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Don't laugh but I'm betting on Jeremy Corbyn or Zarah Sultana becoming PM before 2030

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  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 52,059
    ydoethur said:

    eek said:

    ydoethur said:

    IanB2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    @TSE

    You mentioned OPT about MAGA obsessives who believe Pearl Harbor was a false flag.

    They weren’t the first. Jeanette Rankin, Representative from Montana, thought so too, saying ‘The British are such clever propagandists they might have cooked up the whole story.’ She said this while casting the only vote against declaring war on Japan.

    Oddly this absolute batshit line is missing from a Wiki entry that tries to pretend she did it as a point of principle.

    Also, we might mention that of course it was Hitler declared war on America, not the other way around (although Congress voted to reciprocate in which vote Rankin, realising what an utter twat she had made of herself over Japan, abstained).

    And the UK, as well as other allies, declared war on Japan before the USA actually did!
    That wasn't out of solidarity with the US but because Japan attacked British territories across Asia. The way even we tend to focus exclusively on Pearl Harbor is an indictment of our understanding of our own history.
    Or of recognition that the strategic importance of Pearl Harbor in bringing America into the war is the vital point?
    Didn’t we keep quiet about the expected attack on Pearl Harbor? - as Churchill knew we needed to get the USA fully committed to the war and it was the way to do so.

    Asking because I expect your knowledge of WW2 history is vastly superior to mine
    I am not particularly an expert on the background to Pearl Harbor but as I remember the Americans were warned, but ignored the warning.

    This wasn't unusual. The Soviets did much the same before Barbarossa five months earlier.
    The film Tora Tora Tora did its best to be as historically accurate as possible - an aspiration not even attempted by later American efforts. So while it is as a consequence not a particularly well told story, it does provide a visual depiction of as close to a recreation of the relevant events as was possible. And, yes, there were warnings, and key bits of information that didn’t reach the right people until it was too late.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 23,124
    On topic, I chuckled. Does that count?
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 52,059
    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:



    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    Yes they would as it was still a Virgin birth and his message would still have been the same.

    Fortunately for you most Christians won't impose fatwas of death on you as you might have received if you had made similar jokes about Muhammad
    That's because Christians are called to forgive those who smite them.

    Done with enough smugness, that can be even more annoying than issuing a death threat.
    No, it’s because Christianity is now weak. In times and places when it was strong, the consequences of thinking freely were no less brutal and gruesome.
    Globally there are more Christians than there have ever been, in the West militant secular leftists like you hate Christianity as much as you hate capitalism and anything else that doesn't accord with your worldview. Yet that is just part of the culture wars, for most conservatives as a result the likes of you are the enemy in said wars
    This correspondent has NEVER given me the impression that he HATES anyone.
    He is a militant atheist left liberal and it seeps through everything he writes
    Liberal, for sure. I was always seen as a relatively right wing one, though, by others. Militant, if you mean favouring violent methods, no, and you have no basis to make such a suggestion. Atheist, for sure. It’s entirely obvious that each and every religion is an invented or imagined human construct.
    In the culture wars which today dominate western politics you are firmly on the opposing side to conservatives and rightwingers.

    Indeed today's right despises woke atheist liberals like you even more than they used to oppose socialist trade unionists in the last century
    Absolutely. Although your bizarre and extreme views seem to have a fair few conservative opponents, too…
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 122,647
    Nigelb said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    I don't think we have a sample of God's DNA even now.
    You wouldn’t need God’s DNA, just the father’s.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 35,182
    I'm off for the evening. See you all tomorrow!

    For the benefit of my Essex neighbour, DV!
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 55,756
    ydoethur said:

    MattW said:

    stodge said:

    Andy_JS said:

    viewcode said:

    Has Jezza actually announced a new party, or is he dithering again?

    Jezza can win his own seat easily but that'll probably be it as far as his new party is concerned.
    Leanne Mohamad is on board and could very well unseat Wes, and the four Gaza indies in his group have chances of defending their seats
    The more immediate question is the degree to which any new party will fight seats at the London local elections next year. In boroughs like Newham and Redbridge, could we see these "Independents" become the official opposition to Labour or perhaps more?

    Will, for example, the likes of WPGB, TUSC and others stand aside or unite behind a common slate of candidates? Will we see a single candidate for the Newham Mayoral election?
    I haven't seen anything from TUSC but Galloway has said WPGB will not be a part of the new party as they have very different LGTB,Trans and Ukraine views but would be prepared to do local deals on standing aside.
    I doubt George has the votes to make it remotely attractive to Corbyn. Galloway will focus on the Manchester and Lancs area and Birmingham I think in the longer term, hes just not got a toehold in London
    I'm losing track. Mr Gallowazzock has said that WPGB will not be part of the new party?

    Is this Corbyn's new party, the Dried Grape faction, or something else that the WPGB won't be part of, either.

    Why can't one of them just call one of the new parties the People's Front of the Zionist Entity?
    Galloway will not join the New Corbyn/Sultana Fandango
    So they will have to manage without the bull?
    I thought he was a cat.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 12,476

    Nigelb said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    I don't think we have a sample of God's DNA even now.
    You wouldn’t need God’s DNA, just the father’s.
    Who are you taking that from? Who is the alleged father here?
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 74,133
    DavidL said:

    ydoethur said:

    MattW said:

    stodge said:

    Andy_JS said:

    viewcode said:

    Has Jezza actually announced a new party, or is he dithering again?

    Jezza can win his own seat easily but that'll probably be it as far as his new party is concerned.
    Leanne Mohamad is on board and could very well unseat Wes, and the four Gaza indies in his group have chances of defending their seats
    The more immediate question is the degree to which any new party will fight seats at the London local elections next year. In boroughs like Newham and Redbridge, could we see these "Independents" become the official opposition to Labour or perhaps more?

    Will, for example, the likes of WPGB, TUSC and others stand aside or unite behind a common slate of candidates? Will we see a single candidate for the Newham Mayoral election?
    I haven't seen anything from TUSC but Galloway has said WPGB will not be a part of the new party as they have very different LGTB,Trans and Ukraine views but would be prepared to do local deals on standing aside.
    I doubt George has the votes to make it remotely attractive to Corbyn. Galloway will focus on the Manchester and Lancs area and Birmingham I think in the longer term, hes just not got a toehold in London
    I'm losing track. Mr Gallowazzock has said that WPGB will not be part of the new party?

    Is this Corbyn's new party, the Dried Grape faction, or something else that the WPGB won't be part of, either.

    Why can't one of them just call one of the new parties the People's Front of the Zionist Entity?
    Galloway will not join the New Corbyn/Sultana Fandango
    So they will have to manage without the bull?
    I thought he was a cat.
    Galloways are definitely bulls.

    Especially since George is famously horny.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 52,059

    Nigelb said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    I don't think we have a sample of God's DNA even now.
    You wouldn’t need God’s DNA, just the father’s.
    Who are you taking that from? Who is the alleged father here?
    Those wise men always seemed like dodgy characters, turning up at the birth with gifts like that. Put them on the sample list...
  • kjhkjh Posts: 12,854
    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    I'm back and I assumed with a new thread this would have died, but no and @hyufd accused me of whitting on about it.

    For the final time @hyufd what are all these so many tax minimising things I did again? Can you provide a list. I have given you all the details so prey tell.

    And what the hell does 'and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold ' mean? It is gobbledygook nonsense. What the hell does 'cash in hand' in this context mean?

    There is no income tax on withdrawal of capital. I have already paid income tax before creating it. Some of it may attract CGT which I pay. There is no cash in hand stuff, whatever that means in this context. You are getting confused with people not declaring income which I have never done.

    You are barking. You haven't a clue what you are talking about.
    I didn't restart it, I was responding to those who did.

    You were the one who was whinging your cash withdrawals from your capital and your ISAs didn't mean you lost all your WFA not me.

    If your income was otherwise over the taxable income threshold where WFA was lost you otherwise would have
    Answer the questions above then:

    a) What are all these 'so many tax minimising schemes' I did again? Can you provide a list. I have given you all the details of what I have so it should be easy.

    b) What does 'take cash in hand from his capital' even mean? There is no such concept with Capital. There is no income tax on spending your savings. Unless you are now implying I avoid CGT which I don't.

    c) What do you think I could have done to put me over the £35k limit? I would love to know. If I cashed in my ISAs I still wouldn't be over it. Go on tell me how I have avoided going over the limit because if there is some way I can magic such an income I definitely want to know.

    @hyufd you have lost it big time. This is idiotic stuff.

    The mind boggling thing about this, is I am the one who wants to pay more tax, who doesn't want the WFA and I am the one being accused of being a tax avoider. You need to give your head a wobble.
    Yes so the cash you get from your capital which is not taxed means you do not have the taxable income to meet the WFA cut off threshold for starters.

    You weren't forced to build up that capital or take cash from it and it would cost too much for HMRC to trace all the cash you withdraw from it to take you over the £35k threshold so you receive no WFA. So stop whinging about it
    You are stark raving mad? 70% of my capital in my house and my DC pension. So are you saying nobody should buy a house or take out a pension. The rest is what I have saved for my retirement. Are you saying people shouldn't save for their retirement?

    The reason I don't have a taxable income at £35k is because I don't have a DB pension. Nobody gave me one. What was I supposed to do? Lots of people don't have one or only small ones. Are you saying they shouldn't save for retirement?

    You do come up with the most idiotic stuff sometimes.

    Come on tell me what I should have done then?
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 55,756

    On topic, I chuckled. Does that count?

    Yes, it is too ridiculous. We went towards that path before and turned away. Corbyn is a narrow minded anti western bigot, has been all his adult life. We have moved on from this rubbish. Enough.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 28,153
    edited July 7

    ydoethur said:

    @TSE

    You mentioned OPT about MAGA obsessives who believe Pearl Harbor was a false flag.

    They weren’t the first. Jeanette Rankin, Representative from Montana, thought so too, saying ‘The British are such clever propagandists they might have cooked up the whole story.’ She said this while casting the only vote against declaring war on Japan.

    Oddly this absolute batshit line is missing from a Wiki entry that tries to pretend she did it as a point of principle.

    Also, we might mention that of course it was Hitler declared war on America, not the other way around (although Congress voted to reciprocate in which vote Rankin, realising what an utter twat she had made of herself over Japan, abstained).

    It was truly brilliant of us to get the Japanese to take public credit for the attack.
    Let's hope nobody sinks any of their aircraft carriers; that would be us too.

    We do have the fastest torpedoes in the world iirc (apart from Russian vapourware).
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 39,045

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    Yes they would as it was still a Virgin birth and his message would still have been the same.

    Fortunately for you most Christians don't impose fatwas of death on you as you might have received if you had made similar jokes about Muhammad
    Believing in Jesus is like believing that Vikings wore horned helmets. A cool story, but no proof that it ever happened.
    Not just the Bible, Tacitus, Josephus etc also attest his existence as do the vast majority of historians
    A history written sometimes hundreds of years after the alleged event by authors with a vested interest? I'm not buying it.
    The earliest extant accounts of Jesus’ life were being written within 35 years of His death. St. Paul was writing in the 50’s and treated His existence as factual. And, neither Tacitus nor Josephus had any vested interest in Christianity.

    By way of comparison, the first written accounts of Jesus’ life are far closer to Him than any extant account of the life of Alexander, but no one disputes the existence or main events of the latter’s life.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 12,476
    IanB2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    I don't think we have a sample of God's DNA even now.
    You wouldn’t need God’s DNA, just the father’s.
    Who are you taking that from? Who is the alleged father here?
    Those wise men always seemed like dodgy characters, turning up at the birth with gifts like that. Put them on the sample list...
    Zoroastrians. Thousands of em. Well. 3 (maybe)
  • MattWMattW Posts: 28,153
    Sean_F said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    Yes they would as it was still a Virgin birth and his message would still have been the same.

    Fortunately for you most Christians don't impose fatwas of death on you as you might have received if you had made similar jokes about Muhammad
    Believing in Jesus is like believing that Vikings wore horned helmets. A cool story, but no proof that it ever happened.
    Not just the Bible, Tacitus, Josephus etc also attest his existence as do the vast majority of historians
    A history written sometimes hundreds of years after the alleged event by authors with a vested interest? I'm not buying it.
    The earliest extant accounts of Jesus’ life were being written within 35 years of His death. St. Paul was writing in the 50’s and treated His existence as factual. And, neither Tacitus nor Josephus had any vested interest in Christianity.

    By way of comparison, the first written accounts of Jesus’ life are far closer to Him than any extant account of the life of Alexander, but no one disputes the existence or main events of the latter’s life.
    Don't go there trying rational arguments with atheists; it will never work - they are creatures of dogma :smile: .
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 128,717
    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:



    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    Yes they would as it was still a Virgin birth and his message would still have been the same.

    Fortunately for you most Christians won't impose fatwas of death on you as you might have received if you had made similar jokes about Muhammad
    That's because Christians are called to forgive those who smite them.

    Done with enough smugness, that can be even more annoying than issuing a death threat.
    No, it’s because Christianity is now weak. In times and places when it was strong, the consequences of thinking freely were no less brutal and gruesome.
    Globally there are more Christians than there have ever been, in the West militant secular leftists like you hate Christianity as much as you hate capitalism and anything else that doesn't accord with your worldview. Yet that is just part of the culture wars, for most conservatives as a result the likes of you are the enemy in said wars
    This correspondent has NEVER given me the impression that he HATES anyone.
    He is a militant atheist left liberal and it seeps through everything he writes
    Liberal, for sure. I was always seen as a relatively right wing one, though, by others. Militant, if you mean favouring violent methods, no, and you have no basis to make such a suggestion. Atheist, for sure. It’s entirely obvious that each and every religion is an invented or imagined human construct.
    In the culture wars which today dominate western politics you are firmly on the opposing side to conservatives and rightwingers.

    Indeed today's right despises woke atheist liberals like you even more than they used to oppose socialist trade unionists in the last century
    Absolutely. Although your bizarre and extreme views seem to have a fair few conservative opponents, too…
    Most of them really LDs, if not already voting such way
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 55,756
    edited July 7
    IanB2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    I don't think we have a sample of God's DNA even now.
    You wouldn’t need God’s DNA, just the father’s.
    Who are you taking that from? Who is the alleged father here?
    Those wise men always seemed like dodgy characters, turning up at the birth with gifts like that. Put them on the sample list...
    Would seriously struggle to get a PVG certificate these days, that's for sure. Gifts for access to the child?
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 25,139
    ydoethur said:

    DavidL said:

    ydoethur said:

    MattW said:

    stodge said:

    Andy_JS said:

    viewcode said:

    Has Jezza actually announced a new party, or is he dithering again?

    Jezza can win his own seat easily but that'll probably be it as far as his new party is concerned.
    Leanne Mohamad is on board and could very well unseat Wes, and the four Gaza indies in his group have chances of defending their seats
    The more immediate question is the degree to which any new party will fight seats at the London local elections next year. In boroughs like Newham and Redbridge, could we see these "Independents" become the official opposition to Labour or perhaps more?

