Have we covered the story that Tony Blair is about to be installed as Governor of Gaza by the Israelis?
They had a Palestinian chap on WATO who was, shall we say, none too impressed. Apparently the Whitehouse are deadly serious.
If they want a former UK PM, Boris Johnson would be a less controversial appointment. In fact I can't think of anyone more inappropriate than Blair.
Couldn't they have got Nigel to do it? Everything that happens in the world is always reported as being 'great news for Nigel Farage' so he couldn't go at all wrong.
Good point.
He's seldom in Clacton or the HoC so it might be a handy little part-time gig. He could probably run Gaza from Mar-a-Lago like he seems to with his other "pin money" grifts, like being an MP.
Morning all, Green hold in Katie Lams seat in Kent with a split ConRef vote. Tight fight in the Weald likely! Rolvenden & Tenterden West (Ashford) Council By-Election Result:
HMRC already have loads of data on all of us which people can access using their gateway ID . I just find some of the hysteria over the digital ID a bit over the top.
If China has cracked sodium ion batteries that would be huge news for renewables. Once produced at volume, they have the potential to be way cheaper than lithium ion.
HMRC already have loads of data on all of us which people can access using their gateway ID . I just find some of the hysteria over the digital ID a bit over the top.
Of course you do. But then you are a statist who thinks the State is the great mother and father of us all.
HMRC already have loads of data on all of us which people can access using their gateway ID . I just find some of the hysteria over the digital ID a bit over the top.
Of course you do. But then you are a statist who thinks the State is the great mother and father of us all.
No I don’t believe that but you don’t see this level of hysteria in countries who have ID cards . I have a Cypriot one as my parents were born there and it’s very useful. That’s my experience of them .
Maybe politicians ought to be asking themselves how they transformed a country in which you almost never had to show ID to do anything [unless you were going abroad from an airport or ferry terminal] into one in which apparently ID cards are needed. You could open a bank account with nothing more than a gas bill until relatively recently IIRC, and society didn't collapse as a result.
It’s not just the UK though, it’s the same all over the developed world.
The reason is step by step actions and reactions to crime and terrorism.
People open accounts to send money to fund terror or drug dealing etc so governments insist on more protections to make it harder to open accounts. Crims and terrorists arrange for people to create fake IDs and addresses to get around the new rules so governments insist on stricter checks or controls and so on.
Added to how technology had changed with everything from bank accounts on your phone to fake AI people pretending to be real people to commit fraud etc there is a constant battle to keep ahead of the baddies.
People employ slave Labour trafficked on fake IDs etc so governments get demands to crack down understandably and so have to bring in more checks and controls.
Of course libertarians could say “let’s stop these controls and checks” but then I don’t want any complaining about drug dealing and terror attacks if it in some way affects them.
If we consider the July 7th bombings in London, can you tell me how these were enabled by terrorist financing, and are now made more difficult by the various identity checks mandated by law?
It would be interesting to see the details of how this happens in practice and how law changes make it harder.
How many more attacks would there have been if it was easier for terrorists to obtain bank accounts, money, IDs etc is more to the point.
And how are you going to try and reign in drug dealers and traffickers without controls on banking and ID?
It's a genuine question. I'm willing to be convinced.
But it seems like it's plenty easy for terrorists to obtain bank accounts because they're often normal people who have been radicalised and become terrorists. And drug dealers also seem to be quite successful in obtaining bank accounts by renting them from members of the public.
If you could make this argument to the powers that be then I’m sure TSE and anyone else involved in the finance world would be delighted to have all the AML rules etc removed as they are clearly unnecessary and don’t stop terrorism and crime. All these thousands of people have been wasting their time and huge sums of money bringing in compliance teams and procedures - they should have just listened to gut feels off the internet.
I am asking to be convinced and you're throwing insults at me. That's not really a good way to convince people.
HMRC already have loads of data on all of us which people can access using their gateway ID . I just find some of the hysteria over the digital ID a bit over the top.
Of course you do. But then you are a statist who thinks the State is the great mother and father of us all.
No I don’t believe that but you don’t see this level of hysteria in countries who have ID cards . I have a Cypriot one as my parents were born there and it’s very useful. That’s my experience of them .
I don't see any hysteria at all. Just a firm opposition to an unnecessary additional power being given to the State which has previous history of abusing any powers they can seize and also of losing millions of people's data on a regular basis. That is before you even start to consider that this will inevitably costs billions more than claimed and will do nothing to solve the problems it is supposed to be addressing. Many countries in Europe have ID cards and still have bigger issues with illegal migration than the UK.
And that is before you even start to consider that illegal migration is a drop in the ocean compared to legal migration.
A quick look suggests it's currently the 10th most popular petition ever...
I make it 9th, which is somewhat remarkable given the others are:
- 3: Brexit related petitions - 3: Pointless calls for an early general election - 1: Stop Trump state visit (first time round) - 1: End child food poverty
So there's been very, very few similarly popular petitions on actual points of policy. And that's in less than 24 hours.
We're up to 6th place in the all time petition rankings.
Will very likely be 5th by the end of today. Only losing to 3 stopping Brexit-related petitions and 1 on stopping the Trump state visit.
I now have to call them AGAIN to chase up documents I should have hjad decades ago
Even better? - my accountant tells me average waiting time to get through on the phone is "40 minutes or maybe much more"
This is simply not acceptable. The UK state is crumbling
And these are the people we expect to handle "digital ID cards for all" without a hitch?
Feck off
You've been on the phone to HMRC for decades? Man, that is unacceptable.
