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!
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.
The Judge accepted that, for the most part, Mr Banks’s evidence was truthful, and in particular his evidence on the issue of serious harm was open, honest and entailed no exaggeration [27]. But there were aspects of his evidence in relation to the public interest defence that the Judge found to be evasive and lacking in candour [28].
Ms Cadwalladr evidently found the process of being cross-examined very stressful [30]-[31]. Although she made errors in her statement ([35]-[43]), and in her oral evidence [44], and over the course of her evidence became more evasive, the Judge found that the evidence Ms Cadwalladr gave was truthful [32]-[33].
I think it's generous to say Carole made "errors" in her statement:
Poor old SKS, forever falling over his massive integrity. 2 investigations. Possible serial offender. Tsk tsk. Putiing the urine back in taking the piss.
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.
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.
Overall conclusions 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.
In reaching this conclusion, the Court found that the Defendant had intended to convey a less serious, but still defamatory, meaning than the single meaning [376]. Applying the ‘Bonnick principle’ [121-123], the Court found the Defendant did not appreciate that her words could carry the single meaning [380], and it was not so obvious that it was unreasonable for her to have failed to appreciate it. The public interest defence fell to be assessed having regard to her intended meaning [382].
Sounds like they think Carole is a complete ****ing moron, so let her win.
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!
"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."
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.
To clarify the leader of the opposition is under a criminal investigation by Durham Police and is now under investigation by the Commons sleaze commissioner
By his own words you would have to ask why hasn't he resigned ?
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.
By the way, do you use Facebook a lot? I just wonder whether I should be more sympathetic to your volte face (just when many people were switching in the other direction), as to whether you are one of the poor gullible folk who were victims of Cambridge Analytica?
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.
It's a shock to those who have only been paying attention to the boosterite guff coming from government. They'd have been better off telling folk the position is dire from the start. Worked for Thatcher and Cameron. People aren't daft
Arron Banks @Arron_banks The judge felt sorry for Carole is how I would sum it up. Defamatory but no serious harm. I suppose falsely accusing someone of taking Russian money for Brexit doesn’t cut the ice. It’s likely I will appeal ..
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.
By the way, do you use Facebook a lot? I just wonder whether I should be more sympathetic to your volte face (just when many people were switching in the other direction), as to whether you are one of the poor gullible folk who were victims of Cambridge Analytica?
Your constant repetition of this point just makes you sound like you've been completely taken in by whichever social media sales pitch you've been given.
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.
I'm not close to my nephew.... great-nephew actually ....., so wasn't in a position to comment. But if I had been, I'd have advised against, on all the grounds above. What is 'interesting' is that he was advised to invest by colleagues working for a major national bank, where he'd not long started work.
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.
They didn't really party during lockdown, to be fair. Starmer had a beer with his lunch ; Johnson and associated staff had about twenty parties, "winetime fridays", and vomit up the walls.
Arron Banks @Arron_banks The judge felt sorry for Carole is how I would sum it up. Defamatory but no serious harm. I suppose falsely accusing someone of taking Russian money for Brexit doesn’t cut the ice. It’s likely I will appeal ..
Hahahaha, go on Arron, waste more of your money, you fucking mug
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.
Since Bitcoin has come back from the dead far more times than Jesus, I'd give it a few more years before declaring the party over.
The psychology of people like you really fascinates me. You're one of the most hardcore libertarians on this site, yet you don't see the value in private money that is permissionless, decentralised and censorship resistant.
You can argue that its true value is far less than its current value, but you seem to delight in every dip in the market and take every possible opportunity to crow that it's "dead" (hint: it's not).
What is it about bitcoin that makes you so angry?
Do you get angry about people paying $1800 for a bar of gold? Or 10k for a Rolex watch?
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.
To clarify the leader of the opposition is under a criminal investigation by Durham Police and is now under investigation by the Commons sleaze commissioner
By his own words you would have to ask why hasn't he resigned ?
Under investigation twice by the sleaze commissioner. In the interests of accuracy and integrity its worth pointing that out. Its what he would want.
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.
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.
It's a shock to those who have only been paying attention to the boosterite guff coming from government. They'd have been better off telling folk the position is dire from the start. Worked for Thatcher and Cameron. People aren't daft
It’s only the fact we stopped doing the testing programme that unluckily tipped us into the red.
There’s only two news stories today, government tidying up of the EUs Brexit mess and Sir Beer Korma under investigation for more criminality and greed. The fact governments policy dealing with illegal migration has been damaged by left winger is tomorrows news story. Nothing else to see here, move along now.
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.
I was shocked it was so small.
Well it's not that small, annualised contraction rate of 3.6%, what I'm still bemused by is any shock over it, the government put taxes up in April on working age people and it's now bitching that the economy has gone into reverse. I mean what the fuck did they expect?
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.
The movements are very crude and simple so just about any watchmaker can service them however the cases are very poorly sealed so if it hasn't ran for years then it probably never will.
If it's a Shturmanskiy then it's fabulously desirable as they were quite rare and were issued to the Cosmonauts. If it's a Raketa, Polyot, Pobeda, etc. then buy another working one off eBay for parts. The watch policy seemed a bit random in the USSR. I suspect, as with so much else, what watch you got was down to who you knew.
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.
That the lawsuit was an illegitimate attempt to silence Cadwalladr.
Even judges are unable to get into the heads of litigants and easily guess motive. It is unlikely that this could be proved even if it were true. The reality is that Banks lost.
Separately, journalists need to be able to question the source of potential dirty money if the state is unwilling to do so. Banks's sources may well be perfectly legitimate, but as I said on another post, the much bigger story is that Russia was certainly intent on influencing British political life. Believing that they did not influence 2016 is only believed by the supremely gullible, whom, of course, they certainly targeted.
In reaching this conclusion, the Court found that the Defendant had intended to convey a less serious, but still defamatory, meaning than the single meaning [376]. Applying the ‘Bonnick principle’ [121-123], the Court found the Defendant did not appreciate that her words could carry the single meaning [380], and it was not so obvious that it was unreasonable for her to have failed to appreciate it. The public interest defence fell to be assessed having regard to her intended meaning [382].
Sounds like they think Carole is a complete ****ing moron, so let her win.
Not really, there's reams of evidence in there, drafts for the talk that was given that show the intentions behind the words that ended up in the final talk. You can read the whole thing yourself if you want to take an informed view.
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!
From a quick skim, that sounds like the judge being quite royally peeved off that these two chancers spent so much effort wasting his time, rather than settling their disputes privately.
Not too unlike like the footballers’ wives from the other week.
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.
I was shocked it was so small.
Well it's not that small, annualised contraction rate of 3.6%, what I'm still bemused by is any shock over it, the government put taxes up in April on working age people and it's now bitching that the economy has gone into reverse. I mean what the fuck did they expect?
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.
I was shocked it was so small.
Well it's not that small, annualised contraction rate of 3.6%, what I'm still bemused by is any shock over it, the government put taxes up in April on working age people and it's now bitching that the economy has gone into reverse. I mean what the fuck did they expect?
Stopping the Covid industry must have had a big impact, any testing centre I went to employed between 10-20 people, mulitiply that up nationwide and thats a lot of people.
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.
In quite a few cases, you get told by the intermediary company (it usually goes: end-client, major intermediary, umbrella, worker) that they only use company X. Company X does this. You comply or you don't get considered for the job. And, as before, many of the workers aren't aware that this is something illegal. Even if they were, they could consider suing - but then they're totally out of contention for the work and it will go around the network.
And it doesn't cover the blanket determination thing. If you are told, "Oh, HMRC have taken into account the issue that end-clients may say 'Nope, everyone working here is inside IR35' and written legislation to prevent this. Which entails them ending up saying, 'Nope, everyone working here is inside IR35'," then from the worker's point of view, it's the same thing.
So why bother with that legislation in the first place? (Again, it's not as if the workers would end up litigating - only if they were on the point of retiring, anyway, and doing it in retrospect).
As you say, the only sane outcome for the end-client is to abandon small PSCs and only use the big companies (most umbrella workers end up coming in via one of the big companies, who use them to minimise their own obligations, anyway). As that was obvious from the start, it's understandable that the workers in question view it as the obvious outcome of the legislation all along.
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.
By the way, do you use Facebook a lot? I just wonder whether I should be more sympathetic to your volte face (just when many people were switching in the other direction), as to whether you are one of the poor gullible folk who were victims of Cambridge Analytica?
Your constant repetition of this point just makes you sound like you've been completely taken in by whichever social media sales pitch you've been given.
Good attempt, but I am not the one who appears (assuming you are the same person) to have turned from one quite extreme position to another.
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.
I was shocked it was so small.
Well it's not that small, annualised contraction rate of 3.6%, what I'm still bemused by is any shock over it, the government put taxes up in April on working age people and it's now bitching that the economy has gone into reverse. I mean what the fuck did they expect?
A lot of institutions are proving to be too slow to respond to events.
I think this winter is going to be dire if as seems likely the war in Ukraine is still going and Russia decides it is now time to turn off the gas. I see little evidence that Europe is prepared for this.
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.
It's a shock to those who have only been paying attention to the boosterite guff coming from government. They'd have been better off telling folk the position is dire from the start. Worked for Thatcher and Cameron. People aren't daft
I think it's also one in the eye for people who think putting up taxes on working people can be done consequence free. That has never been the case and once again it's working people who are bearing the brunt of this while old people are being protected. Time to put taxes up for £50k+ pensioners, clawback the state pension for higher rate pensioners and make NI payable on all forms of income, earned or unearned and shovel the money towards working people and dump the NI rise and axe the corporation tax rises.
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.
Since Bitcoin has come back from the dead far more times than Jesus, I'd give it a few more years before declaring the party over.
The psychology of people like you really fascinates me. You're one of the most hardcore libertarians on this site, yet you don't see the value in private money that is permissionless, decentralised and censorship resistant.
You can argue that its true value is far less than its current value, but you seem to delight in every dip in the market and take every possible opportunity to crow that it's "dead" (hint: it's not).
What is it about bitcoin that makes you so angry?
Do you get angry about people paying $1800 for a bar of gold? Or 10k for a Rolex watch?
Bitcoin is terrible for privacy. Look up some of the cases of people who have been prosecuted using the evidence of their Bitcoin transactions.
I sometimes wonder if it wasn't invented by a bunch of NSA guys as a plant.
At the end of the day, it's all down to political cowardice from Governments of all stripes. Employers NI is a pernicious stealth tax on work, and continuing to pursue it causes all sorts of unfair and unpleasant anomalies, many of which are directly damaging to economic activity.
The effective incidence is, and always has been, on the workers.
But to transfer its explicit incidence to income tax (which would be the economically least damaging outcome) would be to decloak it and make it obvious, and that would be unpopular. So we're stuck with it getting worse and worse.
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!
From a quick skim, that sounds like the judge being quite royally peeved off that these two chancers spent so much effort wasting his time, rather than settling their disputes privately.
Not too unlike like the footballers’ wives from the other week.
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.
By the way, do you use Facebook a lot? I just wonder whether I should be more sympathetic to your volte face (just when many people were switching in the other direction), as to whether you are one of the poor gullible folk who were victims of Cambridge Analytica?
Your constant repetition of this point just makes you sound like you've been completely taken in by whichever social media sales pitch you've been given.
Good attempt, but I am not the one who appears (assuming you are the same person) to have turned from one quite extreme position to another.
You were extremely against overturning the status quo and now you're extremely in favour of it.
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.
It's a shock to those who have only been paying attention to the boosterite guff coming from government. They'd have been better off telling folk the position is dire from the start. Worked for Thatcher and Cameron. People aren't daft
It’s only the fact we stopped doing the testing programme that unluckily tipped us into the red.
There’s only two news stories today, government tidying up of the EUs Brexit mess and Sir Beer Korma under investigation for more criminality and greed. The fact governments policy dealing with illegal migration has been damaged by left winger is tomorrows news story. Nothing else to see here, move along now.
Construction, production and services all down. It isn't sector based. That's not good news whichever way you slice it. We'll be in recession heading into winter. With more huge energy hikes to come.
