Imagine being able to walk into your local newsagent, picking up a copy of every magazine and newspaper, and walking out the door without paying for any of them. Thats what the internet is like as far as news is concerned.
No it isn't. The papers are perfectly able to firewall their product so people have to pay. If they chose not to then that is their problem.
Equally if they do it incompetently as the Telegraph does that's their problem.
The problem for a lot of papers is that the Mail has worked out how to provide stuff others insist on being paid for, for free.
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
If I was Starmer I'd be gutted not to have a large lead on repaying a borrowed £5 against Johnson of all people.
The one that shocked me was Johnson's 18 point lead on "Buy a round for their friends at the pub" - he clearly wins on the conviviality front (fun night out +22) but I'm surprised there's that big a gap on a "trust" issue....
I don't think the "buy a round" replies are motivated by a lack of trust in Sir Keir are they? More that he is just not one of the lads/good fun.
He's a lawyer. He's the unhumorous old git who no-one actually likes who sits at the end of the bar.
Maybe now and then someone buys him a drink because they feel sorry for him. They maybe say a polite word to him to him, but he starts muttering about "British Recovery bonds", and they edge away.
(I'm afraid Labour made the wrong choice -- it is already obvious).
That rather implies they had something better on offer. To be honest I've now forgotten who else was on offer.
The one thing I do remember was that the Labour record of no woman ever beating any man in a leadership election was upheld, although they have a much better record in the deputy-leader role.
It’s even more embarrassing when you remember Starmer was the only man in the leadership race.
I VOTED FOR A WOMAN LEADER
Labour's problem with women was that Laura Pidcock lost her seat. Whatever you think of her politics, she was a more compelling speaker than any of the candidates.
Being a more compelling speaker is not the be all and end all. Boris is a chaotic, confusing but generally compelling speaker, but his style is only part of why those who like him like him as they do. Rightly or not they like what they think he is selling. I'm not sure Pidcock, however compelling, had something people wanted to buy.
I hope Keir can grab some positive bzz - he's relatively boring, but he's not as boring a speaker as people say either.
His problem is not that he's a boring speaker; it's that he appears to be a boring thinker.
I'm amazed people are still talking about Starmer 24 hours later. This must surely be a record. Nevertheless I am firmly of the opinion that he's a dead man walking and, more to the point, he evidently agrees. In the teeth of Boris's breezy optimism he has nothing to offer except increasingly morose petulance and a wistful appreciation that it's all gone horribly wrong.
He won't last until 2024. I'd bet the farm laying him for next PM but I prefer more exciting wagers with faster gratification. He carved his own tombstone with the BLM stunt and it only remains to organise a funeral. The epitaph will be that he hit the ground kneeling.
Over on Twitter "What can he do to make Labour more popular" most popular response one word answer beginning with R
Denmark posted only 329 cases yesterday, down from over 3,500 just before Christmas. All the metrics in Denmark are going the right way, so I'm going to post this the below warning that I tend to everytime someone posts one of Eric's quotes on here, in this case on the grounds that it is unessessarily alarmist -
"But as Feigl-Ding’s influence has grown, so have the voices of his critics, many of them fellow scientists who have expressed ongoing concern over his tweets, which they say are often unnecessarily alarmist, misleading, or sometimes just plain wrong. “Science misinformation is a huge problem right now — I think we can all appreciate it — [and] he’s a constant source of it,” said Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist at George Mason University and the University of Arizona who serves on FAS’ Covid-19 Rapid Response Taskforce, a separate arm of the organization from Feigl-Ding’s work. Tara Smith, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Kent State University, suggested that Feigl-Ding’s reach means his tweets have the power to be hugely influential. “With as large of a following as he has, when he says something that’s really wrong or misleading, it reverberates throughout the Twittersphere,” she said."
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
If I was Starmer I'd be gutted not to have a large lead on repaying a borrowed £5 against Johnson of all people.
The one that shocked me was Johnson's 18 point lead on "Buy a round for their friends at the pub" - he clearly wins on the conviviality front (fun night out +22) but I'm surprised there's that big a gap on a "trust" issue....
I don't think the "buy a round" replies are motivated by a lack of trust in Sir Keir are they? More that he is just not one of the lads/good fun.
He's a lawyer. He's the unhumorous old git who no-one actually likes who sits at the end of the bar.
Maybe now and then someone buys him a drink because they feel sorry for him. They maybe say a polite word to him to him, but he starts muttering about "British Recovery bonds", and they edge away.
(I'm afraid Labour made the wrong choice -- it is already obvious).
That rather implies they had something better on offer. To be honest I've now forgotten who else was on offer.
The one thing I do remember was that the Labour record of no woman ever beating any man in a leadership election was upheld, although they have a much better record in the deputy-leader role.
It’s even more embarrassing when you remember Starmer was the only man in the leadership race.
I VOTED FOR A WOMAN LEADER
Labour's problem with women was that Laura Pidcock lost her seat. Whatever you think of her politics, she was a more compelling speaker than any of the candidates.
Being a more compelling speaker is not the be all and end all. Boris is a chaotic, confusing but generally compelling speaker, but his style is only part of why those who like him like him as they do. Rightly or not they like what they think he is selling. I'm not sure Pidcock, however compelling, had something people wanted to buy.
I hope Keir can grab some positive bzz - he's relatively boring, but he's not as boring a speaker as people say either.
His problem is not that he's a boring speaker; it's that he appears to be a boring thinker.
I'm amazed people are still talking about Starmer 24 hours later. This must surely be a record. Nevertheless I am firmly of the opinion that he's a dead man walking and, more to the point, he evidently agrees. In the teeth of Boris's breezy optimism he has nothing to offer except increasingly morose petulance and a wistful appreciation that it's all gone horribly wrong.
He won't last until 2024. I'd bet the farm laying him for next PM but I prefer more exciting wagers with faster gratification. He carved his own tombstone with the BLM stunt and it only remains to organise a funeral. The epitaph will be that he hit the ground kneeling.
On this poll just 4 days ago Starmer would be PM with SNP and LD support
Labour needs a leader who would cut through the self congratulatory bullsh8t and ask the party why it took a pandemic to reveal what was going on in the sweatshops of Leicester and not their party.
Ask why the party was silent as prolonged school closures saw the gap between middle and working class kids widen to a chasm.
These are the abuses that actually spawned the labour movement, after all. Fighting them was the reason labour came into being.
If they aren't going to fight them, then what is the point? they are heading for extinction.
Am I the only person who couldn't care less about Harry and Meghan?
I wish them well and hope they have a good life, just as I would wish for anyone and I honestly don't care about what they get up to. Be in the UK, USA, Canada or wherever - who cares?
he also picks up on the fact that everyone being workers means the organisation being paid for the ride isn't a none VAT registered self employed driver but Uber itself (in which case VAT should be being paid on the entire bill).
I'm surprised by the existing VAT treatment, and in particular the inference that booking an Uber does not involve a supply of services from Uber to the person booking the ride, even if it ALSO (before today) involved the supply of services by the driver.
I once did a VAT Tribunal about this which turned upon services in a brothel. The supply of rooms, towels (?) and condoms was by the establishment and VATable. The services offered by the girls were not as they were not VAT registered. Of course if the girls were regarded as employees the result would have come out differently.
employees or workers? There is a difference there but I'm not 100% sure whether workers may give you a get out on the VAT
One of the infuriating things about this topic is that statutory employment protection law distinguishes between "employees" and "workers" (but even there the definition differs depending on the statute) and the taxman's interpretation which doesn't really recognise the distinction.
he also picks up on the fact that everyone being workers means the organisation being paid for the ride isn't a none VAT registered self employed driver but Uber itself (in which case VAT should be being paid on the entire bill).
That's going to be a chunky bill for Uber between, ENI, NI, PAYE and VAT plus claims for NMW and holiday pay. They won't even be able to offset any CT because they never seem to make a profit. Must be a real question mark as to whether they survive this.
As I said the other day when the discussion was on UBI, if a firm cannot operate on a model that pays its employees a living wage and pays all the taxes and other liabilities it is due to pay then it is not a viable business and should not be propped up by the taxpayer.
It is different if it is a business operating on a viable model that then gets into difficulties because of the economic climate or other issues. Then I see the benefit of at least considering tax payer support in the short term as is the current case with the pandemic relief. But either Uber is a viable business paying its employees and taxes or it is not. If it is not then it deserves to fail.
Absolutely. And the number of genuinely self employed small taxi firms and businesses that they have been able to destroy with this illegal business model is a disgrace. Its worse than Amazon (words I never thought I would type).
Governments must try harder to ensure that there is a genuinely level playing field between indigenous businesses and these multinational tech companies (which is getting dangerously near getting back on topic, nice piece by the way).
Yes. The Uber case and RT's fascinating article are closely linked. We don't yet know what to do with the internet in terms of global regulation, safety and protection, taxation, unfair competition, pricing and so on.
I suspect many of us support the best of both sides of RT's article. Firstly we support free speech, news dissemination, informed discussion and lively debate.
We also oppose hate speech, paedophile images, racism, the destruction of quality journalism, copyright and intellectual property theft, commercial monopolies of every sort and unfair competition.
We also like to get as much as possible free, but know that everything internetted has a cost to someone somewhere even if it is free to us.
The Australian move has an irrational look to it, and Facebook's response is rational. It is the beginning not the end of a saga that will run and run.
I am not 100% clear (possibly being dim) of the (non polemical) answers to these questions:
What is the problem that the Aussies are trying to solve? What is the evil that RT would like to avert? What is the best way of solving the Aussie problem while averting RT's evil?
The cost in the UK would be a fraction of this - and would provide a large drop in the classroom transmissibility of the virus (whatever that figure might otherwise be). Would do the same for flu and colds next winter, so probably still worth doing then.
he also picks up on the fact that everyone being workers means the organisation being paid for the ride isn't a none VAT registered self employed driver but Uber itself (in which case VAT should be being paid on the entire bill).
I'm surprised by the existing VAT treatment, and in particular the inference that booking an Uber does not involve a supply of services from Uber to the person booking the ride, even if it ALSO (before today) involved the supply of services by the driver.
I don't use taxis or Uber, so I may be out of touch on this subject. However, I would have thought that there would be a business opening for a tech company that connected users with genuinely self employer taxi drivers and charged the drivers for the privilege. Are there in fact any like that?
The cost in the UK would be a fraction of this - and would provide a large drop in the classroom transmissibility of the virus (whatever that figure might otherwise be). Would do the same for flu and colds next winter, so probably still worth doing then.
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
If I was Starmer I'd be gutted not to have a large lead on repaying a borrowed £5 against Johnson of all people.
I'm also not persuaded that Boris is more likely than Keir to buy a round for his friends at the pub. He would offer, then harrumph and announce he's forgotten his wallet, can somebody lend me £50?
Well, maybe, but I can see why people would think that he would, but it's the repaying the lent £5 where I don't understand the trust of the voters.
And it's the things like that where you have evidence that the public see something in someone you don't that are more interesting.
The task of the Opposition is to convince the public that trust is misplaced.
The cost in the UK would be a fraction of this - and would provide a large drop in the classroom transmissibility of the virus (whatever that figure might otherwise be). Would do the same for flu and colds next winter, so probably still worth doing then.