I used to object to ID cards on principle. Very very firmly. Passionately
Now I find I don't really care, as so much of our data is available to everyone, via phones, social media, everything. And I can see why digital ID would be helpful
My main objection now is practical. If a large tech company was proposing this - Apple, or Amazon - I'd be fairly if not entirely confident they'd get it right. With the UK government, I am absolutely sure it will take years, cost billlions, and be a fucking pointless disaster
Maybe politicians ought to be asking themselves how they transformed a country in which you almost never had to show ID to do anything [unless you were going abroad from an airport or ferry terminal] into one in which apparently ID cards are needed. You could open a bank account with nothing more than a gas bill until relatively recently IIRC, and society didn't collapse as a result.
It’s not just the UK though, it’s the same all over the developed world.
The reason is step by step actions and reactions to crime and terrorism.
People open accounts to send money to fund terror or drug dealing etc so governments insist on more protections to make it harder to open accounts. Crims and terrorists arrange for people to create fake IDs and addresses to get around the new rules so governments insist on stricter checks or controls and so on.
Added to how technology had changed with everything from bank accounts on your phone to fake AI people pretending to be real people to commit fraud etc there is a constant battle to keep ahead of the baddies.
People employ slave Labour trafficked on fake IDs etc so governments get demands to crack down understandably and so have to bring in more checks and controls.
Of course libertarians could say “let’s stop these controls and checks” but then I don’t want any complaining about drug dealing and terror attacks if it in some way affects them.
If we consider the July 7th bombings in London, can you tell me how these were enabled by terrorist financing, and are now made more difficult by the various identity checks mandated by law?
It would be interesting to see the details of how this happens in practice and how law changes make it harder.
How many more attacks would there have been if it was easier for terrorists to obtain bank accounts, money, IDs etc is more to the point.
And how are you going to try and reign in drug dealers and traffickers without controls on banking and ID?
It's a genuine question. I'm willing to be convinced.
But it seems like it's plenty easy for terrorists to obtain bank accounts because they're often normal people who have been radicalised and become terrorists. And drug dealers also seem to be quite successful in obtaining bank accounts by renting them from members of the public.
If you could make this argument to the powers that be then I’m sure TSE and anyone else involved in the finance world would be delighted to have all the AML rules etc removed as they are clearly unnecessary and don’t stop terrorism and crime. All these thousands of people have been wasting their time and huge sums of money bringing in compliance teams and procedures - they should have just listened to gut feels off the internet.
I am asking to be convinced and you're throwing insults at me. That's not really a good way to convince people.
I apologise if it seemed I was throwing insults at you, I wasn’t but can see why it might have appeared that way.
I don’t have the energy today to really get into the weeds of my argument as I’ve had a shitty virus all week and bored and fed up now. Largely I’ve spent a large part of a career having to sit through courses and talks etc re AML and financial crime - it’s very very frustrating but I have to admit that I do see the reasoning for it and have had very interesting clients offered up in my career who, my morals aside, would have been filtered out by the processes of thorough ID and background info.
I am far from a big state person but I’ve experienced living in a country where they have ID cards and was never asked to show once but they were very useful for many ordinary actions such as opening bank accounts and varied other things. I live in a place with a great and growing government hub where you go in with your ID and can do most of what you need to do online from paying taxes to various permit applications. I don’t see a huge problem with having a spin off where it provides a fail safe form of ID to cut down paperwork and bureaucracy.
I also feel that if there is suddenly some totalitarian govt in power in the UK it makes no odds if this or similar govs introduce ID cards or not, the new totalitarian one will be forcing it on you and scraping every bit of info.
Anyway, apologies again if I offended you with my earlier post.
I now have to call them AGAIN to chase up documents I should have hjad decades ago
Even better? - my accountant tells me average waiting time to get through on the phone is "40 minutes or maybe much more"
This is simply not acceptable. The UK state is crumbling
And these are the people we expect to handle "digital ID cards for all" without a hitch?
Feck off
You've been on the phone to HMRC for decades? Man, that is unacceptable.
I used to object to ID cards on principle. Very very firmly. Passionately
Now I find I don't really care, as so much of our data is available to everyone, via phones, social media, everything. And I can see why digital ID would be helpful
My main objection now is practical. If a large tech company was proposing this - Apple, or Amazon - I'd be fairly if not entirely confident they'd get it right. With the UK government, I am absolutely sure it will take years, cost billlions, and be a fucking pointless disaster
1) Being mean to the GREAT orange leader 2) Not doing what the orange one told him to do
Funny you should say that because the charges are barely a couple of centimetres distant from that narrative.
The BBC article is also trying to normalise the insanity "even if Mr Comey got things wrong..."
The indictment is on its face, utter bullshit. There is no mens rea presented - or rather the absence of mens rea is evident in the indictment itself.
Did you need any more words than "the indictment is utter bullshit"?
And to think Comey probably handed Trump the Presidency on a silver platter in 2016. What an orange ingrate!
How did he offend Mr. Orange?
He refused to pledge loyalty to him.
It's a job requirement for law enforcement now, 1st Amendment be damned.
Bondi fires a third federal prosecutor in Miami office, linked to anti-Trump posts
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article312247303.html ..But Rosenzweig — considered to be among the rising prosecutors in the office — wasn’t fired because he had been associated with the criminal investigations of Trump by the Justice Department’s special counsel during the prior Biden administration. That was why two other respected federal prosecutors in the Miami office were abruptly terminated this year.
Rather, Rosenzweig was fired, according to multiple sources, because of the negative things he said about Trump on a social media blog before he became a federal prosecutor in Miami. When he was working for the prominent law firm Kobre & Kim in Washington during Trump’s first term, Rosenzweig posted criticisms of the president starting in 2017 — posts that were recently brought to the attention of the Justice Department...