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.
In quite a few cases, you get told by the intermediary company (it usually goes: end-client, major intermediary, umbrella, worker) that they only use company X. Company X does this. You comply or you don't get considered for the job. And, as before, many of the workers aren't aware that this is something illegal. Even if they were, they could consider suing - but then they're totally out of contention for the work and it will go around the network.
And it doesn't cover the blanket determination thing. If you are told, "Oh, HMRC have taken into account the issue that end-clients may say 'Nope, everyone working here is inside IR35' and written legislation to prevent this. Which entails them ending up saying, 'Nope, everyone working here is inside IR35'," then from the worker's point of view, it's the same thing.
So why bother with that legislation in the first place? (Again, it's not as if the workers would end up litigating - only if they were on the point of retiring, anyway, and doing it in retrospect).
As you say, the only sane outcome for the end-client is to abandon small PSCs and only use the big companies (most umbrella workers end up coming in via one of the big companies, who use them to minimise their own obligations, anyway). As that was obvious from the start, it's understandable that the workers in question view it as the obvious outcome of the legislation all along.
Can you tell me exactly what is illegal? Because unless I've missed something (and believe me I know I haven't) the thing you are claiming is illegal is actually 100% legal...
And the actual viewpoint isn't that everyone is inside IR35 - the point is that end clients can't accept risk because
1) they don't trust HMRC (for good reason) and 2)can't trust their employees (for equally good reasons) to not do something stupid that results in HMRC coming sniffing.
so the same option is to insist that everyone who they "employee" no matter how remote the employment relationship is are being paid as employees.
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.
In quite a few cases, you get told by the intermediary company (it usually goes: end-client, major intermediary, umbrella, worker) that they only use company X. Company X does this. You comply or you don't get considered for the job. And, as before, many of the workers aren't aware that this is something illegal. Even if they were, they could consider suing - but then they're totally out of contention for the work and it will go around the network.
And it doesn't cover the blanket determination thing. If you are told, "Oh, HMRC have taken into account the issue that end-clients may say 'Nope, everyone working here is inside IR35' and written legislation to prevent this. Which entails them ending up saying, 'Nope, everyone working here is inside IR35'," then from the worker's point of view, it's the same thing.
So why bother with that legislation in the first place? (Again, it's not as if the workers would end up litigating - only if they were on the point of retiring, anyway, and doing it in retrospect).
As you say, the only sane outcome for the end-client is to abandon small PSCs and only use the big companies (most umbrella workers end up coming in via one of the big companies, who use them to minimise their own obligations, anyway). As that was obvious from the start, it's understandable that the workers in question view it as the obvious outcome of the legislation all along.
Can you tell me exactly what is illegal? Because unless I've missed something (and believe me I know I haven't) the thing you are claiming is illegal is actually 100% legal...
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.
The movements are very crude and simple so just about any watchmaker can service them however the cases are very poorly sealed so if it hasn't ran for years then it probably never will.
If it's a Shturmanskiy then it's fabulously desirable as they were quite rare and were issued to the Cosmonauts. If it's a Raketa, Polyot, Pobeda, etc. then buy another working one off eBay for parts. The watch policy seemed a bit random in the USSR. I suspect, as with so much else, what watch you got was down to who you knew.
Thanks for that. I’ll dig it out tonight and see what it is. I know it works, as someone in Ukraine got it going a few years ago. Needed some sort of external winder mechanism from memory, so after a few days of not wearing it, it stopped.
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.
Since Bitcoin has come back from the dead far more times than Jesus, I'd give it a few more years before declaring the party over.
The psychology of people like you really fascinates me. You're one of the most hardcore libertarians on this site, yet you don't see the value in private money that is permissionless, decentralised and censorship resistant.
You can argue that its true value is far less than its current value, but you seem to delight in every dip in the market and take every possible opportunity to crow that it's "dead" (hint: it's not).
What is it about bitcoin that makes you so angry?
Do you get angry about people paying $1800 for a bar of gold? Or 10k for a Rolex watch?
Bitcoin is terrible for privacy. Look up some of the cases of people who have been prosecuted using the evidence of their Bitcoin transactions.
I sometimes wonder if it wasn't invented by a bunch of NSA guys as a plant.
I didn't say it was private - in fact the whole point of it is that it isn't, it's a ledger that anyone can view. "Don't trust, verify" etc.
If you want privacy, Monero is the only game in town.
Edit - just realised you misinterpreted my meaning. Private, as in, privately issued, issued not by the state. Not private in the sense of "people can't see your transactions".
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.
It's a shock to those who have only been paying attention to the boosterite guff coming from government. They'd have been better off telling folk the position is dire from the start. Worked for Thatcher and Cameron. People aren't daft
It’s only the fact we stopped doing the testing programme that unluckily tipped us into the red.
There’s only two news stories today, government tidying up of the EUs Brexit mess and Sir Beer Korma under investigation for more criminality and greed. The fact governments policy dealing with illegal migration has been damaged by left winger is tomorrows news story. Nothing else to see here, move along now.
Construction, production and services all down. It isn't sector based. That's not good news whichever way you slice it. We'll be in recession heading into winter. With more huge energy hikes to come.
The ONS always gets construction wrong, there is absolutely no way that construction has contracted.
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.
I was shocked it was so small.
Well it's not that small, annualised contraction rate of 3.6%, what I'm still bemused by is any shock over it, the government put taxes up in April on working age people and it's now bitching that the economy has gone into reverse. I mean what the fuck did they expect?
Stopping the Covid industry must have had a big impact, any testing centre I went to employed between 10-20 people, mulitiply that up nationwide and thats a lot of people.
Stopping test and trace had a negative 0.5% impact on the GDP figure.
So given that overall there was a 0.3% reduction this suggests that ignoring test and trace would give a positive gdp figure.
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.
In quite a few cases, you get told by the intermediary company (it usually goes: end-client, major intermediary, umbrella, worker) that they only use company X. Company X does this. You comply or you don't get considered for the job. And, as before, many of the workers aren't aware that this is something illegal. Even if they were, they could consider suing - but then they're totally out of contention for the work and it will go around the network.
And it doesn't cover the blanket determination thing. If you are told, "Oh, HMRC have taken into account the issue that end-clients may say 'Nope, everyone working here is inside IR35' and written legislation to prevent this. Which entails them ending up saying, 'Nope, everyone working here is inside IR35'," then from the worker's point of view, it's the same thing.
So why bother with that legislation in the first place? (Again, it's not as if the workers would end up litigating - only if they were on the point of retiring, anyway, and doing it in retrospect).
As you say, the only sane outcome for the end-client is to abandon small PSCs and only use the big companies (most umbrella workers end up coming in via one of the big companies, who use them to minimise their own obligations, anyway). As that was obvious from the start, it's understandable that the workers in question view it as the obvious outcome of the legislation all along.
Can you tell me exactly what is illegal? Because unless I've missed something (and believe me I know I haven't) the thing you are claiming is illegal is actually 100% legal...
Blanket determination of IR35 status.
Which doesn't exist - you have corporate policies from no high that say we won't accept anyone working through a PSC - so no determination is required...
And as I've continually stated a no PSC policy is the sanest approach in any industry where multiple sources of labour is required but I wouldn't trust HMRC as far as I could throw them...
Oh and if you think being inside is bad - the real trick is that an end client could say the contract is outside IR35 and then change it to an inside determination at any point up to the time the end client pays the first invoice to the agency.
Cue - a contract being presented with a very large tax bill and no means of escape.
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.
It's a shock to those who have only been paying attention to the boosterite guff coming from government. They'd have been better off telling folk the position is dire from the start. Worked for Thatcher and Cameron. People aren't daft
It’s only the fact we stopped doing the testing programme that unluckily tipped us into the red.
There’s only two news stories today, government tidying up of the EUs Brexit mess and Sir Beer Korma under investigation for more criminality and greed. The fact governments policy dealing with illegal migration has been damaged by left winger is tomorrows news story. Nothing else to see here, move along now.
Construction, production and services all down. It isn't sector based. That's not good news whichever way you slice it. We'll be in recession heading into winter. With more huge energy hikes to come.
The ONS always gets construction wrong, there is absolutely no way that construction has contracted.
I remember when they were claiming that construction was in recession for about 4 quarters in a row and subsequently revised the numbers to show that it had been growing at 5% per annum throughout that period. If they had looked out of their offices and counted the cranes on the Thames they would have got a better result.
Arron Banks @Arron_banks The judge felt sorry for Carole is how I would sum it up. Defamatory but no serious harm. I suppose falsely accusing someone of taking Russian money for Brexit doesn’t cut the ice. It’s likely I will appeal ..
That's a highly inaccurate summary from Banks.
AIUI the summary of the judgement says that the statements were incorrect, and defamatory, but it was legitimate to bring the accusations out for public scrutiny at the time.
After a particular date, they were sufficiently addressed to mean that they should have been withdrawn at that point, and they weren't.
However, by that point, they had an insufficient impact on his reputation to merit the claim.
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.
It's a shock to those who have only been paying attention to the boosterite guff coming from government. They'd have been better off telling folk the position is dire from the start. Worked for Thatcher and Cameron. People aren't daft
It’s only the fact we stopped doing the testing programme that unluckily tipped us into the red.
There’s only two news stories today, government tidying up of the EUs Brexit mess and Sir Beer Korma under investigation for more criminality and greed. The fact governments policy dealing with illegal migration has been damaged by left winger is tomorrows news story. Nothing else to see here, move along now.
Construction, production and services all down. It isn't sector based. That's not good news whichever way you slice it. We'll be in recession heading into winter. With more huge energy hikes to come.
The ONS always gets construction wrong, there is absolutely no way that construction has contracted.
I remember when they were claiming that construction was in recession for about 4 quarters in a row and subsequently revised the numbers to show that it had been growing at 5% per annum throughout that period. If they had looked out of their offices and counted the cranes on the Thames they would have got a better result.
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.
I was shocked it was so small.
Well it's not that small, annualised contraction rate of 3.6%, what I'm still bemused by is any shock over it, the government put taxes up in April on working age people and it's now bitching that the economy has gone into reverse. I mean what the fuck did they expect?
Stopping the Covid industry must have had a big impact, any testing centre I went to employed between 10-20 people, mulitiply that up nationwide and thats a lot of people.
Stopping test and trace had a negative 0.5% impact on the GDP figure.
So given that overall there was a 0.3% reduction this suggests that ignoring test and trace would give a positive gdp figure.
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.
Since Bitcoin has come back from the dead far more times than Jesus, I'd give it a few more years before declaring the party over.
The psychology of people like you really fascinates me. You're one of the most hardcore libertarians on this site, yet you don't see the value in private money that is permissionless, decentralised and censorship resistant.
You can argue that its true value is far less than its current value, but you seem to delight in every dip in the market and take every possible opportunity to crow that it's "dead" (hint: it's not).
What is it about bitcoin that makes you so angry?
Do you get angry about people paying $1800 for a bar of gold? Or 10k for a Rolex watch?
I'd have no objection to Crypto Currencies if they didn't use so much energy to produce. I'd still not 'invest' in them.
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.
It's a shock to those who have only been paying attention to the boosterite guff coming from government. They'd have been better off telling folk the position is dire from the start. Worked for Thatcher and Cameron. People aren't daft
It’s only the fact we stopped doing the testing programme that unluckily tipped us into the red.
There’s only two news stories today, government tidying up of the EUs Brexit mess and Sir Beer Korma under investigation for more criminality and greed. The fact governments policy dealing with illegal migration has been damaged by left winger is tomorrows news story. Nothing else to see here, move along now.
Construction, production and services all down. It isn't sector based. That's not good news whichever way you slice it. We'll be in recession heading into winter. With more huge energy hikes to come.
Which points to the elephant in the room - this fucking government.
We are in the early months of one of those generational economic crises that befall this country - this has the potential to be as damaging as the events of the 7-s oil shock, the 80s monetarism disaster, the 00s sub-prime crash.