Is it actually a good idea to stop young children developing lifetime immunity protection factors by stopping them catching childhood colds and so on?
I don't know about the pupils, but it would be nice to get through the autumn term without two major colds. Back in 2019 someone gave me something that put me in hospital with pneumonia and on intravenous antibiotics for a week.
he also picks up on the fact that everyone being workers means the organisation being paid for the ride isn't a none VAT registered self employed driver but Uber itself (in which case VAT should be being paid on the entire bill).
I'm surprised by the existing VAT treatment, and in particular the inference that booking an Uber does not involve a supply of services from Uber to the person booking the ride, even if it ALSO (before today) involved the supply of services by the driver.
I don't use taxis or Uber, so I may be out of touch on this subject. However, I would have thought that there would be a business opening for a tech company that connected users with genuinely self employer taxi drivers and charged the drivers for the privilege. Are there in fact any like that?
So, one where the drivers are setting the fare, and so can legitimately be said to be in control?
he also picks up on the fact that everyone being workers means the organisation being paid for the ride isn't a none VAT registered self employed driver but Uber itself (in which case VAT should be being paid on the entire bill).
I'm surprised by the existing VAT treatment, and in particular the inference that booking an Uber does not involve a supply of services from Uber to the person booking the ride, even if it ALSO (before today) involved the supply of services by the driver.
I once did a VAT Tribunal about this which turned upon services in a brothel. The supply of rooms, towels (?) and condoms was by the establishment and VATable. The services offered by the girls were not as they were not VAT registered. Of course if the girls were regarded as employees the result would have come out differently.
employees or workers? There is a difference there but I'm not 100% sure whether workers may give you a get out on the VAT
One of the infuriating things about this topic is that statutory employment protection law distinguishes between "employees" and "workers" (but even there the definition differs depending on the statute) and the taxman's interpretation which doesn't really recognise the distinction.
Thanks - it was the latter bit I was trying to work out as. So in HMRC's eyes a driver who is a worker is (probably) an employee for VAT purposes and is paid by the large corporation not the customer.
Am I the only person who couldn't care less about Harry and Meghan?
I wish them well and hope they have a good life, just as I would wish for anyone and I honestly don't care about what they get up to. Be in the UK, USA, Canada or wherever - who cares?
Clearly not because nearly everyone on here is echoing similar sentiments.
Bye bye Harry you and your money grabbing wife will not be missed.
I always find this attack line against Meghan odd. She was very wealthy before marriage and would have continued to be very wealthy. Her net worth pre-marriage was of a similar order of magnitude to Kate Middleton's and I assume that marrying the future King brings more riches than someone a fair way down the line of succession. So why is Meghan attacked in this way, but not Kate?
I doubt money was the motivation for either of them. Call me naive, but in both cases it may have been love. If it was instead power (of a kind), pomp or getting to a princess/queen then Kate, again, seems more open to attack, particularly as Meghan has given all that up (along with the duties it entails, of course).
he also picks up on the fact that everyone being workers means the organisation being paid for the ride isn't a none VAT registered self employed driver but Uber itself (in which case VAT should be being paid on the entire bill).
I'm surprised by the existing VAT treatment, and in particular the inference that booking an Uber does not involve a supply of services from Uber to the person booking the ride, even if it ALSO (before today) involved the supply of services by the driver.
I once did a VAT Tribunal about this which turned upon services in a brothel. The supply of rooms, towels (?) and condoms was by the establishment and VATable. The services offered by the girls were not as they were not VAT registered. Of course if the girls were regarded as employees the result would have come out differently.
employees or workers? There is a difference there but I'm not 100% sure whether workers may give you a get out on the VAT
One of the infuriating things about this topic is that statutory employment protection law distinguishes between "employees" and "workers" (but even there the definition differs depending on the statute) and the taxman's interpretation which doesn't really recognise the distinction.
Thanks - it was the latter bit I was trying to work out as. So in HMRC's eyes a driver who is a worker is (probably) an employee for VAT purposes and is paid by the large corporation not the customer.
The tests HMRC set out are largely those in IR35. VAT is a bit above my paygrade.
Am I the only person who couldn't care less about Harry and Meghan?
I wish them well and hope they have a good life, just as I would wish for anyone and I honestly don't care about what they get up to. Be in the UK, USA, Canada or wherever - who cares?
he also picks up on the fact that everyone being workers means the organisation being paid for the ride isn't a none VAT registered self employed driver but Uber itself (in which case VAT should be being paid on the entire bill).
I'm surprised by the existing VAT treatment, and in particular the inference that booking an Uber does not involve a supply of services from Uber to the person booking the ride, even if it ALSO (before today) involved the supply of services by the driver.
I don't use taxis or Uber, so I may be out of touch on this subject. However, I would have thought that there would be a business opening for a tech company that connected users with genuinely self employer taxi drivers and charged the drivers for the privilege. Are there in fact any like that?
So, one where the drivers are setting the fare, and so can legitimately be said to be in control?
From memory the law focusses on who you pay.
Pay the taxi driver directly and there isn't a problem - the issue comes when you pay the mini-cab / app firm and they then pay the driver.
Bye bye Harry you and your money grabbing wife will not be missed.
More proof that the Americans are a disaster for the royals.
"So what was it about the divorced, American actress, that first rang the alarm bells in the Royal family?"
Harry's probably counting his lucky stars he found her. A route out of the world's most oppressive family and its lifetime of misery in a goldfish bowl full of weirdos.
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
If I was Starmer I'd be gutted not to have a large lead on repaying a borrowed £5 against Johnson of all people.
The one that shocked me was Johnson's 18 point lead on "Buy a round for their friends at the pub" - he clearly wins on the conviviality front (fun night out +22) but I'm surprised there's that big a gap on a "trust" issue....
I don't think the "buy a round" replies are motivated by a lack of trust in Sir Keir are they? More that he is just not one of the lads/good fun.
I keep banging on about it, but I think a LotO needs to have the charisma to sell their vision to the public at Election time better than the sitting PM does theirs, and I can't see Sir Keir being able to manage it.
Johnson has charisma of a particular type - the ability to project a larger than life persona. He entertains, amuses, but most of all he distracts. We get the persona not the person. It's phony yet he's viewed by the unwary and the unperceptive - who are many - as authentic. For example, the "doesn't take himself too seriously" act plays particularly well even though 'himself' is the only thing he takes seriously. It's infuriating really. I hope he comes unstuck but there's no doubting that "Boris" is a powerful brand. It could be fought - and imo beaten - by a different sort of charisma, where the power comes from the focus, the drive, from a self-confidence grounded in principles truly believed and ideas rigorously thought through, a sense that it's the real person being presented, not a showboating, needy comic. Does Keir Starmer have this? I don't want to say no - too depressing an admission and in any case too early - so I'll go with not yet.
I gave you a like, but I'm going with no.
Well, as I hinted, it's mainly concern for my mental health that prevents me joining you. I really don't want to slide into a place where I'm secretly rooting for economic catastrophe as the only realistic way to exorcise Boris Johnson from the body politic.
Am I the only person who couldn't care less about Harry and Meghan?
I wish them well and hope they have a good life, just as I would wish for anyone and I honestly don't care about what they get up to. Be in the UK, USA, Canada or wherever - who cares?
I agree with totally . I am also glad Megan won her case against the mail. Harry is now no where near the throne. Just let them get on with their lifes.
I'm feeling very smug now as I said on these very pages earlier this week that the rise correlated exactly with the very cold and snowy weather. My speculation turned out to be right!
If the speculation that it is the dry air during cold spells that is the problem, then last Saturday would have been the peak for this as dewpoints were extremely low during the day (below -10C in places).
That could be argued to be a 2017+ Corbyn did win over some (very very small) number of Tories but basically quite a bit more of them (the + I guess) or more others. He did win over a small number of SNP but I think he was done over there by some Labour switching to Conservative in Scotland based on the question of the union rather than anything to do with the leadership of the whole party.
You'll have to forgive me if you are an exception to this but there has long been a general theme pushed by the right and Centrists that Labour would be more successful by getting rid of the 'hard left' with 'hard left' being related to policies and people closely related to the 2017 leadership, which attracted millions of extra votes.
The problem I have is (3) doesn't actually seem to be the current approach, the Labour right are currently partying (and purging) like its the 1980's and having a lot of fun doing it. Now I'm glad they are having a good time but that ain't winning Labour left wing votes. I don't know if they are any updates on Labour internal stuff now that we have a right winger in charge but a few quick things off the top of my head.
Forde inquiry delay, court settlement pay offs, Corbyn suspension, readmittance of people mentioned in Forde inquiry, firing lefties from shadow cabinet, spy cops bills, Bristol (West maybe) CLP stitch up, suspension of people for lots of different motions from ones to reinstate Jeremy Corbyn, no confidence in the general secretary, no confidence in Keir Starmer, the calling of previous listed motions as anti-Semitic, the not quite lie but clever way of telling people in Liverpool he wouldn't write for the Sun before writing for them.
Lots to complain about in there but the last one for example, is just a trick, a clever one which didn't actually involve lying in fairness, but one will people will remember as he tricks the left. Which has seemed to be Starmers entire party leadership. His pitch was (3) or the Corbyn without Corbynism the Labour right always claimed it would offer which I would agree is the best position the offer. His actual leadership is more indicating (2) if he plans to dramatically switch to (3) then he is going to find that a portion of the left have already lost too much trust in him.
In terms of my list of Starmer's anti left activities we can argue about morally bad people etc. but lets stick to electorally, for electoral reasons I never thought May should boot the no deal Brexiteers out (for my/Labours good she should but I couldn't make the argument on electoral grounds) so even if the left are bad people, all the things in that list (however righteous) will annoy the left and help cost votes.
TL;DR My problem isn't that I don't think (3) is the best strategy, it is that I don't think the Labour leadership or many on the right and centre think it is (or are so determined to get their enemies they don't care either way)
Denmark posted only 329 cases yesterday, down from over 3,500 just before Christmas. All the metrics in Denmark are going the right way, so I'm going to post this the below warning that I tend to everytime someone posts one of Eric's quotes on here, in this case on the grounds that it is unessessarily alarmist -
"But as Feigl-Ding’s influence has grown, so have the voices of his critics, many of them fellow scientists who have expressed ongoing concern over his tweets, which they say are often unnecessarily alarmist, misleading, or sometimes just plain wrong...."
he also picks up on the fact that everyone being workers means the organisation being paid for the ride isn't a none VAT registered self employed driver but Uber itself (in which case VAT should be being paid on the entire bill).
I'm surprised by the existing VAT treatment, and in particular the inference that booking an Uber does not involve a supply of services from Uber to the person booking the ride, even if it ALSO (before today) involved the supply of services by the driver.
I once did a VAT Tribunal about this which turned upon services in a brothel. The supply of rooms, towels (?) and condoms was by the establishment and VATable. The services offered by the girls were not as they were not VAT registered. Of course if the girls were regarded as employees the result would have come out differently.
employees or workers? There is a difference there but I'm not 100% sure whether workers may give you a get out on the VAT
One of the infuriating things about this topic is that statutory employment protection law distinguishes between "employees" and "workers" (but even there the definition differs depending on the statute) and the taxman's interpretation which doesn't really recognise the distinction.