REMINDER: TEST MATCH RULES ARE NOW IN PLACE FOR THE RYDER CUP
Thankyou for your attention to this message.
It's a mistake to imbue sporting events with great significance in the grand scheme of things but I'm viewing this Ryder Cup as a battle between civilised European values and Trumpite barbarism.
Which of the US golfers are ‘out’ Trumpers just so I know how many voodoo dolls to make?
I'd guess many are but the outest is DeChambeau. He was on stage at Lago for the election victory party.
I’m assuming the big orange cheese himself will muscle in at some point?
That is sadly certain. He'll no doubt be wondering why the US players aren't cheating. Losers.
I now have to call them AGAIN to chase up documents I should have hjad decades ago
Even better? - my accountant tells me average waiting time to get through on the phone is "40 minutes or maybe much more"
This is simply not acceptable. The UK state is crumbling
And these are the people we expect to handle "digital ID cards for all" without a hitch?
Feck off
You've been on the phone to HMRC for decades? Man, that is unacceptable.
I used to object to ID cards on principle. Very very firmly. Passionately
Now I find I don't really care, as so much of our data is available to everyone, via phones, social media, everything. And I can see why digital ID would be helpful
My main objection now is practical. If a large tech company was proposing this - Apple, or Amazon - I'd be fairly if not entirely confident they'd get it right. With the UK government, I am absolutely sure it will take years, cost billlions, and be a fucking pointless disaster
I think you might have responded to the wrong post/ poster.
1) Being mean to the GREAT orange leader 2) Not doing what the orange one told him to do
Funny you should say that because the charges are barely a couple of centimetres distant from that narrative.
The BBC article is also trying to normalise the insanity "even if Mr Comey got things wrong..."
The indictment is on its face, utter bullshit. There is no mens rea presented - or rather the absence of mens rea is evident in the indictment itself.
Did you need any more words than "the indictment is utter bullshit"?
And to think Comey probably handed Trump the Presidency on a silver platter in 2016. What an orange ingrate!
How did he offend Mr. Orange?
He refused to pledge loyalty to him.
It's a job requirement for law enforcement now, 1st Amendment be damned.
Bondi fires a third federal prosecutor in Miami office, linked to anti-Trump posts
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article312247303.html ..But Rosenzweig — considered to be among the rising prosecutors in the office — wasn’t fired because he had been associated with the criminal investigations of Trump by the Justice Department’s special counsel during the prior Biden administration. That was why two other respected federal prosecutors in the Miami office were abruptly terminated this year.
Rather, Rosenzweig was fired, according to multiple sources, because of the negative things he said about Trump on a social media blog before he became a federal prosecutor in Miami. When he was working for the prominent law firm Kobre & Kim in Washington during Trump’s first term, Rosenzweig posted criticisms of the president starting in 2017 — posts that were recently brought to the attention of the Justice Department...
If only the administration would spend as much time trawling the internet to find out who started the Ukraine war and how many serious scientists think RFK jr’s brain worm is actually the one making policies life would start going in a better direction.
I now have to call them AGAIN to chase up documents I should have hjad decades ago
Even better? - my accountant tells me average waiting time to get through on the phone is "40 minutes or maybe much more"
This is simply not acceptable. The UK state is crumbling
And these are the people we expect to handle "digital ID cards for all" without a hitch?
Feck off
You've been on the phone to HMRC for decades? Man, that is unacceptable.
I used to object to ID cards on principle. Very very firmly. Passionately
Now I find I don't really care, as so much of our data is available to everyone, via phones, social media, everything. And I can see why digital ID would be helpful
My main objection now is practical. If a large tech company was proposing this - Apple, or Amazon - I'd be fairly if not entirely confident they'd get it right. With the UK government, I am absolutely sure it will take years, cost billlions, and be a fucking pointless disaster
Not everyone has given most of their private information to technology companies over the last 15 to 20 years.
I now have to call them AGAIN to chase up documents I should have hjad decades ago
Even better? - my accountant tells me average waiting time to get through on the phone is "40 minutes or maybe much more"
This is simply not acceptable. The UK state is crumbling
And these are the people we expect to handle "digital ID cards for all" without a hitch?
Feck off
You've been on the phone to HMRC for decades? Man, that is unacceptable.
I used to object to ID cards on principle. Very very firmly. Passionately
Now I find I don't really care, as so much of our data is available to everyone, via phones, social media, everything. And I can see why digital ID would be helpful
My main objection now is practical. If a large tech company was proposing this - Apple, or Amazon - I'd be fairly if not entirely confident they'd get it right. With the UK government, I am absolutely sure it will take years, cost billlions, and be a fucking pointless disaster
I think you might have responded to the wrong post/ poster.
Is the sun over the yardarm already?
I am now in minute 23 of my call to HMRC. No human has answered, yet
1) Being mean to the GREAT orange leader 2) Not doing what the orange one told him to do
Funny you should say that because the charges are barely a couple of centimetres distant from that narrative.
The BBC article is also trying to normalise the insanity "even if Mr Comey got things wrong..."
The indictment is on its face, utter bullshit. There is no mens rea presented - or rather the absence of mens rea is evident in the indictment itself.
Did you need any more words than "the indictment is utter bullshit"?
And to think Comey probably handed Trump the Presidency on a silver platter in 2016. What an orange ingrate!
How did he offend Mr. Orange?
He refused to pledge loyalty to him.
It's a job requirement for law enforcement now, 1st Amendment be damned.
Bondi fires a third federal prosecutor in Miami office, linked to anti-Trump posts
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article312247303.html ..But Rosenzweig — considered to be among the rising prosecutors in the office — wasn’t fired because he had been associated with the criminal investigations of Trump by the Justice Department’s special counsel during the prior Biden administration. That was why two other respected federal prosecutors in the Miami office were abruptly terminated this year.
