Any chance of Root getting the highest test score today? 400 not out is the current record held by Brian Lara. Root is on 163.
Almost certainly not and it wouldn't be good for England if he did. IIRC the Windies drew the match where Lara scored 400.
Ideal scenario today is that England get a lead of 100-150 and the pitch deterioates to the point where Leach can win the game for them but it is very unlikely and a draw with knackered bowlers on both sides looks far more probable.
They did, but only after enforcing the follow on, only to see England score 422/5 in their second innings, still trailing by 44 runs.
The declaration wasn't badly timed, England did well to bat through to the end of day 5. That was essentially a 4th innings when England had the third, and you'd never normally expect 422/5 in a fourth innings.
One of the joys of cricket is that spending a long time in the field makes life bloody difficult for opening batsmen in particular. We even saw that in this match, let alone when the opposition ran up 751. NZ had a really hard day yesterday, made worse by being a bowler short. If they are in the field again today until tea there will be some stiff and creaky openers in the 3rd innings. It's not much of a chance but it is there.
In 2004 England batted much better second time around because they had a rest during the first innings.
That's true but there's also the psychological damage of batting knowing the game is out of reach and you're batting for days only to prevent a loss. How often has a team followed on and then scored over 400 in the third innings of the Test? It can't be many times.
I see that I missed an extraordinarily prolonged and bone-headed argument by @HYUFD last night about anyone who isn't his type of Conservative wanting to confiscate all private property like the Bolshevisks. I think that was the gist of it anyway.
Today we have Liz Truss introducing her "This is why I should be PM (because I am the new Maggie)" bill (and messing up the Northern Ireland Protocol in order to do so).
Well, the old Maggie - and the Tory party she led - understood that if you believed, as they did, in order and stability, in strong institutions, in property rights and predictability in commercial relationships, the rule of law is essential.
And no it was not just domestic law she was talking about. She believed this about international law too - as anyone seeing what she said and did during the Falklands, for instance - would have realised. After all, this is what she said after that conflict ended: "I believe Britain has now found a role. It is upholding international law and teaching the nations of the world how to live."
I expect books are being written right now about how that Tory party turned into the one we have today which believes that the rule of law is an expendable inconvenience to be discarded the moment it stops you doing what you want.
The elephant in the room of course being the Belgrano (including the declaration of the "total exclusion zone") which excited much rage and charges of "illegality" at the time before we go about heralding Maggie as the mother and guardian of modern international law.
The Belgrano was a
1) Warship 2) Belonging to a country that had committed acts of war against the UK 3) Was engaged in hostile military action - her task group was attacking anything it thought was a submarine contact with weapons. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government 4) Was tasked with an attack on the approaching UK task force in international waters. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government.
The last 2 were known to the UK government at the time - the NSA was sending realtime decrypts of Argentine messages via teleprinter to the UK. The UK government was often reading the Argentine mail before the Argentine recipients read it. This was because they were using manual, electro mechanical machines (think big, ugly typewriter) and the NSA had implanted the codebreaking entirely on their big iron mainframes.
The whole Belgrano nonsense was about attacking Thatcher.
Indeed it was. My point was that people use the nebulous concept of "international law" to attack and justify any number of things.
Indeed.
Just this morning, my wife commented on a facebook aquaintance. Always fired up on women's rights, Palestine. Lately been spitting blood over Rwanda. The lady in question was posting pictures of her holiday in Dubai.
Going on holiday some place isn't an endorsement of that country's politics
Maybe not but it is tangibly supporting the people who determine those politics.
Yes it is, but by extension so is buying consumer products produced in those countries, or made using resources mined in those countries. Nobody on this board, to my knowledge, has anything but contempt for the Chinese government, but how many of us even attempt to avoid consumption patterns that benefit the Chinese economy? And even if you try, how successful are you?
Not wrong at all but that's an extrapolation too far. The person in question was "always fired up on women's rights". And goes to Dubai. I mean other holiday destinations are available.
I am not particularly fired up about anything (perhaps farmed salmon, which I always avoid but that's pretty first world problem-ish). But if I was I wouldn't literally go out of my way to support the perpetrators of whatever it was I was fired up against.
I see that I missed an extraordinarily prolonged and bone-headed argument by @HYUFD last night about anyone who isn't his type of Conservative wanting to confiscate all private property like the Bolshevisks. I think that was the gist of it anyway.
Today we have Liz Truss introducing her "This is why I should be PM (because I am the new Maggie)" bill (and messing up the Northern Ireland Protocol in order to do so).
Well, the old Maggie - and the Tory party she led - understood that if you believed, as they did, in order and stability, in strong institutions, in property rights and predictability in commercial relationships, the rule of law is essential.
And no it was not just domestic law she was talking about. She believed this about international law too - as anyone seeing what she said and did during the Falklands, for instance - would have realised. After all, this is what she said after that conflict ended: "I believe Britain has now found a role. It is upholding international law and teaching the nations of the world how to live."
I expect books are being written right now about how that Tory party turned into the one we have today which believes that the rule of law is an expendable inconvenience to be discarded the moment it stops you doing what you want.
The elephant in the room of course being the Belgrano (including the declaration of the "total exclusion zone") which excited much rage and charges of "illegality" at the time before we go about heralding Maggie as the mother and guardian of modern international law.
The Belgrano was a
1) Warship 2) Belonging to a country that had committed acts of war against the UK 3) Was engaged in hostile military action - her task group was attacking anything it thought was a submarine contact with weapons. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government 4) Was tasked with an attack on the approaching UK task force in international waters. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government.
The last 2 were known to the UK government at the time - the NSA was sending realtime decrypts of Argentine messages via teleprinter to the UK. The UK government was often reading the Argentine mail before the Argentine recipients read it. This was because they were using manual, electro mechanical machines (think big, ugly typewriter) and the NSA had implanted the codebreaking entirely on their big iron mainframes.
The whole Belgrano nonsense was about attacking Thatcher.
Indeed it was. My point was that people use the nebulous concept of "international law" to attack and justify any number of things.
Indeed.
Just this morning, my wife commented on a facebook aquaintance. Always fired up on women's rights, Palestine. Lately been spitting blood over Rwanda. The lady in question was posting pictures of her holiday in Dubai.
Who the hell takes a holiday in Dubai in June?
This morning it’s 45ºC, with very high humidity and dusty. Visibility about 3km in the 25mph wind. It’s a horrible place to be today.
Interesting you say it's 45'C. When I worked there and they were telling me about some of the dubious practices the one that stayed in my memory was that the construction workers were not allowed to work when the temperature exceeded 45'C so the government never allowed it to go above and how surprised I would be how often the temperature would be exactly 45'C!
I see that I missed an extraordinarily prolonged and bone-headed argument by @HYUFD last night about anyone who isn't his type of Conservative wanting to confiscate all private property like the Bolshevisks. I think that was the gist of it anyway.
Today we have Liz Truss introducing her "This is why I should be PM (because I am the new Maggie)" bill (and messing up the Northern Ireland Protocol in order to do so).
Well, the old Maggie - and the Tory party she led - understood that if you believed, as they did, in order and stability, in strong institutions, in property rights and predictability in commercial relationships, the rule of law is essential.
And no it was not just domestic law she was talking about. She believed this about international law too - as anyone seeing what she said and did during the Falklands, for instance - would have realised. After all, this is what she said after that conflict ended: "I believe Britain has now found a role. It is upholding international law and teaching the nations of the world how to live."
I expect books are being written right now about how that Tory party turned into the one we have today which believes that the rule of law is an expendable inconvenience to be discarded the moment it stops you doing what you want.
The elephant in the room of course being the Belgrano (including the declaration of the "total exclusion zone") which excited much rage and charges of "illegality" at the time before we go about heralding Maggie as the mother and guardian of modern international law.
The Belgrano was a
1) Warship 2) Belonging to a country that had committed acts of war against the UK 3) Was engaged in hostile military action - her task group was attacking anything it thought was a submarine contact with weapons. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government 4) Was tasked with an attack on the approaching UK task force in international waters. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government.
The last 2 were known to the UK government at the time - the NSA was sending realtime decrypts of Argentine messages via teleprinter to the UK. The UK government was often reading the Argentine mail before the Argentine recipients read it. This was because they were using manual, electro mechanical machines (think big, ugly typewriter) and the NSA had implanted the codebreaking entirely on their big iron mainframes.
The whole Belgrano nonsense was about attacking Thatcher.
Indeed. The argument in favour of not sinking (by such military geniuses as Anthony Wedgewood Benn and Jeremy Corbyn IIRC) was that the Belgrano was sailing away from the Falklands (they do not understand that ships regularly change course, particularly in a war zone)! This was perhaps Conqueror's only opportunity to sink her, and it was deemed that Belgrano was perhaps part of a pincer movement on the Task Force. Following the sinking the Argentine Navy (which was a credible threat) returned to port. The sinking was probably pivotal in the whole war. The loss of life was tragic, but the responsibility rests with those who ordered the invasion of the Falklands in the first place.
And the responsibilty for that is, in fact, partly shared by Thatcher herself. Her government's handling of the diplomatic run-up to the invasion was woeful ; the loss of life could have been so easily avoided.
I do not agree at all. The responsibility lay with the aggressor. That is like trying to say that Zelensky should share the blame for Putin's actions. Besides, diplomacy is an imprecise art form. As with all aspects of leadership or difficult endeavour it is very easy to criticise in hindsight. Lord Carrington did the decent thing and resigned (remember when people used to do that?).The reality was that Mrs Thatcher took the difficult decisions to rectify the mistakes, and she had a resolve that few others would have matched.
I see that I missed an extraordinarily prolonged and bone-headed argument by @HYUFD last night about anyone who isn't his type of Conservative wanting to confiscate all private property like the Bolshevisks. I think that was the gist of it anyway.
Today we have Liz Truss introducing her "This is why I should be PM (because I am the new Maggie)" bill (and messing up the Northern Ireland Protocol in order to do so).
Well, the old Maggie - and the Tory party she led - understood that if you believed, as they did, in order and stability, in strong institutions, in property rights and predictability in commercial relationships, the rule of law is essential.
And no it was not just domestic law she was talking about. She believed this about international law too - as anyone seeing what she said and did during the Falklands, for instance - would have realised. After all, this is what she said after that conflict ended: "I believe Britain has now found a role. It is upholding international law and teaching the nations of the world how to live."
I expect books are being written right now about how that Tory party turned into the one we have today which believes that the rule of law is an expendable inconvenience to be discarded the moment it stops you doing what you want.
The elephant in the room of course being the Belgrano (including the declaration of the "total exclusion zone") which excited much rage and charges of "illegality" at the time before we go about heralding Maggie as the mother and guardian of modern international law.
The Belgrano was a
1) Warship 2) Belonging to a country that had committed acts of war against the UK 3) Was engaged in hostile military action - her task group was attacking anything it thought was a submarine contact with weapons. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government 4) Was tasked with an attack on the approaching UK task force in international waters. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government.
The last 2 were known to the UK government at the time - the NSA was sending realtime decrypts of Argentine messages via teleprinter to the UK. The UK government was often reading the Argentine mail before the Argentine recipients read it. This was because they were using manual, electro mechanical machines (think big, ugly typewriter) and the NSA had implanted the codebreaking entirely on their big iron mainframes.
The whole Belgrano nonsense was about attacking Thatcher.
Indeed. The argument in favour of not sinking (by such military geniuses as Anthony Wedgewood Benn and Jeremy Corbyn IIRC) was that the Belgrano was sailing away from the Falklands (they do not understand that ships regularly change course, particularly in a war zone)! This was perhaps Conqueror's only opportunity to sink her, and it was deemed that Belgrano was perhaps part of a pincer movement on the Task Force. Following the sinking the Argentine Navy (which was a credible threat) returned to port. The sinking was probably pivotal in the whole war. The loss of life was tragic, but the responsibility rests with those who ordered the invasion of the Falklands in the first place.
And the responsibilty for that is, in fact, partly shared by Thatcher herself. Her government's handling of the diplomatic run-up to the invasion was woeful ; the loss of life could have been so easily avoided.
The responsibility of that lies 100% with the military regime that chose to invade.
Just as the sole responsibility for the Russia/Ukraine war lies entirely with Putin's Russia and not with Ukraine, or NATO or any other scapegoats.
I see that I missed an extraordinarily prolonged and bone-headed argument by @HYUFD last night about anyone who isn't his type of Conservative wanting to confiscate all private property like the Bolshevisks. I think that was the gist of it anyway.
Today we have Liz Truss introducing her "This is why I should be PM (because I am the new Maggie)" bill (and messing up the Northern Ireland Protocol in order to do so).
Well, the old Maggie - and the Tory party she led - understood that if you believed, as they did, in order and stability, in strong institutions, in property rights and predictability in commercial relationships, the rule of law is essential.
And no it was not just domestic law she was talking about. She believed this about international law too - as anyone seeing what she said and did during the Falklands, for instance - would have realised. After all, this is what she said after that conflict ended: "I believe Britain has now found a role. It is upholding international law and teaching the nations of the world how to live."
I expect books are being written right now about how that Tory party turned into the one we have today which believes that the rule of law is an expendable inconvenience to be discarded the moment it stops you doing what you want.
The elephant in the room of course being the Belgrano (including the declaration of the "total exclusion zone") which excited much rage and charges of "illegality" at the time before we go about heralding Maggie as the mother and guardian of modern international law.
The Belgrano was a
1) Warship 2) Belonging to a country that had committed acts of war against the UK 3) Was engaged in hostile military action - her task group was attacking anything it thought was a submarine contact with weapons. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government 4) Was tasked with an attack on the approaching UK task force in international waters. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government.
The last 2 were known to the UK government at the time - the NSA was sending realtime decrypts of Argentine messages via teleprinter to the UK. The UK government was often reading the Argentine mail before the Argentine recipients read it. This was because they were using manual, electro mechanical machines (think big, ugly typewriter) and the NSA had implanted the codebreaking entirely on their big iron mainframes.
The whole Belgrano nonsense was about attacking Thatcher.
Indeed it was. My point was that people use the nebulous concept of "international law" to attack and justify any number of things.
Indeed.
Just this morning, my wife commented on a facebook aquaintance. Always fired up on women's rights, Palestine. Lately been spitting blood over Rwanda. The lady in question was posting pictures of her holiday in Dubai.
Going on holiday some place isn't an endorsement of that country's politics
Maybe not but it is tangibly supporting the people who determine those politics.
Yes it is, but by extension so is buying consumer products produced in those countries, or made using resources mined in those countries. Nobody on this board, to my knowledge, has anything but contempt for the Chinese government, but how many of us even attempt to avoid consumption patterns that benefit the Chinese economy? And even if you try, how successful are you?
Not wrong at all but that's an extrapolation too far. The person in question was "always fired up on women's rights". And goes to Dubai. I mean other holiday destinations are available.
I am not particularly fired up about anything (perhaps farmed salmon, which I always avoid but that's pretty first world problem-ish). But if I was I wouldn't literally go out of my way to support the perpetrators of whatever it was I was fired up against.
If you were to take a holiday in Scotland, would that be an endorsement of salmon farming practices?
I can do similar work 'inside IR35' or 'outside IR35'. If I do the former, then I have to pay about 20% more tax. National Insurance. I have a strong moral objection to National Insurance because it is an inherently unfair tax, as it only applies to those who work. My income is good, but also vulnerable to shocks, the contracts I work provide no provision for sick pay, jury service etc; I would be sacked immediately. If I have no work, the social security system would be little use to me. As far as I can work out, I wouldn't be eligible for any kind of welfare if I don't have work because of my existing assets - which aren't great, but just enough to disqualify me. Looking at things in the round and objectively, I worked out that to provide security for myself, I need to build up cash reserves in my company to pay myself an income in the event of hard times, because the state would not provide in these circumstances. I don't think the supposed purposes of national insurance are much use to me, aside from the possibiity of a state pension. But I have paid in quite a bit of money towards that over the years already, and would continue to pay a modest amount of NI.
On a moral level, what is the problem with saying to myself, OK I will just organise my affairs so I pay about the same amount of tax as those who live off income from investments; and make my own provision for social security because the state is not much help in my situation?