    Will, for example, the likes of WPGB, TUSC and others stand aside or unite behind a common slate of candidates? Will we see a single candidate for the Newham Mayoral election?
    I haven't seen anything from TUSC but Galloway has said WPGB will not be a part of the new party as they have very different LGTB,Trans and Ukraine views but would be prepared to do local deals on standing aside.
    I doubt George has the votes to make it remotely attractive to Corbyn. Galloway will focus on the Manchester and Lancs area and Birmingham I think in the longer term, hes just not got a toehold in London
    I'm losing track. Mr Gallowazzock has said that WPGB will not be part of the new party?

    Is this Corbyn's new party, the Dried Grape faction, or something else that the WPGB won't be part of, either.

    Why can't one of them just call one of the new parties the People's Front of the Zionist Entity?
    Galloway will not join the New Corbyn/Sultana Fandango
    So they will have to manage without the bull?
    I thought he was a cat.
    Galloways are definitely bulls.

    Especially since George is famously horny.
    I thought Galloways were flaky. Rather pie in the sky.
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 5,922
    ydoethur said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    Only for extremist secular atheists like you
    Or objective historians
    I always feel awkward defending Hyufd, but on this point he is absolutely right and you and TwistedFireStopper are wrong. There is not one objective historian with relevant expertise who doubts the existence of Jesus. The only one who would come close is Robert M. Price, who doubts the existence of Jesus an is an historian of the relevant period *but* is also an extremist secular atheist.

    Otherwise we have Raphael Lataster (not an historian and also an ESA) Richard Carrier (who has some training as an historian in a related period but is also an ESA and a noted conspiracy theorist) Earl Doherty (Ordinary BA in Canadian Studies from Carleton) Dorothy Murdoch (who believed the Ancient Egyptians and Ancient Greeks both spoke English) Tom Harpur (not an historian and also an ESA) and David Fitzgerald (who is not an historian, an ESA and memorably claimed that the reason he could provide no evidence for his thesis was that it made his self-published book too long).

    I suppose we could add Thomas Brodie, who might just pass muster on not being an ESA because he's a Dominican friar, but most of his writings seem to have been informed by his - ahem - shall we say, excessive use of the elements?
    Just because @HYUFD is often wrong doesn’t mean he is always wrong.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 128,717
    edited July 7

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:



    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    Yes they would as it was still a Virgin birth and his message would still have been the same.

    Fortunately for you most Christians won't impose fatwas of death on you as you might have received if you had made similar jokes about Muhammad
    That's because Christians are called to forgive those who smite them.

    Done with enough smugness, that can be even more annoying than issuing a death threat.
    No, it’s because Christianity is now weak. In times and places when it was strong, the consequences of thinking freely were no less brutal and gruesome.
    Globally there are more Christians than there have ever been, in the West militant secular leftists like you hate Christianity as much as you hate capitalism and anything else that doesn't accord with your worldview. Yet that is just part of the culture wars, for most conservatives as a result the likes of you are the enemy in said wars
    This correspondent has NEVER given me the impression that he HATES anyone.
    He is a militant atheist left liberal and it seeps through everything he writes
    Liberal, for sure. I was always seen as a relatively right wing one, though, by others. Militant, if you mean favouring violent methods, no, and you have no basis to make such a suggestion. Atheist, for sure. It’s entirely obvious that each and every religion is an invented or imagined human construct.
    In the culture wars which today dominate western politics you are firmly on the opposing side to conservatives and rightwingers.

    Indeed today's right despises woke atheist liberals like you even more than they used to oppose socialist trade unionists in the last century
    It's strange how the terms 'atheist', 'liberal' and 'leftist' are used interchangeably nowadays by elements of the Right. (Leon is another one who seems hazy about the distinction.) It's strange because there's a large Christian tradition in the Labour movement, while atheistic ultra-rationalism was often seen as a very conservative philosophy.
    Most of today's Trump, Reform and Badenoch, PP and Vox, Le Pen, Meloni, AfD and Merz led Union, Coalition and Pauline Hanson and Polievre voting right have more in common with the old Christian often working class Labour, Democrat and Social Democrat blue collar voters of the last century than the woke atheist globalist 'progressive' party voters of today. Indeed many of the former now vote for the right.

    Atheistic uber rational highly educated graduates largely now vote for liberal parties by contrast and were always only a small part of the centre right parties they sometimes voted for over socialists
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 74,133
    MattW said:

    Sean_F said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    Yes they would as it was still a Virgin birth and his message would still have been the same.

    Fortunately for you most Christians don't impose fatwas of death on you as you might have received if you had made similar jokes about Muhammad
    Believing in Jesus is like believing that Vikings wore horned helmets. A cool story, but no proof that it ever happened.
    Not just the Bible, Tacitus, Josephus etc also attest his existence as do the vast majority of historians
    A history written sometimes hundreds of years after the alleged event by authors with a vested interest? I'm not buying it.
    The earliest extant accounts of Jesus’ life were being written within 35 years of His death. St. Paul was writing in the 50’s and treated His existence as factual. And, neither Tacitus nor Josephus had any vested interest in Christianity.

    By way of comparison, the first written accounts of Jesus’ life are far closer to Him than any extant account of the life of Alexander, but no one disputes the existence or main events of the latter’s life.
    Don't go there trying rational arguments with atheists; it will never work - they are creatures of dogma :smile: .
    As Tim O'Neill rather drily noted* when reviewing Fitzgerald's work:

    https://armariummagnus.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-jesus-myth-theory-reponse-to-david.html

    *Well, Christ Mythers rather than atheists per se. After all, Tim O'Neill is an atheist and clearly considers himself entirely rational.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 52,059
    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    I'm back and I assumed with a new thread this would have died, but no and @hyufd accused me of whitting on about it.

    For the final time @hyufd what are all these so many tax minimising things I did again? Can you provide a list. I have given you all the details so prey tell.

    And what the hell does 'and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold ' mean? It is gobbledygook nonsense. What the hell does 'cash in hand' in this context mean?

    There is no income tax on withdrawal of capital. I have already paid income tax before creating it. Some of it may attract CGT which I pay. There is no cash in hand stuff, whatever that means in this context. You are getting confused with people not declaring income which I have never done.

    You are barking. You haven't a clue what you are talking about.
    I didn't restart it, I was responding to those who did.

    You were the one who was whinging your cash withdrawals from your capital and your ISAs didn't mean you lost all your WFA not me.

    If your income was otherwise over the taxable income threshold where WFA was lost you otherwise would have
    Answer the questions above then:

    a) What are all these 'so many tax minimising schemes' I did again? Can you provide a list. I have given you all the details of what I have so it should be easy.

    b) What does 'take cash in hand from his capital' even mean? There is no such concept with Capital. There is no income tax on spending your savings. Unless you are now implying I avoid CGT which I don't.

    c) What do you think I could have done to put me over the £35k limit? I would love to know. If I cashed in my ISAs I still wouldn't be over it. Go on tell me how I have avoided going over the limit because if there is some way I can magic such an income I definitely want to know.

    @hyufd you have lost it big time. This is idiotic stuff.

    The mind boggling thing about this, is I am the one who wants to pay more tax, who doesn't want the WFA and I am the one being accused of being a tax avoider. You need to give your head a wobble.
    Yes so the cash you get from your capital which is not taxed means you do not have the taxable income to meet the WFA cut off threshold for starters.

    You weren't forced to build up that capital or take cash from it and it would cost too much for HMRC to trace all the cash you withdraw from it to take you over the £35k threshold so you receive no WFA. So stop whinging about it
    You are stark raving mad? 70% of my capital in my house and my DC pension. So are you saying nobody should buy a house or take out a pension. The rest is what I have saved for my retirement. Are you saying people shouldn't save for their retirement?

    The reason I don't have a taxable income at £35k is because I don't have a DB pension. Nobody gave me one. What was I supposed to do? Lots of people don't have one or only small ones. Are you saying they shouldn't save for retirement?

    You do come up with the most idiotic stuff sometimes.

    Come on tell me what I should have done then?
    You should have got more into ISA wrappers, from what you said earlier!
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 122,647
    edited July 7
    MattW said:

    ydoethur said:

    @TSE

    You mentioned OPT about MAGA obsessives who believe Pearl Harbor was a false flag.

    They weren’t the first. Jeanette Rankin, Representative from Montana, thought so too, saying ‘The British are such clever propagandists they might have cooked up the whole story.’ She said this while casting the only vote against declaring war on Japan.

    Oddly this absolute batshit line is missing from a Wiki entry that tries to pretend she did it as a point of principle.

    Also, we might mention that of course it was Hitler declared war on America, not the other way around (although Congress voted to reciprocate in which vote Rankin, realising what an utter twat she had made of herself over Japan, abstained).

    It was truly brilliant of us to get the Japanese to take public credit for the attack.
    Let's hope nobody sinks any of their aircraft carriers; that would be us too.

    We do have the fastest torpedoes in the world iirc (apart from Russian vapourware).
    Other than North Korea I think we’re the only country to have sunk an American navy ship in battle since WWII although that involves a high level of pedantry.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 52,059
    edited July 7

    IanB2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    I don't think we have a sample of God's DNA even now.
    You wouldn’t need God’s DNA, just the father’s.
    Who are you taking that from? Who is the alleged father here?
    Those wise men always seemed like dodgy characters, turning up at the birth with gifts like that. Put them on the sample list...
    Zoroastrians. Thousands of em. Well. 3 (maybe)
    I would suspect whichever of the three of them fooled the other two into thinking they were following a star, rather than returning to the scene of the crime, so to speak
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 74,133

    MattW said:

    ydoethur said:

    @TSE

    You mentioned OPT about MAGA obsessives who believe Pearl Harbor was a false flag.

    They weren’t the first. Jeanette Rankin, Representative from Montana, thought so too, saying ‘The British are such clever propagandists they might have cooked up the whole story.’ She said this while casting the only vote against declaring war on Japan.

    Oddly this absolute batshit line is missing from a Wiki entry that tries to pretend she did it as a point of principle.

    Also, we might mention that of course it was Hitler declared war on America, not the other way around (although Congress voted to reciprocate in which vote Rankin, realising what an utter twat she had made of herself over Japan, abstained).

    It was truly brilliant of us to get the Japanese to take public credit for the attack.
    Let's hope nobody sinks any of their aircraft carriers; that would be us too.

    We do have the fastest torpedoes in the world iirc (apart from Russian vapourware).
    Other than North Korea I think we’re the only country to have sunk an American navy ship in battle since WWII although that involves a high level of pedantry.
    I'm intrigued. That's not a story I've heard. What happened, where and when?
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 52,036
    ydoethur said:

    MattW said:

    ydoethur said:

    @TSE

    You mentioned OPT about MAGA obsessives who believe Pearl Harbor was a false flag.

    They weren’t the first. Jeanette Rankin, Representative from Montana, thought so too, saying ‘The British are such clever propagandists they might have cooked up the whole story.’ She said this while casting the only vote against declaring war on Japan.

    Oddly this absolute batshit line is missing from a Wiki entry that tries to pretend she did it as a point of principle.

    Also, we might mention that of course it was Hitler declared war on America, not the other way around (although Congress voted to reciprocate in which vote Rankin, realising what an utter twat she had made of herself over Japan, abstained).

    It was truly brilliant of us to get the Japanese to take public credit for the attack.
    Let's hope nobody sinks any of their aircraft carriers; that would be us too.

    We do have the fastest torpedoes in the world iirc (apart from Russian vapourware).
    Other than North Korea I think we’re the only country to have sunk an American navy ship in battle since WWII although that involves a high level of pedantry.
    I'm intrigued. That's not a story I've heard. What happened, where and when?
    The Argentines are Americans.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 122,647
    ydoethur said:

    MattW said:

    ydoethur said:

    @TSE

    You mentioned OPT about MAGA obsessives who believe Pearl Harbor was a false flag.

    They weren’t the first. Jeanette Rankin, Representative from Montana, thought so too, saying ‘The British are such clever propagandists they might have cooked up the whole story.’ She said this while casting the only vote against declaring war on Japan.

    Oddly this absolute batshit line is missing from a Wiki entry that tries to pretend she did it as a point of principle.

    Also, we might mention that of course it was Hitler declared war on America, not the other way around (although Congress voted to reciprocate in which vote Rankin, realising what an utter twat she had made of herself over Japan, abstained).

    It was truly brilliant of us to get the Japanese to take public credit for the attack.
    Let's hope nobody sinks any of their aircraft carriers; that would be us too.

    We do have the fastest torpedoes in the world iirc (apart from Russian vapourware).
    Other than North Korea I think we’re the only country to have sunk an American navy ship in battle since WWII although that involves a high level of pedantry.
    I'm intrigued. That's not a story I've heard. What happened, where and when?
    The ARA General Belgrano was the USS Phoenix before the Yanks sold it to Argentina.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 74,133

    ydoethur said:

    MattW said:

    ydoethur said:

    @TSE

    You mentioned OPT about MAGA obsessives who believe Pearl Harbor was a false flag.

    They weren’t the first. Jeanette Rankin, Representative from Montana, thought so too, saying ‘The British are such clever propagandists they might have cooked up the whole story.’ She said this while casting the only vote against declaring war on Japan.

    Oddly this absolute batshit line is missing from a Wiki entry that tries to pretend she did it as a point of principle.

    Also, we might mention that of course it was Hitler declared war on America, not the other way around (although Congress voted to reciprocate in which vote Rankin, realising what an utter twat she had made of herself over Japan, abstained).

    It was truly brilliant of us to get the Japanese to take public credit for the attack.
    Let's hope nobody sinks any of their aircraft carriers; that would be us too.

    We do have the fastest torpedoes in the world iirc (apart from Russian vapourware).
    Other than North Korea I think we’re the only country to have sunk an American navy ship in battle since WWII although that involves a high level of pedantry.
    I'm intrigued. That's not a story I've heard. What happened, where and when?
    The ARA General Belgrano was the USS Phoenix before the Yanks sold it to Argentina.
    Oh, I see.

    I thought you meant while still commissioned by the US Navy and I was a bit startled.

    Although I gather the HMAS Melbourne did ram a US destroyer, split it in half and sink the bow of it.

    Also the IDF strafed a US ship so badly it had to be scrapped.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 55,508
    IanB2 said:



    ydoethur said:

    eek said:

    ydoethur said:

    IanB2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    @TSE

    You mentioned OPT about MAGA obsessives who believe Pearl Harbor was a false flag.

    They weren’t the first. Jeanette Rankin, Representative from Montana, thought so too, saying ‘The British are such clever propagandists they might have cooked up the whole story.’ She said this while casting the only vote against declaring war on Japan.

    Oddly this absolute batshit line is missing from a Wiki entry that tries to pretend she did it as a point of principle.

    Also, we might mention that of course it was Hitler declared war on America, not the other way around (although Congress voted to reciprocate in which vote Rankin, realising what an utter twat she had made of herself over Japan, abstained).