Our problem is two fold: One - a government congenitally incapable of accepting reality. Instead of analysing and understanding the situation they deny and lie. The ONS should not be having to write to the PM to insist he stops lying about the economy being good. His response in PMQs last week a great example of this - isn't everything I do marvellous? Two - a government politically unwilling to do anything to help. OK we have had governments like that before, but at least Thatcher and Howe were happy to accept reality and clearly state it was the price to pay to restructure the economy as part of their plan. Where is the Johnson plan?
I still think what we are dubbing "CoL" for shorthand will sink the lot of them. Because ultimately they will continue to screw the economy and people's lives, and we know their reaction is to deny, to lie, then to sneer and blame the people on the receiving end. This time it won't only be Labour voters, it will be millions who voted for Boris to be better off.
I agree about defence spending too but I am wondering what our capacity might be.
The tories cancelled the Warrior CSP so Lockheed sacked everybody involved with heavy armour at Ampthill.
You've got the repurposed forklift factory at Merthyr Tydfil that's fucking up Ajax. Probably no capacity there.
Rheinmetall-BAE at Bristol are busy painting giant Union Jacks on everything as part of the Challenger 3 project.
The UK has very little capability or capacity to make armour or artillery. The government needs to worry more about equipping its own armed forces competently before fretting about fucking Ukraine.
Golly, I hadn’t realised that Germany has a 55% stake in the UK’s MBT programme, gammons choking on their kedgeree everywhere. The Cadwalladr verdict should finish them off.
Arron Banks @Arron_banks The judge felt sorry for Carole is how I would sum it up. Defamatory but no serious harm. I suppose falsely accusing someone of taking Russian money for Brexit doesn’t cut the ice. It’s likely I will appeal ..
That's a highly inaccurate summary from Banks.
AIUI the summary of the judgement says that the statements were incorrect, and defamatory, but it was legitimate to bring the accusations out for public scrutiny at the time.
After a particular date, they were sufficiently addressed to mean that they should have been withdrawn at that point, and they weren't.
However, by that point, they had an insufficient impact on his reputation to merit the claim.
Irrespective of how odious someone might be (and I don't think Banks is that odious, to be honest), surely it has to merit the claim. The extent to which damages/costs are awarded is another matter, but I think the principle of not telling lies about people should be considered quite important.
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.
It's a shock to those who have only been paying attention to the boosterite guff coming from government. They'd have been better off telling folk the position is dire from the start. Worked for Thatcher and Cameron. People aren't daft
It’s only the fact we stopped doing the testing programme that unluckily tipped us into the red.
There’s only two news stories today, government tidying up of the EUs Brexit mess and Sir Beer Korma under investigation for more criminality and greed. The fact governments policy dealing with illegal migration has been damaged by left winger is tomorrows news story. Nothing else to see here, move along now.
Construction, production and services all down. It isn't sector based. That's not good news whichever way you slice it. We'll be in recession heading into winter. With more huge energy hikes to come.
Which points to the elephant in the room - this fucking government.
We are in the early months of one of those generational economic crises that befall this country - this has the potential to be as damaging as the events of the 7-s oil shock, the 80s monetarism disaster, the 00s sub-prime crash.
Our problem is two fold: One - a government congenitally incapable of accepting reality. Instead of analysing and understanding the situation they deny and lie. The ONS should not be having to write to the PM to insist he stops lying about the economy being good. His response in PMQs last week a great example of this - isn't everything I do marvellous? Two - a government politically unwilling to do anything to help. OK we have had governments like that before, but at least Thatcher and Howe were happy to accept reality and clearly state it was the price to pay to restructure the economy as part of their plan. Where is the Johnson plan?
I still think what we are dubbing "CoL" for shorthand will sink the lot of them. Because ultimately they will continue to screw the economy and people's lives, and we know their reaction is to deny, to lie, then to sneer and blame the people on the receiving end. This time it won't only be Labour voters, it will be millions who voted for Boris to be better off.
Three - the government getting relatively little scrutiny because nobody else has a clue what to do either...
At the end of the day, it's all down to political cowardice from Governments of all stripes. Employers NI is a pernicious stealth tax on work, and continuing to pursue it causes all sorts of unfair and unpleasant anomalies, many of which are directly damaging to economic activity.
The effective incidence is, and always has been, on the workers.
But to transfer its explicit incidence to income tax (which would be the economically least damaging outcome) would be to decloak it and make it obvious, and that would be unpopular. So we're stuck with it getting worse and worse.
The problem is that you can't decloak it because there is no way everyone would receive the 15% pay increase that would be required nor cope with the 15% increase in tax that would go alongside 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.
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.
Since Bitcoin has come back from the dead far more times than Jesus, I'd give it a few more years before declaring the party over.
The psychology of people like you really fascinates me. You're one of the most hardcore libertarians on this site, yet you don't see the value in private money that is permissionless, decentralised and censorship resistant.
You can argue that its true value is far less than its current value, but you seem to delight in every dip in the market and take every possible opportunity to crow that it's "dead" (hint: it's not).
What is it about bitcoin that makes you so angry?
Do you get angry about people paying $1800 for a bar of gold? Or 10k for a Rolex watch?
The only person using the word "dead" is you. I have never used that word to the best of my recollection, all I have ever and consistently said is that it is worse than a pyramid scheme. Only you seem to be bothered by Bitcoins supposed "death" or not, I'm more bothered by whether its a scam or not. Scams can go on almost forever without ever dying if more people are able to fall victim to fraudsters.
I do see the theoretical possible value in private money that is permissionless, decentralised and censorship resistant. The problem is that Bitcoin is not that. Just as the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire so Bitcoin is neither censorship resistant, nor permissionless, nor decentralised and ultimately nor is it really private money either.
I don't get angry about people paying for a bar of gold, or a Rolex watch. People aren't scammed into buying those as people are scammed into buying cryto "currencies".
What makes me angry about Bitcoin is I don't like fraudsters and that is what Bitcoin has evolved into, at the cost of burning enough fuel to power a medium sized country.
Just looked at my meagre crypto balance, oh my days
Who’d’ve thunk that a Ponzi scheme could lose you money?
I don't know what you mean. Mine is down a mere 69.6%. But if my investment of £350 has precipitated the collapse of the crypto bubble, it is worth it for the planet.
Basically, the day after a rail strike, all the trains are in the wrong place so staff work overtime in order to run a normal service.
Shapps's masterplan is to run a reduced service instead. Cynics might note this will increase the travelling public's inconvenience.
What the Brexit Revolutionary Party fails to comprehend is that rail workers are highly skilled. You cannot ask agency staff to just hop in and work as signallers or drivers. There are very long courses with complex documentation and safety rules. There are stringent health criteria and security checks. It is a highly responsible job with extremely serious potential consequences if the employee makes a mistake or if you recruit someone with ill-intentions or at risk of losing consciousness while working.
It is becoming increasingly clear that the Tories want to create a huge industrial conflict. They know that the Winter of Discontent, the Falklands and the miners’ strike made the enduring Maggie myth, and hope that Brexit, vaccines and crushing the rail workers will make for an enduring Boris myth. Their chances of repeating the trick look to be low.
That would be a deluded strategy - especially as the Winter if Discontent is what brought Callaghan down, and that it took two terms for Thatcher's union legislation to attain any real degree of popularity. But it's also deluded to think that this government has any organised plan for any such thing. That would be to give them far too much credit.
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.
I was shocked it was so small.
Well it's not that small, annualised contraction rate of 3.6%, what I'm still bemused by is any shock over it, the government put taxes up in April on working age people and it's now bitching that the economy has gone into reverse. I mean what the fuck did they expect?
Stopping the Covid industry must have had a big impact, any testing centre I went to employed between 10-20 people, mulitiply that up nationwide and thats a lot of people.
Stopping test and trace had a negative 0.5% impact on the GDP figure.
So given that overall there was a 0.3% reduction this suggests that ignoring test and trace would give a positive gdp figure.
I know I live in the glorious south but it really does not feel like a recession at all. I took my wife to the Ivy in Winchester on Saturday afternoon to celebrate our 27th Wedding Anniversary. It was completely full with a queue at the door.
It was the first time I had been to Winchester in 3 years and the high street was absolutely buzzing, all restaurants/pubs were full.
Its the same in Southampton, even during the week restaurants are full.
There are job vacancy boards everywhere, anyone who wants a job can have one.
I left school in the early 80's, there were no jobs then.
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.
It's a shock to those who have only been paying attention to the boosterite guff coming from government. They'd have been better off telling folk the position is dire from the start. Worked for Thatcher and Cameron. People aren't daft
It’s only the fact we stopped doing the testing programme that unluckily tipped us into the red.
There’s only two news stories today, government tidying up of the EUs Brexit mess and Sir Beer Korma under investigation for more criminality and greed. The fact governments policy dealing with illegal migration has been damaged by left winger is tomorrows news story. Nothing else to see here, move along now.
Construction, production and services all down. It isn't sector based. That's not good news whichever way you slice it. We'll be in recession heading into winter. With more huge energy hikes to come.
Which points to the elephant in the room - this fucking government.
We are in the early months of one of those generational economic crises that befall this country - this has the potential to be as damaging as the events of the 7-s oil shock, the 80s monetarism disaster, the 00s sub-prime crash.
Our problem is two fold: One - a government congenitally incapable of accepting reality. Instead of analysing and understanding the situation they deny and lie. The ONS should not be having to write to the PM to insist he stops lying about the economy being good. His response in PMQs last week a great example of this - isn't everything I do marvellous? Two - a government politically unwilling to do anything to help. OK we have had governments like that before, but at least Thatcher and Howe were happy to accept reality and clearly state it was the price to pay to restructure the economy as part of their plan. Where is the Johnson plan?
I still think what we are dubbing "CoL" for shorthand will sink the lot of them. Because ultimately they will continue to screw the economy and people's lives, and we know their reaction is to deny, to lie, then to sneer and blame the people on the receiving end. This time it won't only be Labour voters, it will be millions who voted for Boris to be better off.
Three - the government getting relatively little scrutiny because nobody else has a clue what to do either...
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.
P.S. - One unusual feature of Off Payroll "deemed workers" is that they are the only workers to be prohibited from ever claiming tax-free travel and subsistence costs back.
Which, given that they are the most likely to be involved in temporary contracts that could be a considerable distance from home, and their tax burden is the highest of the three classes of workers (employed, self-employed, deemed employed) is very harsh.
An employee or self-employed worker can claim T&S for up to 2 years. A deemed employed worker on a 2 week contract is judged to have that 2-week location as their "permanent place of work" and prohibited from such claims. That's one element that very much vexes those deemed inside IR35 in my experience, and I can understand why.
Hey - be glad that my work back in 2016 actually achieved something - the original plan for travel and subsistence would have screwed up directors of limited companies as well as those working via an umbrella.
Also technically the 2 year rule you are talking about only occurs if your employer moves you from you initial office to a new one. If you decide to take a job in London you can't claim t&s expenses for your daily commute to London. If, however you employer closed the Peterborough office you worked in and moved it to Cambridge you could claim expenses for the first 2 years of that move.
Thank God for that!
The 2-year rule is possibly more visible for me than for some, because one way of filling temporary vacancies is to get IT consultants employed by of people like BAe, Capita, ATOS, etc. As they'll be there for less than 2 years, they get full T&S.
One way this could all shake out is to destroy all the small and individual self-employed and force them into companies like Capita and ATOS, who would end up being the only ones with such resource available for temporary and transient IT work. I'm sure that those big companies wouldn't complain, but they do end up charging a lot for what they do and tend to be less flexible.
Some might muse darkly that the Tories had that as the intent all along. I think that's possibly a little too conspiratorial.
That was the core basis of my argument back in 2016 - by stopping directors from being able to travel it would stop smaller consultancies growing before they had a chance to start.
The actual issue comes down to a problem that HMRC simply can't fix - most of the things they are trying to do here is to avoid large employers from pulling tricks to reduce the costs of employing low / minimum wage people.
And the highly skilled workforce is then caught in the cross fire because it's simply not possible to say these rules apply to people earning less than say 3 times minimum wage (although if they did life would be so much easier for everyone involved).