Isn't this the most rational response to the situation described above?
The "Off Payroll Legislation" simply creates a new class of workers: those who pay all the taxes and have all the responsibilities and negatives of employed people, but without any of the protections or benefits. Instead leaving them as vulnerable as the self-employed, but without any of the tax benefits that exist in order to cover off those vulnerabilities and issues.
It's basically a tax scam on behalf of HMRC. But one that nets far less in the way of income than they anticipated, anyway. If they were serious, they'd have made the legislation such that as soon as one is "deemed employed," they must actually be employed, with all of the benefits and protections that entails. But that would shred the areas of work involved (as few would fully employ people when they only need them for a few weeks or months to cover something transient) and cause significant economic impact, so they came up with this scam.
Sorry it doesn't create a new class of worker - agency workers have existed for a very long time.
And the actual issue always comes down to Employer NI - which is worth £60-70bn to the Government but is only collected from those who are employed - hence HMRC being petrified that that self employment may increase..
The net difference in VAT+Corporation Tax + Dividend Tax versus Employee NI+Employers NI + Income Tax can make the delta significantly smaller. The Dividend Tax changes a few years back closed that delta quite a bit, anyway.
The solution surely has to be to merge NI and Income Tax and rationalise things. I know they're petrified about impacting their richer pensioners, but a rule for a different income tax rate for the retired over a certain age would easily solve that.
Nope that isn't how VAT works - VAT is never the company's money it is something you collect on behalf of the Government.
I have a rule when talking about this which is to ignore anyone who uses the VAT argument because it shows how little they actually know (but I will ignore it here in a way that I wouldn't do it in a professional capacity).
And the bug bear is never actually Employee NI. Corporation tax + Dividend payments are so close to Employee NI + income tax as to make no difference.
The problem always comes back to Employer NI for which there is no equivalent elsewhere in the tax system.
Needs to be made clear, because the VAT issue confuses the hell out of people on the working side of things. They see the money being charged for and paid over, so it feels like it's a cost. To those immersed in the ins and outs it may be obvious, but to the layman - not so much.
That the cost to the end-user involves VAT being paid on one side but not on the other. I'm vaguely aware that VAT is enormously complex and involves obligations being passed down through a chain and reclaimed (as well as the HMRC specific clawback thingies where you can elect to pay a defined and reduced amount of VAT but not claim back VAT payments already made, but you do have to negotiate a list of professions and alight on one that they'll agree with).
The Employers NI issue is a total bastard, and a number of brolly companies have violated it in the past. A lot of the time, the end contractor (who will now not have an accountant) will not be sufficiently au fait with the labyrinthine laws and accountancy stuff to know what they are legally allowed to challenge in respect of such things as opt-outs and contracts.
The entire area is often far more violated by those with the power to do so, on the knowledge that they won't be challenged (eg blanket determinations of status - supposedly illegal but the norm rather than the exception. Often with handwaving justifications such as "No, we're not doing blanket determinations. We're simply sacking all of our contractors forthwith and only offering them back with all posts deemed inside IR35." Which sounds like blanket determinations to me, but hey - they get away with it).
I see that I missed an extraordinarily prolonged and bone-headed argument by @HYUFD last night about anyone who isn't his type of Conservative wanting to confiscate all private property like the Bolshevisks. I think that was the gist of it anyway.
Today we have Liz Truss introducing her "This is why I should be PM (because I am the new Maggie)" bill (and messing up the Northern Ireland Protocol in order to do so).
Well, the old Maggie - and the Tory party she led - understood that if you believed, as they did, in order and stability, in strong institutions, in property rights and predictability in commercial relationships, the rule of law is essential.
And no it was not just domestic law she was talking about. She believed this about international law too - as anyone seeing what she said and did during the Falklands, for instance - would have realised. After all, this is what she said after that conflict ended: "I believe Britain has now found a role. It is upholding international law and teaching the nations of the world how to live."
I expect books are being written right now about how that Tory party turned into the one we have today which believes that the rule of law is an expendable inconvenience to be discarded the moment it stops you doing what you want.
The elephant in the room of course being the Belgrano (including the declaration of the "total exclusion zone") which excited much rage and charges of "illegality" at the time before we go about heralding Maggie as the mother and guardian of modern international law.
The Belgrano was a
1) Warship 2) Belonging to a country that had committed acts of war against the UK 3) Was engaged in hostile military action - her task group was attacking anything it thought was a submarine contact with weapons. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government 4) Was tasked with an attack on the approaching UK task force in international waters. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government.
The last 2 were known to the UK government at the time - the NSA was sending realtime decrypts of Argentine messages via teleprinter to the UK. The UK government was often reading the Argentine mail before the Argentine recipients read it. This was because they were using manual, electro mechanical machines (think big, ugly typewriter) and the NSA had implanted the codebreaking entirely on their big iron mainframes.
The whole Belgrano nonsense was about attacking Thatcher.
Indeed it was. My point was that people use the nebulous concept of "international law" to attack and justify any number of things.
Indeed.
Just this morning, my wife commented on a facebook aquaintance. Always fired up on women's rights, Palestine. Lately been spitting blood over Rwanda. The lady in question was posting pictures of her holiday in Dubai.
Who the hell takes a holiday in Dubai in June?
This morning it’s 45ºC, with very high humidity and dusty. Visibility about 3km in the 25mph wind. It’s a horrible place to be today.
Interesting you say it's 45'C. When I worked there and they were telling me about some of the dubious practices the one that stayed in my memory was that the construction workers were not allowed to work when the temperature exceeded 45'C so the government never allowed it to go above and how surprised I would be how often the temperature would be exactly 45'C!
It will get up to about 48ºC in August, but rarely goes over 50ºC. I always use the airport information service for accurate weather. Pilots can and do wait for temperatures to fall in the summer, as hot days make runways seem shorter to planes because of the reduced air density.
I see that I missed an extraordinarily prolonged and bone-headed argument by @HYUFD last night about anyone who isn't his type of Conservative wanting to confiscate all private property like the Bolshevisks. I think that was the gist of it anyway.
Today we have Liz Truss introducing her "This is why I should be PM (because I am the new Maggie)" bill (and messing up the Northern Ireland Protocol in order to do so).
Well, the old Maggie - and the Tory party she led - understood that if you believed, as they did, in order and stability, in strong institutions, in property rights and predictability in commercial relationships, the rule of law is essential.
And no it was not just domestic law she was talking about. She believed this about international law too - as anyone seeing what she said and did during the Falklands, for instance - would have realised. After all, this is what she said after that conflict ended: "I believe Britain has now found a role. It is upholding international law and teaching the nations of the world how to live."
I expect books are being written right now about how that Tory party turned into the one we have today which believes that the rule of law is an expendable inconvenience to be discarded the moment it stops you doing what you want.
The elephant in the room of course being the Belgrano (including the declaration of the "total exclusion zone") which excited much rage and charges of "illegality" at the time before we go about heralding Maggie as the mother and guardian of modern international law.
The Belgrano was a
1) Warship 2) Belonging to a country that had committed acts of war against the UK 3) Was engaged in hostile military action - her task group was attacking anything it thought was a submarine contact with weapons. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government 4) Was tasked with an attack on the approaching UK task force in international waters. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government.
The last 2 were known to the UK government at the time - the NSA was sending realtime decrypts of Argentine messages via teleprinter to the UK. The UK government was often reading the Argentine mail before the Argentine recipients read it. This was because they were using manual, electro mechanical machines (think big, ugly typewriter) and the NSA had implanted the codebreaking entirely on their big iron mainframes.
The whole Belgrano nonsense was about attacking Thatcher.
Indeed. The argument in favour of not sinking (by such military geniuses as Anthony Wedgewood Benn and Jeremy Corbyn IIRC) was that the Belgrano was sailing away from the Falklands (they do not understand that ships regularly change course, particularly in a war zone)! This was perhaps Conqueror's only opportunity to sink her, and it was deemed that Belgrano was perhaps part of a pincer movement on the Task Force. Following the sinking the Argentine Navy (which was a credible threat) returned to port. The sinking was probably pivotal in the whole war. The loss of life was tragic, but the responsibility rests with those who ordered the invasion of the Falklands in the first place.
Morning all.
Corbyn was not an MP in 1982. He was an obscure member of Harringay Council. AFAICS he was asserting that the Falklands War was a Tory plot.
I see that I missed an extraordinarily prolonged and bone-headed argument by @HYUFD last night about anyone who isn't his type of Conservative wanting to confiscate all private property like the Bolshevisks. I think that was the gist of it anyway.
Today we have Liz Truss introducing her "This is why I should be PM (because I am the new Maggie)" bill (and messing up the Northern Ireland Protocol in order to do so).
Well, the old Maggie - and the Tory party she led - understood that if you believed, as they did, in order and stability, in strong institutions, in property rights and predictability in commercial relationships, the rule of law is essential.
And no it was not just domestic law she was talking about. She believed this about international law too - as anyone seeing what she said and did during the Falklands, for instance - would have realised. After all, this is what she said after that conflict ended: "I believe Britain has now found a role. It is upholding international law and teaching the nations of the world how to live."
I expect books are being written right now about how that Tory party turned into the one we have today which believes that the rule of law is an expendable inconvenience to be discarded the moment it stops you doing what you want.
The elephant in the room of course being the Belgrano (including the declaration of the "total exclusion zone") which excited much rage and charges of "illegality" at the time before we go about heralding Maggie as the mother and guardian of modern international law.
The Belgrano was a
1) Warship 2) Belonging to a country that had committed acts of war against the UK 3) Was engaged in hostile military action - her task group was attacking anything it thought was a submarine contact with weapons. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government 4) Was tasked with an attack on the approaching UK task force in international waters. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government.
The last 2 were known to the UK government at the time - the NSA was sending realtime decrypts of Argentine messages via teleprinter to the UK. The UK government was often reading the Argentine mail before the Argentine recipients read it. This was because they were using manual, electro mechanical machines (think big, ugly typewriter) and the NSA had implanted the codebreaking entirely on their big iron mainframes.
The whole Belgrano nonsense was about attacking Thatcher.
Indeed it was. My point was that people use the nebulous concept of "international law" to attack and justify any number of things.
Indeed.
Just this morning, my wife commented on a facebook aquaintance. Always fired up on women's rights, Palestine. Lately been spitting blood over Rwanda. The lady in question was posting pictures of her holiday in Dubai.
Who the hell takes a holiday in Dubai in June?
This morning it’s 45ºC, with very high humidity and dusty. Visibility about 3km in the 25mph wind. It’s a horrible place to be today.
Interesting you say it's 45'C. When I worked there and they were telling me about some of the dubious practices the one that stayed in my memory was that the construction workers were not allowed to work when the temperature exceeded 45'C so the government never allowed it to go above and how surprised I would be how often the temperature would be exactly 45'C!
I see that I missed an extraordinarily prolonged and bone-headed argument by @HYUFD last night about anyone who isn't his type of Conservative wanting to confiscate all private property like the Bolshevisks. I think that was the gist of it anyway.
Today we have Liz Truss introducing her "This is why I should be PM (because I am the new Maggie)" bill (and messing up the Northern Ireland Protocol in order to do so).
Well, the old Maggie - and the Tory party she led - understood that if you believed, as they did, in order and stability, in strong institutions, in property rights and predictability in commercial relationships, the rule of law is essential.
And no it was not just domestic law she was talking about. She believed this about international law too - as anyone seeing what she said and did during the Falklands, for instance - would have realised. After all, this is what she said after that conflict ended: "I believe Britain has now found a role. It is upholding international law and teaching the nations of the world how to live."
I expect books are being written right now about how that Tory party turned into the one we have today which believes that the rule of law is an expendable inconvenience to be discarded the moment it stops you doing what you want.
The elephant in the room of course being the Belgrano (including the declaration of the "total exclusion zone") which excited much rage and charges of "illegality" at the time before we go about heralding Maggie as the mother and guardian of modern international law.
The Belgrano was a
1) Warship 2) Belonging to a country that had committed acts of war against the UK 3) Was engaged in hostile military action - her task group was attacking anything it thought was a submarine contact with weapons. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government 4) Was tasked with an attack on the approaching UK task force in international waters. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government.
The last 2 were known to the UK government at the time - the NSA was sending realtime decrypts of Argentine messages via teleprinter to the UK. The UK government was often reading the Argentine mail before the Argentine recipients read it. This was because they were using manual, electro mechanical machines (think big, ugly typewriter) and the NSA had implanted the codebreaking entirely on their big iron mainframes.
The whole Belgrano nonsense was about attacking Thatcher.
Indeed it was. My point was that people use the nebulous concept of "international law" to attack and justify any number of things.
Indeed.
Just this morning, my wife commented on a facebook aquaintance. Always fired up on women's rights, Palestine. Lately been spitting blood over Rwanda. The lady in question was posting pictures of her holiday in Dubai.
Going on holiday some place isn't an endorsement of that country's politics
Maybe not but it is tangibly supporting the people who determine those politics.
Yes it is, but by extension so is buying consumer products produced in those countries, or made using resources mined in those countries. Nobody on this board, to my knowledge, has anything but contempt for the Chinese government, but how many of us even attempt to avoid consumption patterns that benefit the Chinese economy? And even if you try, how successful are you?
Not wrong at all but that's an extrapolation too far. The person in question was "always fired up on women's rights". And goes to Dubai. I mean other holiday destinations are available.
I am not particularly fired up about anything (perhaps farmed salmon, which I always avoid but that's pretty first world problem-ish). But if I was I wouldn't literally go out of my way to support the perpetrators of whatever it was I was fired up against.
If you were to take a holiday in Scotland, would that be an endorsement of salmon farming practices?
Salmon farming is a very small piece of what makes up Scotland. And it isn't directly run by the government, for the personal profit of the rulers of the country.
In Dubai, the money pyramid links directly back to the literal *owners* of the country. Who have enshrined in law their attitudes towards women and foreign workers.
From the article: "The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the main driver of April's contraction was the fall in the services sector due to the winding down of the NHS's Covid test and trace operation."
So the shape of our economy is still being distorted by the exceptional spending on the pandemic. As that is wound down the economy shrinks a little. There is no doubt that we are heading to a recession though. Not only our economy but the world economy is in a very bad way and this is being aggravated by the zero Covid policy in China.
The zero Covid policy in China is not having as severe an impact as I expected. I thought that there would be more widespread lockdowns by now that would cause major international trade issues, but they've been more successful in containing the spread of the virus, and limiting the economic impact, than I expected.
I just ordered a new phone, which was shipped immediately, for example.
What we need to do is fire up the armaments factories to equip Ukraine's army with armoured vehicles, artillery, etc. Everything is still focused on supplying Ukraine from existing stocks. We could do with cranking things up a few notches.
Interesting. I waited 2 months for a new Iphone earlier this year. We saw yet another consequence in the flash report on the economy that I have quoted. Sales of new registrations in March were exceptionally low whilst April's were better than normal. That must surely be supply related which, AIUI, is chip related. If these things are starting to ease that will help but higher interest rates to reduce inflation, a reduction in the value of real wages and a tightening of government spending will still drive us into a recession.
I agree about defence spending too but I am wondering what our capacity might be.
David you bought a new iPhone what at somewhere North of a thousand pounds.
Recession what recession.
The extraordinary costs of such branded products will be a topic for future historians to dwell upon in times to come.
See the prices that people pay for mechanical watches of various brands.
Phones are simply in the personal jewellery category, for many people.
Yep it used to be just the "Lux" supplements featuring multi-thousand pound watches but now the Evening Standard is as likely to have a feature on watches costing around ten grand.
I got pissed off when I was quoted £11 for a new battery in my watch. I went on Ebay and bought a new watch for £6.75 and it tells the time as well or even better than a Rolex.
A mechanical watch can't tell time as well as a 99p digital watch.
As the quart movement in a 99p digital will be godawful, I expect the reverse to be true.
I don't believe that for one second
Ha.
If you can get a mechanical watch that is accurate to +-5 seconds a day - well, that is top end. Most , you are looking at up 15 or 30 seconds per day
Even the shittiest quartz watch is accurate to less than +-1 second per day
+/- 3 seconds is generally considered the benchmark in the watch game. I've got a Panerai Luminor Marina with an 8 Giorni Brevattato movement which reliably does +/- 0.5 seconds but that is very much an outlier in terms of mechanical watches.