    And the UK, as well as other allies, declared war on Japan before the USA actually did!
    That wasn't out of solidarity with the US but because Japan attacked British territories across Asia. The way even we tend to focus exclusively on Pearl Harbor is an indictment of our understanding of our own history.
    Or of recognition that the strategic importance of Pearl Harbor in bringing America into the war is the vital point?
    Didn’t we keep quiet about the expected attack on Pearl Harbor? - as Churchill knew we needed to get the USA fully committed to the war and it was the way to do so.

    Asking because I expect your knowledge of WW2 history is vastly superior to mine
    I am not particularly an expert on the background to Pearl Harbor but as I remember the Americans were warned, but ignored the warning.

    This wasn't unusual. The Soviets did much the same before Barbarossa five months earlier.
    The film Tora Tora Tora did its best to be as historically accurate as possible - an aspiration not even attempted by later American efforts. So while it is as a consequence not a particularly well told story, it does provide a visual depiction of as close to a recreation of the relevant events as was possible. And, yes, there were warnings, and key bits of information that didn’t reach the right people until it was too late.
    There were no warnings about Pearl Harbour, specifically.

    That the Japanese were heading to war was increasingly clear. The assumption was that the Philippines would be the main target - see the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Pacific_War - a book that was actually read by the senior officers of the Japanese Navy.

    Some would ask why the Philippines, which was the probable. expected target, was even more poorly prepared than Pearl Harbour.

    The Pearl Harbour attack was considered a mad gamble by much of the Japanese Naval staff - it was a late addition to the war plan.

    The Japanese were very, very careful not to send any signals naming targets - just code names, even when encrypted. This followed the revelations of the Black Chamber and its effects on negotiations with the US previously (Washington Naval Treaty) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_American_Black_Chamber

    The lengthy declaration of war which was being translated as it was being typed up at the Japanese Embassy in Washington had no information about what was to be attacked. In the end, it was delivered after the attack on Peral Harbour.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 12,476
    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    I don't think we have a sample of God's DNA even now.
    You wouldn’t need God’s DNA, just the father’s.
    Who are you taking that from? Who is the alleged father here?
    Those wise men always seemed like dodgy characters, turning up at the birth with gifts like that. Put them on the sample list...
    Zoroastrians. Thousands of em. Well. 3 (maybe)
    I would suspect whichever of the three of them fooled the other two into thinking they were following a star, rather than returning to the scene of the crime, so to speak
    The detail of the timing of their visit is somewhat sketchy at best
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 122,647
    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    MattW said:

    ydoethur said:

    @TSE

    You mentioned OPT about MAGA obsessives who believe Pearl Harbor was a false flag.

    They weren’t the first. Jeanette Rankin, Representative from Montana, thought so too, saying ‘The British are such clever propagandists they might have cooked up the whole story.’ She said this while casting the only vote against declaring war on Japan.

    Oddly this absolute batshit line is missing from a Wiki entry that tries to pretend she did it as a point of principle.

    Also, we might mention that of course it was Hitler declared war on America, not the other way around (although Congress voted to reciprocate in which vote Rankin, realising what an utter twat she had made of herself over Japan, abstained).

    It was truly brilliant of us to get the Japanese to take public credit for the attack.
    Let's hope nobody sinks any of their aircraft carriers; that would be us too.

    We do have the fastest torpedoes in the world iirc (apart from Russian vapourware).
    Other than North Korea I think we’re the only country to have sunk an American navy ship in battle since WWII although that involves a high level of pedantry.
    I'm intrigued. That's not a story I've heard. What happened, where and when?
    The ARA General Belgrano was the USS Phoenix before the Yanks sold it to Argentina.
    Oh, I see.

    I thought you meant while still commissioned by the US Navy and I was a bit startled.

    Although I gather the HMAS Melbourne did ram a US destroyer, split it in half and sink the bow of it.

    Also the IDF strafed a US ship so badly it had to be scrapped.
    It’s also the only ship ever sunk in combat by a nuclear-powered submarine.

    The Belgrano features in so many military history quizzes.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 55,756
    ydoethur said:

    DavidL said:

    ydoethur said:

    MattW said:

    stodge said:

    Andy_JS said:

    viewcode said:

    Has Jezza actually announced a new party, or is he dithering again?

    Jezza can win his own seat easily but that'll probably be it as far as his new party is concerned.
    Leanne Mohamad is on board and could very well unseat Wes, and the four Gaza indies in his group have chances of defending their seats
    The more immediate question is the degree to which any new party will fight seats at the London local elections next year. In boroughs like Newham and Redbridge, could we see these "Independents" become the official opposition to Labour or perhaps more?

    Will, for example, the likes of WPGB, TUSC and others stand aside or unite behind a common slate of candidates? Will we see a single candidate for the Newham Mayoral election?
    I haven't seen anything from TUSC but Galloway has said WPGB will not be a part of the new party as they have very different LGTB,Trans and Ukraine views but would be prepared to do local deals on standing aside.
    I doubt George has the votes to make it remotely attractive to Corbyn. Galloway will focus on the Manchester and Lancs area and Birmingham I think in the longer term, hes just not got a toehold in London
    I'm losing track. Mr Gallowazzock has said that WPGB will not be part of the new party?

    Is this Corbyn's new party, the Dried Grape faction, or something else that the WPGB won't be part of, either.

    Why can't one of them just call one of the new parties the People's Front of the Zionist Entity?
    Galloway will not join the New Corbyn/Sultana Fandango
    So they will have to manage without the bull?
    I thought he was a cat.
    Galloways are definitely bulls.

    Especially since George is famously horny.
    I always thought Galloway was more cheesy myself. And he is.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 52,059
    Whale is tonights starter, a first for me. If blindfolded I would think it was lamb, but with the hint of a fishy aftertaste
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 52,036

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    I don't think we have a sample of God's DNA even now.
    You wouldn’t need God’s DNA, just the father’s.
    Who are you taking that from? Who is the alleged father here?
    Those wise men always seemed like dodgy characters, turning up at the birth with gifts like that. Put them on the sample list...
    Zoroastrians. Thousands of em. Well. 3 (maybe)
    I would suspect whichever of the three of them fooled the other two into thinking they were following a star, rather than returning to the scene of the crime, so to speak
    The detail of the timing of their visit is somewhat sketchy at best
    As indeed is much of the nativity story.

    The Magi were strollers and brought gold (for a King) Frankincense (for a prophet) and myrrh (for a corpse). The story is there to reinforce the divine portents of Jesus's birth, as indeed was the supposed census that placed the birth in Bethlehem rather than Nazareth in order to fulfil another prophecy.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 128,717
    edited July 7
    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    I'm back and I assumed with a new thread this would have died, but no and @hyufd accused me of whitting on about it.

    For the final time @hyufd what are all these so many tax minimising things I did again? Can you provide a list. I have given you all the details so prey tell.

    And what the hell does 'and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold ' mean? It is gobbledygook nonsense. What the hell does 'cash in hand' in this context mean?

    There is no income tax on withdrawal of capital. I have already paid income tax before creating it. Some of it may attract CGT which I pay. There is no cash in hand stuff, whatever that means in this context. You are getting confused with people not declaring income which I have never done.

    You are barking. You haven't a clue what you are talking about.
    I didn't restart it, I was responding to those who did.

    You were the one who was whinging your cash withdrawals from your capital and your ISAs didn't mean you lost all your WFA not me.

    If your income was otherwise over the taxable income threshold where WFA was lost you otherwise would have
    Answer the questions above then:

    a) What are all these 'so many tax minimising schemes' I did again? Can you provide a list. I have given you all the details of what I have so it should be easy.

    b) What does 'take cash in hand from his capital' even mean? There is no such concept with Capital. There is no income tax on spending your savings. Unless you are now implying I avoid CGT which I don't.

    c) What do you think I could have done to put me over the £35k limit? I would love to know. If I cashed in my ISAs I still wouldn't be over it. Go on tell me how I have avoided going over the limit because if there is some way I can magic such an income I definitely want to know.

    @hyufd you have lost it big time. This is idiotic stuff.

    The mind boggling thing about this, is I am the one who wants to pay more tax, who doesn't want the WFA and I am the one being accused of being a tax avoider. You need to give your head a wobble.
    Yes so the cash you get from your capital which is not taxed means you do not have the taxable income to meet the WFA cut off threshold for starters.

    You weren't forced to build up that capital or take cash from it and it would cost too much for HMRC to trace all the cash you withdraw from it to take you over the £35k threshold so you receive no WFA. So stop whinging about it
    You are stark raving mad? 70% of my capital in my house and my DC pension. So are you saying nobody should buy a house or take out a pension. The rest is what I have saved for my retirement. Are you saying people shouldn't save for their retirement?

    The reason I don't have a taxable income at £35k is because I don't have a DB pension. Nobody gave me one. What was I supposed to do? Lots of people don't have one or only small ones. Are you saying they shouldn't save for retirement?

    You do come up with the most idiotic stuff sometimes.

    Come on tell me what I should have done then?
    Stop whinging about still getting your WFA then, those with DB pensions as you say don't now get it even if they have the benefit of a DB pension income
  • kjhkjh Posts: 12,854
    edited July 7
    IanB2 said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    I'm back and I assumed with a new thread this would have died, but no and @hyufd accused me of whitting on about it.

    For the final time @hyufd what are all these so many tax minimising things I did again? Can you provide a list. I have given you all the details so prey tell.

    And what the hell does 'and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold ' mean? It is gobbledygook nonsense. What the hell does 'cash in hand' in this context mean?

    There is no income tax on withdrawal of capital. I have already paid income tax before creating it. Some of it may attract CGT which I pay. There is no cash in hand stuff, whatever that means in this context. You are getting confused with people not declaring income which I have never done.

    You are barking. You haven't a clue what you are talking about.
    I didn't restart it, I was responding to those who did.

    You were the one who was whinging your cash withdrawals from your capital and your ISAs didn't mean you lost all your WFA not me.

    If your income was otherwise over the taxable income threshold where WFA was lost you otherwise would have
    Answer the questions above then:

    a) What are all these 'so many tax minimising schemes' I did again? Can you provide a list. I have given you all the details of what I have so it should be easy.

    b) What does 'take cash in hand from his capital' even mean? There is no such concept with Capital. There is no income tax on spending your savings. Unless you are now implying I avoid CGT which I don't.

    c) What do you think I could have done to put me over the £35k limit? I would love to know. If I cashed in my ISAs I still wouldn't be over it. Go on tell me how I have avoided going over the limit because if there is some way I can magic such an income I definitely want to know.

    @hyufd you have lost it big time. This is idiotic stuff.

    The mind boggling thing about this, is I am the one who wants to pay more tax, who doesn't want the WFA and I am the one being accused of being a tax avoider. You need to give your head a wobble.
    Yes so the cash you get from your capital which is not taxed means you do not have the taxable income to meet the WFA cut off threshold for starters.

    You weren't forced to build up that capital or take cash from it and it would cost too much for HMRC to trace all the cash you withdraw from it to take you over the £35k threshold so you receive no WFA. So stop whinging about it
    You are stark raving mad? 70% of my capital in my house and my DC pension. So are you saying nobody should buy a house or take out a pension. The rest is what I have saved for my retirement. Are you saying people shouldn't save for their retirement?

    The reason I don't have a taxable income at £35k is because I don't have a DB pension. Nobody gave me one. What was I supposed to do? Lots of people don't have one or only small ones. Are you saying they shouldn't save for retirement?

    You do come up with the most idiotic stuff sometimes.

    Come on tell me what I should have done then?
    You should have got more into ISA wrappers, from what you said earlier!
    I had a fair bit pre 2011, but used it all to move house. Since then I topped up my pension for a couple of year and then retired. On savings I could get a better return outside of an ISA and with the savings allowance I was better off. Similar for share ISAs with the CGT limit it wasn't an issue (is now). Also for details I won't go into we could invest in my wife's employer company shares more favourably which could not go into an ISA. Since she retired we have used our ISA allowance and now have about £100k in ISAs.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 32,742
    edited July 7
    ydoethur said:

    One for @ydoethur.

    Dame Amanda Spielman on with Tom Swarbrick on LBC.

    Sounds like the world’s worst porno, but at least unlike in her previous role she’s not screwing England’s children.
    I hate to say this but she is probably right. She was banging on about SENS (SENDS) explaining that the cost is prohibitive because too many pushy parents are getting their naughty ADHD children extra assistance and a free taxi to and from school. As someone whose profoundly autistic child didn't get so much as a smile from the local authority I tended to agree with her.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 14,852
    ydoethur said:

    MattW said:

    Sean_F said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    Yes they would as it was still a Virgin birth and his message would still have been the same.

    Fortunately for you most Christians don't impose fatwas of death on you as you might have received if you had made similar jokes about Muhammad
    Believing in Jesus is like believing that Vikings wore horned helmets. A cool story, but no proof that it ever happened.
    Not just the Bible, Tacitus, Josephus etc also attest his existence as do the vast majority of historians
    A history written sometimes hundreds of years after the alleged event by authors with a vested interest? I'm not buying it.
    The earliest extant accounts of Jesus’ life were being written within 35 years of His death. St. Paul was writing in the 50’s and treated His existence as factual. And, neither Tacitus nor Josephus had any vested interest in Christianity.

    By way of comparison, the first written accounts of Jesus’ life are far closer to Him than any extant account of the life of Alexander, but no one disputes the existence or main events of the latter’s life.
    Don't go there trying rational arguments with atheists; it will never work - they are creatures of dogma :smile: .
    As Tim O'Neill rather drily noted* when reviewing Fitzgerald's work:

    https://armariummagnus.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-jesus-myth-theory-reponse-to-david.html

    *Well, Christ Mythers rather than atheists per se. After all, Tim O'Neill is an atheist and clearly considers himself entirely rational.
    Just to point out that one of the very best recent books on the historical Jesus was written by an atheist who had no doubts at all about Jesus's existence and no belief at all in Christianity: Jesus of Nazareth by the late Maurice Casey, professor at Nottingham University theology department. Highly recommended, but fairly technical.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 122,647
    edited July 7
    Talking about Pearl Harbor/Japan in WWII I have a piece comparing Farage as Nimitz, Kemi as Yamamoto arrogantly sailing to Midway expecting to smash the American carriers not realising she was walking into a trap because she couldn’t conceive that Yanks would be near Midway and spreading her forces too thin.

    I just haven’t worked out what the equivalent of the Doolittle Raid is.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 16,626

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:



    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    Yes they would as it was still a Virgin birth and his message would still have been the same.

    Fortunately for you most Christians won't impose fatwas of death on you as you might have received if you had made similar jokes about Muhammad
    That's because Christians are called to forgive those who smite them.