Rather, Rosenzweig was fired, according to multiple sources, because of the negative things he said about Trump on a social media blog before he became a federal prosecutor in Miami. When he was working for the prominent law firm Kobre & Kim in Washington during Trump’s first term, Rosenzweig posted criticisms of the president starting in 2017 — posts that were recently brought to the attention of the Justice Department...
If only the administration would spend as much time trawling the internet to find out who started the Ukraine war and how many serious scientists think RFK jr’s brain worm is actually the one making policies life would start going in a better direction.
We'd all be in a better space if RFK's brain worm 🐛 was the one making health policy.
I now have to call them AGAIN to chase up documents I should have hjad decades ago
Even better? - my accountant tells me average waiting time to get through on the phone is "40 minutes or maybe much more"
This is simply not acceptable. The UK state is crumbling
And these are the people we expect to handle "digital ID cards for all" without a hitch?
Feck off
You've been on the phone to HMRC for decades? Man, that is unacceptable.
I used to object to ID cards on principle. Very very firmly. Passionately
Now I find I don't really care, as so much of our data is available to everyone, via phones, social media, everything. And I can see why digital ID would be helpful
My main objection now is practical. If a large tech company was proposing this - Apple, or Amazon - I'd be fairly if not entirely confident they'd get it right. With the UK government, I am absolutely sure it will take years, cost billlions, and be a fucking pointless disaster
Not everyone has given most of their private information to technology companies over the last 15 to 20 years.
Sure, and I respect that position. I used to have it - I used to object to the idea of ID cards on principle, as I say
Now the emotions have drained, But so has my confidence in HMG achieving anything like this, in less than 100 years and costing less than eleventy bazillion pounds, at the end of which we will have the digital equivalent of HS2
I now have to call them AGAIN to chase up documents I should have hjad decades ago
Even better? - my accountant tells me average waiting time to get through on the phone is "40 minutes or maybe much more"
This is simply not acceptable. The UK state is crumbling
And these are the people we expect to handle "digital ID cards for all" without a hitch?
Feck off
You've been on the phone to HMRC for decades? Man, that is unacceptable.
I used to object to ID cards on principle. Very very firmly. Passionately
Now I find I don't really care, as so much of our data is available to everyone, via phones, social media, everything. And I can see why digital ID would be helpful
My main objection now is practical. If a large tech company was proposing this - Apple, or Amazon - I'd be fairly if not entirely confident they'd get it right. With the UK government, I am absolutely sure it will take years, cost billlions, and be a fucking pointless disaster
I think you might have responded to the wrong post/ poster.
Is the sun over the yardarm already?
I am now in minute 23 of my call to HMRC. No human has answered, yet
What do you expect at 15.30 on a Friday? No one is going to answer you until 0800 hours on Monday.
I now have to call them AGAIN to chase up documents I should have hjad decades ago
Even better? - my accountant tells me average waiting time to get through on the phone is "40 minutes or maybe much more"
This is simply not acceptable. The UK state is crumbling
And these are the people we expect to handle "digital ID cards for all" without a hitch?
Feck off
You've been on the phone to HMRC for decades? Man, that is unacceptable.
I used to object to ID cards on principle. Very very firmly. Passionately
Now I find I don't really care, as so much of our data is available to everyone, via phones, social media, everything. And I can see why digital ID would be helpful
My main objection now is practical. If a large tech company was proposing this - Apple, or Amazon - I'd be fairly if not entirely confident they'd get it right. With the UK government, I am absolutely sure it will take years, cost billlions, and be a fucking pointless disaster
I think you might have responded to the wrong post/ poster.
Is the sun over the yardarm already?
I am now in minute 23 of my call to HMRC. No human has answered, yet
What do you expect at 15.30 on a Friday? No one is going to answer you until 0800 hours on Monday.
I now have to call them AGAIN to chase up documents I should have hjad decades ago
Even better? - my accountant tells me average waiting time to get through on the phone is "40 minutes or maybe much more"
This is simply not acceptable. The UK state is crumbling
And these are the people we expect to handle "digital ID cards for all" without a hitch?
Feck off
You've been on the phone to HMRC for decades? Man, that is unacceptable.
I used to object to ID cards on principle. Very very firmly. Passionately
Now I find I don't really care, as so much of our data is available to everyone, via phones, social media, everything. And I can see why digital ID would be helpful
My main objection now is practical. If a large tech company was proposing this - Apple, or Amazon - I'd be fairly if not entirely confident they'd get it right. With the UK government, I am absolutely sure it will take years, cost billlions, and be a fucking pointless disaster
I think you might have responded to the wrong post/ poster.
Is the sun over the yardarm already?
I am now in minute 23 of my call to HMRC. No human has answered, yet
What do you expect at 15.30 on a Friday? No one is going to answer you until 0800 hours on Monday.
They're all Wanking From Home
In that case you really are wasting your time. They've all been on the M5 since lunchtime heading for their static caravans on Brean Sands.
Maybe politicians ought to be asking themselves how they transformed a country in which you almost never had to show ID to do anything [unless you were going abroad from an airport or ferry terminal] into one in which apparently ID cards are needed. You could open a bank account with nothing more than a gas bill until relatively recently IIRC, and society didn't collapse as a result.
It’s not just the UK though, it’s the same all over the developed world.
The reason is step by step actions and reactions to crime and terrorism.
People open accounts to send money to fund terror or drug dealing etc so governments insist on more protections to make it harder to open accounts. Crims and terrorists arrange for people to create fake IDs and addresses to get around the new rules so governments insist on stricter checks or controls and so on.