The fact that more mugs are willing to buy into the negative equity pyramid scheme doesn't change the fact that it is a negative equity pyramid scheme.
I see that I missed an extraordinarily prolonged and bone-headed argument by @HYUFD last night about anyone who isn't his type of Conservative wanting to confiscate all private property like the Bolshevisks. I think that was the gist of it anyway.
Today we have Liz Truss introducing her "This is why I should be PM (because I am the new Maggie)" bill (and messing up the Northern Ireland Protocol in order to do so).
Well, the old Maggie - and the Tory party she led - understood that if you believed, as they did, in order and stability, in strong institutions, in property rights and predictability in commercial relationships, the rule of law is essential.
And no it was not just domestic law she was talking about. She believed this about international law too - as anyone seeing what she said and did during the Falklands, for instance - would have realised. After all, this is what she said after that conflict ended: "I believe Britain has now found a role. It is upholding international law and teaching the nations of the world how to live."
I expect books are being written right now about how that Tory party turned into the one we have today which believes that the rule of law is an expendable inconvenience to be discarded the moment it stops you doing what you want.
The elephant in the room of course being the Belgrano (including the declaration of the "total exclusion zone") which excited much rage and charges of "illegality" at the time before we go about heralding Maggie as the mother and guardian of modern international law.
The Belgrano was a
1) Warship 2) Belonging to a country that had committed acts of war against the UK 3) Was engaged in hostile military action - her task group was attacking anything it thought was a submarine contact with weapons. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government 4) Was tasked with an attack on the approaching UK task force in international waters. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government.
The last 2 were known to the UK government at the time - the NSA was sending realtime decrypts of Argentine messages via teleprinter to the UK. The UK government was often reading the Argentine mail before the Argentine recipients read it. This was because they were using manual, electro mechanical machines (think big, ugly typewriter) and the NSA had implanted the codebreaking entirely on their big iron mainframes.
The whole Belgrano nonsense was about attacking Thatcher.
Indeed it was. My point was that people use the nebulous concept of "international law" to attack and justify any number of things.
Indeed.
Just this morning, my wife commented on a facebook aquaintance. Always fired up on women's rights, Palestine. Lately been spitting blood over Rwanda. The lady in question was posting pictures of her holiday in Dubai.
Going on holiday some place isn't an endorsement of that country's politics
Maybe not but it is tangibly supporting the people who determine those politics.
Yes it is, but by extension so is buying consumer products produced in those countries, or made using resources mined in those countries. Nobody on this board, to my knowledge, has anything but contempt for the Chinese government, but how many of us even attempt to avoid consumption patterns that benefit the Chinese economy? And even if you try, how successful are you?
Not wrong at all but that's an extrapolation too far. The person in question was "always fired up on women's rights". And goes to Dubai. I mean other holiday destinations are available.
I am not particularly fired up about anything (perhaps farmed salmon, which I always avoid but that's pretty first world problem-ish). But if I was I wouldn't literally go out of my way to support the perpetrators of whatever it was I was fired up against.
If you were to take a holiday in Scotland, would that be an endorsement of salmon farming practices?
Good question. It is not a government policy as far as I can see. It is private enterprise, although operating within government laws so theoretically they could ban it. I think I would weigh my dislike of salmon farming vs the benefit of being in Scotland on holiday. Happy to make that assessment.
400 is out of reach, 300 would be great, 200 is (perhaps) realistic.
But if Root reaches 243, runs out of partners (or Stokes declares), NZ set a target, and England fail to reach it, then Root will beat Ricky Ponting's 242 in a losing test.
I see that I missed an extraordinarily prolonged and bone-headed argument by @HYUFD last night about anyone who isn't his type of Conservative wanting to confiscate all private property like the Bolshevisks. I think that was the gist of it anyway.
Today we have Liz Truss introducing her "This is why I should be PM (because I am the new Maggie)" bill (and messing up the Northern Ireland Protocol in order to do so).
Well, the old Maggie - and the Tory party she led - understood that if you believed, as they did, in order and stability, in strong institutions, in property rights and predictability in commercial relationships, the rule of law is essential.
And no it was not just domestic law she was talking about. She believed this about international law too - as anyone seeing what she said and did during the Falklands, for instance - would have realised. After all, this is what she said after that conflict ended: "I believe Britain has now found a role. It is upholding international law and teaching the nations of the world how to live."
I expect books are being written right now about how that Tory party turned into the one we have today which believes that the rule of law is an expendable inconvenience to be discarded the moment it stops you doing what you want.
The elephant in the room of course being the Belgrano (including the declaration of the "total exclusion zone") which excited much rage and charges of "illegality" at the time before we go about heralding Maggie as the mother and guardian of modern international law.
The Belgrano was a
1) Warship 2) Belonging to a country that had committed acts of war against the UK 3) Was engaged in hostile military action - her task group was attacking anything it thought was a submarine contact with weapons. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government 4) Was tasked with an attack on the approaching UK task force in international waters. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government.
The last 2 were known to the UK government at the time - the NSA was sending realtime decrypts of Argentine messages via teleprinter to the UK. The UK government was often reading the Argentine mail before the Argentine recipients read it. This was because they were using manual, electro mechanical machines (think big, ugly typewriter) and the NSA had implanted the codebreaking entirely on their big iron mainframes.
The whole Belgrano nonsense was about attacking Thatcher.
Indeed it was. My point was that people use the nebulous concept of "international law" to attack and justify any number of things.
Indeed.
Just this morning, my wife commented on a facebook aquaintance. Always fired up on women's rights, Palestine. Lately been spitting blood over Rwanda. The lady in question was posting pictures of her holiday in Dubai.
Going on holiday some place isn't an endorsement of that country's politics
Maybe not but it is tangibly supporting the people who determine those politics.
Yes it is, but by extension so is buying consumer products produced in those countries, or made using resources mined in those countries. Nobody on this board, to my knowledge, has anything but contempt for the Chinese government, but how many of us even attempt to avoid consumption patterns that benefit the Chinese economy? And even if you try, how successful are you?
Not wrong at all but that's an extrapolation too far. The person in question was "always fired up on women's rights". And goes to Dubai. I mean other holiday destinations are available.
I am not particularly fired up about anything (perhaps farmed salmon, which I always avoid but that's pretty first world problem-ish). But if I was I wouldn't literally go out of my way to support the perpetrators of whatever it was I was fired up against.
If you were to take a holiday in Scotland, would that be an endorsement of salmon farming practices?
Salmon farming is a very small piece of what makes up Scotland. And it isn't directly run by the government, for the personal profit of the rulers of the country.
In Dubai, the money pyramid links directly back to the literal *owners* of the country. Who have enshrined in law their attitudes towards women and foreign workers.
They have actually changed the law here on workers being tied to employers. You don’t need permission to change employer any more.
+/- 3 seconds is generally considered the benchmark in the watch game. I've got a Panerai Luminor Marina with an 8 Giorni Brevattato movement which reliably does +/- 0.5 seconds but that is very much an outlier in terms of mechanical watches.
Is there still a difference between analogue and digital time eg the Beeb's GST pips - which are "correct"?
I see that I missed an extraordinarily prolonged and bone-headed argument by @HYUFD last night about anyone who isn't his type of Conservative wanting to confiscate all private property like the Bolshevisks. I think that was the gist of it anyway.
Today we have Liz Truss introducing her "This is why I should be PM (because I am the new Maggie)" bill (and messing up the Northern Ireland Protocol in order to do so).
Well, the old Maggie - and the Tory party she led - understood that if you believed, as they did, in order and stability, in strong institutions, in property rights and predictability in commercial relationships, the rule of law is essential.
And no it was not just domestic law she was talking about. She believed this about international law too - as anyone seeing what she said and did during the Falklands, for instance - would have realised. After all, this is what she said after that conflict ended: "I believe Britain has now found a role. It is upholding international law and teaching the nations of the world how to live."
I expect books are being written right now about how that Tory party turned into the one we have today which believes that the rule of law is an expendable inconvenience to be discarded the moment it stops you doing what you want.
The elephant in the room of course being the Belgrano (including the declaration of the "total exclusion zone") which excited much rage and charges of "illegality" at the time before we go about heralding Maggie as the mother and guardian of modern international law.
The Belgrano was a
1) Warship 2) Belonging to a country that had committed acts of war against the UK 3) Was engaged in hostile military action - her task group was attacking anything it thought was a submarine contact with weapons. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government 4) Was tasked with an attack on the approaching UK task force in international waters. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government.
The last 2 were known to the UK government at the time - the NSA was sending realtime decrypts of Argentine messages via teleprinter to the UK. The UK government was often reading the Argentine mail before the Argentine recipients read it. This was because they were using manual, electro mechanical machines (think big, ugly typewriter) and the NSA had implanted the codebreaking entirely on their big iron mainframes.
The whole Belgrano nonsense was about attacking Thatcher.
Indeed it was. My point was that people use the nebulous concept of "international law" to attack and justify any number of things.
Indeed.
Just this morning, my wife commented on a facebook aquaintance. Always fired up on women's rights, Palestine. Lately been spitting blood over Rwanda. The lady in question was posting pictures of her holiday in Dubai.
Who the hell takes a holiday in Dubai in June?
This morning it’s 45ºC, with very high humidity and dusty. Visibility about 3km in the 25mph wind. It’s a horrible place to be today.
Interesting you say it's 45'C. When I worked there and they were telling me about some of the dubious practices the one that stayed in my memory was that the construction workers were not allowed to work when the temperature exceeded 45'C so the government never allowed it to go above and how surprised I would be how often the temperature would be exactly 45'C!
That's one powerful government.
When Mussolini's government got bored with the whole "trains running on time" thing, which never really worked, they just mandated that, officially, all the trains ran on time.
Where militant right wing nationalists have taken over the centre of the capital. They object to the proposed peace with Azerbaijan. Seems like quite a relaxed Revolution tho
Otherwise Yerevan comes across as pleasant but boring. I shall repair to a cafe for cold Armenian wine
Giving Ukraine sufficent weapons to resist Putinism but not enough to defeat it- apart from being a moral crisis- is a disaster, in that it keeps Russia in the game at a time when it is making threats against the entire world, even threatening to take over Stonehenge.
A sober analysis of the military situation here...
Basically, the Russians have stopped kidding themselves they can do US style high energy maneuvering warfare and have resorted to something they are actually good at - indiscriminate slaughter and destruction through rolling artillery barrages.
The Ukrainians are in 'hoping and coping' mode taking heavy casualties in the probably misplaced hope that Biden will save them with massive shipments of Wunderwaffen.
Donetsk/Lugansk oblasts and denying the Black Sea all the way to the Romanian border appears to be the extent of the Russian ambitions at the moment.
That hardly negates @Cicero 's argument. If we're going to send Ukraine weapons, we should send suffiecnet to defeat the invasion. It's not complicated.
Stop Putin now, and there is sufficient time to replace what's sent.
I see that I missed an extraordinarily prolonged and bone-headed argument by @HYUFD last night about anyone who isn't his type of Conservative wanting to confiscate all private property like the Bolshevisks. I think that was the gist of it anyway.
Today we have Liz Truss introducing her "This is why I should be PM (because I am the new Maggie)" bill (and messing up the Northern Ireland Protocol in order to do so).
Well, the old Maggie - and the Tory party she led - understood that if you believed, as they did, in order and stability, in strong institutions, in property rights and predictability in commercial relationships, the rule of law is essential.
And no it was not just domestic law she was talking about. She believed this about international law too - as anyone seeing what she said and did during the Falklands, for instance - would have realised. After all, this is what she said after that conflict ended: "I believe Britain has now found a role. It is upholding international law and teaching the nations of the world how to live."
I expect books are being written right now about how that Tory party turned into the one we have today which believes that the rule of law is an expendable inconvenience to be discarded the moment it stops you doing what you want.
The elephant in the room of course being the Belgrano (including the declaration of the "total exclusion zone") which excited much rage and charges of "illegality" at the time before we go about heralding Maggie as the mother and guardian of modern international law.
The Belgrano was a
1) Warship 2) Belonging to a country that had committed acts of war against the UK 3) Was engaged in hostile military action - her task group was attacking anything it thought was a submarine contact with weapons. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government 4) Was tasked with an attack on the approaching UK task force in international waters. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government.
The last 2 were known to the UK government at the time - the NSA was sending realtime decrypts of Argentine messages via teleprinter to the UK. The UK government was often reading the Argentine mail before the Argentine recipients read it. This was because they were using manual, electro mechanical machines (think big, ugly typewriter) and the NSA had implanted the codebreaking entirely on their big iron mainframes.
The whole Belgrano nonsense was about attacking Thatcher.
Indeed it was. My point was that people use the nebulous concept of "international law" to attack and justify any number of things.
Indeed.
Just this morning, my wife commented on a facebook aquaintance. Always fired up on women's rights, Palestine. Lately been spitting blood over Rwanda. The lady in question was posting pictures of her holiday in Dubai.
Going on holiday some place isn't an endorsement of that country's politics
Maybe not but it is tangibly supporting the people who determine those politics.
Yes it is, but by extension so is buying consumer products produced in those countries, or made using resources mined in those countries. Nobody on this board, to my knowledge, has anything but contempt for the Chinese government, but how many of us even attempt to avoid consumption patterns that benefit the Chinese economy? And even if you try, how successful are you?
Not wrong at all but that's an extrapolation too far. The person in question was "always fired up on women's rights". And goes to Dubai. I mean other holiday destinations are available.
I am not particularly fired up about anything (perhaps farmed salmon, which I always avoid but that's pretty first world problem-ish). But if I was I wouldn't literally go out of my way to support the perpetrators of whatever it was I was fired up against.
If you were to take a holiday in Scotland, would that be an endorsement of salmon farming practices?
Where militant right wing nationalists have taken over the centre of the capital. They object to the proposed peace with Azerbaijan. Seems like quite a relaxed Revolution tho
Otherwise Yerevan comes across as pleasant but boring. I shall repair to a cafe for cold Armenian wine
ուրախություն!
Is that an Armenian cover version of Abbey Road there?
The chart on that "bitcoin obituaries" page probably looks rather impressive now, than when it was designed for when more and more mugs were being parted from their money.
Many pyramid schemes can keep going for a while, so long as there's enough fools ready to part with their money. They all eventually end the same way though, because if nothing there at the end of the day you run out of fools.
Bitcoin is worse than a pyramid scheme, it has less than nothing behind it.
Yesterday I had lunch with some junior members of my family. To suggest they are non political would be an understatement. If they know the leaders of the opposition parties I would be surprised. But having recently enjoyed my hospitality in France and the attendant difficulties in getting through airports etc they let fly.
Everything was the fault of 'Brexit'. A surprise to me because had I written this yesterday morning I'd be surprised they'd heard of 'Brexit'!
The point is that it's now clear and obvious that the disaster that is Brexit has spread way beyond political nerds through social media to even the most disinterested. This has to be an opportunity.
If BREXIT=Disaster and the architects of this disaster are the TORY government and the ANTI BREXIT parties are all there in plain sight isn't it about time the lilly livered on the opposition benches started joining the dots and stopped treating it as the calamity that dares not speak it's name?
A key problem for the government on the economy is that the pandemic is receding into the background, and the equal or greater pressure felt by other economies as a result of Ukraine, particularly those more dependent on Russian energy. These two things, throwing things into relief in two different ways, are starting to make the post-Brexit differential with other economies more obvious, as noted by various financial institutions this and last week.
Exactly!. It's becoming more obvious by the day and now we're at the stage where even a blind man on a galloping camel can see the damage brexit has done we have to make sure this isn't just seen as a big mistake we collectively made.
From the article: "The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the main driver of April's contraction was the fall in the services sector due to the winding down of the NHS's Covid test and trace operation."
So the shape of our economy is still being distorted by the exceptional spending on the pandemic. As that is wound down the economy shrinks a little. There is no doubt that we are heading to a recession though. Not only our economy but the world economy is in a very bad way and this is being aggravated by the zero Covid policy in China.