    Done with enough smugness, that can be even more annoying than issuing a death threat.
    No, it’s because Christianity is now weak. In times and places when it was strong, the consequences of thinking freely were no less brutal and gruesome.
    Globally there are more Christians than there have ever been, in the West militant secular leftists like you hate Christianity as much as you hate capitalism and anything else that doesn't accord with your worldview. Yet that is just part of the culture wars, for most conservatives as a result the likes of you are the enemy in said wars
    This correspondent has NEVER given me the impression that he HATES anyone.
    He is a militant atheist left liberal and it seeps through everything he writes
    Liberal, for sure. I was always seen as a relatively right wing one, though, by others. Militant, if you mean favouring violent methods, no, and you have no basis to make such a suggestion. Atheist, for sure. It’s entirely obvious that each and every religion is an invented or imagined human construct.
    In the culture wars which today dominate western politics you are firmly on the opposing side to conservatives and rightwingers.

    Indeed today's right despises woke atheist liberals like you even more than they used to oppose socialist trade unionists in the last century
    It's strange how the terms 'atheist', 'liberal' and 'leftist' are used interchangeably nowadays by elements of the Right. (Leon is another one who seems hazy about the distinction.) It's strange because there's a large Christian tradition in the Labour movement, while atheistic ultra-rationalism was often seen as a very conservative philosophy.
    Indeed. Some of the most left wing people I know are committed Christians. Especially in nonconformist denominations. My grandparents were from this tradition, too.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 12,476
    edited July 7
    Foxy said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    I don't think we have a sample of God's DNA even now.
    You wouldn’t need God’s DNA, just the father’s.
    Who are you taking that from? Who is the alleged father here?
    Those wise men always seemed like dodgy characters, turning up at the birth with gifts like that. Put them on the sample list...
    Zoroastrians. Thousands of em. Well. 3 (maybe)
    I would suspect whichever of the three of them fooled the other two into thinking they were following a star, rather than returning to the scene of the crime, so to speak
    The detail of the timing of their visit is somewhat sketchy at best
    As indeed is much of the nativity story.

    The Magi were strollers and brought gold (for a King) Frankincense (for a prophet) and myrrh (for a corpse). The story is there to reinforce the divine portents of Jesus's birth, as indeed was the supposed census that placed the birth in Bethlehem rather than Nazareth in order to fulfil another prophecy.
    Quite.
    Its why, for me, defining my own faith and knowledge of God requires me to delve into things in a different way and work out my own Gnosis.
    Its up to everyone to decide what their relationship is, or is not, with God and what that means.
    Its much more interesting (for example, and from my perspective) to look at the gospels the Romans booted and ask why and what they are telling me compared to, in opposition to, or in tandem with the 'accepted' ones
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 52,036

    IanB2 said:



    ydoethur said:

    eek said:

    ydoethur said:

    IanB2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    @TSE

    You mentioned OPT about MAGA obsessives who believe Pearl Harbor was a false flag.

    They weren’t the first. Jeanette Rankin, Representative from Montana, thought so too, saying ‘The British are such clever propagandists they might have cooked up the whole story.’ She said this while casting the only vote against declaring war on Japan.

    Oddly this absolute batshit line is missing from a Wiki entry that tries to pretend she did it as a point of principle.

    Also, we might mention that of course it was Hitler declared war on America, not the other way around (although Congress voted to reciprocate in which vote Rankin, realising what an utter twat she had made of herself over Japan, abstained).

    And the UK, as well as other allies, declared war on Japan before the USA actually did!
    That wasn't out of solidarity with the US but because Japan attacked British territories across Asia. The way even we tend to focus exclusively on Pearl Harbor is an indictment of our understanding of our own history.
    Or of recognition that the strategic importance of Pearl Harbor in bringing America into the war is the vital point?
    Didn’t we keep quiet about the expected attack on Pearl Harbor? - as Churchill knew we needed to get the USA fully committed to the war and it was the way to do so.

    Asking because I expect your knowledge of WW2 history is vastly superior to mine
    I am not particularly an expert on the background to Pearl Harbor but as I remember the Americans were warned, but ignored the warning.

    This wasn't unusual. The Soviets did much the same before Barbarossa five months earlier.
    The film Tora Tora Tora did its best to be as historically accurate as possible - an aspiration not even attempted by later American efforts. So while it is as a consequence not a particularly well told story, it does provide a visual depiction of as close to a recreation of the relevant events as was possible. And, yes, there were warnings, and key bits of information that didn’t reach the right people until it was too late.
    There were no warnings about Pearl Harbour, specifically.

    That the Japanese were heading to war was increasingly clear. The assumption was that the Philippines would be the main target - see the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Pacific_War - a book that was actually read by the senior officers of the Japanese Navy.

    Some would ask why the Philippines, which was the probable. expected target, was even more poorly prepared than Pearl Harbour.

    The Pearl Harbour attack was considered a mad gamble by much of the Japanese Naval staff - it was a late addition to the war plan.

    The Japanese were very, very careful not to send any signals naming targets - just code names, even when encrypted. This followed the revelations of the Black Chamber and its effects on negotiations with the US previously (Washington Naval Treaty) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_American_Black_Chamber

    The lengthy declaration of war which was being translated as it was being typed up at the Japanese Embassy in Washington had no information about what was to be attacked. In the end, it was delivered after the attack on Peral Harbour.
    If we did indeed have accurate knowledge of the Japanese attack, then we might have warned our own troops in Malaya, Hong Kong and Shanghai.

    Obviously there were ominous rumblings, as Force Z were despatched in October 1941, and arrived in Singapore on 2nd December.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 74,133
    algarkirk said:

    ydoethur said:

    MattW said:

    Sean_F said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    Yes they would as it was still a Virgin birth and his message would still have been the same.

    Fortunately for you most Christians don't impose fatwas of death on you as you might have received if you had made similar jokes about Muhammad
    Believing in Jesus is like believing that Vikings wore horned helmets. A cool story, but no proof that it ever happened.
    Not just the Bible, Tacitus, Josephus etc also attest his existence as do the vast majority of historians
    A history written sometimes hundreds of years after the alleged event by authors with a vested interest? I'm not buying it.
    The earliest extant accounts of Jesus’ life were being written within 35 years of His death. St. Paul was writing in the 50’s and treated His existence as factual. And, neither Tacitus nor Josephus had any vested interest in Christianity.

    By way of comparison, the first written accounts of Jesus’ life are far closer to Him than any extant account of the life of Alexander, but no one disputes the existence or main events of the latter’s life.
    Don't go there trying rational arguments with atheists; it will never work - they are creatures of dogma :smile: .
    As Tim O'Neill rather drily noted* when reviewing Fitzgerald's work:

    https://armariummagnus.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-jesus-myth-theory-reponse-to-david.html

    *Well, Christ Mythers rather than atheists per se. After all, Tim O'Neill is an atheist and clearly considers himself entirely rational.
    Just to point out that one of the very best recent books on the historical Jesus was written by an atheist who had no doubts at all about Jesus's existence and no belief at all in Christianity: Jesus of Nazareth by the late Maurice Casey, professor at Nottingham University theology department. Highly recommended, but fairly technical.
    Bart Ehrman is probably more accessible to a lay reader. We could add Joseph Hoffman, Cristina Petterson, Larry Hurtado, Stephanie Fisher, not sure if Geza Vermes would count as a liberal Jew...
  • TazTaz Posts: 19,512
    Tesla had a good run recently but down 9% after the recent announcement from Musk.

    Why doesn’t he just concentrate on running his businesses or hand them over to someone who will.

    https://x.com/thealphathought/status/1942263491991162891?s=61
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 52,059
    MattW said:

    Sean_F said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    Yes they would as it was still a Virgin birth and his message would still have been the same.

    Fortunately for you most Christians don't impose fatwas of death on you as you might have received if you had made similar jokes about Muhammad
    Believing in Jesus is like believing that Vikings wore horned helmets. A cool story, but no proof that it ever happened.
    Not just the Bible, Tacitus, Josephus etc also attest his existence as do the vast majority of historians
    A history written sometimes hundreds of years after the alleged event by authors with a vested interest? I'm not buying it.
    The earliest extant accounts of Jesus’ life were being written within 35 years of His death. St. Paul was writing in the 50’s and treated His existence as factual. And, neither Tacitus nor Josephus had any vested interest in Christianity.

    By way of comparison, the first written accounts of Jesus’ life are far closer to Him than any extant account of the life of Alexander, but no one disputes the existence or main events of the latter’s life.
    Don't go there trying rational arguments with atheists; it will never work - they are creatures of dogma :smile: .
    We have the ability to apply the same " you what? ? ?" healthy scepticism to the religion of our own location and time as almost everyone finds so very easy with all the other bizarre belief systems from history and around the world, that's all.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 12,854
    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    I'm back and I assumed with a new thread this would have died, but no and @hyufd accused me of whitting on about it.

    For the final time @hyufd what are all these so many tax minimising things I did again? Can you provide a list. I have given you all the details so prey tell.

    And what the hell does 'and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold ' mean? It is gobbledygook nonsense. What the hell does 'cash in hand' in this context mean?

    There is no income tax on withdrawal of capital. I have already paid income tax before creating it. Some of it may attract CGT which I pay. There is no cash in hand stuff, whatever that means in this context. You are getting confused with people not declaring income which I have never done.

    You are barking. You haven't a clue what you are talking about.
    I didn't restart it, I was responding to those who did.

    You were the one who was whinging your cash withdrawals from your capital and your ISAs didn't mean you lost all your WFA not me.

    If your income was otherwise over the taxable income threshold where WFA was lost you otherwise would have
    Answer the questions above then:

    a) What are all these 'so many tax minimising schemes' I did again? Can you provide a list. I have given you all the details of what I have so it should be easy.

    b) What does 'take cash in hand from his capital' even mean? There is no such concept with Capital. There is no income tax on spending your savings. Unless you are now implying I avoid CGT which I don't.

    c) What do you think I could have done to put me over the £35k limit? I would love to know. If I cashed in my ISAs I still wouldn't be over it. Go on tell me how I have avoided going over the limit because if there is some way I can magic such an income I definitely want to know.

    @hyufd you have lost it big time. This is idiotic stuff.

    The mind boggling thing about this, is I am the one who wants to pay more tax, who doesn't want the WFA and I am the one being accused of being a tax avoider. You need to give your head a wobble.
    Yes so the cash you get from your capital which is not taxed means you do not have the taxable income to meet the WFA cut off threshold for starters.

    You weren't forced to build up that capital or take cash from it and it would cost too much for HMRC to trace all the cash you withdraw from it to take you over the £35k threshold so you receive no WFA. So stop whinging about it
    You are stark raving mad? 70% of my capital in my house and my DC pension. So are you saying nobody should buy a house or take out a pension. The rest is what I have saved for my retirement. Are you saying people shouldn't save for their retirement?

    The reason I don't have a taxable income at £35k is because I don't have a DB pension. Nobody gave me one. What was I supposed to do? Lots of people don't have one or only small ones. Are you saying they shouldn't save for retirement?

    You do come up with the most idiotic stuff sometimes.

    Come on tell me what I should have done then?
    Stop whinging about still getting your WFA then, those with DB pensions as you say don't now get it even if they have the benefit of a DB pension income
    I'm whinging because lots of people are getting it who shouldn't. That money should be used for those less well off, not for people who are wealthy. So that is why I am whinging.

    It is an utter waste of money. It needs to be means tested and set at a lower threshold so people like me don't get it. And even if I return it most won't.

    It is a reasonable whinge.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 66,038
    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:



    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    Yes they would as it was still a Virgin birth and his message would still have been the same.

    Fortunately for you most Christians won't impose fatwas of death on you as you might have received if you had made similar jokes about Muhammad
    That's because Christians are called to forgive those who smite them.

    Done with enough smugness, that can be even more annoying than issuing a death threat.
    No, it’s because Christianity is now weak. In times and places when it was strong, the consequences of thinking freely were no less brutal and gruesome.
    Globally there are more Christians than there have ever been, in the West militant secular leftists like you hate Christianity as much as you hate capitalism and anything else that doesn't accord with your worldview. Yet that is just part of the culture wars, for most conservatives as a result the likes of you are the enemy in said wars
    This correspondent has NEVER given me the impression that he HATES anyone.
    He is a militant atheist left liberal and it seeps through everything he writes
    Liberal, for sure. I was always seen as a relatively right wing one, though, by others. Militant, if you mean favouring violent methods, no, and you have no basis to make such a suggestion. Atheist, for sure. It’s entirely obvious that each and every religion is an invented or imagined human construct.
    In the culture wars which today dominate western politics you are firmly on the opposing side to conservatives and rightwingers.

    Indeed today's right despises woke atheist liberals like you even more than they used to oppose socialist trade unionists in the last century
    As a so called Christian how do you 'hate' so much

    You are absolutely doing nothing for Christianity or even Jesus in your postings and certainty your inability to apologise or admit you are wrong is testament to just how you betray the faith of millions
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 31,982

    Talking about Pearl Harbor/Japan in WWII I have a piece comparing Farage as Nimitz, Kemi as Yamamoto arrogantly sailing to Midway expecting to smash the American carriers not realising she was walking into a trap because she couldn’t conceive that Yanks would be near Midway and spreading her forces too thin.

    I just haven’t worked out what the equivalent of the Doolittle Raid is.

    The rash of Ukrainian male models firebombing Keir’s vehicles?
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 52,036

    Foxy said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    I don't think we have a sample of God's DNA even now.
    You wouldn’t need God’s DNA, just the father’s.
    Who are you taking that from? Who is the alleged father here?
    Those wise men always seemed like dodgy characters, turning up at the birth with gifts like that. Put them on the sample list...
    Zoroastrians. Thousands of em. Well. 3 (maybe)
    I would suspect whichever of the three of them fooled the other two into thinking they were following a star, rather than returning to the scene of the crime, so to speak
    The detail of the timing of their visit is somewhat sketchy at best
    As indeed is much of the nativity story.

    The Magi were strollers and brought gold (for a King) Frankincense (for a prophet) and myrrh (for a corpse). The story is there to reinforce the divine portents of Jesus's birth, as indeed was the supposed census that placed the birth in Bethlehem rather than Nazareth in order to fulfil another prophecy.
    Quite.
    Its why, for me, defining my own faith and knowledge of God requires me to delve into things in a different way and work out my own Gnosis.
    Its up to everyone to decide what their relationship is, or is not, with God and what that means.
    Its much more interesting (for example, and from my perspective) to look at the gospels the Romans booted and ask why and what they are telling me compared to, in opposition to, or in tandem with the 'accepted' ones
    The problems come from over literal interpretations of the Biblical texts (and these do differ between sects) when many or most biblical stories were parables, fictions to make a moral or philosophical point. I think the ancients (like many pre-modern cultures) were very comfortable interpreting the texts figuratively rather than literally. Our supposedly more sophisticated culture struggles with that, being paralysed by concrete thinking.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 66,670
    MAGA having to reverse ferret on Epstein files is hilarious.

    Conned again.

  • sladeslade Posts: 2,198
    ydoethur said:

    eek said:

    ydoethur said:

    IanB2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    @TSE

    You mentioned OPT about MAGA obsessives who believe Pearl Harbor was a false flag.

    They weren’t the first. Jeanette Rankin, Representative from Montana, thought so too, saying ‘The British are such clever propagandists they might have cooked up the whole story.’ She said this while casting the only vote against declaring war on Japan.