Why is your last paragraph not possible? Would seem the logical work around
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.
With bitcoin, the bubble evidently has a history of reflating itself. You can accept that it is a speculative bubble and still buy in to it. Bitcoin has an ubiquity and function as a currency that other cryptocurrencies lack, so it is not without fundamental value. But you are basically speculating on the behaviour of other people.
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.
In quite a few cases, you get told by the intermediary company (it usually goes: end-client, major intermediary, umbrella, worker) that they only use company X. Company X does this. You comply or you don't get considered for the job. And, as before, many of the workers aren't aware that this is something illegal. Even if they were, they could consider suing - but then they're totally out of contention for the work and it will go around the network.
And it doesn't cover the blanket determination thing. If you are told, "Oh, HMRC have taken into account the issue that end-clients may say 'Nope, everyone working here is inside IR35' and written legislation to prevent this. Which entails them ending up saying, 'Nope, everyone working here is inside IR35'," then from the worker's point of view, it's the same thing.
So why bother with that legislation in the first place? (Again, it's not as if the workers would end up litigating - only if they were on the point of retiring, anyway, and doing it in retrospect).
As you say, the only sane outcome for the end-client is to abandon small PSCs and only use the big companies (most umbrella workers end up coming in via one of the big companies, who use them to minimise their own obligations, anyway). As that was obvious from the start, it's understandable that the workers in question view it as the obvious outcome of the legislation all along.
Can you tell me exactly what is illegal? Because unless I've missed something (and believe me I know I haven't) the thing you are claiming is illegal is actually 100% legal...
Blanket determination of IR35 status.
Which doesn't exist - you have corporate policies from no high that say we won't accept anyone working through a PSC - so no determination is required...
And as I've continually stated a no PSC policy is the sanest approach in any industry where multiple sources of labour is required but I wouldn't trust HMRC as far as I could throw them...
Oh and if you think being inside is bad - the real trick is that an end client could say the contract is outside IR35 and then change it to an inside determination at any point up to the time the end client pays the first invoice to the agency.
Cue - a contract being presented with a very large tax bill and no means of escape.
And my point is that the effect of that is identical to the workers as a blanket determination being enacted.
On the one hand (blanket determination): All workers are deemed inside IR35 without a specific test being applied to each role. This is bad and against the reasonable care clause.
On the other hand (no PSCs): All workers are deemed inside IR35 without a specific test being applied to each role. This is absolutely fine.
When you're pulled in by the company and told "all your roles are now inside IR35 and no test is being applied to them," what's the difference as to which rationale they use?
This is why everyone in the industry hates HMRC and the IR35 legislation and feels very much put upon. You retain all the negatives of the contractor business and lose all the positives and have to continue covering the negatives.
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.
It's a shock to those who have only been paying attention to the boosterite guff coming from government. They'd have been better off telling folk the position is dire from the start. Worked for Thatcher and Cameron. People aren't daft
It’s only the fact we stopped doing the testing programme that unluckily tipped us into the red.
There’s only two news stories today, government tidying up of the EUs Brexit mess and Sir Beer Korma under investigation for more criminality and greed. The fact governments policy dealing with illegal migration has been damaged by left winger is tomorrows news story. Nothing else to see here, move along now.
Construction, production and services all down. It isn't sector based. That's not good news whichever way you slice it. We'll be in recession heading into winter. With more huge energy hikes to come.
Which points to the elephant in the room - this fucking government.
We are in the early months of one of those generational economic crises that befall this country - this has the potential to be as damaging as the events of the 7-s oil shock, the 80s monetarism disaster, the 00s sub-prime crash.
Our problem is two fold: One - a government congenitally incapable of accepting reality. Instead of analysing and understanding the situation they deny and lie. The ONS should not be having to write to the PM to insist he stops lying about the economy being good. His response in PMQs last week a great example of this - isn't everything I do marvellous? Two - a government politically unwilling to do anything to help. OK we have had governments like that before, but at least Thatcher and Howe were happy to accept reality and clearly state it was the price to pay to restructure the economy as part of their plan. Where is the Johnson plan?
I still think what we are dubbing "CoL" for shorthand will sink the lot of them. Because ultimately they will continue to screw the economy and people's lives, and we know their reaction is to deny, to lie, then to sneer and blame the people on the receiving end. This time it won't only be Labour voters, it will be millions who voted for Boris to be better off.
Three - the government getting relatively little scrutiny because nobody else has a clue what to do either...
Does anyone in the world know what to do?
The Swiss seemed to have figured it out, CPI running at just 3% there. It would help if the BoE wasn't run by a fool.
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.
Since Bitcoin has come back from the dead far more times than Jesus, I'd give it a few more years before declaring the party over.
The psychology of people like you really fascinates me. You're one of the most hardcore libertarians on this site, yet you don't see the value in private money that is permissionless, decentralised and censorship resistant.
You can argue that its true value is far less than its current value, but you seem to delight in every dip in the market and take every possible opportunity to crow that it's "dead" (hint: it's not).
What is it about bitcoin that makes you so angry?
Do you get angry about people paying $1800 for a bar of gold? Or 10k for a Rolex watch?
Not speaking for BR here, but BTC is a really terrible currency.
At best it’s a private commodity that has no price anchor. There’s no there there except your ability to convince the next buyer that they’re buying something of value.
It’s permissionless, but mining is a cartel dominated by a single digit number of players: Functionally, Bitcoin transactions are carried out with the assent of a small centralised body with no accountability whatsover. They’ve already flexed this power to prevent changes to the BTC protocol which would have improved it for everyone else but threatened their income.
It’s decentralised in name only - there’s a small core group of programmers who are trusted to make changes & those changes are merged only with the assent of miners who, again, form a cartel.
The censorship resistance is a joke - BTC trades are open to all & the moment your trades hit the fiat financial world in some form you tie every transaction you’ve ever made that connects to that particuliar wallet to you personally. Law enforcement have got pretty good at using this to track down fraud & other crimes.
As a currency, it’s both incredibly volatile & expensive to transact in. You can’t use it as a unit of account because of the volatility & you can’t use it for ordinary payments due to the expense. The only groups who will accept these problems are those who have no other options - so fraud, international money laundering and other criminal purposes mostly. Not so much of a social good though, is it?
It also imposes a huge negative externality on the rest of us - countries have banned BTC & other crypto mining altogether due to the load it places on electrical networks & if you have any concern about global warming at all then the increased CO2 output for negative economic gain is deeply offensive.
WTF does one do in Yerevan? I’ve wandered around a bit. I’ve looked at the right wing “Revolution”. I’ve had a glass of nice cold Armenian white wine. I’ve seen a Scotsman in a kilt by the ugly, Soviet Era Opera House (is there a footie match?)
Now I’ve basically run out of shit to do. Tbilisi it ain’t. Help!
Basically, the day after a rail strike, all the trains are in the wrong place so staff work overtime in order to run a normal service.
Shapps's masterplan is to run a reduced service instead. Cynics might note this will increase the travelling public's inconvenience.
What the Brexit Revolutionary Party fails to comprehend is that rail workers are highly skilled. You cannot ask agency staff to just hop in and work as signallers or drivers. There are very long courses with complex documentation and safety rules. There are stringent health criteria and security checks. It is a highly responsible job with extremely serious potential consequences if the employee makes a mistake or if you recruit someone with ill-intentions or at risk of losing consciousness while working.
It is becoming increasingly clear that the Tories want to create a huge industrial conflict. They know that the Winter of Discontent, the Falklands and the miners’ strike made the enduring Maggie myth, and hope that Brexit, vaccines and crushing the rail workers will make for an enduring Boris myth. Their chances of repeating the trick look to be low.
That would be a deluded strategy - especially as the Winter if Discontent is what brought Callaghan down, and that it took two terms for Thatcher's union legislation to attain any real degree of popularity. But it's also deluded to think that this government has any organised plan for any such thing. That would be to give them far too much credit.
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.
I have a “no holidays in dictatorships” policy, so Dubai out of the question, and a poorly-observed boycott of Chinese products.
I drive a Volvo, just as a small illustration of my hypocrisy.
I eat farmed salmon, but now you mention it, I ought to stop that too.
As for “holidays” in Scotland, they usually turn into forced labour weeks.
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.
It's a shock to those who have only been paying attention to the boosterite guff coming from government. They'd have been better off telling folk the position is dire from the start. Worked for Thatcher and Cameron. People aren't daft
It’s only the fact we stopped doing the testing programme that unluckily tipped us into the red.
There’s only two news stories today, government tidying up of the EUs Brexit mess and Sir Beer Korma under investigation for more criminality and greed. The fact governments policy dealing with illegal migration has been damaged by left winger is tomorrows news story. Nothing else to see here, move along now.
Construction, production and services all down. It isn't sector based. That's not good news whichever way you slice it. We'll be in recession heading into winter. With more huge energy hikes to come.
Which points to the elephant in the room - this fucking government.
We are in the early months of one of those generational economic crises that befall this country - this has the potential to be as damaging as the events of the 7-s oil shock, the 80s monetarism disaster, the 00s sub-prime crash.
Our problem is two fold: One - a government congenitally incapable of accepting reality. Instead of analysing and understanding the situation they deny and lie. The ONS should not be having to write to the PM to insist he stops lying about the economy being good. His response in PMQs last week a great example of this - isn't everything I do marvellous? Two - a government politically unwilling to do anything to help. OK we have had governments like that before, but at least Thatcher and Howe were happy to accept reality and clearly state it was the price to pay to restructure the economy as part of their plan. Where is the Johnson plan?
I still think what we are dubbing "CoL" for shorthand will sink the lot of them. Because ultimately they will continue to screw the economy and people's lives, and we know their reaction is to deny, to lie, then to sneer and blame the people on the receiving end. This time it won't only be Labour voters, it will be millions who voted for Boris to be better off.
Three - the government getting relatively little scrutiny because nobody else has a clue what to do either...
Does anyone in the world know what to do?
The Swiss seemed to have figured it out, CPI running at just 3% there. It would help if the BoE wasn't run by a fool.
I don't know how Bailey got the gig after his FCA disaster.
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.
In quite a few cases, you get told by the intermediary company (it usually goes: end-client, major intermediary, umbrella, worker) that they only use company X. Company X does this. You comply or you don't get considered for the job. And, as before, many of the workers aren't aware that this is something illegal. Even if they were, they could consider suing - but then they're totally out of contention for the work and it will go around the network.
And it doesn't cover the blanket determination thing. If you are told, "Oh, HMRC have taken into account the issue that end-clients may say 'Nope, everyone working here is inside IR35' and written legislation to prevent this. Which entails them ending up saying, 'Nope, everyone working here is inside IR35'," then from the worker's point of view, it's the same thing.
So why bother with that legislation in the first place? (Again, it's not as if the workers would end up litigating - only if they were on the point of retiring, anyway, and doing it in retrospect).
As you say, the only sane outcome for the end-client is to abandon small PSCs and only use the big companies (most umbrella workers end up coming in via one of the big companies, who use them to minimise their own obligations, anyway). As that was obvious from the start, it's understandable that the workers in question view it as the obvious outcome of the legislation all along.
Can you tell me exactly what is illegal? Because unless I've missed something (and believe me I know I haven't) the thing you are claiming is illegal is actually 100% legal...
Blanket determination of IR35 status.
Which doesn't exist - you have corporate policies from no high that say we won't accept anyone working through a PSC - so no determination is required...
And as I've continually stated a no PSC policy is the sanest approach in any industry where multiple sources of labour is required but I wouldn't trust HMRC as far as I could throw them...
Oh and if you think being inside is bad - the real trick is that an end client could say the contract is outside IR35 and then change it to an inside determination at any point up to the time the end client pays the first invoice to the agency.
Cue - a contract being presented with a very large tax bill and no means of escape.
And my point is that the effect of that is identical to the workers as a blanket determination being enacted.
On the one hand (blanket determination): All workers are deemed inside IR35 without a specific test being applied to each role. This is bad and against the reasonable care clause.