The zero Covid policy in China is not having as severe an impact as I expected. I thought that there would be more widespread lockdowns by now that would cause major international trade issues, but they've been more successful in containing the spread of the virus, and limiting the economic impact, than I expected.
I just ordered a new phone, which was shipped immediately, for example.
What we need to do is fire up the armaments factories to equip Ukraine's army with armoured vehicles, artillery, etc. Everything is still focused on supplying Ukraine from existing stocks. We could do with cranking things up a few notches.
Interesting. I waited 2 months for a new Iphone earlier this year. We saw yet another consequence in the flash report on the economy that I have quoted. Sales of new registrations in March were exceptionally low whilst April's were better than normal. That must surely be supply related which, AIUI, is chip related. If these things are starting to ease that will help but higher interest rates to reduce inflation, a reduction in the value of real wages and a tightening of government spending will still drive us into a recession.
I agree about defence spending too but I am wondering what our capacity might be.
David you bought a new iPhone what at somewhere North of a thousand pounds.
Recession what recession.
The extraordinary costs of such branded products will be a topic for future historians to dwell upon in times to come.
See the prices that people pay for mechanical watches of various brands.
Phones are simply in the personal jewellery category, for many people.
Yep it used to be just the "Lux" supplements featuring multi-thousand pound watches but now the Evening Standard is as likely to have a feature on watches costing around ten grand.
I got pissed off when I was quoted £11 for a new battery in my watch. I went on Ebay and bought a new watch for £6.75 and it tells the time as well or even better than a Rolex.
A mechanical watch can't tell time as well as a 99p digital watch.
As the quart movement in a 99p digital will be godawful, I expect the reverse to be true.
I can do similar work 'inside IR35' or 'outside IR35'. If I do the former, then I have to pay about 20% more tax. National Insurance. I have a strong moral objection to National Insurance because it is an inherently unfair tax, as it only applies to those who work. My income is good, but also vulnerable to shocks, the contracts I work provide no provision for sick pay, jury service etc; I would be sacked immediately. If I have no work, the social security system would be little use to me. As far as I can work out, I wouldn't be eligible for any kind of welfare if I don't have work because of my existing assets - which aren't great, but just enough to disqualify me. Looking at things in the round and objectively, I worked out that to provide security for myself, I need to build up cash reserves in my company to pay myself an income in the event of hard times, because the state would not provide in these circumstances. I don't think the supposed purposes of national insurance are much use to me, aside from the possibiity of a state pension. But I have paid in quite a bit of money towards that over the years already, and would continue to pay a modest amount of NI.
On a moral level, what is the problem with saying to myself, OK I will just organise my affairs so I pay about the same amount of tax as those who live off income from investments; and make my own provision for social security because the state is not much help in my situation?
Isn't this the most rational response to the situation described above?
The "Off Payroll Legislation" simply creates a new class of workers: those who pay all the taxes and have all the responsibilities and negatives of employed people, but without any of the protections or benefits. Instead leaving them as vulnerable as the self-employed, but without any of the tax benefits that exist in order to cover off those vulnerabilities and issues.
It's basically a tax scam on behalf of HMRC. But one that nets far less in the way of income than they anticipated, anyway. If they were serious, they'd have made the legislation such that as soon as one is "deemed employed," they must actually be employed, with all of the benefits and protections that entails. But that would shred the areas of work involved (as few would fully employ people when they only need them for a few weeks or months to cover something transient) and cause significant economic impact, so they came up with this scam.
Sorry it doesn't create a new class of worker - agency workers have existed for a very long time.
And the actual issue always comes down to Employer NI - which is worth £60-70bn to the Government but is only collected from those who are employed - hence HMRC being petrified that that self employment may increase..
The net difference in VAT+Corporation Tax + Dividend Tax versus Employee NI+Employers NI + Income Tax can make the delta significantly smaller. The Dividend Tax changes a few years back closed that delta quite a bit, anyway.
The solution surely has to be to merge NI and Income Tax and rationalise things. I know they're petrified about impacting their richer pensioners, but a rule for a different income tax rate for the retired over a certain age would easily solve that.
Nope that isn't how VAT works - VAT is never the company's money it is something you collect on behalf of the Government.
I have a rule when talking about this which is to ignore anyone who uses the VAT argument because it shows how little they actually know (but I will ignore it here in a way that I wouldn't do it in a professional capacity).
And the bug bear is never actually Employee NI. Corporation tax + Dividend payments are so close to Employee NI + income tax as to make no difference.
The problem always comes back to Employer NI for which there is no equivalent elsewhere in the tax system.
Needs to be made clear, because the VAT issue confuses the hell out of people on the working side of things. They see the money being charged for and paid over, so it feels like it's a cost. To those immersed in the ins and outs it may be obvious, but to the layman - not so much.
That the cost to the end-user involves VAT being paid on one side but not on the other. I'm vaguely aware that VAT is enormously complex and involves obligations being passed down through a chain and reclaimed (as well as the HMRC specific clawback thingies where you can elect to pay a defined and reduced amount of VAT but not claim back VAT payments already made, but you do have to negotiate a list of professions and alight on one that they'll agree with).
The Employers NI issue is a total bastard, and a number of brolly companies have violated it in the past. A lot of the time, the end contractor (who will now not have an accountant) will not be sufficiently au fait with the labyrinthine laws and accountancy stuff to know what they are legally allowed to challenge in respect of such things as opt-outs and contracts.
The entire area is often far more violated by those with the power to do so, on the knowledge that they won't be challenged (eg blanket determinations of status - supposedly illegal but the norm rather than the exception. Often with handwaving justifications such as "No, we're not doing blanket determinations. We're simply sacking all of our contractors forthwith and only offering them back with all posts deemed inside IR35." Which sounds like blanket determinations to me, but hey - they get away with it).
Firms don't do blanket determinations - what they will do is simply say they won't accept anyone who isn't using an umbrella firm because they won't accept the risk.
The firms doing that have long memories from when the IRS were trying to deal with the same issue in the 1990's and being blunt (were I a large international company) a blanket ban on contractors using PSCs is the sane option (because you can't trust your employees not to screw things up).
Also having looked at that link - it makes another mistake - umbrella's don't steal employer NI money - the issue (as demonstrated in multiple employment tribunals) is that the agency lies about the rate being advertised with people assuming it's a PAYE rate when it really isn't.
I see that I missed an extraordinarily prolonged and bone-headed argument by @HYUFD last night about anyone who isn't his type of Conservative wanting to confiscate all private property like the Bolshevisks. I think that was the gist of it anyway.
Today we have Liz Truss introducing her "This is why I should be PM (because I am the new Maggie)" bill (and messing up the Northern Ireland Protocol in order to do so).
Well, the old Maggie - and the Tory party she led - understood that if you believed, as they did, in order and stability, in strong institutions, in property rights and predictability in commercial relationships, the rule of law is essential.
And no it was not just domestic law she was talking about. She believed this about international law too - as anyone seeing what she said and did during the Falklands, for instance - would have realised. After all, this is what she said after that conflict ended: "I believe Britain has now found a role. It is upholding international law and teaching the nations of the world how to live."
I expect books are being written right now about how that Tory party turned into the one we have today which believes that the rule of law is an expendable inconvenience to be discarded the moment it stops you doing what you want.
The elephant in the room of course being the Belgrano (including the declaration of the "total exclusion zone") which excited much rage and charges of "illegality" at the time before we go about heralding Maggie as the mother and guardian of modern international law.
The Belgrano was a
1) Warship 2) Belonging to a country that had committed acts of war against the UK 3) Was engaged in hostile military action - her task group was attacking anything it thought was a submarine contact with weapons. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government 4) Was tasked with an attack on the approaching UK task force in international waters. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government.
The last 2 were known to the UK government at the time - the NSA was sending realtime decrypts of Argentine messages via teleprinter to the UK. The UK government was often reading the Argentine mail before the Argentine recipients read it. This was because they were using manual, electro mechanical machines (think big, ugly typewriter) and the NSA had implanted the codebreaking entirely on their big iron mainframes.
The whole Belgrano nonsense was about attacking Thatcher.
Indeed. The argument in favour of not sinking (by such military geniuses as Anthony Wedgewood Benn and Jeremy Corbyn IIRC) was that the Belgrano was sailing away from the Falklands (they do not understand that ships regularly change course, particularly in a war zone)! This was perhaps Conqueror's only opportunity to sink her, and it was deemed that Belgrano was perhaps part of a pincer movement on the Task Force. Following the sinking the Argentine Navy (which was a credible threat) returned to port. The sinking was probably pivotal in the whole war. The loss of life was tragic, but the responsibility rests with those who ordered the invasion of the Falklands in the first place.
Morning all.
Corbyn was not an MP in 1982. He was an obscure member of Harringay Council. AFAICS he was asserting that the Falklands War was a Tory plot.
Indeed, I have conflated him with another know-all lefty (though slightly less thick, and all together more classy); Tam Dalyell (11th Baronet).
400 is out of reach, 300 would be great, 200 is (perhaps) realistic.
But if Root reaches 243, runs out of partners (or Stokes declares), NZ set a target, and England fail to reach it, then Root will beat Ricky Ponting's 242 in a losing test.
A draw, of course, would mean that England cannot lose the series.
From the article: "The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the main driver of April's contraction was the fall in the services sector due to the winding down of the NHS's Covid test and trace operation."
So the shape of our economy is still being distorted by the exceptional spending on the pandemic. As that is wound down the economy shrinks a little. There is no doubt that we are heading to a recession though. Not only our economy but the world economy is in a very bad way and this is being aggravated by the zero Covid policy in China.
The zero Covid policy in China is not having as severe an impact as I expected. I thought that there would be more widespread lockdowns by now that would cause major international trade issues, but they've been more successful in containing the spread of the virus, and limiting the economic impact, than I expected.
I just ordered a new phone, which was shipped immediately, for example.
What we need to do is fire up the armaments factories to equip Ukraine's army with armoured vehicles, artillery, etc. Everything is still focused on supplying Ukraine from existing stocks. We could do with cranking things up a few notches.
Interesting. I waited 2 months for a new Iphone earlier this year. We saw yet another consequence in the flash report on the economy that I have quoted. Sales of new registrations in March were exceptionally low whilst April's were better than normal. That must surely be supply related which, AIUI, is chip related. If these things are starting to ease that will help but higher interest rates to reduce inflation, a reduction in the value of real wages and a tightening of government spending will still drive us into a recession.
I agree about defence spending too but I am wondering what our capacity might be.
David you bought a new iPhone what at somewhere North of a thousand pounds.
Recession what recession.
The extraordinary costs of such branded products will be a topic for future historians to dwell upon in times to come.
See the prices that people pay for mechanical watches of various brands.
Phones are simply in the personal jewellery category, for many people.
Yep it used to be just the "Lux" supplements featuring multi-thousand pound watches but now the Evening Standard is as likely to have a feature on watches costing around ten grand.
I got pissed off when I was quoted £11 for a new battery in my watch. I went on Ebay and bought a new watch for £6.75 and it tells the time as well or even better than a Rolex.
A mechanical watch can't tell time as well as a 99p digital watch.
As the quart movement in a 99p digital will be godawful, I expect the reverse to be true.
Still projecting 255-295 for Macron and a majority. Not sure how that works as you need 289. Melenchon assured of second place after Second Round. Seems like Melenchon's uniting of the Left has worked. But nowhere close to making him PM.
From the article: "The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the main driver of April's contraction was the fall in the services sector due to the winding down of the NHS's Covid test and trace operation."
So the shape of our economy is still being distorted by the exceptional spending on the pandemic. As that is wound down the economy shrinks a little. There is no doubt that we are heading to a recession though. Not only our economy but the world economy is in a very bad way and this is being aggravated by the zero Covid policy in China.
The zero Covid policy in China is not having as severe an impact as I expected. I thought that there would be more widespread lockdowns by now that would cause major international trade issues, but they've been more successful in containing the spread of the virus, and limiting the economic impact, than I expected.
I just ordered a new phone, which was shipped immediately, for example.
What we need to do is fire up the armaments factories to equip Ukraine's army with armoured vehicles, artillery, etc. Everything is still focused on supplying Ukraine from existing stocks. We could do with cranking things up a few notches.
Interesting. I waited 2 months for a new Iphone earlier this year. We saw yet another consequence in the flash report on the economy that I have quoted. Sales of new registrations in March were exceptionally low whilst April's were better than normal. That must surely be supply related which, AIUI, is chip related. If these things are starting to ease that will help but higher interest rates to reduce inflation, a reduction in the value of real wages and a tightening of government spending will still drive us into a recession.
I agree about defence spending too but I am wondering what our capacity might be.
David you bought a new iPhone what at somewhere North of a thousand pounds.
Recession what recession.
The extraordinary costs of such branded products will be a topic for future historians to dwell upon in times to come.
See the prices that people pay for mechanical watches of various brands.
Phones are simply in the personal jewellery category, for many people.
Yep it used to be just the "Lux" supplements featuring multi-thousand pound watches but now the Evening Standard is as likely to have a feature on watches costing around ten grand.
I got pissed off when I was quoted £11 for a new battery in my watch. I went on Ebay and bought a new watch for £6.75 and it tells the time as well or even better than a Rolex.
A mechanical watch can't tell time as well as a 99p digital watch.
As the quart movement in a 99p digital will be godawful, I expect the reverse to be true.
I don't believe that for one second
These things can changed by a minute adjustment
A friend bought a Russian aviator watch in Moscow for a few dollars, back in the early 90s.
It kept rubbish time - a friendly jeweller opened it up and discovered that (a) it was rip off of a Swiss "big name" movement from the 50s (b) it was actually very well made, with lots of real jewelled bearings etc and (c) it had never been regulated. Just put together and sold.
From the article: "The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the main driver of April's contraction was the fall in the services sector due to the winding down of the NHS's Covid test and trace operation."
So the shape of our economy is still being distorted by the exceptional spending on the pandemic. As that is wound down the economy shrinks a little. There is no doubt that we are heading to a recession though. Not only our economy but the world economy is in a very bad way and this is being aggravated by the zero Covid policy in China.
The zero Covid policy in China is not having as severe an impact as I expected. I thought that there would be more widespread lockdowns by now that would cause major international trade issues, but they've been more successful in containing the spread of the virus, and limiting the economic impact, than I expected.
I just ordered a new phone, which was shipped immediately, for example.
What we need to do is fire up the armaments factories to equip Ukraine's army with armoured vehicles, artillery, etc. Everything is still focused on supplying Ukraine from existing stocks. We could do with cranking things up a few notches.
Interesting. I waited 2 months for a new Iphone earlier this year. We saw yet another consequence in the flash report on the economy that I have quoted. Sales of new registrations in March were exceptionally low whilst April's were better than normal. That must surely be supply related which, AIUI, is chip related. If these things are starting to ease that will help but higher interest rates to reduce inflation, a reduction in the value of real wages and a tightening of government spending will still drive us into a recession.
I agree about defence spending too but I am wondering what our capacity might be.
David you bought a new iPhone what at somewhere North of a thousand pounds.
Recession what recession.
The extraordinary costs of such branded products will be a topic for future historians to dwell upon in times to come.
See the prices that people pay for mechanical watches of various brands.
Phones are simply in the personal jewellery category, for many people.
Yep it used to be just the "Lux" supplements featuring multi-thousand pound watches but now the Evening Standard is as likely to have a feature on watches costing around ten grand.
I got pissed off when I was quoted £11 for a new battery in my watch. I went on Ebay and bought a new watch for £6.75 and it tells the time as well or even better than a Rolex.
A mechanical watch can't tell time as well as a 99p digital watch.
As the quart movement in a 99p digital will be godawful, I expect the reverse to be true.
From the article: "The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the main driver of April's contraction was the fall in the services sector due to the winding down of the NHS's Covid test and trace operation."
So the shape of our economy is still being distorted by the exceptional spending on the pandemic. As that is wound down the economy shrinks a little. There is no doubt that we are heading to a recession though. Not only our economy but the world economy is in a very bad way and this is being aggravated by the zero Covid policy in China.