    Oddly this absolute batshit line is missing from a Wiki entry that tries to pretend she did it as a point of principle.

    Also, we might mention that of course it was Hitler declared war on America, not the other way around (although Congress voted to reciprocate in which vote Rankin, realising what an utter twat she had made of herself over Japan, abstained).

    And the UK, as well as other allies, declared war on Japan before the USA actually did!
    That wasn't out of solidarity with the US but because Japan attacked British territories across Asia. The way even we tend to focus exclusively on Pearl Harbor is an indictment of our understanding of our own history.
    Or of recognition that the strategic importance of Pearl Harbor in bringing America into the war is the vital point?
    Didn’t we keep quiet about the expected attack on Pearl Harbor? - as Churchill knew we needed to get the USA fully committed to the war and it was the way to do so.

    Asking because I expect your knowledge of WW2 history is vastly superior to mine
    I am not particularly an expert on the background to Pearl Harbor but as I remember the Americans were warned, but ignored the warning.

    This wasn't unusual. The Soviets did much the same before Barbarossa five months earlier.
    We could take that further. The Brits told the Americans but they agreed to not tell Pearl. However they made sure that the carriers were not in harbour.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 66,670
    TVs about to go up in price massively in US:

    Republicans against Trump
    @RpsAgainstTrump
    ·
    19m
    BREAKING: Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that the US will impose 25% blanket tariffs on imports from Japan and South Korea starting August 1.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 52,059

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:



    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    Yes they would as it was still a Virgin birth and his message would still have been the same.

    Fortunately for you most Christians won't impose fatwas of death on you as you might have received if you had made similar jokes about Muhammad
    That's because Christians are called to forgive those who smite them.

    Done with enough smugness, that can be even more annoying than issuing a death threat.
    No, it’s because Christianity is now weak. In times and places when it was strong, the consequences of thinking freely were no less brutal and gruesome.
    Globally there are more Christians than there have ever been, in the West militant secular leftists like you hate Christianity as much as you hate capitalism and anything else that doesn't accord with your worldview. Yet that is just part of the culture wars, for most conservatives as a result the likes of you are the enemy in said wars
    This correspondent has NEVER given me the impression that he HATES anyone.
    He is a militant atheist left liberal and it seeps through everything he writes
    Liberal, for sure. I was always seen as a relatively right wing one, though, by others. Militant, if you mean favouring violent methods, no, and you have no basis to make such a suggestion. Atheist, for sure. It’s entirely obvious that each and every religion is an invented or imagined human construct.
    In the culture wars which today dominate western politics you are firmly on the opposing side to conservatives and rightwingers.

    Indeed today's right despises woke atheist liberals like you even more than they used to oppose socialist trade unionists in the last century
    As a so called Christian how do you 'hate' so much

    You are absolutely doing nothing for Christianity or even Jesus in your postings and certainty your inability to apologise or admit you are wrong is testament to just how you betray the faith of millions
    He was born a few hundred years too late, that's all, and would be well advised to try his luck going around leaning into some standing stones
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 31,982

    MAGA having to reverse ferret on Epstein files is hilarious.

    Conned again.

    It's a very bad look. I almost think releasing it with the Trump bits redacted would be better. Almost.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 31,555

    MAGA having to reverse ferret on Epstein files is hilarious.

    Conned again.

    I've not been following this at all but would imagine given the financial world in which Epstein moved and leaving out the sex stuff, that all sorts of Democrat and Republican donors will have feted him.

    Not just The Donald.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 12,476
    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    I don't think we have a sample of God's DNA even now.
    You wouldn’t need God’s DNA, just the father’s.
    Who are you taking that from? Who is the alleged father here?
    Those wise men always seemed like dodgy characters, turning up at the birth with gifts like that. Put them on the sample list...
    Zoroastrians. Thousands of em. Well. 3 (maybe)
    I would suspect whichever of the three of them fooled the other two into thinking they were following a star, rather than returning to the scene of the crime, so to speak
    The detail of the timing of their visit is somewhat sketchy at best
    As indeed is much of the nativity story.

    The Magi were strollers and brought gold (for a King) Frankincense (for a prophet) and myrrh (for a corpse). The story is there to reinforce the divine portents of Jesus's birth, as indeed was the supposed census that placed the birth in Bethlehem rather than Nazareth in order to fulfil another prophecy.
    Quite.
    Its why, for me, defining my own faith and knowledge of God requires me to delve into things in a different way and work out my own Gnosis.
    Its up to everyone to decide what their relationship is, or is not, with God and what that means.
    Its much more interesting (for example, and from my perspective) to look at the gospels the Romans booted and ask why and what they are telling me compared to, in opposition to, or in tandem with the 'accepted' ones
    The problems come from over literal interpretations of the Biblical texts (and these do differ between sects) when many or most biblical stories were parables, fictions to make a moral or philosophical point. I think the ancients (like many pre-modern cultures) were very comfortable interpreting the texts figuratively rather than literally. Our supposedly more sophisticated culture struggles with that, being paralysed by concrete thinking.
    I think it all changed once the Romans got control of Christianity personally. The treatment of what they defined as 'heresies' has very little to do with Christianity. It became a tool of suppression and societal control and denied people access to God except through the intercession of the priests if they remained within the Church.
    Gnostics tend to believe the world is evil. Salvation comes through knowledge (of God the divine creator, not the demiurge of the Old Testament)
    But there we go, to each their own journey and destination
  • LeonLeon Posts: 62,577

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    It’s a brave man who makes a similar joke about The Prophet, eh?
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 74,133

    MAGA having to reverse ferret on Epstein files is hilarious.

    Conned again.

    It's a very bad look. I almost think releasing it with the Trump bits redacted would be better. Almost.
    According to Stormy, his bits are so small anyway that wouldn't be hard.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 31,555
    edited July 7
    slade said:

    ydoethur said:

    eek said:

    ydoethur said:

    IanB2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    @TSE

    You mentioned OPT about MAGA obsessives who believe Pearl Harbor was a false flag.

    They weren’t the first. Jeanette Rankin, Representative from Montana, thought so too, saying ‘The British are such clever propagandists they might have cooked up the whole story.’ She said this while casting the only vote against declaring war on Japan.

    Oddly this absolute batshit line is missing from a Wiki entry that tries to pretend she did it as a point of principle.

    Also, we might mention that of course it was Hitler declared war on America, not the other way around (although Congress voted to reciprocate in which vote Rankin, realising what an utter twat she had made of herself over Japan, abstained).

    And the UK, as well as other allies, declared war on Japan before the USA actually did!
    That wasn't out of solidarity with the US but because Japan attacked British territories across Asia. The way even we tend to focus exclusively on Pearl Harbor is an indictment of our understanding of our own history.
    Or of recognition that the strategic importance of Pearl Harbor in bringing America into the war is the vital point?
    Didn’t we keep quiet about the expected attack on Pearl Harbor? - as Churchill knew we needed to get the USA fully committed to the war and it was the way to do so.

    Asking because I expect your knowledge of WW2 history is vastly superior to mine
    I am not particularly an expert on the background to Pearl Harbor but as I remember the Americans were warned, but ignored the warning.

    This wasn't unusual. The Soviets did much the same before Barbarossa five months earlier.
    We could take that further. The Brits told the Americans but they agreed to not tell Pearl. However they made sure that the carriers were not in harbour.
    More recently, Israel ignored warnings of the Hamas raid.

    ETA see also Britain and the Falklands, and that Soviet general who declined to start world war 3.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 14,852
    ydoethur said:

    algarkirk said:

    ydoethur said:

    MattW said:

    Sean_F said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    Yes they would as it was still a Virgin birth and his message would still have been the same.

    Fortunately for you most Christians don't impose fatwas of death on you as you might have received if you had made similar jokes about Muhammad
    Believing in Jesus is like believing that Vikings wore horned helmets. A cool story, but no proof that it ever happened.
    Not just the Bible, Tacitus, Josephus etc also attest his existence as do the vast majority of historians
    A history written sometimes hundreds of years after the alleged event by authors with a vested interest? I'm not buying it.
    The earliest extant accounts of Jesus’ life were being written within 35 years of His death. St. Paul was writing in the 50’s and treated His existence as factual. And, neither Tacitus nor Josephus had any vested interest in Christianity.

    By way of comparison, the first written accounts of Jesus’ life are far closer to Him than any extant account of the life of Alexander, but no one disputes the existence or main events of the latter’s life.
    Don't go there trying rational arguments with atheists; it will never work - they are creatures of dogma :smile: .
    As Tim O'Neill rather drily noted* when reviewing Fitzgerald's work:

    https://armariummagnus.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-jesus-myth-theory-reponse-to-david.html

    *Well, Christ Mythers rather than atheists per se. After all, Tim O'Neill is an atheist and clearly considers himself entirely rational.
    Just to point out that one of the very best recent books on the historical Jesus was written by an atheist who had no doubts at all about Jesus's existence and no belief at all in Christianity: Jesus of Nazareth by the late Maurice Casey, professor at Nottingham University theology department. Highly recommended, but fairly technical.
    Bart Ehrman is probably more accessible to a lay reader. We could add Joseph Hoffman, Cristina Petterson, Larry Hurtado, Stephanie Fisher, not sure if Geza Vermes would count as a liberal Jew...
    For accessible and sane books on the historical Jesus for the non theologically minded, E P Sanders little Penguin paperback 'The Historical Figure of Jesus' is, for me, unsurpassed.

    I'm not sure about presenting Larry Hurtado neat and without warning to the unwary or faint hearted. However, I am a fan and in great agreement with one of his big ideas.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 54,893

    ydoethur said:

    MattW said:

    ydoethur said:

    @TSE

    You mentioned OPT about MAGA obsessives who believe Pearl Harbor was a false flag.

    They weren’t the first. Jeanette Rankin, Representative from Montana, thought so too, saying ‘The British are such clever propagandists they might have cooked up the whole story.’ She said this while casting the only vote against declaring war on Japan.

    Oddly this absolute batshit line is missing from a Wiki entry that tries to pretend she did it as a point of principle.

    Also, we might mention that of course it was Hitler declared war on America, not the other way around (although Congress voted to reciprocate in which vote Rankin, realising what an utter twat she had made of herself over Japan, abstained).

    It was truly brilliant of us to get the Japanese to take public credit for the attack.
    Let's hope nobody sinks any of their aircraft carriers; that would be us too.

    We do have the fastest torpedoes in the world iirc (apart from Russian vapourware).
    Other than North Korea I think we’re the only country to have sunk an American navy ship in battle since WWII although that involves a high level of pedantry.
    I'm intrigued. That's not a story I've heard. What happened, where and when?
    The ARA General Belgrano was the USS Phoenix before the Yanks sold it to Argentina.
    Fun fact: the Sheffield and Coventry, wot were sunk during the Falklands War, had sister ships in the Argentine Navy: Santisima Trinidad, and Hercules.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 66,670
    Trump's letter to Japan on trade is one for the ages. Totally sums up his state of mind.


    https://x.com/SpencerHakimian/status/1942272912830132541
  • LeonLeon Posts: 62,577

    Nigelb said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    I don't think we have a sample of God's DNA even now.
    That’s because nobody has asked him. I understand he’s a modest muslim chap residing in the Sheffield area.
    Also lives with his Mum
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 74,133

    ydoethur said:

    One for @ydoethur.

    Dame Amanda Spielman on with Tom Swarbrick on LBC.

    Sounds like the world’s worst porno, but at least unlike in her previous role she’s not screwing England’s children.
    I hate to say this but she is probably right. She was banging on about SENS (SENDS) explaining that the cost is prohibitive because too many pushy parents are getting their naughty ADHD children extra assistance and a free taxi to and from school. As someone whose profoundly autistic child didn't get so much as a smile from the local authority I tended to agree with her.
    Seems unlikely, if I'm honest. That she's right, I mean. It would go against all past form.

    I would also query why she's saying this now rather than when she was chief of OFSTED if she does think this. She opined (usually inaccurately) on everything from potty training to mobile phones to the correct way of teaching literacy, none of which she showed the slightest understanding of.

    I would say it's the other way around - the cost is prohibitive *despite* the difficulties in getting help from the system, partly because of the way the costs are calculated post assessment.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 14,852
    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    I don't think we have a sample of God's DNA even now.
    You wouldn’t need God’s DNA, just the father’s.
    Who are you taking that from? Who is the alleged father here?
    Those wise men always seemed like dodgy characters, turning up at the birth with gifts like that. Put them on the sample list...
    Zoroastrians. Thousands of em. Well. 3 (maybe)
    I would suspect whichever of the three of them fooled the other two into thinking they were following a star, rather than returning to the scene of the crime, so to speak
    The detail of the timing of their visit is somewhat sketchy at best
    As indeed is much of the nativity story.

    The Magi were strollers and brought gold (for a King) Frankincense (for a prophet) and myrrh (for a corpse). The story is there to reinforce the divine portents of Jesus's birth, as indeed was the supposed census that placed the birth in Bethlehem rather than Nazareth in order to fulfil another prophecy.
    Quite.
    Its why, for me, defining my own faith and knowledge of God requires me to delve into things in a different way and work out my own Gnosis.
    Its up to everyone to decide what their relationship is, or is not, with God and what that means.
    Its much more interesting (for example, and from my perspective) to look at the gospels the Romans booted and ask why and what they are telling me compared to, in opposition to, or in tandem with the 'accepted' ones
    The problems come from over literal interpretations of the Biblical texts (and these do differ between sects) when many or most biblical stories were parables, fictions to make a moral or philosophical point. I think the ancients (like many pre-modern cultures) were very comfortable interpreting the texts figuratively rather than literally. Our supposedly more sophisticated culture struggles with that, being paralysed by concrete thinking.
    Yes, and a lot of the shoutier parts of Christianity have been rather captured by literal thinking. So much so that in parts of America disbelief in evolution on 'bible' grounds is quite common.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 46,069
    ydoethur said:

    MAGA having to reverse ferret on Epstein files is hilarious.

    Conned again.

    It's a very bad look. I almost think releasing it with the Trump bits redacted would be better. Almost.
    According to Stormy, his bits are so small anyway that wouldn't be hard.
    Read that as 'Stormzy' and had a crazy couple of minutes.
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 25,139
    Leon said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    It’s a brave man who makes a similar joke about The Prophet, eh?
    Not really, there's already been comments made (not by myself, but happy to repeat it) that by modern standards "the Prophet" would be a paedophile considering one of the people he reported slept with and her reported age.

    Its you that seems to have this hang up with regards to Islam, not the atheists here. Funny that.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 74,133

    Trump's letter to Japan on trade is one for the ages. Totally sums up his state of mind.


    https://x.com/SpencerHakimian/status/1942272912830132541

    Good gracious. Did he write that himself? Surely some poor sod of a secretary didn't have to do it with all the dreadful grammar and numerous punctuation errors?