Thanks - it was the latter bit I was trying to work out as. So in HMRC's eyes a driver who is a worker is (probably) an employee for VAT purposes and is paid by the large corporation not the customer.
The tests HMRC set out are largely those in IR35. VAT is a bit above my paygrade.
The question or VAT does not revolve around "employee" or "worker". The question is, who is suppling services, and what is the value of that supply?
Agency and intermediary relationships are always complicated for VAT purposes, as the VAT treatment does not always follow contract.
A recent example I have come across is Patreon. Patreon's view is that it, and not the creator, is supplying the Patron with the services, and the creator is (if at all) supplying Patreon.
I don't think that is how most people would have assumed.
he also picks up on the fact that everyone being workers means the organisation being paid for the ride isn't a none VAT registered self employed driver but Uber itself (in which case VAT should be being paid on the entire bill).
I'm surprised by the existing VAT treatment, and in particular the inference that booking an Uber does not involve a supply of services from Uber to the person booking the ride, even if it ALSO (before today) involved the supply of services by the driver.
I once did a VAT Tribunal about this which turned upon services in a brothel. The supply of rooms, towels (?) and condoms was by the establishment and VATable. The services offered by the girls were not as they were not VAT registered. Of course if the girls were regarded as employees the result would have come out differently.
employees or workers? There is a difference there but I'm not 100% sure whether workers may give you a get out on the VAT
One of the infuriating things about this topic is that statutory employment protection law distinguishes between "employees" and "workers" (but even there the definition differs depending on the statute) and the taxman's interpretation which doesn't really recognise the distinction.
Thanks - it was the latter bit I was trying to work out as. So in HMRC's eyes a driver who is a worker is (probably) an employee for VAT purposes and is paid by the large corporation not the customer.
The tests HMRC set out are largely those in IR35. VAT is a bit above my paygrade.
VAT was the bit I was interested in.
IR35 (and expenses when working via an umbrella company) is probably a topic I'm a world class expert in. (For those that care the approach HMRC wanted back in 2000 that will be implemented in April where the client determines status will kill contracting for a few years as most companies are going we aren't accepting any risk).
The cost in the UK would be a fraction of this - and would provide a large drop in the classroom transmissibility of the virus (whatever that figure might otherwise be). Would do the same for flu and colds next winter, so probably still worth doing then.
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
If I was Starmer I'd be gutted not to have a large lead on repaying a borrowed £5 against Johnson of all people.
The one that shocked me was Johnson's 18 point lead on "Buy a round for their friends at the pub" - he clearly wins on the conviviality front (fun night out +22) but I'm surprised there's that big a gap on a "trust" issue....
I don't think the "buy a round" replies are motivated by a lack of trust in Sir Keir are they? More that he is just not one of the lads/good fun.
He's a lawyer. He's the unhumorous old git who no-one actually likes who sits at the end of the bar.
Maybe now and then someone buys him a drink because they feel sorry for him. They maybe say a polite word to him to him, but he starts muttering about "British Recovery bonds", and they edge away.
(I'm afraid Labour made the wrong choice -- it is already obvious).
That rather implies they had something better on offer. To be honest I've now forgotten who else was on offer.
The one thing I do remember was that the Labour record of no woman ever beating any man in a leadership election was upheld, although they have a much better record in the deputy-leader role.
It’s even more embarrassing when you remember Starmer was the only man in the leadership race.
I VOTED FOR A WOMAN LEADER
Labour's problem with women was that Laura Pidcock lost her seat. Whatever you think of her politics, she was a more compelling speaker than any of the candidates.
Being a more compelling speaker is not the be all and end all. Boris is a chaotic, confusing but generally compelling speaker, but his style is only part of why those who like him like him as they do. Rightly or not they like what they think he is selling. I'm not sure Pidcock, however compelling, had something people wanted to buy.
I hope Keir can grab some positive bzz - he's relatively boring, but he's not as boring a speaker as people say either.
His problem is not that he's a boring speaker; it's that he appears to be a boring thinker.
I'm amazed people are still talking about Starmer 24 hours later. This must surely be a record. Nevertheless I am firmly of the opinion that he's a dead man walking and, more to the point, he evidently agrees. In the teeth of Boris's breezy optimism he has nothing to offer except increasingly morose petulance and a wistful appreciation that it's all gone horribly wrong.
He won't last until 2024. I'd bet the farm laying him for next PM but I prefer more exciting wagers with faster gratification. He carved his own tombstone with the BLM stunt and it only remains to organise a funeral. The epitaph will be that he hit the ground kneeling.
On this poll just 4 days ago Starmer would be PM with SNP and LD support
SKS's potential bullseye is on the issue of only modestly interesting competence. But without a front bench of people who can command attention by the depth and quality of their contribution (cf Brown Blair, Clarke, Major, Darling, Cook, Mowlem, Lawson, one could go on) they will struggle. Let's have wotsis/hername at Home Office, Treasury, Foreign, Health etc won't resonate when they send you to sleep are eminently forgettable and have Richard Burgon and the ghost of Laura Pidcock MP sitting behind them.
Am I the only person who couldn't care less about Harry and Meghan?
I wish them well and hope they have a good life, just as I would wish for anyone and I honestly don't care about what they get up to. Be in the UK, USA, Canada or wherever - who cares?
I'd like to see the back of the monarchy so I don't care particularly, but like you I wish them well.
People seem genuinely offended about their decision, like it's a slap in the face to the country or the Queen... 'How very dare they?'
But if I were in Harry's place I'd probably do something similar. His mum was essentially hounded to her death by the media, the same outlets who now attack Harry and his wife. They've been treated like shit. I don't follow the breathless revelations of the Mail and the Express so I can't discern precisely what grievous crimes Harry and Meghan have committed, other than to decide not to play the media/Royal circus game.
If you're happy with your wife and family and not bothered about all the monarchy bullshit, then why not walk away? Good luck to 'em.
he also picks up on the fact that everyone being workers means the organisation being paid for the ride isn't a none VAT registered self employed driver but Uber itself (in which case VAT should be being paid on the entire bill).
I'm surprised by the existing VAT treatment, and in particular the inference that booking an Uber does not involve a supply of services from Uber to the person booking the ride, even if it ALSO (before today) involved the supply of services by the driver.
I once did a VAT Tribunal about this which turned upon services in a brothel. The supply of rooms, towels (?) and condoms was by the establishment and VATable. The services offered by the girls were not as they were not VAT registered. Of course if the girls were regarded as employees the result would have come out differently.
employees or workers? There is a difference there but I'm not 100% sure whether workers may give you a get out on the VAT
One of the infuriating things about this topic is that statutory employment protection law distinguishes between "employees" and "workers" (but even there the definition differs depending on the statute) and the taxman's interpretation which doesn't really recognise the distinction.
Thanks - it was the latter bit I was trying to work out as. So in HMRC's eyes a driver who is a worker is (probably) an employee for VAT purposes and is paid by the large corporation not the customer.
The tests HMRC set out are largely those in IR35. VAT is a bit above my paygrade.
The question or VAT does not revolve around "employee" or "worker". The question is, who is suppling services, and what is the value of that supply?
Agency and intermediary relationships are always complicated for VAT purposes, as the VAT treatment does not always follow contract.
A recent example I have come across is Patreon. Patreon's view is that it, and not the creator, is supplying the Patron with the services, and the creator is (if at all) supplying Patreon.
I don't think that is how most people would have assumed.
Which is exactly court cases have worked against Onlyfans and other systems because the courts do seem to have ruled that VAT follows the payment chain.
Denmark posted only 329 cases yesterday, down from over 3,500 just before Christmas. All the metrics in Denmark are going the right way, so I'm going to post this the below warning that I tend to everytime someone posts one of Eric's quotes on here, in this case on the grounds that it is unessessarily alarmist -
"But as Feigl-Ding’s influence has grown, so have the voices of his critics, many of them fellow scientists who have expressed ongoing concern over his tweets, which they say are often unnecessarily alarmist, misleading, or sometimes just plain wrong...."
Fair comments, but I didn't think this tweet particularly alarmist, which was why I posted it.
It didn't mention whether the kids were symptomatic or asymptomatic and gave no context to the specialist's suggestion that there was "something" about B1117 and kids. It seemed to suggest that it was a variant more dangerous to children, of which there is no, zero, evidence.
he also picks up on the fact that everyone being workers means the organisation being paid for the ride isn't a none VAT registered self employed driver but Uber itself (in which case VAT should be being paid on the entire bill).
I'm surprised by the existing VAT treatment, and in particular the inference that booking an Uber does not involve a supply of services from Uber to the person booking the ride, even if it ALSO (before today) involved the supply of services by the driver.
I once did a VAT Tribunal about this which turned upon services in a brothel. The supply of rooms, towels (?) and condoms was by the establishment and VATable. The services offered by the girls were not as they were not VAT registered. Of course if the girls were regarded as employees the result would have come out differently.
employees or workers? There is a difference there but I'm not 100% sure whether workers may give you a get out on the VAT
One of the infuriating things about this topic is that statutory employment protection law distinguishes between "employees" and "workers" (but even there the definition differs depending on the statute) and the taxman's interpretation which doesn't really recognise the distinction.
Thanks - it was the latter bit I was trying to work out as. So in HMRC's eyes a driver who is a worker is (probably) an employee for VAT purposes and is paid by the large corporation not the customer.
The tests HMRC set out are largely those in IR35. VAT is a bit above my paygrade.
The question or VAT does not revolve around "employee" or "worker". The question is, who is suppling services, and what is the value of that supply?
Agency and intermediary relationships are always complicated for VAT purposes, as the VAT treatment does not always follow contract.
A recent example I have come across is Patreon. Patreon's view is that it, and not the creator, is supplying the Patron with the services, and the creator is (if at all) supplying Patreon.
I don't think that is how most people would have assumed.
Which is exactly court cases have worked against Onlyfans and other systems because the courts do seem to have ruled that VAT follows the payment chain.
If you have the time and inclination, the Redrow Homes case is frequently cited on whether VAT should follow payments.
he also picks up on the fact that everyone being workers means the organisation being paid for the ride isn't a none VAT registered self employed driver but Uber itself (in which case VAT should be being paid on the entire bill).
I'm surprised by the existing VAT treatment, and in particular the inference that booking an Uber does not involve a supply of services from Uber to the person booking the ride, even if it ALSO (before today) involved the supply of services by the driver.
I once did a VAT Tribunal about this which turned upon services in a brothel. The supply of rooms, towels (?) and condoms was by the establishment and VATable. The services offered by the girls were not as they were not VAT registered. Of course if the girls were regarded as employees the result would have come out differently.
employees or workers? There is a difference there but I'm not 100% sure whether workers may give you a get out on the VAT
One of the infuriating things about this topic is that statutory employment protection law distinguishes between "employees" and "workers" (but even there the definition differs depending on the statute) and the taxman's interpretation which doesn't really recognise the distinction.
Thanks - it was the latter bit I was trying to work out as. So in HMRC's eyes a driver who is a worker is (probably) an employee for VAT purposes and is paid by the large corporation not the customer.
The tests HMRC set out are largely those in IR35. VAT is a bit above my paygrade.