The zero Covid policy in China is not having as severe an impact as I expected. I thought that there would be more widespread lockdowns by now that would cause major international trade issues, but they've been more successful in containing the spread of the virus, and limiting the economic impact, than I expected.
I just ordered a new phone, which was shipped immediately, for example.
What we need to do is fire up the armaments factories to equip Ukraine's army with armoured vehicles, artillery, etc. Everything is still focused on supplying Ukraine from existing stocks. We could do with cranking things up a few notches.
Interesting. I waited 2 months for a new Iphone earlier this year. We saw yet another consequence in the flash report on the economy that I have quoted. Sales of new registrations in March were exceptionally low whilst April's were better than normal. That must surely be supply related which, AIUI, is chip related. If these things are starting to ease that will help but higher interest rates to reduce inflation, a reduction in the value of real wages and a tightening of government spending will still drive us into a recession.
I agree about defence spending too but I am wondering what our capacity might be.
David you bought a new iPhone what at somewhere North of a thousand pounds.
Recession what recession.
The extraordinary costs of such branded products will be a topic for future historians to dwell upon in times to come.
See the prices that people pay for mechanical watches of various brands.
Phones are simply in the personal jewellery category, for many people.
Yep it used to be just the "Lux" supplements featuring multi-thousand pound watches but now the Evening Standard is as likely to have a feature on watches costing around ten grand.
I got pissed off when I was quoted £11 for a new battery in my watch. I went on Ebay and bought a new watch for £6.75 and it tells the time as well or even better than a Rolex.
A mechanical watch can't tell time as well as a 99p digital watch.
As the quart movement in a 99p digital will be godawful, I expect the reverse to be true.
I don't believe that for one second
These things can changed by a minute adjustment
A friend bought a Russian aviator watch in Moscow for a few dollars, back in the early 90s.
It kept rubbish time - a friendly jeweller opened it up and discovered that (a) it was rip off of a Swiss "big name" movement from the 50s (b) it was actually very well made, with lots of real jewelled bearings etc and (c) it had never been regulated. Just put together and sold.
After adjustment, it ran very well, apparently.
I’ve got one of them, inherited from father-in-law who was in the Soviet Air Force. Keep meaning to try and find someone who can service it.
Bitcoin might have been a piss poor investment when it was priced at $70,000 but it isn't a pyramid scheme. Some of the fixed interest products attached to cryptocoins - well I can't see how those aren't pyramid schemes mind.
I see that I missed an extraordinarily prolonged and bone-headed argument by @HYUFD last night about anyone who isn't his type of Conservative wanting to confiscate all private property like the Bolshevisks. I think that was the gist of it anyway.
Today we have Liz Truss introducing her "This is why I should be PM (because I am the new Maggie)" bill (and messing up the Northern Ireland Protocol in order to do so).
Well, the old Maggie - and the Tory party she led - understood that if you believed, as they did, in order and stability, in strong institutions, in property rights and predictability in commercial relationships, the rule of law is essential.
And no it was not just domestic law she was talking about. She believed this about international law too - as anyone seeing what she said and did during the Falklands, for instance - would have realised. After all, this is what she said after that conflict ended: "I believe Britain has now found a role. It is upholding international law and teaching the nations of the world how to live."
I expect books are being written right now about how that Tory party turned into the one we have today which believes that the rule of law is an expendable inconvenience to be discarded the moment it stops you doing what you want.
The elephant in the room of course being the Belgrano (including the declaration of the "total exclusion zone") which excited much rage and charges of "illegality" at the time before we go about heralding Maggie as the mother and guardian of modern international law.
The Belgrano was a
1) Warship 2) Belonging to a country that had committed acts of war against the UK 3) Was engaged in hostile military action - her task group was attacking anything it thought was a submarine contact with weapons. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government 4) Was tasked with an attack on the approaching UK task force in international waters. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government.
The last 2 were known to the UK government at the time - the NSA was sending realtime decrypts of Argentine messages via teleprinter to the UK. The UK government was often reading the Argentine mail before the Argentine recipients read it. This was because they were using manual, electro mechanical machines (think big, ugly typewriter) and the NSA had implanted the codebreaking entirely on their big iron mainframes.
The whole Belgrano nonsense was about attacking Thatcher.
Indeed it was. My point was that people use the nebulous concept of "international law" to attack and justify any number of things.
Indeed.
Just this morning, my wife commented on a facebook aquaintance. Always fired up on women's rights, Palestine. Lately been spitting blood over Rwanda. The lady in question was posting pictures of her holiday in Dubai.
Going on holiday some place isn't an endorsement of that country's politics
Maybe not but it is tangibly supporting the people who determine those politics.
Yes it is, but by extension so is buying consumer products produced in those countries, or made using resources mined in those countries. Nobody on this board, to my knowledge, has anything but contempt for the Chinese government, but how many of us even attempt to avoid consumption patterns that benefit the Chinese economy? And even if you try, how successful are you?
Not wrong at all but that's an extrapolation too far. The person in question was "always fired up on women's rights". And goes to Dubai. I mean other holiday destinations are available.
I am not particularly fired up about anything (perhaps farmed salmon, which I always avoid but that's pretty first world problem-ish). But if I was I wouldn't literally go out of my way to support the perpetrators of whatever it was I was fired up against.
If you were to take a holiday in Scotland, would that be an endorsement of salmon farming practices?
Salmon farming is a very small piece of what makes up Scotland. And it isn't directly run by the government, for the personal profit of the rulers of the country.
In Dubai, the money pyramid links directly back to the literal *owners* of the country. Who have enshrined in law their attitudes towards women and foreign workers.
But those salmon farming practices are legal in Scotland and contribute to the tax take of the government. So it seems the answer has to be yes, a holiday in Scotland is an endorsement of salmon farming practices.
(I should add that I don't really care about salmon farming either way, I'm only following it as an example raised that some people do care about. It feels a little silly to be talking about it alongside human rights, but I'm keen to get to the bottom of what people think about what a holiday tacitly endorses)
I'll put my cards on the table. I think this kind of analysis (you claim to be in favour of women's rights but you went to an institutionally misogynistic country) is not wholly without merit but largely misses the mark because it implies a holiday is some special category of consumption when it really doesn't seem that way to me. If I holiday in the UK, am I endorsing Brexit? What about if I go to Brighton, that was quite remainy, am I then untainted? If I visit Windsor Castle, am I endorsing anti-Catholic prejudice? Is @Leon a homophobe for visiting Turkey?
You can drive yourself quite mad trying to find the one silver of land where all your view are perfectly represented and building your sandcastle masterpiece there, but I don't think most people are on the hook for their holidays in most cases. This feels more like a "gotcha" criticism which could too easily backfire on the person issuing the criticsim.
Giving Ukraine sufficent weapons to resist Putinism but not enough to defeat it- apart from being a moral crisis- is a disaster, in that it keeps Russia in the game at a time when it is making threats against the entire world, even threatening to take over Stonehenge.
A sober analysis of the military situation here...
Basically, the Russians have stopped kidding themselves they can do US style high energy maneuvering warfare and have resorted to something they are actually good at - indiscriminate slaughter and destruction through rolling artillery barrages.
The Ukrainians are in 'hoping and coping' mode taking heavy casualties in the probably misplaced hope that Biden will save them with massive shipments of Wunderwaffen.
Donetsk/Lugansk oblasts and denying the Black Sea all the way to the Romanian border appears to be the extent of the Russian ambitions at the moment.
That hardly negates @Cicero 's argument. If we're going to send Ukraine weapons, we should send suffiecnet to defeat the invasion. It's not complicated.
Stop Putin now, and there is sufficient time to replace what's sent.
The strategy seems to be to provide enough weapons to Ukraine to make things difficult for Putin and to hold Russia back. Not for Ukraine to actually win the war. The strategic aim is possibly to force Russia to agree to a ceasefire and to deter similar invasions in the future.
And it's cost Banks at least £750k, which is no bad thing.
The judgement will be very interesting - I was waiting for it to be "over" before looking at it in any detail as the press is full of fluff until you get to the final outcome; and I don't think I'd realised it was focused on two particular statements (or I'd have been more bullish about CC's chances of winning.)
As I said yesterday, I still think we need to revisit what's acceptable in terms of spattering ill-sourced accusations around in the press, however odious the target, and this makes that less rather than more likely, unless the judgement is very nuanced.
Still projecting 255-295 for Macron and a majority. Not sure how that works as you need 289. Melenchon assured of second place after Second Round. Seems like Melenchon's uniting of the Left has worked. But nowhere close to making him PM.
In terms of first round first place places by district it is:
Still projecting 255-295 for Macron and a majority. Not sure how that works as you need 289. Melenchon assured of second place after Second Round. Seems like Melenchon's uniting of the Left has worked. But nowhere close to making him PM.
Does En marche (Now ensemble) have electibility beyond Macron ?
I see that I missed an extraordinarily prolonged and bone-headed argument by @HYUFD last night about anyone who isn't his type of Conservative wanting to confiscate all private property like the Bolshevisks. I think that was the gist of it anyway.
Today we have Liz Truss introducing her "This is why I should be PM (because I am the new Maggie)" bill (and messing up the Northern Ireland Protocol in order to do so).
Well, the old Maggie - and the Tory party she led - understood that if you believed, as they did, in order and stability, in strong institutions, in property rights and predictability in commercial relationships, the rule of law is essential.
And no it was not just domestic law she was talking about. She believed this about international law too - as anyone seeing what she said and did during the Falklands, for instance - would have realised. After all, this is what she said after that conflict ended: "I believe Britain has now found a role. It is upholding international law and teaching the nations of the world how to live."
I expect books are being written right now about how that Tory party turned into the one we have today which believes that the rule of law is an expendable inconvenience to be discarded the moment it stops you doing what you want.
The elephant in the room of course being the Belgrano (including the declaration of the "total exclusion zone") which excited much rage and charges of "illegality" at the time before we go about heralding Maggie as the mother and guardian of modern international law.
The Belgrano was a
1) Warship 2) Belonging to a country that had committed acts of war against the UK 3) Was engaged in hostile military action - her task group was attacking anything it thought was a submarine contact with weapons. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government 4) Was tasked with an attack on the approaching UK task force in international waters. Having been ordered to do so, by the Argentine government.
The last 2 were known to the UK government at the time - the NSA was sending realtime decrypts of Argentine messages via teleprinter to the UK. The UK government was often reading the Argentine mail before the Argentine recipients read it. This was because they were using manual, electro mechanical machines (think big, ugly typewriter) and the NSA had implanted the codebreaking entirely on their big iron mainframes.
The whole Belgrano nonsense was about attacking Thatcher.
Indeed. The argument in favour of not sinking (by such military geniuses as Anthony Wedgewood Benn and Jeremy Corbyn IIRC) was that the Belgrano was sailing away from the Falklands (they do not understand that ships regularly change course, particularly in a war zone)! This was perhaps Conqueror's only opportunity to sink her, and it was deemed that Belgrano was perhaps part of a pincer movement on the Task Force. Following the sinking the Argentine Navy (which was a credible threat) returned to port. The sinking was probably pivotal in the whole war. The loss of life was tragic, but the responsibility rests with those who ordered the invasion of the Falklands in the first place.
And the responsibilty for that is, in fact, partly shared by Thatcher herself. Her government's handling of the diplomatic run-up to the invasion was woeful ; the loss of life could have been so easily avoided.
The responsibility of that lies 100% with the military regime that chose to invade.
Just as the sole responsibility for the Russia/Ukraine war lies entirely with Putin's Russia and not with Ukraine, or NATO or any other scapegoats.
From the article: "The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the main driver of April's contraction was the fall in the services sector due to the winding down of the NHS's Covid test and trace operation."
So the shape of our economy is still being distorted by the exceptional spending on the pandemic. As that is wound down the economy shrinks a little. There is no doubt that we are heading to a recession though. Not only our economy but the world economy is in a very bad way and this is being aggravated by the zero Covid policy in China.
The zero Covid policy in China is not having as severe an impact as I expected. I thought that there would be more widespread lockdowns by now that would cause major international trade issues, but they've been more successful in containing the spread of the virus, and limiting the economic impact, than I expected.
I just ordered a new phone, which was shipped immediately, for example.
What we need to do is fire up the armaments factories to equip Ukraine's army with armoured vehicles, artillery, etc. Everything is still focused on supplying Ukraine from existing stocks. We could do with cranking things up a few notches.
Interesting. I waited 2 months for a new Iphone earlier this year. We saw yet another consequence in the flash report on the economy that I have quoted. Sales of new registrations in March were exceptionally low whilst April's were better than normal. That must surely be supply related which, AIUI, is chip related. If these things are starting to ease that will help but higher interest rates to reduce inflation, a reduction in the value of real wages and a tightening of government spending will still drive us into a recession.
I agree about defence spending too but I am wondering what our capacity might be.
David you bought a new iPhone what at somewhere North of a thousand pounds.
Recession what recession.
The extraordinary costs of such branded products will be a topic for future historians to dwell upon in times to come.
See the prices that people pay for mechanical watches of various brands.
Phones are simply in the personal jewellery category, for many people.
Yep it used to be just the "Lux" supplements featuring multi-thousand pound watches but now the Evening Standard is as likely to have a feature on watches costing around ten grand.
I got pissed off when I was quoted £11 for a new battery in my watch. I went on Ebay and bought a new watch for £6.75 and it tells the time as well or even better than a Rolex.
A mechanical watch can't tell time as well as a 99p digital watch.
As the quart movement in a 99p digital will be godawful, I expect the reverse to be true.
From the article: "The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the main driver of April's contraction was the fall in the services sector due to the winding down of the NHS's Covid test and trace operation."
So the shape of our economy is still being distorted by the exceptional spending on the pandemic. As that is wound down the economy shrinks a little. There is no doubt that we are heading to a recession though. Not only our economy but the world economy is in a very bad way and this is being aggravated by the zero Covid policy in China.
The zero Covid policy in China is not having as severe an impact as I expected. I thought that there would be more widespread lockdowns by now that would cause major international trade issues, but they've been more successful in containing the spread of the virus, and limiting the economic impact, than I expected.
I just ordered a new phone, which was shipped immediately, for example.
What we need to do is fire up the armaments factories to equip Ukraine's army with armoured vehicles, artillery, etc. Everything is still focused on supplying Ukraine from existing stocks. We could do with cranking things up a few notches.
Interesting. I waited 2 months for a new Iphone earlier this year. We saw yet another consequence in the flash report on the economy that I have quoted. Sales of new registrations in March were exceptionally low whilst April's were better than normal. That must surely be supply related which, AIUI, is chip related. If these things are starting to ease that will help but higher interest rates to reduce inflation, a reduction in the value of real wages and a tightening of government spending will still drive us into a recession.
I agree about defence spending too but I am wondering what our capacity might be.
David you bought a new iPhone what at somewhere North of a thousand pounds.
Recession what recession.
The extraordinary costs of such branded products will be a topic for future historians to dwell upon in times to come.
See the prices that people pay for mechanical watches of various brands.
Phones are simply in the personal jewellery category, for many people.
Yep it used to be just the "Lux" supplements featuring multi-thousand pound watches but now the Evening Standard is as likely to have a feature on watches costing around ten grand.
I got pissed off when I was quoted £11 for a new battery in my watch. I went on Ebay and bought a new watch for £6.75 and it tells the time as well or even better than a Rolex.
A mechanical watch can't tell time as well as a 99p digital watch.
As the quart movement in a 99p digital will be godawful, I expect the reverse to be true.
Giving Ukraine sufficent weapons to resist Putinism but not enough to defeat it- apart from being a moral crisis- is a disaster, in that it keeps Russia in the game at a time when it is making threats against the entire world, even threatening to take over Stonehenge.
A sober analysis of the military situation here...
Basically, the Russians have stopped kidding themselves they can do US style high energy maneuvering warfare and have resorted to something they are actually good at - indiscriminate slaughter and destruction through rolling artillery barrages.
The Ukrainians are in 'hoping and coping' mode taking heavy casualties in the probably misplaced hope that Biden will save them with massive shipments of Wunderwaffen.
Donetsk/Lugansk oblasts and denying the Black Sea all the way to the Romanian border appears to be the extent of the Russian ambitions at the moment.