    I mean, if I were marking that for GCSE English I would send it back to be redone.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 31,982

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    I don't think we have a sample of God's DNA even now.
    You wouldn’t need God’s DNA, just the father’s.
    Who are you taking that from? Who is the alleged father here?
    Those wise men always seemed like dodgy characters, turning up at the birth with gifts like that. Put them on the sample list...
    Zoroastrians. Thousands of em. Well. 3 (maybe)
    I would suspect whichever of the three of them fooled the other two into thinking they were following a star, rather than returning to the scene of the crime, so to speak
    The detail of the timing of their visit is somewhat sketchy at best
    As indeed is much of the nativity story.

    The Magi were strollers and brought gold (for a King) Frankincense (for a prophet) and myrrh (for a corpse). The story is there to reinforce the divine portents of Jesus's birth, as indeed was the supposed census that placed the birth in Bethlehem rather than Nazareth in order to fulfil another prophecy.
    Quite.
    Its why, for me, defining my own faith and knowledge of God requires me to delve into things in a different way and work out my own Gnosis.
    Its up to everyone to decide what their relationship is, or is not, with God and what that means.
    Its much more interesting (for example, and from my perspective) to look at the gospels the Romans booted and ask why and what they are telling me compared to, in opposition to, or in tandem with the 'accepted' ones
    The problems come from over literal interpretations of the Biblical texts (and these do differ between sects) when many or most biblical stories were parables, fictions to make a moral or philosophical point. I think the ancients (like many pre-modern cultures) were very comfortable interpreting the texts figuratively rather than literally. Our supposedly more sophisticated culture struggles with that, being paralysed by concrete thinking.
    I think it all changed once the Romans got control of Christianity personally. The treatment of what they defined as 'heresies' has very little to do with Christianity. It became a tool of suppression and societal control and denied people access to God except through the intercession of the priests if they remained within the Church.
    Gnostics tend to believe the world is evil. Salvation comes through knowledge (of God the divine creator, not the demiurge of the Old Testament)
    But there we go, to each their own journey and destination
    I believe each to their own, but I think there's something to be said for religion adhering to a standardised moral code - it adds guardrails that occult spirituality doesn't have. I can go to a Church and pray for healing, peace of mind, forgiveness, and even prosperity, but I can't pray for my annoying boss to drive off a cliff. Because I know that's against what God tells me, and he's not going to help with it. I can however use witchcraft to place a curse to do so. A benign intermediary between man and spiritual power is a useful thing.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 74,133

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    I don't think we have a sample of God's DNA even now.
    You wouldn’t need God’s DNA, just the father’s.
    Who are you taking that from? Who is the alleged father here?
    Those wise men always seemed like dodgy characters, turning up at the birth with gifts like that. Put them on the sample list...
    Zoroastrians. Thousands of em. Well. 3 (maybe)
    I would suspect whichever of the three of them fooled the other two into thinking they were following a star, rather than returning to the scene of the crime, so to speak
    The detail of the timing of their visit is somewhat sketchy at best
    As indeed is much of the nativity story.

    The Magi were strollers and brought gold (for a King) Frankincense (for a prophet) and myrrh (for a corpse). The story is there to reinforce the divine portents of Jesus's birth, as indeed was the supposed census that placed the birth in Bethlehem rather than Nazareth in order to fulfil another prophecy.
    Quite.
    Its why, for me, defining my own faith and knowledge of God requires me to delve into things in a different way and work out my own Gnosis.
    Its up to everyone to decide what their relationship is, or is not, with God and what that means.
    Its much more interesting (for example, and from my perspective) to look at the gospels the Romans booted and ask why and what they are telling me compared to, in opposition to, or in tandem with the 'accepted' ones
    The problems come from over literal interpretations of the Biblical texts (and these do differ between sects) when many or most biblical stories were parables, fictions to make a moral or philosophical point. I think the ancients (like many pre-modern cultures) were very comfortable interpreting the texts figuratively rather than literally. Our supposedly more sophisticated culture struggles with that, being paralysed by concrete thinking.
    I think it all changed once the Romans got control of Christianity personally. The treatment of what they defined as 'heresies' has very little to do with Christianity. It became a tool of suppression and societal control and denied people access to God except through the intercession of the priests if they remained within the Church.
    Gnostics tend to believe the world is evil. Salvation comes through knowledge (of God the divine creator, not the demiurge of the Old Testament)
    But there we go, to each their own journey and destination
    I believe each to their own, but I think there's something to be said for religion adhering to a standardised moral code - it adds guardrails that occult spirituality doesn't have. I can go to a Church and pray for healing, peace of mind, forgiveness, and even prosperity, but I can't pray for my annoying boss to drive off a cliff. Because I know that's against what God tells me, and he's not going to help with it. I can however use witchcraft to place a curse to do so. A benign intermediary between man and spiritual power is a useful thing.
    Er, excuse me? Surely your boss isn't *that* annoying?
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 74,133
    edited July 7
    Edited for Vanilla double post SNAFU.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 128,717

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:



    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    Yes they would as it was still a Virgin birth and his message would still have been the same.

    Fortunately for you most Christians won't impose fatwas of death on you as you might have received if you had made similar jokes about Muhammad
    That's because Christians are called to forgive those who smite them.

    Done with enough smugness, that can be even more annoying than issuing a death threat.
    No, it’s because Christianity is now weak. In times and places when it was strong, the consequences of thinking freely were no less brutal and gruesome.
    Globally there are more Christians than there have ever been, in the West militant secular leftists like you hate Christianity as much as you hate capitalism and anything else that doesn't accord with your worldview. Yet that is just part of the culture wars, for most conservatives as a result the likes of you are the enemy in said wars
    This correspondent has NEVER given me the impression that he HATES anyone.
    He is a militant atheist left liberal and it seeps through everything he writes
    Liberal, for sure. I was always seen as a relatively right wing one, though, by others. Militant, if you mean favouring violent methods, no, and you have no basis to make such a suggestion. Atheist, for sure. It’s entirely obvious that each and every religion is an invented or imagined human construct.
    In the culture wars which today dominate western politics you are firmly on the opposing side to conservatives and rightwingers.

    Indeed today's right despises woke atheist liberals like you even more than they used to oppose socialist trade unionists in the last century
    As a so called Christian how do you 'hate' so much

    You are absolutely doing nothing for Christianity or even Jesus in your postings and certainty your inability to apologise or admit you are wrong is testament to just how you betray the faith of millions
    You don't win the culture wars by meekly lying down and letting woke atheist left liberals walk all over you
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 52,059
    edited July 7

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    I don't think we have a sample of God's DNA even now.
    You wouldn’t need God’s DNA, just the father’s.
    Who are you taking that from? Who is the alleged father here?
    Those wise men always seemed like dodgy characters, turning up at the birth with gifts like that. Put them on the sample list...
    Zoroastrians. Thousands of em. Well. 3 (maybe)
    I would suspect whichever of the three of them fooled the other two into thinking they were following a star, rather than returning to the scene of the crime, so to speak
    The detail of the timing of their visit is somewhat sketchy at best
    As indeed is much of the nativity story.

    The Magi were strollers and brought gold (for a King) Frankincense (for a prophet) and myrrh (for a corpse). The story is there to reinforce the divine portents of Jesus's birth, as indeed was the supposed census that placed the birth in Bethlehem rather than Nazareth in order to fulfil another prophecy.
    Quite.
    Its why, for me, defining my own faith and knowledge of God requires me to delve into things in a different way and work out my own Gnosis.
    Its up to everyone to decide what their relationship is, or is not, with God and what that means.
    Its much more interesting (for example, and from my perspective) to look at the gospels the Romans booted and ask why and what they are telling me compared to, in opposition to, or in tandem with the 'accepted' ones
    The problems come from over literal interpretations of the Biblical texts (and these do differ between sects) when many or most biblical stories were parables, fictions to make a moral or philosophical point. I think the ancients (like many pre-modern cultures) were very comfortable interpreting the texts figuratively rather than literally. Our supposedly more sophisticated culture struggles with that, being paralysed by concrete thinking.
    I think it all changed once the Romans got control of Christianity personally. The treatment of what they defined as 'heresies' has very little to do with Christianity. It became a tool of suppression and societal control and denied people access to God except through the intercession of the priests if they remained within the Church.
    Gnostics tend to believe the world is evil. Salvation comes through knowledge (of God the divine creator, not the demiurge of the Old Testament)
    But there we go, to each their own journey and destination
    Good points. Pre-christian religions offered punters a lot of choice; they could choose which god to take their immediate concerns to, depending on his or her speciality, and it was accepted that different gods had different priorities and principles, and conflict between them was all part of the scene. Hence the individual was a player in a world over which they could exercise some choice. That Roman emperor was a clever fellow, who spotted that a belief system with a single god would be a much more powerful tool to direct and control his population, since once that god had 'spoken' (as proclaimed by pliant priests), that would be that. And the rest is history....and centuries of death, torture, war, misery, abuse, persecution, guilt, and control, duly followed, until enough of us questioned all that toxic nonsense and created a society where people are largely free to think as we wish.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 31,982
    ydoethur said:

    Trump's letter to Japan on trade is one for the ages. Totally sums up his state of mind.


    https://x.com/SpencerHakimian/status/1942272912830132541

    Good gracious. Did he write that himself? Surely some poor sod of a secretary didn't have to do it with all the dreadful grammar and numerous punctuation errors?

    I mean, if I were marking that for GCSE English I would send it back to be redone.
    Silly man doing his own writing - he should just use ChatGPT like Sir.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 74,133
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:



    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    Yes they would as it was still a Virgin birth and his message would still have been the same.

    Fortunately for you most Christians won't impose fatwas of death on you as you might have received if you had made similar jokes about Muhammad
    That's because Christians are called to forgive those who smite them.

    Done with enough smugness, that can be even more annoying than issuing a death threat.
    No, it’s because Christianity is now weak. In times and places when it was strong, the consequences of thinking freely were no less brutal and gruesome.
    Globally there are more Christians than there have ever been, in the West militant secular leftists like you hate Christianity as much as you hate capitalism and anything else that doesn't accord with your worldview. Yet that is just part of the culture wars, for most conservatives as a result the likes of you are the enemy in said wars
    This correspondent has NEVER given me the impression that he HATES anyone.
    He is a militant atheist left liberal and it seeps through everything he writes
    Liberal, for sure. I was always seen as a relatively right wing one, though, by others. Militant, if you mean favouring violent methods, no, and you have no basis to make such a suggestion. Atheist, for sure. It’s entirely obvious that each and every religion is an invented or imagined human construct.
    In the culture wars which today dominate western politics you are firmly on the opposing side to conservatives and rightwingers.

    Indeed today's right despises woke atheist liberals like you even more than they used to oppose socialist trade unionists in the last century
    As a so called Christian how do you 'hate' so much

    You are absolutely doing nothing for Christianity or even Jesus in your postings and certainty your inability to apologise or admit you are wrong is testament to just how you betray the faith of millions
    You don't win the culture wars by meekly lying down and letting woke atheist left liberals walk all over you
    Jesus thought you did, according to Matthew 5:39.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 128,717
    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    I'm back and I assumed with a new thread this would have died, but no and @hyufd accused me of whitting on about it.

    For the final time @hyufd what are all these so many tax minimising things I did again? Can you provide a list. I have given you all the details so prey tell.

    And what the hell does 'and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold ' mean? It is gobbledygook nonsense. What the hell does 'cash in hand' in this context mean?

    There is no income tax on withdrawal of capital. I have already paid income tax before creating it. Some of it may attract CGT which I pay. There is no cash in hand stuff, whatever that means in this context. You are getting confused with people not declaring income which I have never done.

    You are barking. You haven't a clue what you are talking about.
    I didn't restart it, I was responding to those who did.

    You were the one who was whinging your cash withdrawals from your capital and your ISAs didn't mean you lost all your WFA not me.

    If your income was otherwise over the taxable income threshold where WFA was lost you otherwise would have
    Answer the questions above then:

    a) What are all these 'so many tax minimising schemes' I did again? Can you provide a list. I have given you all the details of what I have so it should be easy.

    b) What does 'take cash in hand from his capital' even mean? There is no such concept with Capital. There is no income tax on spending your savings. Unless you are now implying I avoid CGT which I don't.

    c) What do you think I could have done to put me over the £35k limit? I would love to know. If I cashed in my ISAs I still wouldn't be over it. Go on tell me how I have avoided going over the limit because if there is some way I can magic such an income I definitely want to know.

    @hyufd you have lost it big time. This is idiotic stuff.

    The mind boggling thing about this, is I am the one who wants to pay more tax, who doesn't want the WFA and I am the one being accused of being a tax avoider. You need to give your head a wobble.
    Yes so the cash you get from your capital which is not taxed means you do not have the taxable income to meet the WFA cut off threshold for starters.

    You weren't forced to build up that capital or take cash from it and it would cost too much for HMRC to trace all the cash you withdraw from it to take you over the £35k threshold so you receive no WFA. So stop whinging about it
    You are stark raving mad? 70% of my capital in my house and my DC pension. So are you saying nobody should buy a house or take out a pension. The rest is what I have saved for my retirement. Are you saying people shouldn't save for their retirement?

    The reason I don't have a taxable income at £35k is because I don't have a DB pension. Nobody gave me one. What was I supposed to do? Lots of people don't have one or only small ones. Are you saying they shouldn't save for retirement?

    You do come up with the most idiotic stuff sometimes.

    Come on tell me what I should have done then?
    Stop whinging about still getting your WFA then, those with DB pensions as you say don't now get it even if they have the benefit of a DB pension income
    I'm whinging because lots of people are getting it who shouldn't. That money should be used for those less well off, not for people who are wealthy. So that is why I am whinging.

    It is an utter waste of money. It needs to be means tested and set at a lower threshold so people like me don't get it. And even if I return it most won't.

    It is a reasonable whinge.
    It is means tested, taxable income over £35k no longer gets it.

    Of course the government could also confiscate your house and your ISA if you really want to stop receiving your WFA!
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 74,133

    ydoethur said:

    Trump's letter to Japan on trade is one for the ages. Totally sums up his state of mind.


    https://x.com/SpencerHakimian/status/1942272912830132541

    Good gracious. Did he write that himself? Surely some poor sod of a secretary didn't have to do it with all the dreadful grammar and numerous punctuation errors?

    I mean, if I were marking that for GCSE English I would send it back to be redone.
    Silly man doing his own writing - he should just use ChatGPT like Sir.
    Well, I never normally recommend it because it's bloody awful, but even Grammarly would have made a better fist of it than that.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 128,717
    edited July 7
    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:



    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    Yes they would as it was still a Virgin birth and his message would still have been the same.

    Fortunately for you most Christians won't impose fatwas of death on you as you might have received if you had made similar jokes about Muhammad
    That's because Christians are called to forgive those who smite them.