The question or VAT does not revolve around "employee" or "worker". The question is, who is suppling services, and what is the value of that supply?
Agency and intermediary relationships are always complicated for VAT purposes, as the VAT treatment does not always follow contract.
A recent example I have come across is Patreon. Patreon's view is that it, and not the creator, is supplying the Patron with the services, and the creator is (if at all) supplying Patreon.
I don't think that is how most people would have assumed.
If your card is charged to Patreon, then they're the supplier of the service to you, and liable for the VAT.
If your card is charged to the individual creator, then they are the supplier of the service to you, and Patreon is the supplier of the service to them.
The voters, at the time of their marriage in 2018 Harry had a net favourable rating of +60% and Meghan of almost +40%.
Now they have abandoned their royal duties after the royal wedding British taxpayers paid for, Harry's rating has plunged to just +1% with UK voters and Meghan's has collapsed to -26%
he also picks up on the fact that everyone being workers means the organisation being paid for the ride isn't a none VAT registered self employed driver but Uber itself (in which case VAT should be being paid on the entire bill).
I'm surprised by the existing VAT treatment, and in particular the inference that booking an Uber does not involve a supply of services from Uber to the person booking the ride, even if it ALSO (before today) involved the supply of services by the driver.
I once did a VAT Tribunal about this which turned upon services in a brothel. The supply of rooms, towels (?) and condoms was by the establishment and VATable. The services offered by the girls were not as they were not VAT registered. Of course if the girls were regarded as employees the result would have come out differently.
employees or workers? There is a difference there but I'm not 100% sure whether workers may give you a get out on the VAT
One of the infuriating things about this topic is that statutory employment protection law distinguishes between "employees" and "workers" (but even there the definition differs depending on the statute) and the taxman's interpretation which doesn't really recognise the distinction.
Thanks - it was the latter bit I was trying to work out as. So in HMRC's eyes a driver who is a worker is (probably) an employee for VAT purposes and is paid by the large corporation not the customer.
The tests HMRC set out are largely those in IR35. VAT is a bit above my paygrade.
The question or VAT does not revolve around "employee" or "worker". The question is, who is suppling services, and what is the value of that supply?
Agency and intermediary relationships are always complicated for VAT purposes, as the VAT treatment does not always follow contract.
A recent example I have come across is Patreon. Patreon's view is that it, and not the creator, is supplying the Patron with the services, and the creator is (if at all) supplying Patreon.
I don't think that is how most people would have assumed.
If your card is charged to Patreon, then they're the supplier of the service to you, and liable for the VAT.
If your card is charged to the individual creator, then they are the supplier of the service to you, and Patreon is the supplier of the service to them.
Except not always.
Payment merchants, such as Paypal, are for example classed as true agents, even though it is Paypal and not the creator who appears on your card.
The voters, at the time of their marriage in 2018 Harry had a net favourable rating of +60% and Meghan of almost +40%.
Now they have abandoned their royal duties after the royal wedding British taxpayers paid for, Harry's rating has plunged to just +1% with UK voters and Meghan's has collapsed to -26%
Regarding the 2017 GE and personality/charisma polling, I think it is almost impossible to judge actually. Corbyn vs May was only polled once, and that was 9 months before the GE. I would say that is not enough data to work with really. On one hand it could be argued that May won the personality poll by 5 points, and won the GE. On the other, it was obvious that Corbyn was the more charismatic of the two during the campaign, and that from a betting point of view he outperformed the markets (or that May underperformed them). Tories were 1.15 to win a majority, and the less charismatic leader blew it.I think that is more important than who technically was PM when looking at it from a betting POV
To put it into context, here are Cameron vs EdM Personality polls, and the Tory VI lead at the time
So DC was never on steady ground VI wise, but he was so much more charismatic than Ed that he won a majority.
I think Labour needs to be a good few points ahead on VI for Sir Keir to be PM
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
If I was Starmer I'd be gutted not to have a large lead on repaying a borrowed £5 against Johnson of all people.
The one that shocked me was Johnson's 18 point lead on "Buy a round for their friends at the pub" - he clearly wins on the conviviality front (fun night out +22) but I'm surprised there's that big a gap on a "trust" issue....
I don't think the "buy a round" replies are motivated by a lack of trust in Sir Keir are they? More that he is just not one of the lads/good fun.
I keep banging on about it, but I think a LotO needs to have the charisma to sell their vision to the public at Election time better than the sitting PM does theirs, and I can't see Sir Keir being able to manage it.
Not always, see 1945 when Attlee won, 1970 when Heath won and 1992 when Major won despite being the less charismatic leaders.
See also France in 2012 when Hollande beat Sarkozy despite being the duller of the 2 and 2020 in the US when Biden won despite being less charismatic than Trump.
Charisma normally wins but if the government and incumbent leader is unpopular, serious but dull can beat charismatic
For starters, Major was the incumbent, not LotO.
The world has moved on since the 40s and 70s. It is probably a more shallow, celebrity obsessed place, for better or worse.
Biden beat Trump but not by as much as the polls predicted. Biden won by 4.4% and, according to Wiki, the polls for the last year of the race had him 7.9% in front. So, yes, of course, charisma/personality is not the only thing, my point really is that it is it is a kind of hidden bonus that VI/Leader ratings don't pick up on. There is probably a % boost, maybe 10% extra on their party's VI polling, that the more charismatic candidate adds to their side when votes are cast.
Major was but Attlee wasn't in 1945, nor was Heath in 1970 and nor was Hollande in France in 2012 nor indeed was Biden in the US last year.
I agree charisma helped Trump close the gap in 2020, as it did for Sarkozy in France in 2012 but Biden and Hollande still narrowly beat them
Maybe I erred previously in saying that the candidate with more charisma wins every time (although I was referring to the UK since 1979, and Major is the only one to win without it, according to IPSOS-MORI polls). The helpful thing to know, as far as analysing polls is concerned, is that the candidate with more charisma/personality seems to out do their polling when it comes to votes being counted. It is like a hidden bonus/winning tie breaker for them
Did Mrs May have more charisma than Jeremy Corbyn in 2017?
I mean there are many adjectives for Mrs May but charisma isn' t one I'd have at the top of my list.
No she didn’t, that’s the point. Jezza had more charisma than May, and so when it came to the campaign, did much better than expected.
So the candidate with the most charisma didn't win the election?
Well that is what I said in the post you replied to!
"Maybe I erred previously in saying that the candidate with more charisma wins every time (although I was referring to the UK since 1979, and Major is the only one to win without it, according to IPSOS-MORI polls). The helpful thing to know, as far as analysing polls is concerned, is that the candidate with more charisma/personality seems to out do their polling when it comes to votes being counted. It is like a hidden bonus/winning tie breaker for them"
I was referring to this bit earlier on where you said
'Maybe I erred previously in saying that the candidate with more charisma wins every time (although I was referring to the UK since 1979, and Major is the only one to win without it, according to IPSOS-MORI polls).'
Well actually, if we are rigidily sticking to IPSOS-MORI polls, in the last one before the 2017 GE May led Corbyn 37-32 in Personality, so I was right in what I said. But it was about 9 months before the GE, had they polled that question closer to the election ,maybe, probably the poll findings would be different
But I think it is pretty fair to say Corbyn was the more charismatic of the two during the campaign, and that, despite losing, him being the more charismatic candidate enabled him to get a better result then the polls had predicted, which is what I think is useful to know.
(and the part you quoted was from the post you replied to, as I said!)
If you want something positive in terms of Starmer I have heard he is actually less wooden than he is currently being as Labour leader, I think Sienna (Labour List lady) said it and she seems like a fairly honest person on that kind of stuff. The intense pressure and criticism probably makes it difficult, Ed seems like a different (better) person these days, the thing Starmer needs to figure out is how to show everyone whatever Sienna saw which involves him but he also probably needs better media (which probably involves less pissed off lefties who can then be helpful rather than harmful, or converting a load of right wing media to his side)
The voters, at the time of their marriage in 2018 Harry had a net favourable rating of +60% and Meghan of almost +40%.
Now they have abandoned their royal duties after the royal wedding British taxpayers paid for, Harry's rating has plunged to just +1% with UK voters and Meghan's has collapsed to -26%
The big tech companies have pushed their luck, using news providers to enhance their own offering for free. But when all is said and done, the essential problem is that news organisations have failed to come up with a model to monetise their product as much as they would like. The Australian gambit is not going to cure that.
The Washington Post asks me daily to pay $29 for an annual subscription. That would be great value if I intended to read more than one article a month in it. This morning, Matthew Goodwin tweeted a link to a Times opinion piece by Gerard Baker. I’d probably pay some very small amount to be able to glance at a well-written rant by an old-school conservative but I’m not going to sign up indefinitely to a subscription to do so. I’ll do without. Still less would I pay a subscription to read Ambrose Evans-Pritchard rave about how Belgians’ fondness for mayonnaise was an infallible indicator that the EU was on the brink of collapse through wokeness.
If newspapers offered a carnet of articles moderately priced, perhaps in sets of 100, I expect my curiosity would overcome me on occasion and the newspaper publishers would get more views, more profile and more funds. Newspapers could also learn much more accurately what content people were willing to pay for online. But they seem determined to stick to a model that imagines newspapers as indivisible items, just like the paper copies. Strange.
The voters, at the time of their marriage in 2018 Harry had a net favourable rating of +60% and Meghan of almost +40%.
Now they have abandoned their royal duties after the royal wedding British taxpayers paid for, Harry's rating has plunged to just +1% with UK voters and Meghan's has collapsed to -26%
Most surprisingly of all Camilla has now overtaken Meghan in terms of favourability, Camilla now has a favourabiliy rating of +1% compared to Meghan's -26%, so it looks like the Duchess of Cornwall has benefited most from Meghan and Harry's fall from grace
The voters, at the time of their marriage in 2018 Harry had a net favourable rating of +60% and Meghan of almost +40%.
Now they have abandoned their royal duties after the royal wedding British taxpayers paid for, Harry's rating has plunged to just +1% with UK voters and Meghan's has collapsed to -26%
he also picks up on the fact that everyone being workers means the organisation being paid for the ride isn't a none VAT registered self employed driver but Uber itself (in which case VAT should be being paid on the entire bill).
I'm surprised by the existing VAT treatment, and in particular the inference that booking an Uber does not involve a supply of services from Uber to the person booking the ride, even if it ALSO (before today) involved the supply of services by the driver.
I once did a VAT Tribunal about this which turned upon services in a brothel. The supply of rooms, towels (?) and condoms was by the establishment and VATable. The services offered by the girls were not as they were not VAT registered. Of course if the girls were regarded as employees the result would have come out differently.
employees or workers? There is a difference there but I'm not 100% sure whether workers may give you a get out on the VAT
One of the infuriating things about this topic is that statutory employment protection law distinguishes between "employees" and "workers" (but even there the definition differs depending on the statute) and the taxman's interpretation which doesn't really recognise the distinction.
Thanks - it was the latter bit I was trying to work out as. So in HMRC's eyes a driver who is a worker is (probably) an employee for VAT purposes and is paid by the large corporation not the customer.
The tests HMRC set out are largely those in IR35. VAT is a bit above my paygrade.