Added to how technology had changed with everything from bank accounts on your phone to fake AI people pretending to be real people to commit fraud etc there is a constant battle to keep ahead of the baddies.
People employ slave Labour trafficked on fake IDs etc so governments get demands to crack down understandably and so have to bring in more checks and controls.
Of course libertarians could say “let’s stop these controls and checks” but then I don’t want any complaining about drug dealing and terror attacks if it in some way affects them.
If we consider the July 7th bombings in London, can you tell me how these were enabled by terrorist financing, and are now made more difficult by the various identity checks mandated by law?
It would be interesting to see the details of how this happens in practice and how law changes make it harder.
How many more attacks would there have been if it was easier for terrorists to obtain bank accounts, money, IDs etc is more to the point.
And how are you going to try and reign in drug dealers and traffickers without controls on banking and ID?
The KGB & Gestapo never managed to stamp out drug dealers and traffickers. Despite having absolutely no limits on what they could do. And a less serious problem to deal with.
Neither was hardly going to turn on its suppliers, tbf.
I now have to call them AGAIN to chase up documents I should have hjad decades ago
Even better? - my accountant tells me average waiting time to get through on the phone is "40 minutes or maybe much more"
This is simply not acceptable. The UK state is crumbling
And these are the people we expect to handle "digital ID cards for all" without a hitch?
Feck off
You've been on the phone to HMRC for decades? Man, that is unacceptable.
I used to object to ID cards on principle. Very very firmly. Passionately
Now I find I don't really care, as so much of our data is available to everyone, via phones, social media, everything. And I can see why digital ID would be helpful
My main objection now is practical. If a large tech company was proposing this - Apple, or Amazon - I'd be fairly if not entirely confident they'd get it right. With the UK government, I am absolutely sure it will take years, cost billlions, and be a fucking pointless disaster
I think you might have responded to the wrong post/ poster.
Is the sun over the yardarm already?
I am now in minute 23 of my call to HMRC. No human has answered, yet
What do you expect at 15.30 on a Friday? No one is going to answer you until 0800 hours on Monday.
OT but loosely connected to that comment.
Back in 2018 I was running a dig in Ancaster and at midday on the last day of the dig season - a Friday afternoon - we found an Anglo-Saxon cremation urn. We had to lift it as it would not have survived a winter left exposed in the ground.
In the UK you need a licence from the Home Office to lift any human remains even if they have been cremated and put in a pot 1500 years ago. So I phoned the Home Office department concerned. They told me they only dealt with that aspect of things Monday - Wednesday but if I emailed them the details they would send me the forms and try and get it sorted. There was a lot of details needed including confirmation that I was able to certify it was not modern remains. The thing they were most concerned about was what we would do with the remains once we had finished studing them.
By 3pm I had all the signed permissions back from them and by dark we had the urn lifted and secured. The service could not have been better, faster or more polite. It was a genuine pleasure (and surprise).
I now have to call them AGAIN to chase up documents I should have hjad decades ago
Even better? - my accountant tells me average waiting time to get through on the phone is "40 minutes or maybe much more"
This is simply not acceptable. The UK state is crumbling
And these are the people we expect to handle "digital ID cards for all" without a hitch?
Feck off
You've been on the phone to HMRC for decades? Man, that is unacceptable.
I used to object to ID cards on principle. Very very firmly. Passionately
Now I find I don't really care, as so much of our data is available to everyone, via phones, social media, everything. And I can see why digital ID would be helpful
My main objection now is practical. If a large tech company was proposing this - Apple, or Amazon - I'd be fairly if not entirely confident they'd get it right. With the UK government, I am absolutely sure it will take years, cost billlions, and be a fucking pointless disaster
I think you might have responded to the wrong post/ poster.
Is the sun over the yardarm already?
I am now in minute 23 of my call to HMRC. No human has answered, yet
What do you expect at 15.30 on a Friday? No one is going to answer you until 0800 hours on Monday.
OT but loosely connected to that comment.
Back in 2018 I was running a dig in Ancaster and at midday on the last day of the dig season - a Friday afternoon - we found an Anglo-Saxon cremation urn. We had to lift it as it would not have survived a winter left exposed in the ground.
In the UK you need a licence from the Home Office to lift any human remains even if they have been crmated and put in a pot 1500 years ago. So I phoned the Home Office department concerned. They told me they only dealt with that aspect of things Monday - Wednesday but if I emailed them the details they would send me the forms and try and get it sorted. There was alot of details needed including confoirmation that I was able to certify it was not modern remains. The thing they were most concerned about was what we would do with the remains once we had finished studing them.
By 3pm I had all the signed permissions back from them and by dark we had the urn lifted and secured. The service could not have been better, faster or more polite. It was a genuine pleasure (and surprise).
It's weird how some bits of the system work really well, whereas others are abysmal
HMRC are definitely at the abysmal end of the spectrum. And yet the UK Passport Office is now super efficient and turns things round in days, answers phones instantly, and so forth
Compare also the vaccine cleverness with the corrupt PPE disaster
I now have to call them AGAIN to chase up documents I should have hjad decades ago
Even better? - my accountant tells me average waiting time to get through on the phone is "40 minutes or maybe much more"
This is simply not acceptable. The UK state is crumbling
And these are the people we expect to handle "digital ID cards for all" without a hitch?
Feck off
You've been on the phone to HMRC for decades? Man, that is unacceptable.
I used to object to ID cards on principle. Very very firmly. Passionately
Now I find I don't really care, as so much of our data is available to everyone, via phones, social media, everything. And I can see why digital ID would be helpful
My main objection now is practical. If a large tech company was proposing this - Apple, or Amazon - I'd be fairly if not entirely confident they'd get it right. With the UK government, I am absolutely sure it will take years, cost billlions, and be a fucking pointless disaster
I think you might have responded to the wrong post/ poster.