On the other hand (no PSCs): All workers are deemed inside IR35 without a specific test being applied to each role. This is absolutely fine.
When you're pulled in by the company and told "all your roles are now inside IR35 and no test is being applied to them," what's the difference as to which rationale they use?
This is why everyone in the industry hates HMRC and the IR35 legislation and feels very much put upon. You retain all the negatives of the contractor business and lose all the positives and have to continue covering the negatives.
Your point was that it's illegal.
My point was that it's perfectly legal - and also the only sane thing for companies to do given how HMRC works...
And yep I don't like it as I was a contractor but now make my money ensuring supply chain compliance and demonstrating that umbrella firms aren't tax avoidance schemes (while also simplifying their work by doing automatic payment reconciliation).
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.
Since Bitcoin has come back from the dead far more times than Jesus, I'd give it a few more years before declaring the party over.
The psychology of people like you really fascinates me. You're one of the most hardcore libertarians on this site, yet you don't see the value in private money that is permissionless, decentralised and censorship resistant.
You can argue that its true value is far less than its current value, but you seem to delight in every dip in the market and take every possible opportunity to crow that it's "dead" (hint: it's not).
What is it about bitcoin that makes you so angry?
Do you get angry about people paying $1800 for a bar of gold? Or 10k for a Rolex watch?
The only person using the word "dead" is you. I have never used that word to the best of my recollection, all I have ever and consistently said is that it is worse than a pyramid scheme. Only you seem to be bothered by Bitcoins supposed "death" or not, I'm more bothered by whether its a scam or not. Scams can go on almost forever without ever dying if more people are able to fall victim to fraudsters.
I do see the theoretical possible value in private money that is permissionless, decentralised and censorship resistant. The problem is that Bitcoin is not that. Just as the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire so Bitcoin is neither censorship resistant, nor permissionless, nor decentralised and ultimately nor is it really private money either.
I don't get angry about people paying for a bar of gold, or a Rolex watch. People aren't scammed into buying those as people are scammed into buying cryto "currencies".
What makes me angry about Bitcoin is I don't like fraudsters and that is what Bitcoin has evolved into, at the cost of burning enough fuel to power a medium sized country.
I would suggest that "eventually it all comes to an end" (your words) and "dead" are synonymous with each other.
Gold is arguably the better private money - it's certainly more battle tested. But bitcoin is an attempt to do the same thing digitally. That's why it has value - the only question we haven't found out yet is what that value is.
With regards to energy...
We expend energy digging gold out of the ground (and storing it, err, back in the ground) The dollar is backed by gas guzzling warships and jet planes. And human life, when those things are used.
People adorn their homes with Christmas lights every year around December. Drive cars daily, on journeys they could walk. Stream hours of endless crap on netflix, the carbon footprint of which is about 71g per hour.
And yet bitcoin attracts far more ire than any of these things. I don't get 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.
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.
With bitcoin, the bubble evidently has a history of reflating itself. You can accept that it is a speculative bubble and still buy in to it. Bitcoin has an ubiquity and function as a currency that other cryptocurrencies lack, so it is not without fundamental value. But you are basically speculating on the behaviour of other people.
It is without fundamental value, its got no real function as a currency.
The very volatility of Bitcoin that has made it such an "investment" completely contradicts its supposed worth as a "currency".
The technology isn't there for it to be a currency. Visa are capable of handling thousands of transactions per second, Bitcoin is capable of handling single digits of transactions per second and it does so consuming enough electricity to power a medium sized country and it couldn't possibly scale up to anything like the scale needed.
Hence people have tried to come up with all kinds of ever more bizarre currencies etc that piggyback onto Bitcoin's blockchain but they inevitably end the supposed "decentralised" nature of it which is why when things like Luna or Celsius go bust that so many victims of the scam get taken down with it.
The technology behind Bitcoin may have some worthwhile uses in the future. Bitcoin itself does not.
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.
It's a shock to those who have only been paying attention to the boosterite guff coming from government. They'd have been better off telling folk the position is dire from the start. Worked for Thatcher and Cameron. People aren't daft
It’s only the fact we stopped doing the testing programme that unluckily tipped us into the red.
There’s only two news stories today, government tidying up of the EUs Brexit mess and Sir Beer Korma under investigation for more criminality and greed. The fact governments policy dealing with illegal migration has been damaged by left winger is tomorrows news story. Nothing else to see here, move along now.
Construction, production and services all down. It isn't sector based. That's not good news whichever way you slice it. We'll be in recession heading into winter. With more huge energy hikes to come.
Which points to the elephant in the room - this fucking government.
We are in the early months of one of those generational economic crises that befall this country - this has the potential to be as damaging as the events of the 7-s oil shock, the 80s monetarism disaster, the 00s sub-prime crash.
Our problem is two fold: One - a government congenitally incapable of accepting reality. Instead of analysing and understanding the situation they deny and lie. The ONS should not be having to write to the PM to insist he stops lying about the economy being good. His response in PMQs last week a great example of this - isn't everything I do marvellous? Two - a government politically unwilling to do anything to help. OK we have had governments like that before, but at least Thatcher and Howe were happy to accept reality and clearly state it was the price to pay to restructure the economy as part of their plan. Where is the Johnson plan?
I still think what we are dubbing "CoL" for shorthand will sink the lot of them. Because ultimately they will continue to screw the economy and people's lives, and we know their reaction is to deny, to lie, then to sneer and blame the people on the receiving end. This time it won't only be Labour voters, it will be millions who voted for Boris to be better off.
Three - the government getting relatively little scrutiny because nobody else has a clue what to do either...
Does anyone in the world know what to do?
The Swiss seemed to have figured it out, CPI running at just 3% there. It would help if the BoE wasn't run by a fool.
I don't know how Bailey got the gig after his FCA disaster.
The government has realised that by putting compromised people into top jobs they can control them entirely. Bailey is no more than a Tory toady. Cressida Dick was another one, Priti Patel kept her in place and in return she had a puppet in charge of the Met. An actually independent governor would be looking at the half point rise and then another half point rise before the end of the summer and tell the government to pick up the pieces of the housing market because that isn't their remit.
WTF does one do in Yerevan? I’ve wandered around a bit. I’ve looked at the right wing “Revolution”. I’ve had a glass of nice cold Armenian white wine. I’ve seen a Scotsman in a kilt by the ugly, Soviet Era Opera House (is there a footie match?)
Now I’ve basically run out of shit to do. Tbilisi it ain’t. Help!
Yerevan a bad time? Google says there's a brandy factory tour.
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.
It's a shock to those who have only been paying attention to the boosterite guff coming from government. They'd have been better off telling folk the position is dire from the start. Worked for Thatcher and Cameron. People aren't daft
It’s only the fact we stopped doing the testing programme that unluckily tipped us into the red.
There’s only two news stories today, government tidying up of the EUs Brexit mess and Sir Beer Korma under investigation for more criminality and greed. The fact governments policy dealing with illegal migration has been damaged by left winger is tomorrows news story. Nothing else to see here, move along now.
Construction, production and services all down. It isn't sector based. That's not good news whichever way you slice it. We'll be in recession heading into winter. With more huge energy hikes to come.
Which points to the elephant in the room - this fucking government.
We are in the early months of one of those generational economic crises that befall this country - this has the potential to be as damaging as the events of the 7-s oil shock, the 80s monetarism disaster, the 00s sub-prime crash.
Our problem is two fold: One - a government congenitally incapable of accepting reality. Instead of analysing and understanding the situation they deny and lie. The ONS should not be having to write to the PM to insist he stops lying about the economy being good. His response in PMQs last week a great example of this - isn't everything I do marvellous? Two - a government politically unwilling to do anything to help. OK we have had governments like that before, but at least Thatcher and Howe were happy to accept reality and clearly state it was the price to pay to restructure the economy as part of their plan. Where is the Johnson plan?
I still think what we are dubbing "CoL" for shorthand will sink the lot of them. Because ultimately they will continue to screw the economy and people's lives, and we know their reaction is to deny, to lie, then to sneer and blame the people on the receiving end. This time it won't only be Labour voters, it will be millions who voted for Boris to be better off.
Completely agree with the first point. The reality is that we were barely recovering from the OO's financial collapse when Covid came along and blew our public finances out of the water. The only way we could afford the money spent on Covid was to print it, along with most other nations. The result is an increase in inflation. Our economy never got back to anything close to normal, hence the absurdly low interest rates for over a decade.
We are far from alone in this dilemma, the markets are down today because US inflation has hit a 40 year high and interest rates are now expected to go up even faster, but we need policies that reduce the inevitable pain, not aggravate it. And we need a plan and a structure that guides us through day to day vicissitudes and at least gives the impression we know what we are doing.
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.
In quite a few cases, you get told by the intermediary company (it usually goes: end-client, major intermediary, umbrella, worker) that they only use company X. Company X does this. You comply or you don't get considered for the job. And, as before, many of the workers aren't aware that this is something illegal. Even if they were, they could consider suing - but then they're totally out of contention for the work and it will go around the network.
And it doesn't cover the blanket determination thing. If you are told, "Oh, HMRC have taken into account the issue that end-clients may say 'Nope, everyone working here is inside IR35' and written legislation to prevent this. Which entails them ending up saying, 'Nope, everyone working here is inside IR35'," then from the worker's point of view, it's the same thing.
So why bother with that legislation in the first place? (Again, it's not as if the workers would end up litigating - only if they were on the point of retiring, anyway, and doing it in retrospect).
As you say, the only sane outcome for the end-client is to abandon small PSCs and only use the big companies (most umbrella workers end up coming in via one of the big companies, who use them to minimise their own obligations, anyway). As that was obvious from the start, it's understandable that the workers in question view it as the obvious outcome of the legislation all along.
Can you tell me exactly what is illegal? Because unless I've missed something (and believe me I know I haven't) the thing you are claiming is illegal is actually 100% legal...
Blanket determination of IR35 status.
Which doesn't exist - you have corporate policies from no high that say we won't accept anyone working through a PSC - so no determination is required...
And as I've continually stated a no PSC policy is the sanest approach in any industry where multiple sources of labour is required but I wouldn't trust HMRC as far as I could throw them...
Oh and if you think being inside is bad - the real trick is that an end client could say the contract is outside IR35 and then change it to an inside determination at any point up to the time the end client pays the first invoice to the agency.
Cue - a contract being presented with a very large tax bill and no means of escape.
And my point is that the effect of that is identical to the workers as a blanket determination being enacted.
On the one hand (blanket determination): All workers are deemed inside IR35 without a specific test being applied to each role. This is bad and against the reasonable care clause.
On the other hand (no PSCs): All workers are deemed inside IR35 without a specific test being applied to each role. This is absolutely fine.
When you're pulled in by the company and told "all your roles are now inside IR35 and no test is being applied to them," what's the difference as to which rationale they use?
This is why everyone in the industry hates HMRC and the IR35 legislation and feels very much put upon. You retain all the negatives of the contractor business and lose all the positives and have to continue covering the negatives.
Your point was that it's illegal.
My point was that it's perfectly legal - and also the only sane thing for companies to do given how HMRC works...
And yep I don't like it as I was a contractor but now make my money ensuring supply chain compliance and demonstrating that umbrella firms aren't tax avoidance schemes (while also simplifying their work by doing automatic payment reconciliation).
I did say that blanket determinations were supposedly illegal, but it was the norm, with the rationale that "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 (and all other contractors), but they get away with it.
And as we've determined here, they get away with it because it's a loophole: you can make what are effective blanket determinations without explicitly violating the law.
Leading to my point of: so what's the point of requiring reasonable care to be made in determinations if it has zero effect on the outcome?
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.
Since Bitcoin has come back from the dead far more times than Jesus, I'd give it a few more years before declaring the party over.
The psychology of people like you really fascinates me. You're one of the most hardcore libertarians on this site, yet you don't see the value in private money that is permissionless, decentralised and censorship resistant.
You can argue that its true value is far less than its current value, but you seem to delight in every dip in the market and take every possible opportunity to crow that it's "dead" (hint: it's not).
What is it about bitcoin that makes you so angry?