The question or VAT does not revolve around "employee" or "worker". The question is, who is suppling services, and what is the value of that supply?
Agency and intermediary relationships are always complicated for VAT purposes, as the VAT treatment does not always follow contract.
A recent example I have come across is Patreon. Patreon's view is that it, and not the creator, is supplying the Patron with the services, and the creator is (if at all) supplying Patreon.
I don't think that is how most people would have assumed.
If your card is charged to Patreon, then they're the supplier of the service to you, and liable for the VAT.
If your card is charged to the individual creator, then they are the supplier of the service to you, and Patreon is the supplier of the service to them.
Except not always.
Payment merchants, such as Paypal, are for example classed as true agents, even though it is Paypal and not the creator who appears on your card.
Ah yes, the exception that proves the rule. as all they're doing is handling the financial transaction itself irrespective of the nature of your business.
If they're handling services related to your actual business (such as Uber, Patreon, OnlyFans etc) then they're liable for the VAT.
The voters, at the time of their marriage in 2018 Harry had a net favourable rating of +60% and Meghan of almost +40%.
Now they have abandoned their royal duties after the royal wedding British taxpayers paid for, Harry's rating has plunged to just +1% with UK voters and Meghan's has collapsed to -26%
I think it a fair summary to say that the good old British public`s view is that, having abandoned their royal duties of their own volition, they should feel free to shed all trappings and quit seeking publicity.
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
If I was Starmer I'd be gutted not to have a large lead on repaying a borrowed £5 against Johnson of all people.
The one that shocked me was Johnson's 18 point lead on "Buy a round for their friends at the pub" - he clearly wins on the conviviality front (fun night out +22) but I'm surprised there's that big a gap on a "trust" issue....
I don't think the "buy a round" replies are motivated by a lack of trust in Sir Keir are they? More that he is just not one of the lads/good fun.
He's a lawyer. He's the unhumorous old git who no-one actually likes who sits at the end of the bar.
Maybe now and then someone buys him a drink because they feel sorry for him. They maybe say a polite word to him to him, but he starts muttering about "British Recovery bonds", and they edge away.
(I'm afraid Labour made the wrong choice -- it is already obvious).
That rather implies they had something better on offer. To be honest I've now forgotten who else was on offer.
The one thing I do remember was that the Labour record of no woman ever beating any man in a leadership election was upheld, although they have a much better record in the deputy-leader role.
It’s even more embarrassing when you remember Starmer was the only man in the leadership race.
I VOTED FOR A WOMAN LEADER
Labour's problem with women was that Laura Pidcock lost her seat. Whatever you think of her politics, she was a more compelling speaker than any of the candidates.
Being a more compelling speaker is not the be all and end all. Boris is a chaotic, confusing but generally compelling speaker, but his style is only part of why those who like him like him as they do. Rightly or not they like what they think he is selling. I'm not sure Pidcock, however compelling, had something people wanted to buy.
I hope Keir can grab some positive bzz - he's relatively boring, but he's not as boring a speaker as people say either.
His problem is not that he's a boring speaker; it's that he appears to be a boring thinker.
I'm amazed people are still talking about Starmer 24 hours later. This must surely be a record. Nevertheless I am firmly of the opinion that he's a dead man walking and, more to the point, he evidently agrees. In the teeth of Boris's breezy optimism he has nothing to offer except increasingly morose petulance and a wistful appreciation that it's all gone horribly wrong.
He won't last until 2024. I'd bet the farm laying him for next PM but I prefer more exciting wagers with faster gratification. He carved his own tombstone with the BLM stunt and it only remains to organise a funeral. The epitaph will be that he hit the ground kneeling.
He'll almost certainly lead Labour into the GE so laying him for next PM at the current 5 is a crazy bet unless you think Johnson will not be leading the Cons into it. I'm on the other side of the bet. Long at 5 and I'll be laying back at 3 tops as soon as it dawns on punters that Johnson is going nowhere.
And, no, his BLM kneel will not doom him. There is no way an election-winning coalition for this country's mainstream party of the progressive left includes lots of people who get their knickers in a spin about a gesture to signify anti-racism.
The voters, at the time of their marriage in 2018 Harry had a net favourable rating of +60% and Meghan of almost +40%.
Now they have abandoned their royal duties after the royal wedding British taxpayers paid for, Harry's rating has plunged to just +1% with UK voters and Meghan's has collapsed to -26%
The voters, at the time of their marriage in 2018 Harry had a net favourable rating of +60% and Meghan of almost +40%.
Now they have abandoned their royal duties after the royal wedding British taxpayers paid for, Harry's rating has plunged to just +1% with UK voters and Meghan's has collapsed to -26%
Most surprisingly of all Camilla has now overtaken Meghan in terms of favourability, Camilla now has a favourabiliy rating of +1% compared to Meghan's -26%, so it looks like the Duchess of Cornwall has benefited most from Meghan and Harry's fall from grace
Hardly news. I love an overnight count, but for locals we've been told for months the plan is to spread it out over 4 days (verification, unitary, parish, PCC).
I worry though that it may be the end of overnight counting, the spectacle of it, as I don't think many did it for the first PCCs anyway, and loads of election officials don't like doing it.
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
If I was Starmer I'd be gutted not to have a large lead on repaying a borrowed £5 against Johnson of all people.
The one that shocked me was Johnson's 18 point lead on "Buy a round for their friends at the pub" - he clearly wins on the conviviality front (fun night out +22) but I'm surprised there's that big a gap on a "trust" issue....
I don't think the "buy a round" replies are motivated by a lack of trust in Sir Keir are they? More that he is just not one of the lads/good fun.
He's a lawyer. He's the unhumorous old git who no-one actually likes who sits at the end of the bar.
Maybe now and then someone buys him a drink because they feel sorry for him. They maybe say a polite word to him to him, but he starts muttering about "British Recovery bonds", and they edge away.
(I'm afraid Labour made the wrong choice -- it is already obvious).
That rather implies they had something better on offer. To be honest I've now forgotten who else was on offer.
The one thing I do remember was that the Labour record of no woman ever beating any man in a leadership election was upheld, although they have a much better record in the deputy-leader role.
It’s even more embarrassing when you remember Starmer was the only man in the leadership race.
I VOTED FOR A WOMAN LEADER
Labour's problem with women was that Laura Pidcock lost her seat. Whatever you think of her politics, she was a more compelling speaker than any of the candidates.
Being a more compelling speaker is not the be all and end all. Boris is a chaotic, confusing but generally compelling speaker, but his style is only part of why those who like him like him as they do. Rightly or not they like what they think he is selling. I'm not sure Pidcock, however compelling, had something people wanted to buy.
I hope Keir can grab some positive bzz - he's relatively boring, but he's not as boring a speaker as people say either.
His problem is not that he's a boring speaker; it's that he appears to be a boring thinker.
I'm amazed people are still talking about Starmer 24 hours later. This must surely be a record. Nevertheless I am firmly of the opinion that he's a dead man walking and, more to the point, he evidently agrees. In the teeth of Boris's breezy optimism he has nothing to offer except increasingly morose petulance and a wistful appreciation that it's all gone horribly wrong.
He won't last until 2024. I'd bet the farm laying him for next PM but I prefer more exciting wagers with faster gratification. He carved his own tombstone with the BLM stunt and it only remains to organise a funeral. The epitaph will be that he hit the ground kneeling.
He'll almost certainly lead Labour into the GE so laying him for next PM at the current 5 is a crazy bet unless you think Johnson will not be leading the Cons into it. I'm on the other side of the bet. Long at 5 and I'll be laying back at 3 tops as soon as it dawns on punters that Johnson is going nowhere.
And, no, his BLM kneel will not doom him. There is no way an election-winning coalition for this country's mainstream party of the progressive left includes lots of people who get their knickers in a spin about a gesture to signify anti-racism.
I`m trying to untangle your first paragraph. You think that a different CP leader would have a better chance than Johnson?
I'm surprised by the existing VAT treatment, and in particular the inference that booking an Uber does not involve a supply of services from Uber to the person booking the ride, even if it ALSO (before today) involved the supply of services by the driver.
I once did a VAT Tribunal about this which turned upon services in a brothel. The supply of rooms, towels (?) and condoms was by the establishment and VATable. The services offered by the girls were not as they were not VAT registered. Of course if the girls were regarded as employees the result would have come out differently.
employees or workers? There is a difference there but I'm not 100% sure whether workers may give you a get out on the VAT
One of the infuriating things about this topic is that statutory employment protection law distinguishes between "employees" and "workers" (but even there the definition differs depending on the statute) and the taxman's interpretation which doesn't really recognise the distinction.
Thanks - it was the latter bit I was trying to work out as. So in HMRC's eyes a driver who is a worker is (probably) an employee for VAT purposes and is paid by the large corporation not the customer.
The tests HMRC set out are largely those in IR35. VAT is a bit above my paygrade.
The question or VAT does not revolve around "employee" or "worker". The question is, who is suppling services, and what is the value of that supply?
Agency and intermediary relationships are always complicated for VAT purposes, as the VAT treatment does not always follow contract.
A recent example I have come across is Patreon. Patreon's view is that it, and not the creator, is supplying the Patron with the services, and the creator is (if at all) supplying Patreon.
I don't think that is how most people would have assumed.
If your card is charged to Patreon, then they're the supplier of the service to you, and liable for the VAT.
If your card is charged to the individual creator, then they are the supplier of the service to you, and Patreon is the supplier of the service to them.
Except not always.
Payment merchants, such as Paypal, are for example classed as true agents, even though it is Paypal and not the creator who appears on your card.
Ah yes, the exception that proves the rule. as all they're doing is handling the financial transaction itself irrespective of the nature of your business.
If they're handling services related to your actual business (such as Uber, Patreon, OnlyFans etc) then they're liable for the VAT.
I don't disagree about the thrust here, which is why I was surprised HMRC were not challenging the existing VAT treatment of Uber.
But as I have been corrected, they are, although they appear to have held fire until this judgment.
The cost in the UK would be a fraction of this - and would provide a large drop in the classroom transmissibility of the virus (whatever that figure might otherwise be). Would do the same for flu and colds next winter, so probably still worth doing then.
Is it actually a good idea to stop young children developing lifetime immunity protection factors by stopping them catching childhood colds and so on?
An interesting question. FWIW, I suspect most kids would still get colds, but it might give the teachers a break.
A break from colds... But it would reduce the breaks they get from teaching when they're able to take a legitimate sick day thanks to colds etc. Could be a finely balanced cost/benefit
he also picks up on the fact that everyone being workers means the organisation being paid for the ride isn't a none VAT registered self employed driver but Uber itself (in which case VAT should be being paid on the entire bill).
That's going to be a chunky bill for Uber between, ENI, NI, PAYE and VAT plus claims for NMW and holiday pay. They won't even be able to offset any CT because they never seem to make a profit. Must be a real question mark as to whether they survive this.
As I said the other day when the discussion was on UBI, if a firm cannot operate on a model that pays its employees a living wage and pays all the taxes and other liabilities it is due to pay then it is not a viable business and should not be propped up by the taxpayer.
It is different if it is a business operating on a viable model that then gets into difficulties because of the economic climate or other issues. Then I see the benefit of at least considering tax payer support in the short term as is the current case with the pandemic relief. But either Uber is a viable business paying its employees and taxes or it is not. If it is not then it deserves to fail.