Is the sun over the yardarm already?
I am now in minute 23 of my call to HMRC. No human has answered, yet
What do you expect at 15.30 on a Friday? No one is going to answer you until 0800 hours on Monday.
OT but loosely connected to that comment.
Back in 2018 I was running a dig in Ancaster and at midday on the last day of the dig season - a Friday afternoon - we found an Anglo-Saxon cremation urn. We had to lift it as it would not have survived a winter left exposed in the ground.
In the UK you need a licence from the Home Office to lift any human remains even if they have been crmated and put in a pot 1500 years ago. So I phoned the Home Office department concerned. They told me they only dealt with that aspect of things Monday - Wednesday but if I emailed them the details they would send me the forms and try and get it sorted. There was alot of details needed including confoirmation that I was able to certify it was not modern remains. The thing they were most concerned about was what we would do with the remains once we had finished studing them.
By 3pm I had all the signed permissions back from them and by dark we had the urn lifted and secured. The service could not have been better, faster or more polite. It was a genuine pleasure (and surprise).
As a last resort you could have phoned the police and tell them you had found a body then get them to remove it, transport it somewhere safe and look after it for the weekend.
Maybe politicians ought to be asking themselves how they transformed a country in which you almost never had to show ID to do anything [unless you were going abroad from an airport or ferry terminal] into one in which apparently ID cards are needed. You could open a bank account with nothing more than a gas bill until relatively recently IIRC, and society didn't collapse as a result.
It’s not just the UK though, it’s the same all over the developed world.
The reason is step by step actions and reactions to crime and terrorism.
People open accounts to send money to fund terror or drug dealing etc so governments insist on more protections to make it harder to open accounts. Crims and terrorists arrange for people to create fake IDs and addresses to get around the new rules so governments insist on stricter checks or controls and so on.
Added to how technology had changed with everything from bank accounts on your phone to fake AI people pretending to be real people to commit fraud etc there is a constant battle to keep ahead of the baddies.
People employ slave Labour trafficked on fake IDs etc so governments get demands to crack down understandably and so have to bring in more checks and controls.
Of course libertarians could say “let’s stop these controls and checks” but then I don’t want any complaining about drug dealing and terror attacks if it in some way affects them.
If we consider the July 7th bombings in London, can you tell me how these were enabled by terrorist financing, and are now made more difficult by the various identity checks mandated by law?
It would be interesting to see the details of how this happens in practice and how law changes make it harder.
How many more attacks would there have been if it was easier for terrorists to obtain bank accounts, money, IDs etc is more to the point.
And how are you going to try and reign in drug dealers and traffickers without controls on banking and ID?
The KGB & Gestapo never managed to stamp out drug dealers and traffickers. Despite having absolutely no limits on what they could do. And a less serious problem to deal with.
Neither was hardly going to turn on its suppliers, tbf.
BiB - very out of date, I'm afraid. Almost all test matches end in a positive result now.
I now have to call them AGAIN to chase up documents I should have hjad decades ago
Even better? - my accountant tells me average waiting time to get through on the phone is "40 minutes or maybe much more"
This is simply not acceptable. The UK state is crumbling
And these are the people we expect to handle "digital ID cards for all" without a hitch?
Feck off
You've been on the phone to HMRC for decades? Man, that is unacceptable.
I used to object to ID cards on principle. Very very firmly. Passionately
Now I find I don't really care, as so much of our data is available to everyone, via phones, social media, everything. And I can see why digital ID would be helpful
My main objection now is practical. If a large tech company was proposing this - Apple, or Amazon - I'd be fairly if not entirely confident they'd get it right. With the UK government, I am absolutely sure it will take years, cost billlions, and be a fucking pointless disaster
I think you might have responded to the wrong post/ poster.
Is the sun over the yardarm already?
I am now in minute 23 of my call to HMRC. No human has answered, yet
What do you expect at 15.30 on a Friday? No one is going to answer you until 0800 hours on Monday.
OT but loosely connected to that comment.
Back in 2018 I was running a dig in Ancaster and at midday on the last day of the dig season - a Friday afternoon - we found an Anglo-Saxon cremation urn. We had to lift it as it would not have survived a winter left exposed in the ground.
In the UK you need a licence from the Home Office to lift any human remains even if they have been crmated and put in a pot 1500 years ago. So I phoned the Home Office department concerned. They told me they only dealt with that aspect of things Monday - Wednesday but if I emailed them the details they would send me the forms and try and get it sorted. There was alot of details needed including confoirmation that I was able to certify it was not modern remains. The thing they were most concerned about was what we would do with the remains once we had finished studing them.
By 3pm I had all the signed permissions back from them and by dark we had the urn lifted and secured. The service could not have been better, faster or more polite. It was a genuine pleasure (and surprise).
As a last resort you could have phoned the police and tell them you had found a body then get them to remove it, transport it somewhere safe and look after it for the weekend.
Best bit was the licence I got allowed me to lift human remains from the site for 5 years.
I now have to call them AGAIN to chase up documents I should have hjad decades ago
Even better? - my accountant tells me average waiting time to get through on the phone is "40 minutes or maybe much more"
This is simply not acceptable. The UK state is crumbling
And these are the people we expect to handle "digital ID cards for all" without a hitch?
Feck off
You've been on the phone to HMRC for decades? Man, that is unacceptable.