That hardly negates @Cicero 's argument. If we're going to send Ukraine weapons, we should send suffiecnet to defeat the invasion. It's not complicated.
Stop Putin now, and there is sufficient time to replace what's sent.
The strategy seems to be to provide enough weapons to Ukraine to make things difficult for Putin and to hold Russia back. Not for Ukraine to actually win the war. The strategic aim is possibly to force Russia to agree to a ceasefire and to deter similar invasions in the future.
That's deluded, particularly since it has already been proven not to work. The only real deterrence is completely to defeat the invasion.
Anything else is just a pause, which also concedes more territory to Russia in the meantime.
Oh dear, oh dear! I am sure there a few Brexity people on here looking forward to the repulsive Mr. Banks emerging victorious. I am not sure why I find myself quoting Trump, but WRONG!
"Her lawyer Gavin Millar QC had argued the case was an attempt to silence the journalist’s reporting on “matters of the highest public interest”, namely campaign finance, foreign money and the use of social media messaging and personal data in the context of the EU referendum."
Bitcoin might have been a piss poor investment when it was priced at $70,000 but it isn't a pyramid scheme. Some of the fixed interest products attached to cryptocoins - well I can't see how those aren't pyramid schemes mind.
Its not a pyramid scheme, you're right, its worse than a pyramid scheme.
Pyramid schemes rely upon fools chasing other fools with nothing of substance behind the pyramid scheme.
Bitcoin relies upon fools chasing other fools with less than nothing behind it.
The electricity required to maintain Bitcoin now is more than many countries. The cost of maintaining the Bitcoin 'ecosystem' is vast and growing every year, and that cost has to be paid by someone. That is why it is worse than a pyramid scheme.
Fiat currencies have something of substance behind them. Bitcoin does not, worse it has large costs and nothing behind it.
The technology behind Bitcoin may have some useful cases, but Bitcoin itself? It is nothing other than a scam.
And it's cost Banks at least £750k, which is no bad thing.
The judgement will be very interesting - I was waiting for it to be "over" before looking at it in any detail as the press is full of fluff until you get to the final outcome; and I don't think I'd realised it was focused on two particular statements (or I'd have been more bullish about CC's chances of winning.)
As I said yesterday, I still think we need to revisit what's acceptable in terms of spattering ill-sourced accusations around in the press, however odious the target, and this makes that less rather than more likely, unless the judgement is very nuanced.
I don't understand this stuff, but I thought what was at stake wasn't whether it was true or not - she had already conceded that she couldn't prove it - but whether there was a public interest in her saying it.
Bitcoin might have been a piss poor investment when it was priced at $70,000 but it isn't a pyramid scheme. Some of the fixed interest products attached to cryptocoins - well I can't see how those aren't pyramid schemes mind.
A nephew did very well out of Bitcoin. Bought low on a rising market and sold at or near the top. Bought a house with the proceeds.
Bitcoin might have been a piss poor investment when it was priced at $70,000 but it isn't a pyramid scheme. Some of the fixed interest products attached to cryptocoins - well I can't see how those aren't pyramid schemes mind.
A nephew did very well out of Bitcoin. Bought low on a rising market and sold at or near the top. Bought a house with the proceeds.
The suckers who bought his bitcoins haven't done quite so well.
Integrity latest lol #Breaking Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer is being investigated by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards over potential breaches of rules on earnings and gifts, the parliamentary website shows https://t.co/4qixsYWTtF Morning all
From the article: "The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the main driver of April's contraction was the fall in the services sector due to the winding down of the NHS's Covid test and trace operation."
So the shape of our economy is still being distorted by the exceptional spending on the pandemic. As that is wound down the economy shrinks a little. There is no doubt that we are heading to a recession though. Not only our economy but the world economy is in a very bad way and this is being aggravated by the zero Covid policy in China.
The zero Covid policy in China is not having as severe an impact as I expected. I thought that there would be more widespread lockdowns by now that would cause major international trade issues, but they've been more successful in containing the spread of the virus, and limiting the economic impact, than I expected.
I just ordered a new phone, which was shipped immediately, for example.
What we need to do is fire up the armaments factories to equip Ukraine's army with armoured vehicles, artillery, etc. Everything is still focused on supplying Ukraine from existing stocks. We could do with cranking things up a few notches.
Interesting. I waited 2 months for a new Iphone earlier this year. We saw yet another consequence in the flash report on the economy that I have quoted. Sales of new registrations in March were exceptionally low whilst April's were better than normal. That must surely be supply related which, AIUI, is chip related. If these things are starting to ease that will help but higher interest rates to reduce inflation, a reduction in the value of real wages and a tightening of government spending will still drive us into a recession.
I agree about defence spending too but I am wondering what our capacity might be.
David you bought a new iPhone what at somewhere North of a thousand pounds.
Recession what recession.
The extraordinary costs of such branded products will be a topic for future historians to dwell upon in times to come.
See the prices that people pay for mechanical watches of various brands.
Phones are simply in the personal jewellery category, for many people.
Yep it used to be just the "Lux" supplements featuring multi-thousand pound watches but now the Evening Standard is as likely to have a feature on watches costing around ten grand.
I got pissed off when I was quoted £11 for a new battery in my watch. I went on Ebay and bought a new watch for £6.75 and it tells the time as well or even better than a Rolex.
A mechanical watch can't tell time as well as a 99p digital watch.
As the quart movement in a 99p digital will be godawful, I expect the reverse to be true.
I can do similar work 'inside IR35' or 'outside IR35'. If I do the former, then I have to pay about 20% more tax. National Insurance. I have a strong moral objection to National Insurance because it is an inherently unfair tax, as it only applies to those who work. My income is good, but also vulnerable to shocks, the contracts I work provide no provision for sick pay, jury service etc; I would be sacked immediately. If I have no work, the social security system would be little use to me. As far as I can work out, I wouldn't be eligible for any kind of welfare if I don't have work because of my existing assets - which aren't great, but just enough to disqualify me. Looking at things in the round and objectively, I worked out that to provide security for myself, I need to build up cash reserves in my company to pay myself an income in the event of hard times, because the state would not provide in these circumstances. I don't think the supposed purposes of national insurance are much use to me, aside from the possibiity of a state pension. But I have paid in quite a bit of money towards that over the years already, and would continue to pay a modest amount of NI.
On a moral level, what is the problem with saying to myself, OK I will just organise my affairs so I pay about the same amount of tax as those who live off income from investments; and make my own provision for social security because the state is not much help in my situation?
Isn't this the most rational response to the situation described above?
The "Off Payroll Legislation" simply creates a new class of workers: those who pay all the taxes and have all the responsibilities and negatives of employed people, but without any of the protections or benefits. Instead leaving them as vulnerable as the self-employed, but without any of the tax benefits that exist in order to cover off those vulnerabilities and issues.
It's basically a tax scam on behalf of HMRC. But one that nets far less in the way of income than they anticipated, anyway. If they were serious, they'd have made the legislation such that as soon as one is "deemed employed," they must actually be employed, with all of the benefits and protections that entails. But that would shred the areas of work involved (as few would fully employ people when they only need them for a few weeks or months to cover something transient) and cause significant economic impact, so they came up with this scam.
Sorry it doesn't create a new class of worker - agency workers have existed for a very long time.
And the actual issue always comes down to Employer NI - which is worth £60-70bn to the Government but is only collected from those who are employed - hence HMRC being petrified that that self employment may increase..
The net difference in VAT+Corporation Tax + Dividend Tax versus Employee NI+Employers NI + Income Tax can make the delta significantly smaller. The Dividend Tax changes a few years back closed that delta quite a bit, anyway.
The solution surely has to be to merge NI and Income Tax and rationalise things. I know they're petrified about impacting their richer pensioners, but a rule for a different income tax rate for the retired over a certain age would easily solve that.
Nope that isn't how VAT works - VAT is never the company's money it is something you collect on behalf of the Government.
I have a rule when talking about this which is to ignore anyone who uses the VAT argument because it shows how little they actually know (but I will ignore it here in a way that I wouldn't do it in a professional capacity).
And the bug bear is never actually Employee NI. Corporation tax + Dividend payments are so close to Employee NI + income tax as to make no difference.
The problem always comes back to Employer NI for which there is no equivalent elsewhere in the tax system.
Needs to be made clear, because the VAT issue confuses the hell out of people on the working side of things. They see the money being charged for and paid over, so it feels like it's a cost. To those immersed in the ins and outs it may be obvious, but to the layman - not so much.
That the cost to the end-user involves VAT being paid on one side but not on the other. I'm vaguely aware that VAT is enormously complex and involves obligations being passed down through a chain and reclaimed (as well as the HMRC specific clawback thingies where you can elect to pay a defined and reduced amount of VAT but not claim back VAT payments already made, but you do have to negotiate a list of professions and alight on one that they'll agree with).
The Employers NI issue is a total bastard, and a number of brolly companies have violated it in the past. A lot of the time, the end contractor (who will now not have an accountant) will not be sufficiently au fait with the labyrinthine laws and accountancy stuff to know what they are legally allowed to challenge in respect of such things as opt-outs and contracts.
The entire area is often far more violated by those with the power to do so, on the knowledge that they won't be challenged (eg blanket determinations of status - supposedly illegal but the norm rather than the exception. Often with handwaving justifications such as "No, we're not doing blanket determinations. We're simply sacking all of our contractors forthwith and only offering them back with all posts deemed inside IR35." Which sounds like blanket determinations to me, but hey - they get away with it).
Firms don't do blanket determinations - what they will do is simply say they won't accept anyone who isn't using an umbrella firm because they won't accept the risk.
The firms doing that have long memories from when the IRS were trying to deal with the same issue in the 1990's and being blunt (were I a large international company) a blanket ban on contractors using PSCs is the sane option (because you can't trust your employees not to screw things up).
Also having looked at that link - it makes another mistake - umbrella's don't steal employer NI money - the issue (as demonstrated in multiple employment tribunals) is that the agency lies about the rate being advertised with people assuming it's a PAYE rate when it really isn't.
The effect on the worker (blanket determinations and the Employer NI issue) is, though, exactly the same. It may well be that legally, it's technically different, but to the worker, what's the difference?
The fact that more mugs are willing to buy into the negative equity pyramid scheme doesn't change the fact that it is a negative equity pyramid scheme.
And it's cost Banks at least £750k, which is no bad thing.
The judgement will be very interesting - I was waiting for it to be "over" before looking at it in any detail as the press is full of fluff until you get to the final outcome; and I don't think I'd realised it was focused on two particular statements (or I'd have been more bullish about CC's chances of winning.)
As I said yesterday, I still think we need to revisit what's acceptable in terms of spattering ill-sourced accusations around in the press, however odious the target, and this makes that less rather than more likely, unless the judgement is very nuanced.
I don't understand this stuff, but I thought what was at stake wasn't whether it was true or not - she had already conceded that she couldn't prove it - but whether there was a public interest in her saying it.
Cannot, surely, be in the public interest to propagate a lie? Balance of probabilities, I suppose.
Bitcoin might have been a piss poor investment when it was priced at $70,000 but it isn't a pyramid scheme. Some of the fixed interest products attached to cryptocoins - well I can't see how those aren't pyramid schemes mind.
A nephew did very well out of Bitcoin. Bought low on a rising market and sold at or near the top. Bought a house with the proceeds.
It was always possible to trade BitCoin & make money. But every £1 you make has come from someone else buying in. It’s a kind of rolling Ponzi scheme, or a game of hot potato.
Integrity latest lol #Breaking Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer is being investigated by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards over potential breaches of rules on earnings and gifts, the parliamentary website shows https://t.co/4qixsYWTtF Morning all
And it's cost Banks at least £750k, which is no bad thing.
The judgement will be very interesting - I was waiting for it to be "over" before looking at it in any detail as the press is full of fluff until you get to the final outcome; and I don't think I'd realised it was focused on two particular statements (or I'd have been more bullish about CC's chances of winning.)
As I said yesterday, I still think we need to revisit what's acceptable in terms of spattering ill-sourced accusations around in the press, however odious the target, and this makes that less rather than more likely, unless the judgement is very nuanced.
Looking forward to your summing up.
What judge has said so far it doesn’t sound like it will be nuanced.
Both allegations now ruled in public interest relate to how close Banks was to Russia - is that all Russia or means the out to cause trouble for UK dirty tricks Putin Kremlin bit of Russia? Because if you think back to Russia report report suppression by Boris, there were many in Intelligence community who wanted truth out there not suppressed at the time the journalist put out there what she did, so I reckon she got SECRET help and information from “truth out there” leaning spooks.
And it's cost Banks at least £750k, which is no bad thing.
The judgement will be very interesting - I was waiting for it to be "over" before looking at it in any detail as the press is full of fluff until you get to the final outcome; and I don't think I'd realised it was focused on two particular statements (or I'd have been more bullish about CC's chances of winning.)
As I said yesterday, I still think we need to revisit what's acceptable in terms of spattering ill-sourced accusations around in the press, however odious the target, and this makes that less rather than more likely, unless the judgement is very nuanced.
I don't understand this stuff, but I thought what was at stake wasn't whether it was true or not - she had already conceded that she couldn't prove it - but whether there was a public interest in her saying it.
Cannot, surely, be in the public interest to propagate a lie? Balance of probabilities, I suppose.
Well quite, but see what Guido is now reporting. I think there's quite a lot in this case that goes beyond simply telling lies about someone.
Bitcoin might have been a piss poor investment when it was priced at $70,000 but it isn't a pyramid scheme. Some of the fixed interest products attached to cryptocoins - well I can't see how those aren't pyramid schemes mind.
Its not a pyramid scheme, you're right, its worse than a pyramid scheme.
Pyramid schemes rely upon fools chasing other fools with nothing of substance behind the pyramid scheme.
Bitcoin relies upon fools chasing other fools with less than nothing behind it.
The electricity required to maintain Bitcoin now is more than many countries. The cost of maintaining the Bitcoin 'ecosystem' is vast and growing every year, and that cost has to be paid by someone. That is why it is worse than a pyramid scheme.
Fiat currencies have something of substance behind them. Bitcoin does not, worse it has large costs and nothing behind it.
The technology behind Bitcoin may have some useful cases, but Bitcoin itself? It is nothing other than a scam.
Yes, Bitcoin is a negative sum game, thanks to the cost of mining. Economically it is a net negative, like gambling.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 10m Suffice it to say that the @Telegraph columnists are not fans of the current administration. Next up: Roger Bootle - "This Government is unable or unwilling to stop the slide towards a 1970s disaster"
Integrity latest lol #Breaking Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer is being investigated by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards over potential breaches of rules on earnings and gifts, the parliamentary website shows https://t.co/4qixsYWTtF Morning all
I knew they should have stuck with that kindly old Mr Corbyn.
Integrity latest lol #Breaking Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer is being investigated by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards over potential breaches of rules on earnings and gifts, the parliamentary website shows https://t.co/4qixsYWTtF Morning all
What !!!!!!
I'm sure its all above board, he is Mr Rules you know
I can do similar work 'inside IR35' or 'outside IR35'. If I do the former, then I have to pay about 20% more tax. National Insurance. I have a strong moral objection to National Insurance because it is an inherently unfair tax, as it only applies to those who work. My income is good, but also vulnerable to shocks, the contracts I work provide no provision for sick pay, jury service etc; I would be sacked immediately. If I have no work, the social security system would be little use to me. As far as I can work out, I wouldn't be eligible for any kind of welfare if I don't have work because of my existing assets - which aren't great, but just enough to disqualify me. Looking at things in the round and objectively, I worked out that to provide security for myself, I need to build up cash reserves in my company to pay myself an income in the event of hard times, because the state would not provide in these circumstances. I don't think the supposed purposes of national insurance are much use to me, aside from the possibiity of a state pension. But I have paid in quite a bit of money towards that over the years already, and would continue to pay a modest amount of NI.
On a moral level, what is the problem with saying to myself, OK I will just organise my affairs so I pay about the same amount of tax as those who live off income from investments; and make my own provision for social security because the state is not much help in my situation?
Isn't this the most rational response to the situation described above?