Absolutely. And the number of genuinely self employed small taxi firms and businesses that they have been able to destroy with this illegal business model is a disgrace. Its worse than Amazon (words I never thought I would type).
Governments must try harder to ensure that there is a genuinely level playing field between indigenous businesses and these multinational tech companies (which is getting dangerously near getting back on topic, nice piece by the way).
Yes. The Uber case and RT's fascinating article are closely linked. We don't yet know what to do with the internet in terms of global regulation, safety and protection, taxation, unfair competition, pricing and so on.
I suspect many of us support the best of both sides of RT's article. Firstly we support free speech, news dissemination, informed discussion and lively debate.
We also oppose hate speech, paedophile images, racism, the destruction of quality journalism, copyright and intellectual property theft, commercial monopolies of every sort and unfair competition.
We also like to get as much as possible free, but know that everything internetted has a cost to someone somewhere even if it is free to us.
The Australian move has an irrational look to it, and Facebook's response is rational. It is the beginning not the end of a saga that will run and run.
I am not 100% clear (possibly being dim) of the (non polemical) answers to these questions:
What is the problem that the Aussies are trying to solve? What is the evil that RT would like to avert? What is the best way of solving the Aussie problem while averting RT's evil?
Gosh, anyone feel free to correct me if I get this wrong but:
1. Because so many get their news via facebook they spend a lot more time on it than they do on news sites where they buzz in for the linked article and out again. This means Facebook pick up most of the advertising revenue.
2. RT is concerned that if Facebook have to pay a fee when someone on their site links to one of these articles it will become impossible for everyone else to make such links too. PB is a good example of a site that simply could not have links to anything commercial if it had to pay. This risks diminishing and devaluing the scope of debate on the internet with freedom of speech implications.
3. I think that this is the hardest. It seems to me that the only viable answer is paywalls if the news organisations cannot generate enough advertising revenue to cover their costs and make a profit. Not entirely sure what RT's position is.
The voters, at the time of their marriage in 2018 Harry had a net favourable rating of +60% and Meghan of almost +40%.
Now they have abandoned their royal duties after the royal wedding British taxpayers paid for, Harry's rating has plunged to just +1% with UK voters and Meghan's has collapsed to -26%
I think it a fair summary to say that the good old British public`s view is that, having abandoned their royal duties of their own volition, they should feel free to shed all trappings and quit seeking publicity.
Probably. I like them both just fine, but if you're out, you're out. She can go back to acting.
Royalty is inherently silly, so the key is you have to take it seriously if you are going to do it, like judges wearing robes.
Hardly news. I love an overnight count, but for locals we've been told for months the plan is to spread it out over 4 days (verification, unitary, parish, PCC).
I worry though that it may be the end of overnight counting, the spectacle of it, as I don't think many did it for the first PCCs anyway, and loads of election officials don't like doing it.
Apart from making PB followers stay up all night, are there any reasons why votes are traditionally counted overnight?
Denmark posted only 329 cases yesterday, down from over 3,500 just before Christmas. All the metrics in Denmark are going the right way, so I'm going to post this the below warning that I tend to everytime someone posts one of Eric's quotes on here, in this case on the grounds that it is unessessarily alarmist -
"But as Feigl-Ding’s influence has grown, so have the voices of his critics, many of them fellow scientists who have expressed ongoing concern over his tweets, which they say are often unnecessarily alarmist, misleading, or sometimes just plain wrong...."
Fair comments, but I didn't think this tweet particularly alarmist, which was why I posted it.
It didn't mention whether the kids were symptomatic or asymptomatic and gave no context to the specialist's suggestion that there was "something" about B1117 and kids. It seemed to suggest that it was a variant more dangerous to children, of which there is no, zero, evidence.
I don't think the concern is that, but rather possible increased transmissibility. Has a bearing on how quickly we reopen schools.
Hardly news. I love an overnight count, but for locals we've been told for months the plan is to spread it out over 4 days (verification, unitary, parish, PCC).
I worry though that it may be the end of overnight counting, the spectacle of it, as I don't think many did it for the first PCCs anyway, and loads of election officials don't like doing it.
Apart from making PB followers stay up all night, are there any reasons why votes are traditionally counted overnight?
So the great unwashed can wake up knowing who is now in charge?
But that is the key really, it is fun to see the Prime Minister having to be up all night and then stand next to a guy with a bin on his head in a local sports centre, I'd hate to miss that, but what actual harm if not?
Until the vaccinations are sufficiently widespread to take a bite out of R, any release of lockdown will bring us back over 1.
However, vaccination of the vulnerable categories can massively reduce death and hospitalisation. The problem is that in the case of hospitalisation, this requires a much wider cohort.
So you need to vaccinate a considerable proportion of the population before you can turn COVID into a "flu level" illness.
Hence the talk of going to a rapid 1st jab for everyone over 40.
Cities in particular should be banging through younger age groups tbh - Andy Burnham raises a good point on this.
The big tech companies have pushed their luck, using news providers to enhance their own offering for free. But when all is said and done, the essential problem is that news organisations have failed to come up with a model to monetise their product as much as they would like. The Australian gambit is not going to cure that.
The Washington Post asks me daily to pay $29 for an annual subscription. That would be great value if I intended to read more than one article a month in it. This morning, Matthew Goodwin tweeted a link to a Times opinion piece by Gerard Baker. I’d probably pay some very small amount to be able to glance at a well-written rant by an old-school conservative but I’m not going to sign up indefinitely to a subscription to do so. I’ll do without. Still less would I pay a subscription to read Ambrose Evans-Pritchard rave about how Belgians’ fondness for mayonnaise was an infallible indicator that the EU was on the brink of collapse through wokeness.
If newspapers offered a carnet of articles moderately priced, perhaps in sets of 100, I expect my curiosity would overcome me on occasion and the newspaper publishers would get more views, more profile and more funds. Newspapers could also learn much more accurately what content people were willing to pay for online. But they seem determined to stick to a model that imagines newspapers as indivisible items, just like the paper copies. Strange.
I always sub/unsub to the New York Times for the presidential US elections.
Hardly news. I love an overnight count, but for locals we've been told for months the plan is to spread it out over 4 days (verification, unitary, parish, PCC).
I worry though that it may be the end of overnight counting, the spectacle of it, as I don't think many did it for the first PCCs anyway, and loads of election officials don't like doing it.
I should say that was provisional - it may be that if restrictions are loosened for early May it can be done in something closer to traditional.
The big tech companies have pushed their luck, using news providers to enhance their own offering for free. But when all is said and done, the essential problem is that news organisations have failed to come up with a model to monetise their product as much as they would like. The Australian gambit is not going to cure that.
The Washington Post asks me daily to pay $29 for an annual subscription. That would be great value if I intended to read more than one article a month in it. This morning, Matthew Goodwin tweeted a link to a Times opinion piece by Gerard Baker. I’d probably pay some very small amount to be able to glance at a well-written rant by an old-school conservative but I’m not going to sign up indefinitely to a subscription to do so. I’ll do without. Still less would I pay a subscription to read Ambrose Evans-Pritchard rave about how Belgians’ fondness for mayonnaise was an infallible indicator that the EU was on the brink of collapse through wokeness.
If newspapers offered a carnet of articles moderately priced, perhaps in sets of 100, I expect my curiosity would overcome me on occasion and the newspaper publishers would get more views, more profile and more funds. Newspapers could also learn much more accurately what content people were willing to pay for online. But they seem determined to stick to a model that imagines newspapers as indivisible items, just like the paper copies. Strange.
I agree. In the run up to the election and in the midst of Covid I subscribed to the Atlantic magazine. There are a lot of good pieces on their site but there is also a lot to do with American arts etc that I have zero interest in. I am not sure if I will repeat the subscription. I would buy 50 articles from the Times or the Telegraph for a reasonable price but I am not subscribing to an entire newspaper for that. Monetisation is indeed the key but they need to get a bit cleverer with it.
Hardly news. I love an overnight count, but for locals we've been told for months the plan is to spread it out over 4 days (verification, unitary, parish, PCC).
I worry though that it may be the end of overnight counting, the spectacle of it, as I don't think many did it for the first PCCs anyway, and loads of election officials don't like doing it.
Apart from making PB followers stay up all night, are there any reasons why votes are traditionally counted overnight?
So the great unwashed can wake up knowing who is now in charge?
But that is the key really, it is fun to see the Prime Minister having to be up all night and then stand next to a guy with a bin on his head in a local sports centre, I'd hate to miss that, but what actual harm if not?
Also, it gives Sunderland something to be famous for.
Tell me that the SNP have not been chumming up with Donald Trump again?
Hot from preventing the multi party SPCB from delaying a decision (and one not apparently welcomed by them) for a whole half day, the SNP have now corrupted the Electoral Management Board for Scotland? What fresh hell is this?
I'm sure we can all think of much more recent cases of politicians and parties chumming up with Donald Trump.
Hardly news. I love an overnight count, but for locals we've been told for months the plan is to spread it out over 4 days (verification, unitary, parish, PCC).
I worry though that it may be the end of overnight counting, the spectacle of it, as I don't think many did it for the first PCCs anyway, and loads of election officials don't like doing it.
Apart from making PB followers stay up all night, are there any reasons why votes are traditionally counted overnight?
I guess traditionally less time for votes to be tampered with. I can see that in the GE context, but does anyone fixed PCC elections?
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
If I was Starmer I'd be gutted not to have a large lead on repaying a borrowed £5 against Johnson of all people.
The one that shocked me was Johnson's 18 point lead on "Buy a round for their friends at the pub" - he clearly wins on the conviviality front (fun night out +22) but I'm surprised there's that big a gap on a "trust" issue....
I don't think the "buy a round" replies are motivated by a lack of trust in Sir Keir are they? More that he is just not one of the lads/good fun.
He's a lawyer. He's the unhumorous old git who no-one actually likes who sits at the end of the bar.
Maybe now and then someone buys him a drink because they feel sorry for him. They maybe say a polite word to him to him, but he starts muttering about "British Recovery bonds", and they edge away.
(I'm afraid Labour made the wrong choice -- it is already obvious).
That rather implies they had something better on offer. To be honest I've now forgotten who else was on offer.
The one thing I do remember was that the Labour record of no woman ever beating any man in a leadership election was upheld, although they have a much better record in the deputy-leader role.
It’s even more embarrassing when you remember Starmer was the only man in the leadership race.
I VOTED FOR A WOMAN LEADER
Labour's problem with women was that Laura Pidcock lost her seat. Whatever you think of her politics, she was a more compelling speaker than any of the candidates.
Being a more compelling speaker is not the be all and end all. Boris is a chaotic, confusing but generally compelling speaker, but his style is only part of why those who like him like him as they do. Rightly or not they like what they think he is selling. I'm not sure Pidcock, however compelling, had something people wanted to buy.
I hope Keir can grab some positive bzz - he's relatively boring, but he's not as boring a speaker as people say either.
His problem is not that he's a boring speaker; it's that he appears to be a boring thinker.