    Done with enough smugness, that can be even more annoying than issuing a death threat.
    No, it’s because Christianity is now weak. In times and places when it was strong, the consequences of thinking freely were no less brutal and gruesome.
    Globally there are more Christians than there have ever been, in the West militant secular leftists like you hate Christianity as much as you hate capitalism and anything else that doesn't accord with your worldview. Yet that is just part of the culture wars, for most conservatives as a result the likes of you are the enemy in said wars
    This correspondent has NEVER given me the impression that he HATES anyone.
    He is a militant atheist left liberal and it seeps through everything he writes
    Liberal, for sure. I was always seen as a relatively right wing one, though, by others. Militant, if you mean favouring violent methods, no, and you have no basis to make such a suggestion. Atheist, for sure. It’s entirely obvious that each and every religion is an invented or imagined human construct.
    In the culture wars which today dominate western politics you are firmly on the opposing side to conservatives and rightwingers.

    Indeed today's right despises woke atheist liberals like you even more than they used to oppose socialist trade unionists in the last century
    As a so called Christian how do you 'hate' so much

    You are absolutely doing nothing for Christianity or even Jesus in your postings and certainty your inability to apologise or admit you are wrong is testament to just how you betray the faith of millions
    You don't win the culture wars by meekly lying down and letting woke atheist left liberals walk all over you
    Jesus thought you did, according to Matthew 5:39.
    Exodus 21:23-27.

  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 31,982
    ydoethur said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    I don't think we have a sample of God's DNA even now.
    You wouldn’t need God’s DNA, just the father’s.
    Who are you taking that from? Who is the alleged father here?
    Those wise men always seemed like dodgy characters, turning up at the birth with gifts like that. Put them on the sample list...
    Zoroastrians. Thousands of em. Well. 3 (maybe)
    I would suspect whichever of the three of them fooled the other two into thinking they were following a star, rather than returning to the scene of the crime, so to speak
    The detail of the timing of their visit is somewhat sketchy at best
    As indeed is much of the nativity story.

    The Magi were strollers and brought gold (for a King) Frankincense (for a prophet) and myrrh (for a corpse). The story is there to reinforce the divine portents of Jesus's birth, as indeed was the supposed census that placed the birth in Bethlehem rather than Nazareth in order to fulfil another prophecy.
    Quite.
    Its why, for me, defining my own faith and knowledge of God requires me to delve into things in a different way and work out my own Gnosis.
    Its up to everyone to decide what their relationship is, or is not, with God and what that means.
    Its much more interesting (for example, and from my perspective) to look at the gospels the Romans booted and ask why and what they are telling me compared to, in opposition to, or in tandem with the 'accepted' ones
    The problems come from over literal interpretations of the Biblical texts (and these do differ between sects) when many or most biblical stories were parables, fictions to make a moral or philosophical point. I think the ancients (like many pre-modern cultures) were very comfortable interpreting the texts figuratively rather than literally. Our supposedly more sophisticated culture struggles with that, being paralysed by concrete thinking.
    I think it all changed once the Romans got control of Christianity personally. The treatment of what they defined as 'heresies' has very little to do with Christianity. It became a tool of suppression and societal control and denied people access to God except through the intercession of the priests if they remained within the Church.
    Gnostics tend to believe the world is evil. Salvation comes through knowledge (of God the divine creator, not the demiurge of the Old Testament)
    But there we go, to each their own journey and destination
    I believe each to their own, but I think there's something to be said for religion adhering to a standardised moral code - it adds guardrails that occult spirituality doesn't have. I can go to a Church and pray for healing, peace of mind, forgiveness, and even prosperity, but I can't pray for my annoying boss to drive off a cliff. Because I know that's against what God tells me, and he's not going to help with it. I can however use witchcraft to place a curse to do so. A benign intermediary between man and spiritual power is a useful thing.
    Er, excuse me? Surely your boss isn't *that* annoying?
    I have a lovely boss - it was an example. We all have wrathful thoughts sometimes.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 46,069

    Leon said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    It’s a brave man who makes a similar joke about The Prophet, eh?
    Not really, there's already been comments made (not by myself, but happy to repeat it) that by modern standards "the Prophet" would be a paedophile considering one of the people he reported slept with and her reported age.

    Its you that seems to have this hang up with regards to Islam, not the atheists here. Funny that.
    Yes, if I've heard that once I've heard it a thousand times. And I don't think everyone who's 'told it' is exactly Mr Fortitude Personified.
  • squareroot2squareroot2 Posts: 7,088
    How many politicians can be ruled out of being PM out of the 650?
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 54,893
    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    I don't think we have a sample of God's DNA even now.
    That’s because nobody has asked him. I understand he’s a modest muslim chap residing in the Sheffield area.
    Also lives with his Mum
    Nothing wrong with that!
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 74,133
    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:



    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    Yes they would as it was still a Virgin birth and his message would still have been the same.

    Fortunately for you most Christians won't impose fatwas of death on you as you might have received if you had made similar jokes about Muhammad
    That's because Christians are called to forgive those who smite them.

    Done with enough smugness, that can be even more annoying than issuing a death threat.
    No, it’s because Christianity is now weak. In times and places when it was strong, the consequences of thinking freely were no less brutal and gruesome.
    Globally there are more Christians than there have ever been, in the West militant secular leftists like you hate Christianity as much as you hate capitalism and anything else that doesn't accord with your worldview. Yet that is just part of the culture wars, for most conservatives as a result the likes of you are the enemy in said wars
    This correspondent has NEVER given me the impression that he HATES anyone.
    He is a militant atheist left liberal and it seeps through everything he writes
    Liberal, for sure. I was always seen as a relatively right wing one, though, by others. Militant, if you mean favouring violent methods, no, and you have no basis to make such a suggestion. Atheist, for sure. It’s entirely obvious that each and every religion is an invented or imagined human construct.
    In the culture wars which today dominate western politics you are firmly on the opposing side to conservatives and rightwingers.

    Indeed today's right despises woke atheist liberals like you even more than they used to oppose socialist trade unionists in the last century
    As a so called Christian how do you 'hate' so much

    You are absolutely doing nothing for Christianity or even Jesus in your postings and certainty your inability to apologise or admit you are wrong is testament to just how you betray the faith of millions
    You don't win the culture wars by meekly lying down and letting woke atheist left liberals walk all over you
    Jesus thought you did, according to Matthew 5:39.
    Exodus 21:23-27.

    Jesus also did not believe there would be people who would reject his message
    On the first, I think you will find Exodus was a leetle before Jesus' time.

    On the second Matthew 10:34 would beg to differ.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 46,069

    How many politicians can be ruled out of being PM out of the 650?

    Kemi Badenoch?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 62,577
    edited July 7

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    I don't think we have a sample of God's DNA even now.
    That’s because nobody has asked him. I understand he’s a modest muslim chap residing in the Sheffield area.
    Also lives with his Mum
    I also live with my Dad.

    I know you live alone but you should try coming home everyday to four people who love and adore you, it might make you less of an idiot.
    The Italians have a word for men who live with their mums into middle age

    Mammone

    Some kind people regard the term as affectionate rather than pejorative; I am sure the menage must be consoling. Also saves on laundry bills
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 12,476

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    I don't think we have a sample of God's DNA even now.
    You wouldn’t need God’s DNA, just the father’s.
    Who are you taking that from? Who is the alleged father here?
    Those wise men always seemed like dodgy characters, turning up at the birth with gifts like that. Put them on the sample list...
    Zoroastrians. Thousands of em. Well. 3 (maybe)
    I would suspect whichever of the three of them fooled the other two into thinking they were following a star, rather than returning to the scene of the crime, so to speak
    The detail of the timing of their visit is somewhat sketchy at best
    As indeed is much of the nativity story.

    The Magi were strollers and brought gold (for a King) Frankincense (for a prophet) and myrrh (for a corpse). The story is there to reinforce the divine portents of Jesus's birth, as indeed was the supposed census that placed the birth in Bethlehem rather than Nazareth in order to fulfil another prophecy.
    Quite.
    Its why, for me, defining my own faith and knowledge of God requires me to delve into things in a different way and work out my own Gnosis.
    Its up to everyone to decide what their relationship is, or is not, with God and what that means.
    Its much more interesting (for example, and from my perspective) to look at the gospels the Romans booted and ask why and what they are telling me compared to, in opposition to, or in tandem with the 'accepted' ones
    The problems come from over literal interpretations of the Biblical texts (and these do differ between sects) when many or most biblical stories were parables, fictions to make a moral or philosophical point. I think the ancients (like many pre-modern cultures) were very comfortable interpreting the texts figuratively rather than literally. Our supposedly more sophisticated culture struggles with that, being paralysed by concrete thinking.
    I think it all changed once the Romans got control of Christianity personally. The treatment of what they defined as 'heresies' has very little to do with Christianity. It became a tool of suppression and societal control and denied people access to God except through the intercession of the priests if they remained within the Church.
    Gnostics tend to believe the world is evil. Salvation comes through knowledge (of God the divine creator, not the demiurge of the Old Testament)
    But there we go, to each their own journey and destination
    I believe each to their own, but I think there's something to be said for religion adhering to a standardised moral code - it adds guardrails that occult spirituality doesn't have. I can go to a Church and pray for healing, peace of mind, forgiveness, and even prosperity, but I can't pray for my annoying boss to drive off a cliff. Because I know that's against what God tells me, and he's not going to help with it. I can however use witchcraft to place a curse to do so. A benign intermediary between man and spiritual power is a useful thing.
    Sure thing and if that's where your journey takes you then more power to your elbow.
    Its not for me though. If, for example, I have concluded that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the light and is the benign intermediary then I do not require any other input from a world I consider quite possibly evil, I just need to navigate it (that's not the sum of my journey, I'm just using it as an example of process), but I also don't need to convince anyone else of it, that's for them to discover, ignore or refute in their own life.
    Proselytising is the worst (imho)
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 128,717
    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    I don't think we have a sample of God's DNA even now.
    You wouldn’t need God’s DNA, just the father’s.
    Who are you taking that from? Who is the alleged father here?
    Those wise men always seemed like dodgy characters, turning up at the birth with gifts like that. Put them on the sample list...
    Zoroastrians. Thousands of em. Well. 3 (maybe)
    I would suspect whichever of the three of them fooled the other two into thinking they were following a star, rather than returning to the scene of the crime, so to speak
    The detail of the timing of their visit is somewhat sketchy at best
    As indeed is much of the nativity story.

    The Magi were strollers and brought gold (for a King) Frankincense (for a prophet) and myrrh (for a corpse). The story is there to reinforce the divine portents of Jesus's birth, as indeed was the supposed census that placed the birth in Bethlehem rather than Nazareth in order to fulfil another prophecy.
    Quite.
    Its why, for me, defining my own faith and knowledge of God requires me to delve into things in a different way and work out my own Gnosis.
    Its up to everyone to decide what their relationship is, or is not, with God and what that means.
    Its much more interesting (for example, and from my perspective) to look at the gospels the Romans booted and ask why and what they are telling me compared to, in opposition to, or in tandem with the 'accepted' ones
    The problems come from over literal interpretations of the Biblical texts (and these do differ between sects) when many or most biblical stories were parables, fictions to make a moral or philosophical point. I think the ancients (like many pre-modern cultures) were very comfortable interpreting the texts figuratively rather than literally. Our supposedly more sophisticated culture struggles with that, being paralysed by concrete thinking.
    I think it all changed once the Romans got control of Christianity personally. The treatment of what they defined as 'heresies' has very little to do with Christianity. It became a tool of suppression and societal control and denied people access to God except through the intercession of the priests if they remained within the Church.
    Gnostics tend to believe the world is evil. Salvation comes through knowledge (of God the divine creator, not the demiurge of the Old Testament)
    But there we go, to each their own journey and destination
    Good points. Pre-christian religious offered punters a lot of choice; they could choose which god to take their immediate concerns to, depending on his or her speciality, and it was accepted that different gods had different priorities and principles, and conflict between them was all part of the scene. Hence the individual was a player in a world over which they could exercise some choice. That Roman emperor was a clever fellow, who spotted that a belief system with a single god would be a much more powerful tool to direct and control his population, since once that god had 'spoken' (as proclaimed by pliant priests), that would be that. And the rest is history....and centuries of death, torture, war, misery, abuse, persecution, guilt, and control, duly followed, until enough of us questioned all that toxic nonsense and created a society where people are largely free to think as we wish.
    And declare war on the traditional family and western culture much as the likes of you do and hence the 21st century culture wars
  • LeonLeon Posts: 62,577

    Leon said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    It’s a brave man who makes a similar joke about The Prophet, eh?
    Not really, there's already been comments made (not by myself, but happy to repeat it) that by modern standards "the Prophet" would be a paedophile considering one of the people he reported slept with and her reported age.

    Its you that seems to have this hang up with regards to Islam, not the atheists here. Funny that.
    You don’t think there is a slight difference - in likely consequences - between insulting the Prophet and insulting Jesus Christ?
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 14,852

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    I don't think we have a sample of God's DNA even now.
    You wouldn’t need God’s DNA, just the father’s.
    Who are you taking that from? Who is the alleged father here?
    Those wise men always seemed like dodgy characters, turning up at the birth with gifts like that. Put them on the sample list...
    Zoroastrians. Thousands of em. Well. 3 (maybe)
    I would suspect whichever of the three of them fooled the other two into thinking they were following a star, rather than returning to the scene of the crime, so to speak
    The detail of the timing of their visit is somewhat sketchy at best
    As indeed is much of the nativity story.

    The Magi were strollers and brought gold (for a King) Frankincense (for a prophet) and myrrh (for a corpse). The story is there to reinforce the divine portents of Jesus's birth, as indeed was the supposed census that placed the birth in Bethlehem rather than Nazareth in order to fulfil another prophecy.
    Quite.
    Its why, for me, defining my own faith and knowledge of God requires me to delve into things in a different way and work out my own Gnosis.
    Its up to everyone to decide what their relationship is, or is not, with God and what that means.
    Its much more interesting (for example, and from my perspective) to look at the gospels the Romans booted and ask why and what they are telling me compared to, in opposition to, or in tandem with the 'accepted' ones
    The problems come from over literal interpretations of the Biblical texts (and these do differ between sects) when many or most biblical stories were parables, fictions to make a moral or philosophical point. I think the ancients (like many pre-modern cultures) were very comfortable interpreting the texts figuratively rather than literally. Our supposedly more sophisticated culture struggles with that, being paralysed by concrete thinking.
    I think it all changed once the Romans got control of Christianity personally. The treatment of what they defined as 'heresies' has very little to do with Christianity. It became a tool of suppression and societal control and denied people access to God except through the intercession of the priests if they remained within the Church.
    Gnostics tend to believe the world is evil. Salvation comes through knowledge (of God the divine creator, not the demiurge of the Old Testament)
    But there we go, to each their own journey and destination
    I believe each to their own, but I think there's something to be said for religion adhering to a standardised moral code - it adds guardrails that occult spirituality doesn't have. I can go to a Church and pray for healing, peace of mind, forgiveness, and even prosperity, but I can't pray for my annoying boss to drive off a cliff. Because I know that's against what God tells me, and he's not going to help with it. I can however use witchcraft to place a curse to do so. A benign intermediary between man and spiritual power is a useful thing.
    Yes, up to a point. Ethical monotheism is one of our most remarkable discoveries/inventions. However Plato's great question remains: Does God command a thing because it is good; or is a thing good because God commands it?