The "Off Payroll Legislation" simply creates a new class of workers: those who pay all the taxes and have all the responsibilities and negatives of employed people, but without any of the protections or benefits. Instead leaving them as vulnerable as the self-employed, but without any of the tax benefits that exist in order to cover off those vulnerabilities and issues.
It's basically a tax scam on behalf of HMRC. But one that nets far less in the way of income than they anticipated, anyway. If they were serious, they'd have made the legislation such that as soon as one is "deemed employed," they must actually be employed, with all of the benefits and protections that entails. But that would shred the areas of work involved (as few would fully employ people when they only need them for a few weeks or months to cover something transient) and cause significant economic impact, so they came up with this scam.
Sorry it doesn't create a new class of worker - agency workers have existed for a very long time.
And the actual issue always comes down to Employer NI - which is worth £60-70bn to the Government but is only collected from those who are employed - hence HMRC being petrified that that self employment may increase..
The net difference in VAT+Corporation Tax + Dividend Tax versus Employee NI+Employers NI + Income Tax can make the delta significantly smaller. The Dividend Tax changes a few years back closed that delta quite a bit, anyway.
The solution surely has to be to merge NI and Income Tax and rationalise things. I know they're petrified about impacting their richer pensioners, but a rule for a different income tax rate for the retired over a certain age would easily solve that.
Nope that isn't how VAT works - VAT is never the company's money it is something you collect on behalf of the Government.
I have a rule when talking about this which is to ignore anyone who uses the VAT argument because it shows how little they actually know (but I will ignore it here in a way that I wouldn't do it in a professional capacity).
And the bug bear is never actually Employee NI. Corporation tax + Dividend payments are so close to Employee NI + income tax as to make no difference.
The problem always comes back to Employer NI for which there is no equivalent elsewhere in the tax system.
Needs to be made clear, because the VAT issue confuses the hell out of people on the working side of things. They see the money being charged for and paid over, so it feels like it's a cost. To those immersed in the ins and outs it may be obvious, but to the layman - not so much.
That the cost to the end-user involves VAT being paid on one side but not on the other. I'm vaguely aware that VAT is enormously complex and involves obligations being passed down through a chain and reclaimed (as well as the HMRC specific clawback thingies where you can elect to pay a defined and reduced amount of VAT but not claim back VAT payments already made, but you do have to negotiate a list of professions and alight on one that they'll agree with).
The Employers NI issue is a total bastard, and a number of brolly companies have violated it in the past. A lot of the time, the end contractor (who will now not have an accountant) will not be sufficiently au fait with the labyrinthine laws and accountancy stuff to know what they are legally allowed to challenge in respect of such things as opt-outs and contracts.
The entire area is often far more violated by those with the power to do so, on the knowledge that they won't be challenged (eg blanket determinations of status - supposedly illegal but the norm rather than the exception. Often with handwaving justifications such as "No, we're not doing blanket determinations. We're simply sacking all of our contractors forthwith and only offering them back with all posts deemed inside IR35." Which sounds like blanket determinations to me, but hey - they get away with it).
Firms don't do blanket determinations - what they will do is simply say they won't accept anyone who isn't using an umbrella firm because they won't accept the risk.
The firms doing that have long memories from when the IRS were trying to deal with the same issue in the 1990's and being blunt (were I a large international company) a blanket ban on contractors using PSCs is the sane option (because you can't trust your employees not to screw things up).
Also having looked at that link - it makes another mistake - umbrella's don't steal employer NI money - the issue (as demonstrated in multiple employment tribunals) is that the agency lies about the rate being advertised with people assuming it's a PAYE rate when it really isn't.
The effect on the worker (blanket determinations and the Employer NI issue) is, though, exactly the same. It may well be that legally, it's technically different, but to the worker, what's the difference?
The difference is that agencies are lying and advertising rates that are 30% higher than they actually are....
It all comes down to where the actual problem is and whenever and however you look at the issue 99% of the time all issues come down to agencies doing anything they can to attract workers and earn a few extra quid.
And it's cost Banks at least £750k, which is no bad thing.
The judgement will be very interesting - I was waiting for it to be "over" before looking at it in any detail as the press is full of fluff until you get to the final outcome; and I don't think I'd realised it was focused on two particular statements (or I'd have been more bullish about CC's chances of winning.)
As I said yesterday, I still think we need to revisit what's acceptable in terms of spattering ill-sourced accusations around in the press, however odious the target, and this makes that less rather than more likely, unless the judgement is very nuanced.
I don't understand this stuff, but I thought what was at stake wasn't whether it was true or not - she had already conceded that she couldn't prove it - but whether there was a public interest in her saying it.
I suspect it will be based on the journalistic right to question. If a journalist asks where funding comes from and there is no clear paper trail to prove otherwise it should be (IMO) quite legitimate for them to ask whether it came from hostile state with a particular axe to grind. Whether Banks received money or assistance directly from Russia is only one aspect of this story IMO. Anyone who thinks Russia did not attempt to influence the referendum is a fool. Anyone who thinks they couldn't knows nothing about social media.
And it's cost Banks at least £750k, which is no bad thing.
The judgement will be very interesting - I was waiting for it to be "over" before looking at it in any detail as the press is full of fluff until you get to the final outcome; and I don't think I'd realised it was focused on two particular statements (or I'd have been more bullish about CC's chances of winning.)
As I said yesterday, I still think we need to revisit what's acceptable in terms of spattering ill-sourced accusations around in the press, however odious the target, and this makes that less rather than more likely, unless the judgement is very nuanced.
Oh dear, oh dear! I am sure there a few Brexity people on here looking forward to the repulsive Mr. Banks emerging victorious. I am not sure why I find myself quoting Trump, but WRONG!
"Her lawyer Gavin Millar QC had argued the case was an attempt to silence the journalist’s reporting on “matters of the highest public interest”, namely campaign finance, foreign money and the use of social media messaging and personal data in the context of the EU referendum."
The judge specifically refuted this:
In circumstances where Ms Cadwalladr has no defence of truth, and her defence of public interest has succeeded only in part, it is neither fair nor apt to describe this as a SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) suit.
Integrity latest lol #Breaking Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer is being investigated by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards over potential breaches of rules on earnings and gifts, the parliamentary website shows https://t.co/4qixsYWTtF Morning all
What !!!!!!
I’m thinking Labours struggles in polls is related to Tory’s successful Sir Beer Korma attacks on Labours front bench. Boris popularity dipped a little bit when he partied in lockdown, Labours popularity can be dipping a little bit too for partying in lockdown.
Oh dear, oh dear! I am sure there a few Brexity people on here looking forward to the repulsive Mr. Banks emerging victorious. I am not sure why I find myself quoting Trump, but WRONG!
"Her lawyer Gavin Millar QC had argued the case was an attempt to silence the journalist’s reporting on “matters of the highest public interest”, namely campaign finance, foreign money and the use of social media messaging and personal data in the context of the EU referendum."
Incredibly brave of CC to take this to court, Banks can afford to lose, she cannot.
I find libel law utterly bizarre. Feels like it is a coin toss as to whether you win or not. But if you're rich you can play again, and if you're not - it's game over.
And it's cost Banks at least £750k, which is no bad thing.
The judgement will be very interesting - I was waiting for it to be "over" before looking at it in any detail as the press is full of fluff until you get to the final outcome; and I don't think I'd realised it was focused on two particular statements (or I'd have been more bullish about CC's chances of winning.)
As I said yesterday, I still think we need to revisit what's acceptable in terms of spattering ill-sourced accusations around in the press, however odious the target, and this makes that less rather than more likely, unless the judgement is very nuanced.
I don't understand this stuff, but I thought what was at stake wasn't whether it was true or not - she had already conceded that she couldn't prove it - but whether there was a public interest in her saying it.
I suspect it will be based on the journalistic right to question. If a journalist asks where funding comes from and there is no clear paper trail to prove otherwise it should be (IMO) quite legitimate for them to ask whether it came from hostile state with a particular axe to grind. Whether Banks received money or assistance directly from Russia is only one aspect of this story IMO. Anyone who thinks Russia did not attempt to influence the referendum is a fool. Anyone who thinks they couldn't knows nothing about social media.
IIRC from the legal submissions, Banks was given ample opportunity of right of reply & chose to ignore the specific allegations in favour of trolling Carole on Twitter.
I guess the courts didn’t look too kindly on this behaviour, but we’ll find out when the judgement is published!
Bitcoin might have been a piss poor investment when it was priced at $70,000 but it isn't a pyramid scheme. Some of the fixed interest products attached to cryptocoins - well I can't see how those aren't pyramid schemes mind.
A nephew did very well out of Bitcoin. Bought low on a rising market and sold at or near the top. Bought a house with the proceeds.
It was always possible to trade BitCoin & make money. But every £1 you make has come from someone else buying in. It’s a kind of rolling Ponzi scheme, or a game of hot potato.
And it does it while consuming the electricity supply of a medium-sized country.
Yesterday I had lunch with some junior members of my family. To suggest they are non political would be an understatement. If they know the leaders of the opposition parties I would be surprised. But having recently enjoyed my hospitality in France and the attendant difficulties in getting through airports etc they let fly.
Everything was the fault of 'Brexit'. A surprise to me because had I written this yesterday morning I'd be surprised they'd heard of 'Brexit'!
The point is that it's now clear and obvious that the disaster that is Brexit has spread way beyond political nerds through social media to even the most disinterested. This has to be an opportunity.
If BREXIT=Disaster and the architects of this disaster are the TORY government and the ANTI BREXIT parties are all there in plain sight isn't it about time the lilly livered on the opposition benches started joining the dots and stopped treating it as the calamity that dares not speak it's name?
Not right now.
At the moment, "Brexit Is In Peril" still works to rally enough troops on the right to give the government a second wind. We're starting to see "Obviously, this Brexit isn't going perfectly, but that's because of how it's been done, which is X's fault."
The art is going to be to see if the public mood to drifts a bit more- so that the responses to "Brexit is in peril" shift to the range "Good" to "Oh that's a pity. Has the cricket started yet?" That may never happen, but if it does, it has to come from the people, not the politicians. Johnson wants Starmer and Davey to bang on about the subject, but that would be ineffective and counterproductive.
Basically, don't shoot until you can see the whites of the eyes in the photos in their blue passports.
I agree.
For the time being, on Brexit Labour need to copy Russian tactics at Stalingrad, in a way. The Russians used a tactic they referred to as grabbing the Germans by the belt buckle - what that meant was the Russians got so close to the Germans they didn't have any space to manoeuvre, blunting the German artillery because they wouldn't risk shelling their own men (the Russians suffered no such qualms).
Labour need to grab the Tory belt buckle on Brexit, to not be afraid of it. They need to hammer simple slogans, endlessly, stuff like 'Failing Tory Brexit', 'A Better Brexit', that's as far as they can go right now.
When challenged, like Yvette Cooper was last week, about if we would be better off in the Single Market, they need to be honest and open. Starmer should say something like 'I can't deny that I campaigned for Remain. And I wanted to give the British people a second referendum so they could vote on concrete proposals, not a vague aspiration. The British people voted to Leave, and we've left. I respect choice the British people made. What we need now is a better Brexit, because thanks to Johnson this one isn't working.'
Make it clear that there's no reversing Brexit. It's done. It just needs to be made to work better, to deliver something approaching what it promised.
I think voters would respect that approach, even if they still support Brexit they would appreciate the honesty, rather than Labour floundering and trying to ignore the issue and being seen to be mealy-mouthed.
And ram home the idea that we can't just reverse Brexit on a whim. It's not under threat. We've left, we can't just saunter back in, a Labour government can't do a screeching U-turn. To ally fears in the Red Wall they are obviously sensitive to.
And asked if they would explore going back into the Single Market if they form a government they just need to hammer home something like 'We won't reverse Brexit but being in the Single Market isn't being in the EU. Brexit is failing, we need to make it work and we will do that.'
Labour need to be on the front foot on this, and make this Brexit that very few people are happy with squarely the fault of Johnson and his government. And blunt any attacks from them and the Mail etc that they will reverse Brexit - we can't just reverse ferret and go back to the EU saying 'sorry guys, bit of an error - whoops - but we're back now'. Cos it doesn't work like that.
They need simple slogans about how this Brexit failing, it's the government's fault, and how Labour will make it work and bludgeon them into the electorate's brain until the next election.
This approach won't make the hearts of the 48% (and most Labour voters) sing with joy (it certainty doesn't for me) but they need to be pragmatic and realistic and weaken the 'Brexit is in Peril' line.
And we can hope that, gradually, over the long-term, a return to the full-fat EU becomes something the electorate want. But that day might not come.
Bitcoin might have been a piss poor investment when it was priced at $70,000 but it isn't a pyramid scheme. Some of the fixed interest products attached to cryptocoins - well I can't see how those aren't pyramid schemes mind.
A nephew did very well out of Bitcoin. Bought low on a rising market and sold at or near the top. Bought a house with the proceeds.
It was always possible to trade BitCoin & make money. But every £1 you make has come from someone else buying in. It’s a kind of rolling Ponzi scheme, or a game of hot potato.
In a traditional Ponzi scheme ever £1 you make has to come from someone else buying in.
Bitcoin is worse than that. Bitcoin is so expensive to operate that its essentially like for every £1 you make £1.05 has to come from someone else buying in.
Given enough publicity, there's plenty of people in the world who were willing to be the next to buy in. But eventually it always comes to an end.
Giving Ukraine sufficent weapons to resist Putinism but not enough to defeat it- apart from being a moral crisis- is a disaster, in that it keeps Russia in the game at a time when it is making threats against the entire world, even threatening to take over Stonehenge.
A sober analysis of the military situation here...
Basically, the Russians have stopped kidding themselves they can do US style high energy maneuvering warfare and have resorted to something they are actually good at - indiscriminate slaughter and destruction through rolling artillery barrages.
The Ukrainians are in 'hoping and coping' mode taking heavy casualties in the probably misplaced hope that Biden will save them with massive shipments of Wunderwaffen.
Donetsk/Lugansk oblasts and denying the Black Sea all the way to the Romanian border appears to be the extent of the Russian ambitions at the moment.
That hardly negates @Cicero 's argument. If we're going to send Ukraine weapons, we should send suffiecnet to defeat the invasion. It's not complicated.
Stop Putin now, and there is sufficient time to replace what's sent.
The strategy seems to be to provide enough weapons to Ukraine to make things difficult for Putin and to hold Russia back. Not for Ukraine to actually win the war. The strategic aim is possibly to force Russia to agree to a ceasefire and to deter similar invasions in the future.
That's deluded, particularly since it has already been proven not to work. The only real deterrence is completely to defeat the invasion.
Anything else is just a pause, which also concedes more territory to Russia in the meantime.
It is easy enough for people to say 'just ship whatever is needed to Ukraine', but it is high stakes stuff - basically the west declaring war on Russia.
And it's cost Banks at least £750k, which is no bad thing.
The judgement will be very interesting - I was waiting for it to be "over" before looking at it in any detail as the press is full of fluff until you get to the final outcome; and I don't think I'd realised it was focused on two particular statements (or I'd have been more bullish about CC's chances of winning.)
As I said yesterday, I still think we need to revisit what's acceptable in terms of spattering ill-sourced accusations around in the press, however odious the target, and this makes that less rather than more likely, unless the judgement is very nuanced.
I don't understand this stuff, but I thought what was at stake wasn't whether it was true or not - she had already conceded that she couldn't prove it - but whether there was a public interest in her saying it.
I suspect it will be based on the journalistic right to question. If a journalist asks where funding comes from and there is no clear paper trail to prove otherwise it should be (IMO) quite legitimate for them to ask whether it came from hostile state with a particular axe to grind. Whether Banks received money or assistance directly from Russia is only one aspect of this story IMO. Anyone who thinks Russia did not attempt to influence the referendum is a fool. Anyone who thinks they couldn't knows nothing about social media.
IIRC from the legal submissions, Banks was given ample opportunity of right of reply & chose to ignore the specific allegations in favour of trolling Carole on Twitter.
I guess the courts didn’t look too kindly on this behaviour, but we’ll find out when the judgement is published!