I'm amazed people are still talking about Starmer 24 hours later. This must surely be a record. Nevertheless I am firmly of the opinion that he's a dead man walking and, more to the point, he evidently agrees. In the teeth of Boris's breezy optimism he has nothing to offer except increasingly morose petulance and a wistful appreciation that it's all gone horribly wrong.
He won't last until 2024. I'd bet the farm laying him for next PM but I prefer more exciting wagers with faster gratification. He carved his own tombstone with the BLM stunt and it only remains to organise a funeral. The epitaph will be that he hit the ground kneeling.
He'll almost certainly lead Labour into the GE so laying him for next PM at the current 5 is a crazy bet unless you think Johnson will not be leading the Cons into it. I'm on the other side of the bet. Long at 5 and I'll be laying back at 3 tops as soon as it dawns on punters that Johnson is going nowhere.
And, no, his BLM kneel will not doom him. There is no way an election-winning coalition for this country's mainstream party of the progressive left includes lots of people who get their knickers in a spin about a gesture to signify anti-racism.
It's a struggle to parse your final sentence but you seem to be arguing that " ...people who get their knickers in a spin about a gesture..." should eff off and join the Tories. In which case we concur, except to say that in my opinion they already have done.
I'm surprised by the existing VAT treatment, and in particular the inference that booking an Uber does not involve a supply of services from Uber to the person booking the ride, even if it ALSO (before today) involved the supply of services by the driver.
I once did a VAT Tribunal about this which turned upon services in a brothel. The supply of rooms, towels (?) and condoms was by the establishment and VATable. The services offered by the girls were not as they were not VAT registered. Of course if the girls were regarded as employees the result would have come out differently.
employees or workers? There is a difference there but I'm not 100% sure whether workers may give you a get out on the VAT
One of the infuriating things about this topic is that statutory employment protection law distinguishes between "employees" and "workers" (but even there the definition differs depending on the statute) and the taxman's interpretation which doesn't really recognise the distinction.
Thanks - it was the latter bit I was trying to work out as. So in HMRC's eyes a driver who is a worker is (probably) an employee for VAT purposes and is paid by the large corporation not the customer.
The tests HMRC set out are largely those in IR35. VAT is a bit above my paygrade.
The question or VAT does not revolve around "employee" or "worker". The question is, who is suppling services, and what is the value of that supply?
Agency and intermediary relationships are always complicated for VAT purposes, as the VAT treatment does not always follow contract.
A recent example I have come across is Patreon. Patreon's view is that it, and not the creator, is supplying the Patron with the services, and the creator is (if at all) supplying Patreon.
I don't think that is how most people would have assumed.
If your card is charged to Patreon, then they're the supplier of the service to you, and liable for the VAT.
If your card is charged to the individual creator, then they are the supplier of the service to you, and Patreon is the supplier of the service to them.
Except not always.
Payment merchants, such as Paypal, are for example classed as true agents, even though it is Paypal and not the creator who appears on your card.
Ah yes, the exception that proves the rule. as all they're doing is handling the financial transaction itself irrespective of the nature of your business.
If they're handling services related to your actual business (such as Uber, Patreon, OnlyFans etc) then they're liable for the VAT.
I don't disagree about the thrust here, which is why I was surprised HMRC were not challenging the existing VAT treatment of Uber.
But as I have been corrected, they are, although they appear to have held fire until this judgment.
Hardly news. I love an overnight count, but for locals we've been told for months the plan is to spread it out over 4 days (verification, unitary, parish, PCC).
I worry though that it may be the end of overnight counting, the spectacle of it, as I don't think many did it for the first PCCs anyway, and loads of election officials don't like doing it.
Apart from making PB followers stay up all night, are there any reasons why votes are traditionally counted overnight?
A police guard overnight I guess. I know they have 2 officers at Lindisfarne when the causeway is out.
Hardly news. I love an overnight count, but for locals we've been told for months the plan is to spread it out over 4 days (verification, unitary, parish, PCC).
I worry though that it may be the end of overnight counting, the spectacle of it, as I don't think many did it for the first PCCs anyway, and loads of election officials don't like doing it.
Apart from making PB followers stay up all night, are there any reasons why votes are traditionally counted overnight?
So the great unwashed can wake up knowing who is now in charge?
But that is the key really, it is fun to see the Prime Minister having to be up all night and then stand next to a guy with a bin on his head in a local sports centre, I'd hate to miss that, but what actual harm if not?
That's definitely half the fun of the night. That, and watching partisan punters call it wrong and leaving easy winnings on Betfair.
he also picks up on the fact that everyone being workers means the organisation being paid for the ride isn't a none VAT registered self employed driver but Uber itself (in which case VAT should be being paid on the entire bill).
That's going to be a chunky bill for Uber between, ENI, NI, PAYE and VAT plus claims for NMW and holiday pay. They won't even be able to offset any CT because they never seem to make a profit. Must be a real question mark as to whether they survive this.
As I said the other day when the discussion was on UBI, if a firm cannot operate on a model that pays its employees a living wage and pays all the taxes and other liabilities it is due to pay then it is not a viable business and should not be propped up by the taxpayer.
It is different if it is a business operating on a viable model that then gets into difficulties because of the economic climate or other issues. Then I see the benefit of at least considering tax payer support in the short term as is the current case with the pandemic relief. But either Uber is a viable business paying its employees and taxes or it is not. If it is not then it deserves to fail.
Absolutely. And the number of genuinely self employed small taxi firms and businesses that they have been able to destroy with this illegal business model is a disgrace. Its worse than Amazon (words I never thought I would type).
Governments must try harder to ensure that there is a genuinely level playing field between indigenous businesses and these multinational tech companies (which is getting dangerously near getting back on topic, nice piece by the way).
Yes. The Uber case and RT's fascinating article are closely linked. We don't yet know what to do with the internet in terms of global regulation, safety and protection, taxation, unfair competition, pricing and so on.
I suspect many of us support the best of both sides of RT's article. Firstly we support free speech, news dissemination, informed discussion and lively debate.
We also oppose hate speech, paedophile images, racism, the destruction of quality journalism, copyright and intellectual property theft, commercial monopolies of every sort and unfair competition.
We also like to get as much as possible free, but know that everything internetted has a cost to someone somewhere even if it is free to us.
The Australian move has an irrational look to it, and Facebook's response is rational. It is the beginning not the end of a saga that will run and run.
I am not 100% clear (possibly being dim) of the (non polemical) answers to these questions:
What is the problem that the Aussies are trying to solve? What is the evil that RT would like to avert? What is the best way of solving the Aussie problem while averting RT's evil?
Gosh, anyone feel free to correct me if I get this wrong but:
1. Because so many get their news via facebook they spend a lot more time on it than they do on news sites where they buzz in for the linked article and out again. This means Facebook pick up most of the advertising revenue.
2. RT is concerned that if Facebook have to pay a fee when someone on their site links to one of these articles it will become impossible for everyone else to make such links too. PB is a good example of a site that simply could not have links to anything commercial if it had to pay. This risks diminishing and devaluing the scope of debate on the internet with freedom of speech implications.
3. I think that this is the hardest. It seems to me that the only viable answer is paywalls if the news organisations cannot generate enough advertising revenue to cover their costs and make a profit. Not entirely sure what RT's position is.
Isn't that a long way of saying "those who framed the law believe media have not successfully competed with Facebook"?
But NYT now get more revenue from online subscriptions than from sales.
This is a bad law. There may be laws that are possible around this, but this is a dog's breakfast.
The bigger issue is that Google, Facebook et al are too dominant. They should be regulated as utilities, as that is effectively what they are, with capped returns and tough restrictions on what they can do with people’s data.
If Zuckerberg gets poorer as a result I don’t really care.
he also picks up on the fact that everyone being workers means the organisation being paid for the ride isn't a none VAT registered self employed driver but Uber itself (in which case VAT should be being paid on the entire bill).
I'm surprised by the existing VAT treatment, and in particular the inference that booking an Uber does not involve a supply of services from Uber to the person booking the ride, even if it ALSO (before today) involved the supply of services by the driver.
I don't use taxis or Uber, so I may be out of touch on this subject. However, I would have thought that there would be a business opening for a tech company that connected users with genuinely self employer taxi drivers and charged the drivers for the privilege. Are there in fact any like that?
So, one where the drivers are setting the fare, and so can legitimately be said to be in control?
Yes - and competing against other drivers available nearby and at the same time. The tech company would be an enabler - not quite like Ebay but with some similarities.
Labour are years and years away from being ready for power again, aren't they?
Maybe I should just shrug and give up, and enjoy the pure blue Toryness.
I just hope future Tory PMs have enough fingers to count the wins out for the cameras outside Downing Street.
Labour do look very far from winning. They seem more bereft of ideas than the government.
That shouldn't be the case in year 11.
It’s by no means certain, but you’d bet on the major economies all taking decisions to create a bit of a boom between now and 2024. Boris gets credit for vaccinations, erasing any memories of the other stuff, and then is mostly mr good news for a few years. He may just be a lucky general.
I'm sure Reps as part of the inclusive healing process that they're always going on about will be showing a lot of love to O'Rourke and AOC for their nonpartisan efforts in helping Texas.
The bigger issue is that Google, Facebook et al are too dominant. They should be regulated as utilities, as that is effectively what they are, with capped returns and tough restrictions on what they can do with people’s data.
If Zuckerberg gets poorer as a result I don’t really care.
That may be the bigger issue, but it is not this issue, that is whether this particular law was reasonable.
So it isn't really missing the point as much as looking at a different point. As was said earlier, facebook can be an awful company and this could be the wrong thing to do. The dominance of big tech does not make anything that happens against them ok by default.
The bigger issue is that Google, Facebook et al are too dominant. They should be regulated as utilities, as that is effectively what they are, with capped returns and tough restrictions on what they can do with people’s data.
If Zuckerberg gets poorer as a result I don’t really care.
I think you've missed the point about Richard's article. It's nothing to do with whether we like Facebook or not, or if it should be taxed or regulated. it's saying that the means the Australian government has used is a blunderbuss which might cause widespread collateral damage.
Comments
The problem for a lot of papers is that the Mail has worked out how to provide stuff others insist on being paid for, for free.
Why anyone can get so exercised about these two in particular is beyond me.
I mean, the Royal Family itself is the world's most lucrative, luxurious and ludicrous welfare state, but that's not unique to Harry and Meg.
My favorite
https://twitter.com/2L_ftf33t/status/1362695591189508098
"But as Feigl-Ding’s influence has grown, so have the voices of his critics, many of them fellow scientists who have expressed ongoing concern over his tweets, which they say are often unnecessarily alarmist, misleading, or sometimes just plain wrong. “Science misinformation is a huge problem right now — I think we can all appreciate it — [and] he’s a constant source of it,” said Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist at George Mason University and the University of Arizona who serves on FAS’ Covid-19 Rapid Response Taskforce, a separate arm of the organization from Feigl-Ding’s work. Tara Smith, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Kent State University, suggested that Feigl-Ding’s reach means his tweets have the power to be hugely influential. “With as large of a following as he has, when he says something that’s really wrong or misleading, it reverberates throughout the Twittersphere,” she said."
https://undark.org/2020/11/25/complicated-rise-of-eric-feigl-ding/
https://twitter.com/david_conn/status/1362742002115305474
https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1361407903069073408?s=20
I wish them well and hope they have a good life, just as I would wish for anyone and I honestly don't care about what they get up to. Be in the UK, USA, Canada or wherever - who cares?