Do you get angry about people paying $1800 for a bar of gold? Or 10k for a Rolex watch?
The only person using the word "dead" is you. I have never used that word to the best of my recollection, all I have ever and consistently said is that it is worse than a pyramid scheme. Only you seem to be bothered by Bitcoins supposed "death" or not, I'm more bothered by whether its a scam or not. Scams can go on almost forever without ever dying if more people are able to fall victim to fraudsters.
I do see the theoretical possible value in private money that is permissionless, decentralised and censorship resistant. The problem is that Bitcoin is not that. Just as the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire so Bitcoin is neither censorship resistant, nor permissionless, nor decentralised and ultimately nor is it really private money either.
I don't get angry about people paying for a bar of gold, or a Rolex watch. People aren't scammed into buying those as people are scammed into buying cryto "currencies".
What makes me angry about Bitcoin is I don't like fraudsters and that is what Bitcoin has evolved into, at the cost of burning enough fuel to power a medium sized country.
I would suggest that "eventually it all comes to an end" (your words) and "dead" are synonymous with each other.
Gold is arguably the better private money - it's certainly more battle tested. But bitcoin is an attempt to do the same thing digitally. That's why it has value - the only question we haven't found out yet is what that value is.
With regards to energy...
We expend energy digging gold out of the ground (and storing it, err, back in the ground) The dollar is backed by gas guzzling warships and jet planes. And human life, when those things are used.
People adorn their homes with Christmas lights every year around December. Drive cars daily, on journeys they could walk. Stream hours of endless crap on netflix, the carbon footprint of which is about 71g per hour.
And yet bitcoin attracts far more ire than any of these things. I don't get it.
It’s because BTC energy use is wildly out of proportion to the benefits.
A single BTC transaction costs roughly $200 in energy. The fee is currently less than this because the miners get seignorage from the BTC created when you create the next block in the chain, but the cost is there nonetheless.
What other payment system costs $200 a time? Even the most expensive way to transfer currency internationally is measured in the single digit 10s of $ & doesn’t incur roundtrip conversion costs in and out of a tradeable token that are required if you transfer via BTC. Spreads on BTC exchanges tend to be quite wide.
Meanwhile, the BTC network limits it to (IIRC) 7 transactions a second. So it’s a crippled system that can never serve the real needs of actual currency users that burns ridiculous amount of energy for the limited transfer of tokens that you can’t use as currency but might be able to sell to someone in the future if you’re lucky.
But the sales patter was fantastic & convinced many, many people to buy in to this setup.
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.
Since Bitcoin has come back from the dead far more times than Jesus, I'd give it a few more years before declaring the party over.
The psychology of people like you really fascinates me. You're one of the most hardcore libertarians on this site, yet you don't see the value in private money that is permissionless, decentralised and censorship resistant.
You can argue that its true value is far less than its current value, but you seem to delight in every dip in the market and take every possible opportunity to crow that it's "dead" (hint: it's not).
What is it about bitcoin that makes you so angry?
Do you get angry about people paying $1800 for a bar of gold? Or 10k for a Rolex watch?
The only person using the word "dead" is you. I have never used that word to the best of my recollection, all I have ever and consistently said is that it is worse than a pyramid scheme. Only you seem to be bothered by Bitcoins supposed "death" or not, I'm more bothered by whether its a scam or not. Scams can go on almost forever without ever dying if more people are able to fall victim to fraudsters.
I do see the theoretical possible value in private money that is permissionless, decentralised and censorship resistant. The problem is that Bitcoin is not that. Just as the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire so Bitcoin is neither censorship resistant, nor permissionless, nor decentralised and ultimately nor is it really private money either.
I don't get angry about people paying for a bar of gold, or a Rolex watch. People aren't scammed into buying those as people are scammed into buying cryto "currencies".
What makes me angry about Bitcoin is I don't like fraudsters and that is what Bitcoin has evolved into, at the cost of burning enough fuel to power a medium sized country.
I would suggest that "eventually it all comes to an end" (your words) and "dead" are synonymous with each other.
Gold is arguably the better private money - it's certainly more battle tested. But bitcoin is an attempt to do the same thing digitally. That's why it has value - the only question we haven't found out yet is what that value is.
With regards to energy...
We expend energy digging gold out of the ground (and storing it, err, back in the ground) The dollar is backed by gas guzzling warships and jet planes. And human life, when those things are used.
People adorn their homes with Christmas lights every year around December. Drive cars daily, on journeys they could walk. Stream hours of endless crap on netflix, the carbon footprint of which is about 71g per hour.
And yet bitcoin attracts far more ire than any of these things. I don't get it.
I would not, I would suggest "eventually it all comes to an end" and "mortal" could be said to be synonymous with each other if you want to stretch that point, but dead means something completely different. Eventually I will come to an end (die), that is a truism, but I am not dead.
Gold is valuable because it is useful. It is a commodity that is a useful means of wealth protection and financial exchange, only because of all its other uses. Its not just rare (something Bitcoin sought to replicate) but its useful and desired for jewellery, medals, electronics, medicines, dentistry and much more
Behind gold there is a useful product behind it, that is why you can store wealth in gold, because you know that the gold will be worth something in the future, because in the future people will still want jewellery, medals, electronics, medicines etc
That use does not exist for Bitcoin. All Bitcoin has a future of is more people willing to bet on the future of Bitcoin. That is a Ponzi scheme, and worse it is a negative equity one.
Yes we expend energy digging gold out of the ground, but we don't do so purely for the sake of it, but because people have a desire for it because of its uses.
There are sane reasons to use gold as a means of financial exchange. Bitcoin is an economically and scientifically illiterate attempt to digitise that which preys on the uneducated and greedy.
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.
Since Bitcoin has come back from the dead far more times than Jesus, I'd give it a few more years before declaring the party over.
The psychology of people like you really fascinates me. You're one of the most hardcore libertarians on this site, yet you don't see the value in private money that is permissionless, decentralised and censorship resistant.
You can argue that its true value is far less than its current value, but you seem to delight in every dip in the market and take every possible opportunity to crow that it's "dead" (hint: it's not).
What is it about bitcoin that makes you so angry?
Do you get angry about people paying $1800 for a bar of gold? Or 10k for a Rolex watch?
The only person using the word "dead" is you. I have never used that word to the best of my recollection, all I have ever and consistently said is that it is worse than a pyramid scheme. Only you seem to be bothered by Bitcoins supposed "death" or not, I'm more bothered by whether its a scam or not. Scams can go on almost forever without ever dying if more people are able to fall victim to fraudsters.
I do see the theoretical possible value in private money that is permissionless, decentralised and censorship resistant. The problem is that Bitcoin is not that. Just as the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire so Bitcoin is neither censorship resistant, nor permissionless, nor decentralised and ultimately nor is it really private money either.
I don't get angry about people paying for a bar of gold, or a Rolex watch. People aren't scammed into buying those as people are scammed into buying cryto "currencies".
What makes me angry about Bitcoin is I don't like fraudsters and that is what Bitcoin has evolved into, at the cost of burning enough fuel to power a medium sized country.
I would suggest that "eventually it all comes to an end" (your words) and "dead" are synonymous with each other.
Gold is arguably the better private money - it's certainly more battle tested. But bitcoin is an attempt to do the same thing digitally. That's why it has value - the only question we haven't found out yet is what that value is.
With regards to energy...
We expend energy digging gold out of the ground (and storing it, err, back in the ground) The dollar is backed by gas guzzling warships and jet planes. And human life, when those things are used.
People adorn their homes with Christmas lights every year around December. Drive cars daily, on journeys they could walk. Stream hours of endless crap on netflix, the carbon footprint of which is about 71g per hour.
And yet bitcoin attracts far more ire than any of these things. I don't get it.
It’s because BTC energy use is wildly out of proportion to the benefits.
A single BTC transaction costs roughly $200 in energy. The fee is currently less than this because the miners get seignorage from the BTC created when you create the next block in the chain, but the cost is there nonetheless.
What other payment system costs $200 a time? Even the most expensive way to transfer currency internationally is measured in the single digit 10s of $ & doesn’t incur roundtrip conversion costs in and out of a tradeable token that are required if you transfer via BTC. Spreads on BTC exchanges tend to be quite wide.
Meanwhile, the BTC network limits it to (IIRC) 7 transactions a second. So it’s a crippled system that can never serve the real needs of actual currency users that burns ridiculous amount of energy for the limited transfer of tokens that you can’t use as currency but might be able to sell to someone in the future if you’re lucky.
But the sales patter was fantastic & convinced many, many people to buy in to this setup.
My gold costs me over $200 a year to store it... so, er, gold?
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.
It's a shock to those who have only been paying attention to the boosterite guff coming from government. They'd have been better off telling folk the position is dire from the start. Worked for Thatcher and Cameron. People aren't daft
It’s only the fact we stopped doing the testing programme that unluckily tipped us into the red.
There’s only two news stories today, government tidying up of the EUs Brexit mess and Sir Beer Korma under investigation for more criminality and greed. The fact governments policy dealing with illegal migration has been damaged by left winger is tomorrows news story. Nothing else to see here, move along now.
Construction, production and services all down. It isn't sector based. That's not good news whichever way you slice it. We'll be in recession heading into winter. With more huge energy hikes to come.
Which points to the elephant in the room - this fucking government.
We are in the early months of one of those generational economic crises that befall this country - this has the potential to be as damaging as the events of the 7-s oil shock, the 80s monetarism disaster, the 00s sub-prime crash.
Our problem is two fold: One - a government congenitally incapable of accepting reality. Instead of analysing and understanding the situation they deny and lie. The ONS should not be having to write to the PM to insist he stops lying about the economy being good. His response in PMQs last week a great example of this - isn't everything I do marvellous? Two - a government politically unwilling to do anything to help. OK we have had governments like that before, but at least Thatcher and Howe were happy to accept reality and clearly state it was the price to pay to restructure the economy as part of their plan. Where is the Johnson plan?
I still think what we are dubbing "CoL" for shorthand will sink the lot of them. Because ultimately they will continue to screw the economy and people's lives, and we know their reaction is to deny, to lie, then to sneer and blame the people on the receiving end. This time it won't only be Labour voters, it will be millions who voted for Boris to be better off.
Three - the government getting relatively little scrutiny because nobody else has a clue what to do either...
Does anyone in the world know what to do?
The Swiss seemed to have figured it out, CPI running at just 3% there. It would help if the BoE wasn't run by a fool.
The amazing thing about Switzerland is that it used to be poor. When I was there last summer the manager of my mega-luxe 5 start hotel on lake Lugano (rack rate: £800 a night) said that “10 miles from where we are sitting there is a rustic cafe called the Bar americano as that is where impoverished Switzers would gather to meet for the last time before emigrating to America, never to see each other again”.
Who on earth would migrate from Switzerland to America now?
The Swiss were famous mercenaries (eg the Pope’s Swiss Guard) for the same reason. Dire poverty
150 years of studied neutrality, consensual and low key and consistently conservative governance, lots of referendums, a bit of luck with geography (being on major trade routes yet away from obvious battlefields) has turned that poverty into luxurious wealth
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.
It's a shock to those who have only been paying attention to the boosterite guff coming from government. They'd have been better off telling folk the position is dire from the start. Worked for Thatcher and Cameron. People aren't daft
It’s only the fact we stopped doing the testing programme that unluckily tipped us into the red.
There’s only two news stories today, government tidying up of the EUs Brexit mess and Sir Beer Korma under investigation for more criminality and greed. The fact governments policy dealing with illegal migration has been damaged by left winger is tomorrows news story. Nothing else to see here, move along now.
Construction, production and services all down. It isn't sector based. That's not good news whichever way you slice it. We'll be in recession heading into winter. With more huge energy hikes to come.
Which points to the elephant in the room - this fucking government.
We are in the early months of one of those generational economic crises that befall this country - this has the potential to be as damaging as the events of the 7-s oil shock, the 80s monetarism disaster, the 00s sub-prime crash.