I'm grimly enjoying the reports of "shock" contraction of the economy. Not the contraction but the idea that it's a shock. What did people expect? Prices up, taxes up, disposable income squeezed to breaking point and we are a consumer economy. This is the result of terrible government policy on energy, taxation and investment for 20+ years finally coming home to roost.
And it's cost Banks at least £750k, which is no bad thing.
The judgement will be very interesting - I was waiting for it to be "over" before looking at it in any detail as the press is full of fluff until you get to the final outcome; and I don't think I'd realised it was focused on two particular statements (or I'd have been more bullish about CC's chances of winning.)
As I said yesterday, I still think we need to revisit what's acceptable in terms of spattering ill-sourced accusations around in the press, however odious the target, and this makes that less rather than more likely, unless the judgement is very nuanced.
I don't understand this stuff, but I thought what was at stake wasn't whether it was true or not - she had already conceded that she couldn't prove it - but whether there was a public interest in her saying it.
I suspect it will be based on the journalistic right to question. If a journalist asks where funding comes from and there is no clear paper trail to prove otherwise it should be (IMO) quite legitimate for them to ask whether it came from hostile state with a particular axe to grind. Whether Banks received money or assistance directly from Russia is only one aspect of this story IMO. Anyone who thinks Russia did not attempt to influence the referendum is a fool. Anyone who thinks they couldn't knows nothing about social media.
IIRC from the legal submissions, Banks was given ample opportunity of right of reply & chose to ignore the specific allegations in favour of trolling Carole on Twitter.
I guess the courts didn’t look too kindly on this behaviour, but we’ll find out when the judgement is published!
416. For the reasons I have given, I conclude: i) The claimant has proved that the publication of the TED Talk has caused and/or is likely to cause serious harm to his reputation. The TED Talk is defamatory of Mr Banks for the purposes of s.1 of the 2013 Act. ii) The claimant has failed to prove that publication of the Tweet caused or is likely to cause serious harm to his reputation. The claim in respect of the Tweet is therefore dismissed on the ground that the Tweet is not defamatory for the purposes of s.1 of the 2013 Act. iii) The defendant has established a public interest defence in relation to the publication of the TED Talk pursuant to s.4 of the 2013 Act. iv) There was a significant change of circumstances once both the NCA’s statement and the Joint Statement had been published on 29 April 2020, such that the public interest defence in s.4 of the 2013 Act ceased to apply. v) The claimant has failed to prove that the publication of the TED Talk from 29 April 2020 caused and/or is likely to cause serious harm to his reputation. In respect of that period, the TED Talk is not defamatory for the purposes of s.1 of the 2013 Act. vi) Accordingly, the claim is dismissed.
Oh dear, oh dear! I am sure there a few Brexity people on here looking forward to the repulsive Mr. Banks emerging victorious. I am not sure why I find myself quoting Trump, but WRONG!
"Her lawyer Gavin Millar QC had argued the case was an attempt to silence the journalist’s reporting on “matters of the highest public interest”, namely campaign finance, foreign money and the use of social media messaging and personal data in the context of the EU referendum."
The judge specifically refuted this:
In circumstances where Ms Cadwalladr has no defence of truth, and her defence of public interest has succeeded only in part, it is neither fair nor apt to describe this as a SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) suit.
Comments
I am not particularly fired up about anything (perhaps farmed salmon, which I always avoid but that's pretty first world problem-ish). But if I was I wouldn't literally go out of my way to support the perpetrators of whatever it was I was fired up against.
A lot of effort has gone in to maintaining a price of 1 BTC=30k USD
Can only fight gravity for so long.
Just as the sole responsibility for the Russia/Ukraine war lies entirely with Putin's Russia and not with Ukraine, or NATO or any other scapegoats.
Watches these days are some mix of
- Fitness monitors (heart rate etc)
- Jewellery
- Increasingly, a payment device.
The time telling bit is an afterthought.
That's all it ever was. A negative equity pyramid scheme. The sooner it dies, the better, a pity for all the mugs who get caught out from the scam.
(e.g. this: https://www.tenaka.net/ir35
(NB: not me))
That the cost to the end-user involves VAT being paid on one side but not on the other. I'm vaguely aware that VAT is enormously complex and involves obligations being passed down through a chain and reclaimed (as well as the HMRC specific clawback thingies where you can elect to pay a defined and reduced amount of VAT but not claim back VAT payments already made, but you do have to negotiate a list of professions and alight on one that they'll agree with).
The Employers NI issue is a total bastard, and a number of brolly companies have violated it in the past. A lot of the time, the end contractor (who will now not have an accountant) will not be sufficiently au fait with the labyrinthine laws and accountancy stuff to know what they are legally allowed to challenge in respect of such things as opt-outs and contracts.
The entire area is often far more violated by those with the power to do so, on the knowledge that they won't be challenged (eg blanket determinations of status - supposedly illegal but the norm rather than the exception. Often with handwaving justifications such as "No, we're not doing blanket determinations. We're simply sacking all of our contractors forthwith and only offering them back with all posts deemed inside IR35." Which sounds like blanket determinations to me, but hey - they get away with it).
https://www.thenationalnews.com/uae/government/2022/06/09/uae-midday-break-for-workers-to-begin-next-week/
It will get up to about 48ºC in August, but rarely goes over 50ºC. I always use the airport information service for accurate weather. Pilots can and do wait for temperatures to fall in the summer, as hot days make runways seem shorter to planes because of the reduced air density.
Why is anyone talking about the General Belgrano? The anniversary was last month. Morning all.
Corbyn was not an MP in 1982. He was an obscure member of Harringay Council. AFAICS he was asserting that the Falklands War was a Tory plot.
In Dubai, the money pyramid links directly back to the literal *owners* of the country. Who have enshrined in law their attitudes towards women and foreign workers.
I'm happy that love can transcend the political divide, at least sometimes.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jun/13/arron-banks-loses-libel-action-against-reporter-carole-cadwalladr-guardian-defamation-brexit-russia
But if Root reaches 243, runs out of partners (or Stokes declares), NZ set a target, and England fail to reach it, then Root will beat Ricky Ponting's 242 in a losing test.
https://www.thenationalnews.com/uae/2022/06/09/some-bosses-still-trying-to-prevent-employees-from-switching-companies-uae-judge-says/
The verdict will make for interesting reading.
Where militant right wing nationalists have taken over the centre of the capital. They object to the proposed peace with Azerbaijan. Seems like quite a relaxed Revolution tho
Otherwise Yerevan comes across as pleasant but boring. I shall repair to a cafe for cold Armenian wine
ուրախություն!
If we're going to send Ukraine weapons, we should send suffiecnet to defeat the invasion. It's not complicated.
Stop Putin now, and there is sufficient time to replace what's sent.
The tears will be delicious.
Many pyramid schemes can keep going for a while, so long as there's enough fools ready to part with their money. They all eventually end the same way though, because if nothing there at the end of the day you run out of fools.
Bitcoin is worse than a pyramid scheme, it has less than nothing behind it.
The firms doing that have long memories from when the IRS were trying to deal with the same issue in the 1990's and being blunt (were I a large international company) a blanket ban on contractors using PSCs is the sane option (because you can't trust your employees not to screw things up).
Also having looked at that link - it makes another mistake - umbrella's don't steal employer NI money - the issue (as demonstrated in multiple employment tribunals) is that the agency lies about the rate being advertised with people assuming it's a PAYE rate when it really isn't.
Final French results.
NUPES (Melenchon) 26.1
Ensemble (Macron) 25.8
RN (Le Pen) 18.7
LR-UDI (Mainstream Right) 11.3
Still projecting 255-295 for Macron and a majority. Not sure how that works as you need 289.
Melenchon assured of second place after Second Round. Seems like Melenchon's uniting of the Left has worked. But nowhere close to making him PM.
It kept rubbish time - a friendly jeweller opened it up and discovered that (a) it was rip off of a Swiss "big name" movement from the 50s (b) it was actually very well made, with lots of real jewelled bearings etc and (c) it had never been regulated. Just put together and sold.
After adjustment, it ran very well, apparently.
So it seems the answer has to be yes, a holiday in Scotland is an endorsement of salmon farming practices.
(I should add that I don't really care about salmon farming either way, I'm only following it as an example raised that some people do care about. It feels a little silly to be talking about it alongside human rights, but I'm keen to get to the bottom of what people think about what a holiday tacitly endorses)
I'll put my cards on the table. I think this kind of analysis (you claim to be in favour of women's rights but you went to an institutionally misogynistic country) is not wholly without merit but largely misses the mark because it implies a holiday is some special category of consumption when it really doesn't seem that way to me.
If I holiday in the UK, am I endorsing Brexit? What about if I go to Brighton, that was quite remainy, am I then untainted? If I visit Windsor Castle, am I endorsing anti-Catholic prejudice? Is @Leon a homophobe for visiting Turkey?
You can drive yourself quite mad trying to find the one silver of land where all your view are perfectly represented and building your sandcastle masterpiece there, but I don't think most people are on the hook for their holidays in most cases. This feels more like a "gotcha" criticism which could too easily backfire on the person issuing the criticsim.
The judgement will be very interesting - I was waiting for it to be "over" before looking at it in any detail as the press is full of fluff until you get to the final outcome; and I don't think I'd realised it was focused on two particular statements (or I'd have been more bullish about CC's chances of winning.)
As I said yesterday, I still think we need to revisit what's acceptable in terms of spattering ill-sourced accusations around in the press, however odious the target, and this makes that less rather than more likely, unless the judgement is very nuanced.
Ensemble 203
NUPES 194
RN 110
LR-UDI 42
https://www.lemonde.fr/resultats-elections/#google
Could see Melenchon vs Le Pen up next maybe.
The only real deterrence is completely to defeat the invasion.
Anything else is just a pause, which also concedes more territory to Russia in the meantime.
"Her lawyer Gavin Millar QC had argued the case was an attempt to silence the journalist’s reporting on “matters of the highest public interest”, namely campaign finance, foreign money and the use of social media messaging and personal data in the context of the EU referendum."
Pyramid schemes rely upon fools chasing other fools with nothing of substance behind the pyramid scheme.
Bitcoin relies upon fools chasing other fools with less than nothing behind it.
The electricity required to maintain Bitcoin now is more than many countries. The cost of maintaining the Bitcoin 'ecosystem' is vast and growing every year, and that cost has to be paid by someone. That is why it is worse than a pyramid scheme.
Fiat currencies have something of substance behind them. Bitcoin does not, worse it has large costs and nothing behind it.
The technology behind Bitcoin may have some useful cases, but Bitcoin itself? It is nothing other than a scam.
#Breaking Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer is being investigated by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards over potential breaches of rules on earnings and gifts, the parliamentary website shows https://t.co/4qixsYWTtF
Morning all
People are now unable to withdraw funds from Celsius. People should have taken heed when Terra Luna got hammered a couple of weeks ago.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2022/06/13/major-crypto-lender-celsius-suspends-withdrawals-bitcoin-drops-below-25000/
https://order-order.com/2022/06/13/judge-rules-cadwalladr-claims-of-russian-backing-for-banks-were-defamatory-awards-no-damages/
JUDGE RULES CADWALLADR CLAIMS OF RUSSIAN BACKING FOR BANKS WERE DEFAMATORY, AWARDS NO DAMAGES
What judge has said so far it doesn’t sound like it will be nuanced.
Both allegations now ruled in public interest relate to how close Banks was to Russia - is that all Russia or means the out to cause trouble for UK dirty tricks Putin Kremlin bit of Russia? Because if you think back to Russia report report suppression by Boris, there were many in Intelligence community who wanted truth out there not suppressed at the time the journalist put out there what she did, so I reckon she got SECRET help and information from “truth out there” leaning spooks.
@andrew_lilico
·
10m
Suffice it to say that the @Telegraph
columnists are not fans of the current administration. Next up: Roger Bootle - "This Government is unable or unwilling to stop the slide towards a 1970s disaster"
https://twitter.com/andrew_lilico
It all comes down to where the actual problem is and whenever and however you look at the issue 99% of the time all issues come down to agencies doing anything they can to attract workers and earn a few extra quid.
HTTPS://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/banks-v-cadwalladr
In circumstances where Ms Cadwalladr has no defence of truth, and her defence of public interest has succeeded only in part, it is neither fair nor apt to describe this as a SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) suit.
https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Banks-v-Cadwalladr-130622-Judgment.pdf
I find libel law utterly bizarre. Feels like it is a coin toss as to whether you win or not.
But if you're rich you can play again, and if you're not - it's game over.
I guess the courts didn’t look too kindly on this behaviour, but we’ll find out when the judgement is published!
For the time being, on Brexit Labour need to copy Russian tactics at Stalingrad, in a way. The Russians used a tactic they referred to as grabbing the Germans by the belt buckle - what that meant was the Russians got so close to the Germans they didn't have any space to manoeuvre, blunting the German artillery because they wouldn't risk shelling their own men (the Russians suffered no such qualms).
Labour need to grab the Tory belt buckle on Brexit, to not be afraid of it. They need to hammer simple slogans, endlessly, stuff like 'Failing Tory Brexit', 'A Better Brexit', that's as far as they can go right now.
When challenged, like Yvette Cooper was last week, about if we would be better off in the Single Market, they need to be honest and open. Starmer should say something like 'I can't deny that I campaigned for Remain. And I wanted to give the British people a second referendum so they could vote on concrete proposals, not a vague aspiration. The British people voted to Leave, and we've left. I respect choice the British people made. What we need now is a better Brexit, because thanks to Johnson this one isn't working.'
Make it clear that there's no reversing Brexit. It's done. It just needs to be made to work better, to deliver something approaching what it promised.
I think voters would respect that approach, even if they still support Brexit they would appreciate the honesty, rather than Labour floundering and trying to ignore the issue and being seen to be mealy-mouthed.
And ram home the idea that we can't just reverse Brexit on a whim. It's not under threat. We've left, we can't just saunter back in, a Labour government can't do a screeching U-turn. To ally fears in the Red Wall they are obviously sensitive to.
And asked if they would explore going back into the Single Market if they form a government they just need to hammer home something like 'We won't reverse Brexit but being in the Single Market isn't being in the EU. Brexit is failing, we need to make it work and we will do that.'
Labour need to be on the front foot on this, and make this Brexit that very few people are happy with squarely the fault of Johnson and his government. And blunt any attacks from them and the Mail etc that they will reverse Brexit - we can't just reverse ferret and go back to the EU saying 'sorry guys, bit of an error - whoops - but we're back now'. Cos it doesn't work like that.
They need simple slogans about how this Brexit failing, it's the government's fault, and how Labour will make it work and bludgeon them into the electorate's brain until the next election.
This approach won't make the hearts of the 48% (and most Labour voters) sing with joy (it certainty doesn't for me) but they need to be pragmatic and realistic and weaken the 'Brexit is in Peril' line.
And we can hope that, gradually, over the long-term, a return to the full-fat EU becomes something the electorate want. But that day might not come.
Bitcoin is worse than that. Bitcoin is so expensive to operate that its essentially like for every £1 you make £1.05 has to come from someone else buying in.
Given enough publicity, there's plenty of people in the world who were willing to be the next to buy in. But eventually it always comes to an end.
They both lost, but him more than her.
i) The claimant has proved that the publication of the TED Talk has caused and/or
is likely to cause serious harm to his reputation. The TED Talk is defamatory of
Mr Banks for the purposes of s.1 of the 2013 Act.
ii) The claimant has failed to prove that publication of the Tweet caused or is likely
to cause serious harm to his reputation. The claim in respect of the Tweet is
therefore dismissed on the ground that the Tweet is not defamatory for the
purposes of s.1 of the 2013 Act.
iii) The defendant has established a public interest defence in relation to the
publication of the TED Talk pursuant to s.4 of the 2013 Act.
iv) There was a significant change of circumstances once both the NCA’s statement
and the Joint Statement had been published on 29 April 2020, such that the
public interest defence in s.4 of the 2013 Act ceased to apply.
v) The claimant has failed to prove that the publication of the TED Talk from 29
April 2020 caused and/or is likely to cause serious harm to his reputation. In
respect of that period, the TED Talk is not defamatory for the purposes of s.1 of
the 2013 Act.
vi) Accordingly, the claim is dismissed.