I used to object to ID cards on principle. Very very firmly. Passionately
Now I find I don't really care, as so much of our data is available to everyone, via phones, social media, everything. And I can see why digital ID would be helpful
My main objection now is practical. If a large tech company was proposing this - Apple, or Amazon - I'd be fairly if not entirely confident they'd get it right. With the UK government, I am absolutely sure it will take years, cost billlions, and be a fucking pointless disaster
I think you might have responded to the wrong post/ poster.
Is the sun over the yardarm already?
I am now in minute 23 of my call to HMRC. No human has answered, yet
What do you expect at 15.30 on a Friday? No one is going to answer you until 0800 hours on Monday.
OT but loosely connected to that comment.
Back in 2018 I was running a dig in Ancaster and at midday on the last day of the dig season - a Friday afternoon - we found an Anglo-Saxon cremation urn. We had to lift it as it would not have survived a winter left exposed in the ground.
In the UK you need a licence from the Home Office to lift any human remains even if they have been crmated and put in a pot 1500 years ago. So I phoned the Home Office department concerned. They told me they only dealt with that aspect of things Monday - Wednesday but if I emailed them the details they would send me the forms and try and get it sorted. There was alot of details needed including confoirmation that I was able to certify it was not modern remains. The thing they were most concerned about was what we would do with the remains once we had finished studing them.
By 3pm I had all the signed permissions back from them and by dark we had the urn lifted and secured. The service could not have been better, faster or more polite. It was a genuine pleasure (and surprise).
As a last resort you could have phoned the police and tell them you had found a body then get them to remove it, transport it somewhere safe and look after it for the weekend.
Best bit was the licence I got allowed me to lift human remains from the site for 5 years.
There's a Midsomer Murders episode in there somewhere...
Trump is on his way to Bethpage with his granddaughter
He's wearing his golf shoes
Is “Bethpage” some word the kids use these days?
New York golf club hosting the Ryder Cup
Bethpage - located between Jericho and Jerusalem in Long Island - was named after Bethphage (house of unripe figs) a biblical town located between Jericho and Jerusalem
I now have to call them AGAIN to chase up documents I should have hjad decades ago
Even better? - my accountant tells me average waiting time to get through on the phone is "40 minutes or maybe much more"
This is simply not acceptable. The UK state is crumbling
And these are the people we expect to handle "digital ID cards for all" without a hitch?
Feck off
You've been on the phone to HMRC for decades? Man, that is unacceptable.
I used to object to ID cards on principle. Very very firmly. Passionately
Now I find I don't really care, as so much of our data is available to everyone, via phones, social media, everything. And I can see why digital ID would be helpful
My main objection now is practical. If a large tech company was proposing this - Apple, or Amazon - I'd be fairly if not entirely confident they'd get it right. With the UK government, I am absolutely sure it will take years, cost billlions, and be a fucking pointless disaster
I think you might have responded to the wrong post/ poster.
Is the sun over the yardarm already?
I am now in minute 23 of my call to HMRC. No human has answered, yet
What do you expect at 15.30 on a Friday? No one is going to answer you until 0800 hours on Monday.
OT but loosely connected to that comment.
Back in 2018 I was running a dig in Ancaster and at midday on the last day of the dig season - a Friday afternoon - we found an Anglo-Saxon cremation urn. We had to lift it as it would not have survived a winter left exposed in the ground.
In the UK you need a licence from the Home Office to lift any human remains even if they have been crmated and put in a pot 1500 years ago. So I phoned the Home Office department concerned. They told me they only dealt with that aspect of things Monday - Wednesday but if I emailed them the details they would send me the forms and try and get it sorted. There was alot of details needed including confoirmation that I was able to certify it was not modern remains. The thing they were most concerned about was what we would do with the remains once we had finished studing them.
By 3pm I had all the signed permissions back from them and by dark we had the urn lifted and secured. The service could not have been better, faster or more polite. It was a genuine pleasure (and surprise).
As a last resort you could have phoned the police and tell them you had found a body then get them to remove it, transport it somewhere safe and look after it for the weekend.
Best bit was the licence I got allowed me to lift human remains from the site for 5 years.
There's a Midsomer Murders episode in there somewhere...
I did used to joke thaht if anyone had any bodies they neeed disposing of they could just poop them in one of my trenches for a year or two and then I could certify they were archaeological.
It does make me wonder why more people don't bury their murder victims in freshly dug graves in cemeteries.
I now have to call them AGAIN to chase up documents I should have hjad decades ago
Even better? - my accountant tells me average waiting time to get through on the phone is "40 minutes or maybe much more"
This is simply not acceptable. The UK state is crumbling
And these are the people we expect to handle "digital ID cards for all" without a hitch?
Feck off
You've been on the phone to HMRC for decades? Man, that is unacceptable.
I used to object to ID cards on principle. Very very firmly. Passionately
Now I find I don't really care, as so much of our data is available to everyone, via phones, social media, everything. And I can see why digital ID would be helpful
My main objection now is practical. If a large tech company was proposing this - Apple, or Amazon - I'd be fairly if not entirely confident they'd get it right. With the UK government, I am absolutely sure it will take years, cost billlions, and be a fucking pointless disaster
I think this view is a bit out-of-date. We stopped outsourcing massive projects 15 years ago, largely ending the gravy train for the big "systems integrators". The Government Digital Service has gone through some re-orgs but has mostly survived, and is actually pretty good at this kind of thing these days.
I now have to call them AGAIN to chase up documents I should have hjad decades ago
Even better? - my accountant tells me average waiting time to get through on the phone is "40 minutes or maybe much more"
This is simply not acceptable. The UK state is crumbling
And these are the people we expect to handle "digital ID cards for all" without a hitch?
Feck off
You've been on the phone to HMRC for decades? Man, that is unacceptable.