Our problem is two fold: One - a government congenitally incapable of accepting reality. Instead of analysing and understanding the situation they deny and lie. The ONS should not be having to write to the PM to insist he stops lying about the economy being good. His response in PMQs last week a great example of this - isn't everything I do marvellous? Two - a government politically unwilling to do anything to help. OK we have had governments like that before, but at least Thatcher and Howe were happy to accept reality and clearly state it was the price to pay to restructure the economy as part of their plan. Where is the Johnson plan?
I still think what we are dubbing "CoL" for shorthand will sink the lot of them. Because ultimately they will continue to screw the economy and people's lives, and we know their reaction is to deny, to lie, then to sneer and blame the people on the receiving end. This time it won't only be Labour voters, it will be millions who voted for Boris to be better off.
Completely agree with the first point. The reality is that we were barely recovering from the OO's financial collapse when Covid came along and blew our public finances out of the water. The only way we could afford the money spent on Covid was to print it, along with most other nations. The result is an increase in inflation. Our economy never got back to anything close to normal, hence the absurdly low interest rates for over a decade.
We are far from alone in this dilemma, the markets are down today because US inflation has hit a 40 year high and interest rates are now expected to go up even faster, but we need policies that reduce the inevitable pain, not aggravate it. And we need a plan and a structure that guides us through day to day vicissitudes and at least gives the impression we know what we are doing.
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.
Except it is not. It is the west supplying weapons to an independent state which has been invaded.
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.
Except it is not. It is the west supplying weapons to an independent state which has been invaded.
If Vlad decides it is declaring war then the actual rights and wrongs become pretty irrelevant. He will only decide that if he is mad or desperate to distract internally.
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.
Since Bitcoin has come back from the dead far more times than Jesus, I'd give it a few more years before declaring the party over.
The psychology of people like you really fascinates me. You're one of the most hardcore libertarians on this site, yet you don't see the value in private money that is permissionless, decentralised and censorship resistant.
You can argue that its true value is far less than its current value, but you seem to delight in every dip in the market and take every possible opportunity to crow that it's "dead" (hint: it's not).
What is it about bitcoin that makes you so angry?
Do you get angry about people paying $1800 for a bar of gold? Or 10k for a Rolex watch?
The only person using the word "dead" is you. I have never used that word to the best of my recollection, all I have ever and consistently said is that it is worse than a pyramid scheme. Only you seem to be bothered by Bitcoins supposed "death" or not, I'm more bothered by whether its a scam or not. Scams can go on almost forever without ever dying if more people are able to fall victim to fraudsters.
I do see the theoretical possible value in private money that is permissionless, decentralised and censorship resistant. The problem is that Bitcoin is not that. Just as the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire so Bitcoin is neither censorship resistant, nor permissionless, nor decentralised and ultimately nor is it really private money either.
I don't get angry about people paying for a bar of gold, or a Rolex watch. People aren't scammed into buying those as people are scammed into buying cryto "currencies".
What makes me angry about Bitcoin is I don't like fraudsters and that is what Bitcoin has evolved into, at the cost of burning enough fuel to power a medium sized country.
I would suggest that "eventually it all comes to an end" (your words) and "dead" are synonymous with each other.
Gold is arguably the better private money - it's certainly more battle tested. But bitcoin is an attempt to do the same thing digitally. That's why it has value - the only question we haven't found out yet is what that value is.
With regards to energy...
We expend energy digging gold out of the ground (and storing it, err, back in the ground) The dollar is backed by gas guzzling warships and jet planes. And human life, when those things are used.
People adorn their homes with Christmas lights every year around December. Drive cars daily, on journeys they could walk. Stream hours of endless crap on netflix, the carbon footprint of which is about 71g per hour.
And yet bitcoin attracts far more ire than any of these things. I don't get it.
It’s because BTC energy use is wildly out of proportion to the benefits.
A single BTC transaction costs roughly $200 in energy. The fee is currently less than this because the miners get seignorage from the BTC created when you create the next block in the chain, but the cost is there nonetheless.
What other payment system costs $200 a time? Even the most expensive way to transfer currency internationally is measured in the single digit 10s of $ & doesn’t incur roundtrip conversion costs in and out of a tradeable token that are required if you transfer via BTC. Spreads on BTC exchanges tend to be quite wide.
Meanwhile, the BTC network limits it to (IIRC) 7 transactions a second. So it’s a crippled system that can never serve the real needs of actual currency users that burns ridiculous amount of energy for the limited transfer of tokens that you can’t use as currency but might be able to sell to someone in the future if you’re lucky.
But the sales patter was fantastic & convinced many, many people to buy in to this setup.
My gold costs me over $200 a year to store it... so, er, gold?
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.
Since Bitcoin has come back from the dead far more times than Jesus, I'd give it a few more years before declaring the party over.
The psychology of people like you really fascinates me. You're one of the most hardcore libertarians on this site, yet you don't see the value in private money that is permissionless, decentralised and censorship resistant.
You can argue that its true value is far less than its current value, but you seem to delight in every dip in the market and take every possible opportunity to crow that it's "dead" (hint: it's not).
What is it about bitcoin that makes you so angry?
Do you get angry about people paying $1800 for a bar of gold? Or 10k for a Rolex watch?
The only person using the word "dead" is you. I have never used that word to the best of my recollection, all I have ever and consistently said is that it is worse than a pyramid scheme. Only you seem to be bothered by Bitcoins supposed "death" or not, I'm more bothered by whether its a scam or not. Scams can go on almost forever without ever dying if more people are able to fall victim to fraudsters.
I do see the theoretical possible value in private money that is permissionless, decentralised and censorship resistant. The problem is that Bitcoin is not that. Just as the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire so Bitcoin is neither censorship resistant, nor permissionless, nor decentralised and ultimately nor is it really private money either.
I don't get angry about people paying for a bar of gold, or a Rolex watch. People aren't scammed into buying those as people are scammed into buying cryto "currencies".
What makes me angry about Bitcoin is I don't like fraudsters and that is what Bitcoin has evolved into, at the cost of burning enough fuel to power a medium sized country.
I would suggest that "eventually it all comes to an end" (your words) and "dead" are synonymous with each other.
Gold is arguably the better private money - it's certainly more battle tested. But bitcoin is an attempt to do the same thing digitally. That's why it has value - the only question we haven't found out yet is what that value is.
With regards to energy...
We expend energy digging gold out of the ground (and storing it, err, back in the ground) The dollar is backed by gas guzzling warships and jet planes. And human life, when those things are used.
People adorn their homes with Christmas lights every year around December. Drive cars daily, on journeys they could walk. Stream hours of endless crap on netflix, the carbon footprint of which is about 71g per hour.
And yet bitcoin attracts far more ire than any of these things. I don't get it.
It's because Bitcoin is a useless sack of shit.
It cannot achieve any of its stated aims - by design.
The good parts of bitcoin are not new, the new parts of bitcoin are not good.
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.
To clarify the leader of the opposition is under a criminal investigation by Durham Police and is now under investigation by the Commons sleaze commissioner
By his own words you would have to ask why hasn't he resigned ?
Because he is not accused of being a serial liar in statements to the House of Commons. He and his deputy have both put their careers on the line by saying that they will resign should they receive FPNs - and indeed Rayner has gone further by saying that they would be unlikely to seek re-election thereafter.
They've answered that direct question several times. Why do you keep asking it ?
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.
It's a shock to those who have only been paying attention to the boosterite guff coming from government. They'd have been better off telling folk the position is dire from the start. Worked for Thatcher and Cameron. People aren't daft
It’s only the fact we stopped doing the testing programme that unluckily tipped us into the red.
There’s only two news stories today, government tidying up of the EUs Brexit mess and Sir Beer Korma under investigation for more criminality and greed. The fact governments policy dealing with illegal migration has been damaged by left winger is tomorrows news story. Nothing else to see here, move along now.
Construction, production and services all down. It isn't sector based. That's not good news whichever way you slice it. We'll be in recession heading into winter. With more huge energy hikes to come.
Which points to the elephant in the room - this fucking government.
We are in the early months of one of those generational economic crises that befall this country - this has the potential to be as damaging as the events of the 7-s oil shock, the 80s monetarism disaster, the 00s sub-prime crash.
Our problem is two fold: One - a government congenitally incapable of accepting reality. Instead of analysing and understanding the situation they deny and lie. The ONS should not be having to write to the PM to insist he stops lying about the economy being good. His response in PMQs last week a great example of this - isn't everything I do marvellous? Two - a government politically unwilling to do anything to help. OK we have had governments like that before, but at least Thatcher and Howe were happy to accept reality and clearly state it was the price to pay to restructure the economy as part of their plan. Where is the Johnson plan?
I still think what we are dubbing "CoL" for shorthand will sink the lot of them. Because ultimately they will continue to screw the economy and people's lives, and we know their reaction is to deny, to lie, then to sneer and blame the people on the receiving end. This time it won't only be Labour voters, it will be millions who voted for Boris to be better off.
Completely agree with the first point. The reality is that we were barely recovering from the OO's financial collapse when Covid came along and blew our public finances out of the water. The only way we could afford the money spent on Covid was to print it, along with most other nations. The result is an increase in inflation. Our economy never got back to anything close to normal, hence the absurdly low interest rates for over a decade.
We are far from alone in this dilemma, the markets are down today because US inflation has hit a 40 year high and interest rates are now expected to go up even faster, but we need policies that reduce the inevitable pain, not aggravate it. And we need a plan and a structure that guides us through day to day vicissitudes and at least gives the impression we know what we are doing.
Comments
https://twitter.com/arron_banks/status/1536283375639592962?s=21&t=lTui3WuQYZyM5ZRBJqHdAg
The Judge accepted that, for the most part, Mr Banks’s evidence was truthful, and in particular his evidence on the issue of serious harm was open, honest and entailed no exaggeration [27]. But there were aspects of his evidence in relation to the public interest defence that the Judge found to be evasive and lacking in candour [28].
Ms Cadwalladr evidently found the process of being cross-examined very stressful [30]-[31]. Although she made errors in her statement ([35]-[43]), and in her oral evidence [44], and over the course of her evidence became more evasive, the Judge found that the evidence Ms Cadwalladr gave was truthful [32]-[33].
I think it's generous to say Carole made "errors" in her statement:
https://order-order.com/2022/01/20/new-carole-cadwalladr-admits-minutes-after-swearing-that-her-witness-statement-true-that-it-is-inaccurate/
2 investigations. Possible serial offender. Tsk tsk.
Putiing the urine back in taking the piss.
Overall conclusions
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.
Sounds like they think Carole is a complete ****ing moron, so let her win.
"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."
By his own words you would have to ask why hasn't he resigned ?
They'd have been better off telling folk the position is dire from the start. Worked for Thatcher and Cameron.
People aren't daft
Arron Banks
@Arron_banks
The judge felt sorry for Carole is how I would sum it up. Defamatory but no serious harm. I suppose falsely accusing someone of taking Russian money for Brexit doesn’t cut the ice. It’s likely I will appeal ..
What is 'interesting' is that he was advised to invest by colleagues working for a major national bank, where he'd not long started work.
The psychology of people like you really fascinates me. You're one of the most hardcore libertarians on this site, yet you don't see the value in private money that is permissionless, decentralised and censorship resistant.
You can argue that its true value is far less than its current value, but you seem to delight in every dip in the market and take every possible opportunity to crow that it's "dead" (hint: it's not).
What is it about bitcoin that makes you so angry?
Do you get angry about people paying $1800 for a bar of gold? Or 10k for a Rolex watch?
In the interests of accuracy and integrity its worth pointing that out.
Its what he would want.
There’s only two news stories today, government tidying up of the EUs Brexit mess and Sir Beer Korma under investigation for more criminality and greed. The fact governments policy dealing with illegal migration has been damaged by left winger is tomorrows news story. Nothing else to see here, move along now.
If it's a Shturmanskiy then it's fabulously desirable as they were quite rare and were issued to the Cosmonauts. If it's a Raketa, Polyot, Pobeda, etc. then buy another working one off eBay for parts. The watch policy seemed a bit random in the USSR. I suspect, as with so much else, what watch you got was down to who you knew.