    (An atheist can play too: Is torturing children for fun wrong because we think it is wrong, or do we think it is wrong because it is? Give reasons for your answer.)
  • HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    I'm back and I assumed with a new thread this would have died, but no and @hyufd accused me of whitting on about it.

    For the final time @hyufd what are all these so many tax minimising things I did again? Can you provide a list. I have given you all the details so prey tell.

    And what the hell does 'and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold ' mean? It is gobbledygook nonsense. What the hell does 'cash in hand' in this context mean?

    There is no income tax on withdrawal of capital. I have already paid income tax before creating it. Some of it may attract CGT which I pay. There is no cash in hand stuff, whatever that means in this context. You are getting confused with people not declaring income which I have never done.

    You are barking. You haven't a clue what you are talking about.
    I didn't restart it, I was responding to those who did.

    You were the one who was whinging your cash withdrawals from your capital and your ISAs didn't mean you lost all your WFA not me.

    If your income was otherwise over the taxable income threshold where WFA was lost you otherwise would have
    Answer the questions above then:

    a) What are all these 'so many tax minimising schemes' I did again? Can you provide a list. I have given you all the details of what I have so it should be easy.

    b) What does 'take cash in hand from his capital' even mean? There is no such concept with Capital. There is no income tax on spending your savings. Unless you are now implying I avoid CGT which I don't.

    c) What do you think I could have done to put me over the £35k limit? I would love to know. If I cashed in my ISAs I still wouldn't be over it. Go on tell me how I have avoided going over the limit because if there is some way I can magic such an income I definitely want to know.

    @hyufd you have lost it big time. This is idiotic stuff.

    The mind boggling thing about this, is I am the one who wants to pay more tax, who doesn't want the WFA and I am the one being accused of being a tax avoider. You need to give your head a wobble.
    Yes so the cash you get from your capital which is not taxed means you do not have the taxable income to meet the WFA cut off threshold for starters.

    You weren't forced to build up that capital or take cash from it and it would cost too much for HMRC to trace all the cash you withdraw from it to take you over the £35k threshold so you receive no WFA. So stop whinging about it
    You are stark raving mad? 70% of my capital in my house and my DC pension. So are you saying nobody should buy a house or take out a pension. The rest is what I have saved for my retirement. Are you saying people shouldn't save for their retirement?

    The reason I don't have a taxable income at £35k is because I don't have a DB pension. Nobody gave me one. What was I supposed to do? Lots of people don't have one or only small ones. Are you saying they shouldn't save for retirement?

    You do come up with the most idiotic stuff sometimes.

    Come on tell me what I should have done then?
    Stop whinging about still getting your WFA then, those with DB pensions as you say don't now get it even if they have the benefit of a DB pension income
    I'm whinging because lots of people are getting it who shouldn't. That money should be used for those less well off, not for people who are wealthy. So that is why I am whinging.

    It is an utter waste of money. It needs to be means tested and set at a lower threshold so people like me don't get it. And even if I return it most won't.

    It is a reasonable whinge.
    It is means tested...
    You're struggling with basic comprehension now, let alone the correct use of tax terminology. What do you think the words "and set at a lower threshold" mean in the post you think you are correcting ?

  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 128,717
    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:



    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    Yes they would as it was still a Virgin birth and his message would still have been the same.

    Fortunately for you most Christians won't impose fatwas of death on you as you might have received if you had made similar jokes about Muhammad
    That's because Christians are called to forgive those who smite them.

    Done with enough smugness, that can be even more annoying than issuing a death threat.
    No, it’s because Christianity is now weak. In times and places when it was strong, the consequences of thinking freely were no less brutal and gruesome.
    Globally there are more Christians than there have ever been, in the West militant secular leftists like you hate Christianity as much as you hate capitalism and anything else that doesn't accord with your worldview. Yet that is just part of the culture wars, for most conservatives as a result the likes of you are the enemy in said wars
    This correspondent has NEVER given me the impression that he HATES anyone.
    He is a militant atheist left liberal and it seeps through everything he writes
    Liberal, for sure. I was always seen as a relatively right wing one, though, by others. Militant, if you mean favouring violent methods, no, and you have no basis to make such a suggestion. Atheist, for sure. It’s entirely obvious that each and every religion is an invented or imagined human construct.
    In the culture wars which today dominate western politics you are firmly on the opposing side to conservatives and rightwingers.

    Indeed today's right despises woke atheist liberals like you even more than they used to oppose socialist trade unionists in the last century
    As a so called Christian how do you 'hate' so much

    You are absolutely doing nothing for Christianity or even Jesus in your postings and certainty your inability to apologise or admit you are wrong is testament to just how you betray the faith of millions
    You don't win the culture wars by meekly lying down and letting woke atheist left liberals walk all over you
    Jesus thought you did, according to Matthew 5:39.
    Exodus 21:23-27.

    Jesus also did not believe there would be people who would reject his message
    On the first, I think you will find Exodus was a leetle before Jesus' time.

    On the second Matthew 10:34 would beg to differ.
    The Old Testament is also part of the Christian Bible and as you state even Jesus knew he had brought a metaphorical sword to take on those who would reject him
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 79,724

    How many politicians can be ruled out of being PM out of the 650?

    Rayner & Farage are the two most likely to be PM in the commons to my mind.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 128,717

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    I'm back and I assumed with a new thread this would have died, but no and @hyufd accused me of whitting on about it.

    For the final time @hyufd what are all these so many tax minimising things I did again? Can you provide a list. I have given you all the details so prey tell.

    And what the hell does 'and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold ' mean? It is gobbledygook nonsense. What the hell does 'cash in hand' in this context mean?

    There is no income tax on withdrawal of capital. I have already paid income tax before creating it. Some of it may attract CGT which I pay. There is no cash in hand stuff, whatever that means in this context. You are getting confused with people not declaring income which I have never done.

    You are barking. You haven't a clue what you are talking about.
    I didn't restart it, I was responding to those who did.

    You were the one who was whinging your cash withdrawals from your capital and your ISAs didn't mean you lost all your WFA not me.

    If your income was otherwise over the taxable income threshold where WFA was lost you otherwise would have
    Answer the questions above then:

    a) What are all these 'so many tax minimising schemes' I did again? Can you provide a list. I have given you all the details of what I have so it should be easy.

    b) What does 'take cash in hand from his capital' even mean? There is no such concept with Capital. There is no income tax on spending your savings. Unless you are now implying I avoid CGT which I don't.

    c) What do you think I could have done to put me over the £35k limit? I would love to know. If I cashed in my ISAs I still wouldn't be over it. Go on tell me how I have avoided going over the limit because if there is some way I can magic such an income I definitely want to know.

    @hyufd you have lost it big time. This is idiotic stuff.

    The mind boggling thing about this, is I am the one who wants to pay more tax, who doesn't want the WFA and I am the one being accused of being a tax avoider. You need to give your head a wobble.
    Yes so the cash you get from your capital which is not taxed means you do not have the taxable income to meet the WFA cut off threshold for starters.

    You weren't forced to build up that capital or take cash from it and it would cost too much for HMRC to trace all the cash you withdraw from it to take you over the £35k threshold so you receive no WFA. So stop whinging about it
    You are stark raving mad? 70% of my capital in my house and my DC pension. So are you saying nobody should buy a house or take out a pension. The rest is what I have saved for my retirement. Are you saying people shouldn't save for their retirement?

    The reason I don't have a taxable income at £35k is because I don't have a DB pension. Nobody gave me one. What was I supposed to do? Lots of people don't have one or only small ones. Are you saying they shouldn't save for retirement?

    You do come up with the most idiotic stuff sometimes.

    Come on tell me what I should have done then?
    Stop whinging about still getting your WFA then, those with DB pensions as you say don't now get it even if they have the benefit of a DB pension income
    I'm whinging because lots of people are getting it who shouldn't. That money should be used for those less well off, not for people who are wealthy. So that is why I am whinging.

    It is an utter waste of money. It needs to be means tested and set at a lower threshold so people like me don't get it. And even if I return it most won't.

    It is a reasonable whinge.
    It is means tested...
    You're struggling with basic comprehension now, let alone the correct use of tax terminology. What do you think the words "and set at a lower threshold" mean in the post you think you are correcting ?

    Everybody with taxable income over £35k already loses WFA if you really want to butt in again to a discussion hours old and not even give the full quote
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 74,133
    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:



    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    Yes they would as it was still a Virgin birth and his message would still have been the same.

    Fortunately for you most Christians won't impose fatwas of death on you as you might have received if you had made similar jokes about Muhammad
    That's because Christians are called to forgive those who smite them.

    Done with enough smugness, that can be even more annoying than issuing a death threat.
    No, it’s because Christianity is now weak. In times and places when it was strong, the consequences of thinking freely were no less brutal and gruesome.
    Globally there are more Christians than there have ever been, in the West militant secular leftists like you hate Christianity as much as you hate capitalism and anything else that doesn't accord with your worldview. Yet that is just part of the culture wars, for most conservatives as a result the likes of you are the enemy in said wars
    This correspondent has NEVER given me the impression that he HATES anyone.
    He is a militant atheist left liberal and it seeps through everything he writes
    Liberal, for sure. I was always seen as a relatively right wing one, though, by others. Militant, if you mean favouring violent methods, no, and you have no basis to make such a suggestion. Atheist, for sure. It’s entirely obvious that each and every religion is an invented or imagined human construct.
    In the culture wars which today dominate western politics you are firmly on the opposing side to conservatives and rightwingers.

    Indeed today's right despises woke atheist liberals like you even more than they used to oppose socialist trade unionists in the last century
    As a so called Christian how do you 'hate' so much

    You are absolutely doing nothing for Christianity or even Jesus in your postings and certainty your inability to apologise or admit you are wrong is testament to just how you betray the faith of millions
    You don't win the culture wars by meekly lying down and letting woke atheist left liberals walk all over you
    Jesus thought you did, according to Matthew 5:39.
    Exodus 21:23-27.

    Jesus also did not believe there would be people who would reject his message
    On the first, I think you will find Exodus was a leetle before Jesus' time.

    On the second Matthew 10:34 would beg to differ.
    The Old Testament is also part of the Christian Bible and as you state even Jesus knew he had brought a metaphorical sword to take on those who would reject him
    Yes, I'm stating that, as was Jesus, but the point is you were not, although I note you've deleted it anyway.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 62,577
    The hotel I am staying at - in Sofia - The Crystal Palace Boutique Hotel - has possibly the best food I have ever encountered in a hotel. The only comparison I know is that 5 star gaff in Rangoon where I spent a well-fed month in January

    Absolutely superb Italo-Bulgarian food. Sublime. Especially after a week of dreck in the mountains
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 46,069
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:



    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    Yes they would as it was still a Virgin birth and his message would still have been the same.

    Fortunately for you most Christians won't impose fatwas of death on you as you might have received if you had made similar jokes about Muhammad
    That's because Christians are called to forgive those who smite them.

    Done with enough smugness, that can be even more annoying than issuing a death threat.
    No, it’s because Christianity is now weak. In times and places when it was strong, the consequences of thinking freely were no less brutal and gruesome.
    Globally there are more Christians than there have ever been, in the West militant secular leftists like you hate Christianity as much as you hate capitalism and anything else that doesn't accord with your worldview. Yet that is just part of the culture wars, for most conservatives as a result the likes of you are the enemy in said wars
    This correspondent has NEVER given me the impression that he HATES anyone.
    He is a militant atheist left liberal and it seeps through everything he writes
    Liberal, for sure. I was always seen as a relatively right wing one, though, by others. Militant, if you mean favouring violent methods, no, and you have no basis to make such a suggestion. Atheist, for sure. It’s entirely obvious that each and every religion is an invented or imagined human construct.
    In the culture wars which today dominate western politics you are firmly on the opposing side to conservatives and rightwingers.

    Indeed today's right despises woke atheist liberals like you even more than they used to oppose socialist trade unionists in the last century
    As a so called Christian how do you 'hate' so much

    You are absolutely doing nothing for Christianity or even Jesus in your postings and certainty your inability to apologise or admit you are wrong is testament to just how you betray the faith of millions
    You don't win the culture wars by meekly lying down and letting woke atheist left liberals walk all over you
    HYUFD! - Only to the King does he take the knee!
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,712
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    I don't think we have a sample of God's DNA even now.
    That’s because nobody has asked him. I understand he’s a modest muslim chap residing in the Sheffield area.
    Also lives with his Mum
    I also live with my Dad.

    I know you live alone but you should try coming home everyday to four people who love and adore you, it might make you less of an idiot.
    The Italians have a word for men who live with their mums into middle age

    Mammone

    Some kind people regard the term as affectionate rather than pejorative; I am sure the menage must be consoling. Also saves on laundry bills
    My parents lived with me until they died (when I was 49). I doubt if one can draw any general conclusions.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 128,717
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    It’s a brave man who makes a similar joke about The Prophet, eh?
    Not really, there's already been comments made (not by myself, but happy to repeat it) that by modern standards "the Prophet" would be a paedophile considering one of the people he reported slept with and her reported age.

    Its you that seems to have this hang up with regards to Islam, not the atheists here. Funny that.
    You don’t think there is a slight difference - in likely consequences - between insulting the Prophet and insulting Jesus Christ?
    Indeed I certainly would not expect the likes of Bart to repeat the comments he just posted in a Mosque or he may not come out alive
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 31,555

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    IanB2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Chris said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Shame the old thread just got superseded. As someone who practised tax law for quarter of a century, I was enjoying HYUFD's continuing wilful self humiliation.

    On what? You butted in to an argument you hadn't followed from its origin.

    Kjh was saying the government should have deprived him of his WFA, if he didn't use so many tax minimisation schemes and take cash in hand from his capital he would have been well over the taxable income threshold for losing his WFA
    Jesus was a Lefty.
    No he believed in the 'Big Society' and charity rather than just the state and was relatively socially conservative
    He believed people should sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. I presume that when you did that you thought of some casuistical justification for holding on to the device you're using to post here.

    But "socially conservative"? He actually enabled a dangerous criminal to escape the death penalty prescribed by Almighty God for the offence she had committed!
    Only if they wanted to be a disciple. He was also quite keen on the parable of the talents and using your skills and investing wisely. He also upheld Mosaic law and believed in lifelong marriage between a man and woman
    It’s questionable whether he even existed.
    If paternity tests existed 2,000 years ago nobody would have heard about Jesus and Christianity wouldn’t have existed.
    I don't think we have a sample of God's DNA even now.
    That’s because nobody has asked him. I understand he’s a modest muslim chap residing in the Sheffield area.
    Also lives with his Mum
    I also live with my Dad.

    I know you live alone but you should try coming home everyday to four people who love and adore you, it might make you less of an idiot.
    The Italians have a word for men who live with their mums into middle age

    Mammone

    Some kind people regard the term as affectionate rather than pejorative; I am sure the menage must be consoling. Also saves on laundry bills
    My parents lived with me until they died (when I was 49). I doubt if one can draw any general conclusions.
    One conclusion is a shortage of affordable housing.
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