If you’re thinking about getting in touch saying this is political correctness gone mad, don’t bother

LucreLout

Re: So explain white lists and black lists without using the words allow or deny.

This is pathetic. There's over a hundred and fifty comments on here, most of them badly thought out "polictical correctness gone mad" screeds heavy on "what if I think the allow list is things I'm allowed to deny" bullshit.

Pathetic? What's pathetic is the endless newspeak being spewed out by those championing offense politics.

This change is pointless and counterproductive, and it smacks of people talking utter nonsense just to have an excuse to take offence on someone elses behalf. It's the same utter stupidity as "the singular they". Define yourself however you choose, just don't expect me to play along with the pretense.

Offence is taken and cannot be given, therefore it is your choice if you choose to be offended. I'm all done worrying about that and I'm done playing your word games, because the sort of things you get offended by are unending and increasingly silly. [Not "you" Sabroni, "you" generically]

Jeff Bezos tells shareholders to buckle up: Amazon to blow this quarter's profits and more on coronavirus costs

LucreLout

Re: Robots don't get Covid-19

There would be a marked effect on efficiency.

Perhaps. My team, like many, has fundamentally changed how we work lately, and we've done it without a drop in productivity.

The costs are real.

As are the costs of not implementing it - training for new employees, bad pr for the dead ones they're replacing, and time to learn the job properly and get fast at it.

LucreLout

Re: Antichrist

Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Zuckerberg et al are not your friends.

No, but they are my pension fund. Well, except Zuckerberg; a man's gotta draw a line somewhere.

Nine million logs of Brits' road journeys spill onto the internet from password-less number-plate camera dashboard

LucreLout

Re: Massive invasion of privacy

My special subject in history at school was to try to answer the question how a country as developed as Germany could fall prey to Hitler........ I never did get a satisfactory answer, though over the half century since

You've had the correct answer several times from several people in the course of this very thread. Socialism. That you prefer not to see it does nothing to change the fact. Socialists are evil. All of them. Its a morally bankrupt ideology for small minded, petty, jealous fools who are too lazy or slow to make a success of themselves, and that is all it has ever been.

There are useful idiots like LucreLout

Useful idiots is a term the left developed to describe themselves. It is applied as a term of disparagement by those forced to live under communism and socialism to those in the west such as yourself that choose to seek to live under it. So not me then, but to you. Happy to keep on educating you, because it certainly appears as though nobody else ever bothered.

it doesn't suit their need to justify social inequality and their own privileged position

Social inequality hasn't existed in Britain for generations. Equality of opportunity does exist and is absolutely the only fair system that can ever work. Just how much of results of my efforts do you feel belongs to you, and why? Equality of outcome is an awful idea espoused by thick and lazy people that lack the wits or testicular fortitude to go and make their own way in the world.

There was no privilege growing up in council estates the North East. My "position" and any "privileges" I enjoy have come about through my own hard work and effort, so if you find you don't enjoy the same then whose fault is that really? Here's a mirror, take a look. It'll answer your Hitler question too. If I can start in a council house with a state education and make myself a millionaire (5 more years) then a man of your age has no excuse for not being able to make rent.

That's the thing about you "useful idiots" - you never seem to realize you're just idiots. It's Tour-de-force of cognitive dissonance......

LucreLout

Re: Massive invasion of privacy

Keir Starmer has married in and his kids are Jewish; Ed Miliband is back in the Shadow Cabinet; Margaret Hodge is still hanging around. But no,the power in the Labour Party is held by verschluggener anti-Semites. In your imagination.

So your defense amounts entirely to a half baked parody of "I'm not racist because some of my friends are black". Really? That's what you come here to waste everyone's time with?

Do you really not see that they are an institutionally racist party? That their members and supporters are therefore racists themselves. Ignoring the issue and pretending it isn't real hasn't worked very well for your party thus far, but hey ho, another 5 elections in opposition for them will do the country no end of good.

I know socialists don't like to think of themselves as evil people, but then, neither did the Nazi's. Both are evil people whose morally bankrupt ideology belongs to the past century, and both must be vanquished in the modern age for the good of all.