Separately, journalists need to be able to question the source of potential dirty money if the state is unwilling to do so. Banks's sources may well be perfectly legitimate, but as I said on another post, the much bigger story is that Russia was certainly intent on influencing British political life. Believing that they did not influence 2016 is only believed by the supremely gullible, whom, of course, they certainly targeted.
Not too unlike like the footballers’ wives from the other week.
Company X does this. You comply or you don't get considered for the job. And, as before, many of the workers aren't aware that this is something illegal. Even if they were, they could consider suing - but then they're totally out of contention for the work and it will go around the network.
And it doesn't cover the blanket determination thing. If you are told, "Oh, HMRC have taken into account the issue that end-clients may say 'Nope, everyone working here is inside IR35' and written legislation to prevent this. Which entails them ending up saying, 'Nope, everyone working here is inside IR35'," then from the worker's point of view, it's the same thing.
So why bother with that legislation in the first place? (Again, it's not as if the workers would end up litigating - only if they were on the point of retiring, anyway, and doing it in retrospect).
As you say, the only sane outcome for the end-client is to abandon small PSCs and only use the big companies (most umbrella workers end up coming in via one of the big companies, who use them to minimise their own obligations, anyway). As that was obvious from the start, it's understandable that the workers in question view it as the obvious outcome of the legislation all along.
I think this winter is going to be dire if as seems likely the war in Ukraine is still going and Russia decides it is now time to turn off the gas. I see little evidence that Europe is prepared for this.
I sometimes wonder if it wasn't invented by a bunch of NSA guys as a plant.
Employers NI is a pernicious stealth tax on work, and continuing to pursue it causes all sorts of unfair and unpleasant anomalies, many of which are directly damaging to economic activity.
The effective incidence is, and always has been, on the workers.
But to transfer its explicit incidence to income tax (which would be the economically least damaging outcome) would be to decloak it and make it obvious, and that would be unpopular. So we're stuck with it getting worse and worse.
It isn't sector based. That's not good news whichever way you slice it.
We'll be in recession heading into winter.
With more huge energy hikes to come.
And the actual viewpoint isn't that everyone is inside IR35 - the point is that end clients can't accept risk because
1) they don't trust HMRC (for good reason) and
2)can't trust their employees (for equally good reasons) to not do something stupid that results in HMRC coming sniffing.
so the same option is to insist that everyone who they "employee" no matter how remote the employment relationship is are being paid as employees.
Lolz. No, they are indeed not.
If you want privacy, Monero is the only game in town.
Edit - just realised you misinterpreted my meaning. Private, as in, privately issued, issued not by the state. Not private in the sense of "people can't see your transactions".
Apols.
So given that overall there was a 0.3% reduction this suggests that ignoring test and trace would give a positive gdp figure.
And as I've continually stated a no PSC policy is the sanest approach in any industry where multiple sources of labour is required but I wouldn't trust HMRC as far as I could throw them...
Oh and if you think being inside is bad - the real trick is that an end client could say the contract is outside IR35 and then change it to an inside determination at any point up to the time the end client pays the first invoice to the agency.
Cue - a contract being presented with a very large tax bill and no means of escape.
AIUI the summary of the judgement says that the statements were incorrect, and defamatory, but it was legitimate to bring the accusations out for public scrutiny at the time.
After a particular date, they were sufficiently addressed to mean that they should have been withdrawn at that point, and they weren't.
However, by that point, they had an insufficient impact on his reputation to merit the claim.
I'd still not 'invest' in them.
We are in the early months of one of those generational economic crises that befall this country - this has the potential to be as damaging as the events of the 7-s oil shock, the 80s monetarism disaster, the 00s sub-prime crash.
Our problem is two fold:
One - a government congenitally incapable of accepting reality. Instead of analysing and understanding the situation they deny and lie. The ONS should not be having to write to the PM to insist he stops lying about the economy being good. His response in PMQs last week a great example of this - isn't everything I do marvellous?
Two - a government politically unwilling to do anything to help. OK we have had governments like that before, but at least Thatcher and Howe were happy to accept reality and clearly state it was the price to pay to restructure the economy as part of their plan. Where is the Johnson plan?
I still think what we are dubbing "CoL" for shorthand will sink the lot of them. Because ultimately they will continue to screw the economy and people's lives, and we know their reaction is to deny, to lie, then to sneer and blame the people on the receiving end. This time it won't only be Labour voters, it will be millions who voted for Boris to be better off.
I do see the theoretical possible value in private money that is permissionless, decentralised and censorship resistant. The problem is that Bitcoin is not that. Just as the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire so Bitcoin is neither censorship resistant, nor permissionless, nor decentralised and ultimately nor is it really private money either.
I don't get angry about people paying for a bar of gold, or a Rolex watch. People aren't scammed into buying those as people are scammed into buying cryto "currencies".
What makes me angry about Bitcoin is I don't like fraudsters and that is what Bitcoin has evolved into, at the cost of burning enough fuel to power a medium sized country.
It was the first time I had been to Winchester in 3 years and the high street was absolutely buzzing, all restaurants/pubs were full.
Its the same in Southampton, even during the week restaurants are full.
There are job vacancy boards everywhere, anyone who wants a job can have one.
I left school in the early 80's, there were no jobs then.
It feels absolutely nothing like that.
https://twitter.com/montie/status/1536277161363001345?s=20&t=RqCPjhYbFVEWU_kLm456_g
On the one hand (blanket determination): All workers are deemed inside IR35 without a specific test being applied to each role. This is bad and against the reasonable care clause.
On the other hand (no PSCs): All workers are deemed inside IR35 without a specific test being applied to each role. This is absolutely fine.
When you're pulled in by the company and told "all your roles are now inside IR35 and no test is being applied to them," what's the difference as to which rationale they use?
This is why everyone in the industry hates HMRC and the IR35 legislation and feels very much put upon. You retain all the negatives of the contractor business and lose all the positives and have to continue covering the negatives.
At best it’s a private commodity that has no price anchor. There’s no there there except your ability to convince the next buyer that they’re buying something of value.
It’s permissionless, but mining is a cartel dominated by a single digit number of players: Functionally, Bitcoin transactions are carried out with the assent of a small centralised body with no accountability whatsover. They’ve already flexed this power to prevent changes to the BTC protocol which would have improved it for everyone else but threatened their income.
It’s decentralised in name only - there’s a small core group of programmers who are trusted to make changes & those changes are merged only with the assent of miners who, again, form a cartel.
The censorship resistance is a joke - BTC trades are open to all & the moment your trades hit the fiat financial world in some form you tie every transaction you’ve ever made that connects to that particuliar wallet to you personally. Law enforcement have got pretty good at using this to track down fraud & other crimes.
As a currency, it’s both incredibly volatile & expensive to transact in. You can’t use it as a unit of account because of the volatility & you can’t use it for ordinary payments due to the expense. The only groups who will accept these problems are those who have no other options - so fraud, international money laundering and other criminal purposes mostly. Not so much of a social good though, is it?
It also imposes a huge negative externality on the rest of us - countries have banned BTC & other crypto mining altogether due to the load it places on electrical networks & if you have any concern about global warming at all then the increased CO2 output for negative economic gain is deeply offensive.
I could go on...
Root out 176
Now I’ve basically run out of shit to do. Tbilisi it ain’t. Help!
I know which I'd rather have
I drive a Volvo, just as a small illustration of my hypocrisy.
I eat farmed salmon, but now you mention it, I ought to stop that too.
As for “holidays” in Scotland, they usually turn into forced labour weeks.
My point was that it's perfectly legal - and also the only sane thing for companies to do given how HMRC works...
And yep I don't like it as I was a contractor but now make my money ensuring supply chain compliance and demonstrating that umbrella firms aren't tax avoidance schemes (while also simplifying their work by doing automatic payment reconciliation).
Gold is arguably the better private money - it's certainly more battle tested. But bitcoin is an attempt to do the same thing digitally. That's why it has value - the only question we haven't found out yet is what that value is.
With regards to energy...
We expend energy digging gold out of the ground (and storing it, err, back in the ground)
The dollar is backed by gas guzzling warships and jet planes. And human life, when those things are used.
People adorn their homes with Christmas lights every year around December.
Drive cars daily, on journeys they could walk.
Stream hours of endless crap on netflix, the carbon footprint of which is about 71g per hour.
And yet bitcoin attracts far more ire than any of these things. I don't get it.
The very volatility of Bitcoin that has made it such an "investment" completely contradicts its supposed worth as a "currency".
The technology isn't there for it to be a currency. Visa are capable of handling thousands of transactions per second, Bitcoin is capable of handling single digits of transactions per second and it does so consuming enough electricity to power a medium sized country and it couldn't possibly scale up to anything like the scale needed.
Hence people have tried to come up with all kinds of ever more bizarre currencies etc that piggyback onto Bitcoin's blockchain but they inevitably end the supposed "decentralised" nature of it which is why when things like Luna or Celsius go bust that so many victims of the scam get taken down with it.
The technology behind Bitcoin may have some worthwhile uses in the future. Bitcoin itself does not.
Google says there's a brandy factory tour.
We are far from alone in this dilemma, the markets are down today because US inflation has hit a 40 year high and interest rates are now expected to go up even faster, but we need policies that reduce the inevitable pain, not aggravate it. And we need a plan and a structure that guides us through day to day vicissitudes and at least gives the impression we know what we are doing.
Which sounds like blanket determinations to me (and all other contractors), but they get away with it.
And as we've determined here, they get away with it because it's a loophole: you can make what are effective blanket determinations without explicitly violating the law.
Leading to my point of: so what's the point of requiring reasonable care to be made in determinations if it has zero effect on the outcome?
A single BTC transaction costs roughly $200 in energy. The fee is currently less than this because the miners get seignorage from the BTC created when you create the next block in the chain, but the cost is there nonetheless.
What other payment system costs $200 a time? Even the most expensive way to transfer currency internationally is measured in the single digit 10s of $ & doesn’t incur roundtrip conversion costs in and out of a tradeable token that are required if you transfer via BTC. Spreads on BTC exchanges tend to be quite wide.
Meanwhile, the BTC network limits it to (IIRC) 7 transactions a second. So it’s a crippled system that can never serve the real needs of actual currency users that burns ridiculous amount of energy for the limited transfer of tokens that you can’t use as currency but might be able to sell to someone in the future if you’re lucky.
But the sales patter was fantastic & convinced many, many people to buy in to this setup.
Gold is valuable because it is useful. It is a commodity that is a useful means of wealth protection and financial exchange, only because of all its other uses. Its not just rare (something Bitcoin sought to replicate) but its useful and desired for jewellery, medals, electronics, medicines, dentistry and much more
Behind gold there is a useful product behind it, that is why you can store wealth in gold, because you know that the gold will be worth something in the future, because in the future people will still want jewellery, medals, electronics, medicines etc
That use does not exist for Bitcoin. All Bitcoin has a future of is more people willing to bet on the future of Bitcoin. That is a Ponzi scheme, and worse it is a negative equity one.
Yes we expend energy digging gold out of the ground, but we don't do so purely for the sake of it, but because people have a desire for it because of its uses.
There are sane reasons to use gold as a means of financial exchange. Bitcoin is an economically and scientifically illiterate attempt to digitise that which preys on the uneducated and greedy.
Who on earth would migrate from Switzerland to America now?
The Swiss were famous mercenaries (eg the Pope’s Swiss Guard) for the same reason. Dire poverty
150 years of studied neutrality, consensual and low key and consistently conservative governance, lots of referendums, a bit of luck with geography (being on major trade routes yet away from obvious battlefields) has turned that poverty into luxurious wealth
It is the west supplying weapons to an independent state which has been invaded.
Oh wait...
It cannot achieve any of its stated aims - by design.
The good parts of bitcoin are not new, the new parts of bitcoin are not good.
He and his deputy have both put their careers on the line by saying that they will resign should they receive FPNs - and indeed Rayner has gone further by saying that they would be unlikely to seek re-election thereafter.
They've answered that direct question several times. Why do you keep asking it ?