I suspect many of us support the best of both sides of RT's article. Firstly we support free speech, news dissemination, informed discussion and lively debate.
We also oppose hate speech, paedophile images, racism, the destruction of quality journalism, copyright and intellectual property theft, commercial monopolies of every sort and unfair competition.
We also like to get as much as possible free, but know that everything internetted has a cost to someone somewhere even if it is free to us.
The Australian move has an irrational look to it, and Facebook's response is rational. It is the beginning not the end of a saga that will run and run.
I am not 100% clear (possibly being dim) of the (non polemical) answers to these questions:
What is the problem that the Aussies are trying to solve?
What is the evil that RT would like to avert?
What is the best way of solving the Aussie problem while averting RT's evil?
However, I would have thought that there would be a business opening for a tech company that connected users with genuinely self employer taxi drivers and charged the drivers for the privilege. Are there in fact any like that?
And it's the things like that where you have evidence that the public see something in someone you don't that are more interesting.
The task of the Opposition is to convince the public that trust is misplaced.
I doubt money was the motivation for either of them. Call me naive, but in both cases it may have been love. If it was instead power (of a kind), pomp or getting to a princess/queen then Kate, again, seems more open to attack, particularly as Meghan has given all that up (along with the duties it entails, of course).
https://buzzmachine.com/2021/01/29/here-comes-the-judge/
https://buzzmachine.com/2021/02/15/in-league-with-murdoch/
https://buzzmachine.com/2021/02/18/murdochs-law-and-the-net/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_(1996_film)
Pay the taxi driver directly and there isn't a problem - the issue comes when you pay the mini-cab / app firm and they then pay the driver.
Good for him.
I am also glad Megan won her case against the mail.
Harry is now no where near the throne.
Just let them get on with their lifes.
That could be argued to be a 2017+ Corbyn did win over some (very very small) number of Tories but basically quite a bit more of them (the + I guess) or more others. He did win over a small number of SNP but I think he was done over there by some Labour switching to Conservative in Scotland based on the question of the union rather than anything to do with the leadership of the whole party.
You'll have to forgive me if you are an exception to this but there has long been a general theme pushed by the right and Centrists that Labour would be more successful by getting rid of the 'hard left' with 'hard left' being related to policies and people closely related to the 2017 leadership, which attracted millions of extra votes.
The problem I have is (3) doesn't actually seem to be the current approach, the Labour right are currently partying (and purging) like its the 1980's and having a lot of fun doing it. Now I'm glad they are having a good time but that ain't winning Labour left wing votes. I don't know if they are any updates on Labour internal stuff now that we have a right winger in charge but a few quick things off the top of my head.
Forde inquiry delay, court settlement pay offs, Corbyn suspension, readmittance of people mentioned in Forde inquiry, firing lefties from shadow cabinet, spy cops bills, Bristol (West maybe) CLP stitch up, suspension of people for lots of different motions from ones to reinstate Jeremy Corbyn, no confidence in the general secretary, no confidence in Keir Starmer, the calling of previous listed motions as anti-Semitic, the not quite lie but clever way of telling people in Liverpool he wouldn't write for the Sun before writing for them.
Lots to complain about in there but the last one for example, is just a trick, a clever one which didn't actually involve lying in fairness, but one will people will remember as he tricks the left. Which has seemed to be Starmers entire party leadership. His pitch was (3) or the Corbyn without Corbynism the Labour right always claimed it would offer which I would agree is the best position the offer. His actual leadership is more indicating (2) if he plans to dramatically switch to (3) then he is going to find that a portion of the left have already lost too much trust in him.
In terms of my list of Starmer's anti left activities we can argue about morally bad people etc. but lets stick to electorally, for electoral reasons I never thought May should boot the no deal Brexiteers out (for my/Labours good she should but I couldn't make the argument on electoral grounds) so even if the left are bad people, all the things in that list (however righteous) will annoy the left and help cost votes.
TL;DR My problem isn't that I don't think (3) is the best strategy, it is that I don't think the Labour leadership or many on the right and centre think it is (or are so determined to get their enemies they don't care either way)
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/feb/19/sacha-baron-cohen-borat-trial-chicago-7-facebook-trump
Agency and intermediary relationships are always complicated for VAT purposes, as the VAT treatment does not always follow contract.
A recent example I have come across is Patreon. Patreon's view is that it, and not the creator, is supplying the Patron with the services, and the creator is (if at all) supplying Patreon.
I don't think that is how most people would have assumed.
IR35 (and expenses when working via an umbrella company) is probably a topic I'm a world class expert in. (For those that care the approach HMRC wanted back in 2000 that will be implemented in April where the client determines status will kill contracting for a few years as most companies are going we aren't accepting any risk).
FWIW, I suspect most kids would still get colds, but it might give the teachers a break.
And then some.
SKS's potential bullseye is on the issue of only modestly interesting competence. But without a front bench of people who can command attention by the depth and quality of their contribution (cf Brown Blair, Clarke, Major, Darling, Cook, Mowlem, Lawson, one could go on) they will struggle. Let's have wotsis/hername at Home Office, Treasury, Foreign, Health etc won't resonate when they send you to sleep are eminently forgettable and have Richard Burgon and the ghost of Laura Pidcock MP sitting behind them.
People seem genuinely offended about their decision, like it's a slap in the face to the country or the Queen... 'How very dare they?'
But if I were in Harry's place I'd probably do something similar. His mum was essentially hounded to her death by the media, the same outlets who now attack Harry and his wife. They've been treated like shit. I don't follow the breathless revelations of the Mail and the Express so I can't discern precisely what grievous crimes Harry and Meghan have committed, other than to decide not to play the media/Royal circus game.
If you're happy with your wife and family and not bothered about all the monarchy bullshit, then why not walk away? Good luck to 'em.
https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/vat-supply-and-consideration/vatsc11521
I did have to check I was not on my work account, but OnlyFans' rules appear to have changed the same way as Patreon, which makes sense.
If your card is charged to the individual creator, then they are the supplier of the service to you, and Patreon is the supplier of the service to them.
Now they have abandoned their royal duties after the royal wedding British taxpayers paid for, Harry's rating has plunged to just +1% with UK voters and Meghan's has collapsed to -26%
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/entertainment/articles-reports/2020/10/28/royal-popularity-harry-and-meghan-drop
Payment merchants, such as Paypal, are for example classed as true agents, even though it is Paypal and not the creator who appears on your card.
I have doubts that anyone could have done better than Starmer given the heavy defeat of 2019.
Regarding the 2017 GE and personality/charisma polling, I think it is almost impossible to judge actually. Corbyn vs May was only polled once, and that was 9 months before the GE. I would say that is not enough data to work with really. On one hand it could be argued that May won the personality poll by 5 points, and won the GE. On the other, it was obvious that Corbyn was the more charismatic of the two during the campaign, and that from a betting point of view he outperformed the markets (or that May underperformed them). Tories were 1.15 to win a majority, and the less charismatic leader blew it.I think that is more important than who technically was PM when looking at it from a betting POV
To put it into context, here are Cameron vs EdM Personality polls, and the Tory VI lead at the time
So DC was never on steady ground VI wise, but he was so much more charismatic than Ed that he won a majority.
I think Labour needs to be a good few points ahead on VI for Sir Keir to be PM
The big tech companies have pushed their luck, using news providers to enhance their own offering for free. But when all is said and done, the essential problem is that news organisations have failed to come up with a model to monetise their product as much as they would like. The Australian gambit is not going to cure that.
The Washington Post asks me daily to pay $29 for an annual subscription. That would be great value if I intended to read more than one article a month in it. This morning, Matthew Goodwin tweeted a link to a Times opinion piece by Gerard Baker. I’d probably pay some very small amount to be able to glance at a well-written rant by an old-school conservative but I’m not going to sign up indefinitely to a subscription to do so. I’ll do without. Still less would I pay a subscription to read Ambrose Evans-Pritchard rave about how Belgians’ fondness for mayonnaise was an infallible indicator that the EU was on the brink of collapse through wokeness.
If newspapers offered a carnet of articles moderately priced, perhaps in sets of 100, I expect my curiosity would overcome me on occasion and the newspaper publishers would get more views, more profile and more funds. Newspapers could also learn much more accurately what content people were willing to pay for online. But they seem determined to stick to a model that imagines newspapers as indivisible items, just like the paper copies. Strange.
If they're handling services related to your actual business (such as Uber, Patreon, OnlyFans etc) then they're liable for the VAT.
And, no, his BLM kneel will not doom him. There is no way an election-winning coalition for this country's mainstream party of the progressive left includes lots of people who get their knickers in a spin about a gesture to signify anti-racism.
I worry though that it may be the end of overnight counting, the spectacle of it, as I don't think many did it for the first PCCs anyway, and loads of election officials don't like doing it.
But as I have been corrected, they are, although they appear to have held fire until this judgment.
1. Because so many get their news via facebook they spend a lot more time on it than they do on news sites where they buzz in for the linked article and out again. This means Facebook pick up most of the advertising revenue.
2. RT is concerned that if Facebook have to pay a fee when someone on their site links to one of these articles it will become impossible for everyone else to make such links too. PB is a good example of a site that simply could not have links to anything commercial if it had to pay. This risks diminishing and devaluing the scope of debate on the internet with freedom of speech implications.
3. I think that this is the hardest. It seems to me that the only viable answer is paywalls if the news organisations cannot generate enough advertising revenue to cover their costs and make a profit. Not entirely sure what RT's position is.
Royalty is inherently silly, so the key is you have to take it seriously if you are going to do it, like judges wearing robes.
Has a bearing on how quickly we reopen schools.
That shouldn't be the case in year 11.
But that is the key really, it is fun to see the Prime Minister having to be up all night and then stand next to a guy with a bin on his head in a local sports centre, I'd hate to miss that, but what actual harm if not?
I'm sure we can all think of much more recent cases of politicians and parties chumming up with Donald Trump.
I know they have 2 officers at Lindisfarne when the causeway is out.
GOP's Thune says Trump allies engaging in 'cancel culture'
The Senate's No. 2 Republican on Thursday defended fellow Republicans who sided with Democrats on the “vote of conscience.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/19/john-thune-trump-cancel-culture-470137
But NYT now get more revenue from online subscriptions than from sales.
This is a bad law. There may be laws that are possible around this, but this is a dog's breakfast.
I think @Richard_Tyndall is missing the point.
The bigger issue is that Google, Facebook et al are too dominant. They should be regulated as utilities, as that is effectively what they are, with capped returns and tough restrictions on what they can do with people’s data.
If Zuckerberg gets poorer as a result I don’t really care.
The tech company would be an enabler - not quite like Ebay but with some similarities.
So it isn't really missing the point as much as looking at a different point. As was said earlier, facebook can be an awful company and this could be the wrong thing to do. The dominance of big tech does not make anything that happens against them ok by default.
It's nothing to do with whether we like Facebook or not, or if it should be taxed or regulated. it's saying that the means the Australian government has used is a blunderbuss which might cause widespread collateral damage.
I agree with him (& I don't use Facebook at all).