I used to object to ID cards on principle. Very very firmly. Passionately
Now I find I don't really care, as so much of our data is available to everyone, via phones, social media, everything. And I can see why digital ID would be helpful
My main objection now is practical. If a large tech company was proposing this - Apple, or Amazon - I'd be fairly if not entirely confident they'd get it right. With the UK government, I am absolutely sure it will take years, cost billlions, and be a fucking pointless disaster
I think you might have responded to the wrong post/ poster.
Is the sun over the yardarm already?
I am now in minute 23 of my call to HMRC. No human has answered, yet
What do you expect at 15.30 on a Friday? No one is going to answer you until 0800 hours on Monday.
OT but loosely connected to that comment.
Back in 2018 I was running a dig in Ancaster and at midday on the last day of the dig season - a Friday afternoon - we found an Anglo-Saxon cremation urn. We had to lift it as it would not have survived a winter left exposed in the ground.
In the UK you need a licence from the Home Office to lift any human remains even if they have been crmated and put in a pot 1500 years ago. So I phoned the Home Office department concerned. They told me they only dealt with that aspect of things Monday - Wednesday but if I emailed them the details they would send me the forms and try and get it sorted. There was alot of details needed including confoirmation that I was able to certify it was not modern remains. The thing they were most concerned about was what we would do with the remains once we had finished studing them.
By 3pm I had all the signed permissions back from them and by dark we had the urn lifted and secured. The service could not have been better, faster or more polite. It was a genuine pleasure (and surprise).
2018 you say? That was pre-Johnson and pre-Covid. I genuinely believe paying people to do nothing for the best part of 18 months has affected public and private sector attitudes. On a slightly different note, I was chasing up accounts payable yesterday. Our terms are fourteen days. So I rang accounts payable at a US manufacturer to be told "your terms are 65 days and you won't get paid until November". I am being paid on Tuesday.
I now have to call them AGAIN to chase up documents I should have hjad decades ago
Even better? - my accountant tells me average waiting time to get through on the phone is "40 minutes or maybe much more"
This is simply not acceptable. The UK state is crumbling
And these are the people we expect to handle "digital ID cards for all" without a hitch?
Feck off
You've been on the phone to HMRC for decades? Man, that is unacceptable.
I used to object to ID cards on principle. Very very firmly. Passionately
Now I find I don't really care, as so much of our data is available to everyone, via phones, social media, everything. And I can see why digital ID would be helpful
My main objection now is practical. If a large tech company was proposing this - Apple, or Amazon - I'd be fairly if not entirely confident they'd get it right. With the UK government, I am absolutely sure it will take years, cost billlions, and be a fucking pointless disaster
I think you might have responded to the wrong post/ poster.
Is the sun over the yardarm already?
I am now in minute 23 of my call to HMRC. No human has answered, yet
What do you expect at 15.30 on a Friday? No one is going to answer you until 0800 hours on Monday.
OT but loosely connected to that comment.
Back in 2018 I was running a dig in Ancaster and at midday on the last day of the dig season - a Friday afternoon - we found an Anglo-Saxon cremation urn. We had to lift it as it would not have survived a winter left exposed in the ground.
In the UK you need a licence from the Home Office to lift any human remains even if they have been crmated and put in a pot 1500 years ago. So I phoned the Home Office department concerned. They told me they only dealt with that aspect of things Monday - Wednesday but if I emailed them the details they would send me the forms and try and get it sorted. There was alot of details needed including confoirmation that I was able to certify it was not modern remains. The thing they were most concerned about was what we would do with the remains once we had finished studing them.
By 3pm I had all the signed permissions back from them and by dark we had the urn lifted and secured. The service could not have been better, faster or more polite. It was a genuine pleasure (and surprise).
It's weird how some bits of the system work really well, whereas others are abysmal
HMRC are definitely at the abysmal end of the spectrum. And yet the UK Passport Office is now super efficient and turns things round in days, answers phones instantly, and so forth
Compare also the vaccine cleverness with the corrupt PPE disaster
Yes re passports . I was shocked at how quick my renewal was , everything done and returned within a week.
Relatively few people signing the petition in some parts of London, particularly those areas with high percentages of young people, which isn't particularly surprising.
Trump is on his way to Bethpage with his granddaughter
He's wearing his golf shoes
Is “Bethpage” some word the kids use these days?
New York golf club hosting the Ryder Cup
Bethpage - located between Jericho and Jerusalem in Long Island - was named after Bethphage (house of unripe figs) a biblical town located between Jericho and Jerusalem
Relatively few people signing the petition in some parts of London, particularly those areas with high percentages of young people, which isn't particularly surprising.
The European Commission is pitching a highly innovative proposal to use the cash balances of Russia's frozen assets to issue a €140 billion loan to Ukraine.
Repayments will begin only when Russia agrees to provide war reparations.
Or too smart? This petition like most petitions is just an opportunity to hate on the government of the day. Londoners are probably less inclined to hate on this government, I would imagine. I don't feel too strongly on this issue either way. Probably marginally in favour since we started requiring ID for voting, as a compulsory scheme will reduce disenfranchisement.
Or too smart? This petition like most petitions is just an opportunity to hate on the government of the day. Londoners are probably less inclined to hate on this government, I would imagine. I don't feel too strongly on this issue either way. Probably marginally in favour since we started requiring ID for voting, as a compulsory scheme will reduce disenfranchisement.
Have we covered the story that Tony Blair is about to be installed as Governor of Gaza by the Israelis?
A British colonial Governor in the Middle East.
What could possibly go wrong?
Meanwhile a British PM is proposing to force a "Brit card" on the citizens of Derry.
Cool. Very cool.
An Irish-sounding lady joined a senior citizens group to which I belong. Said she came from Londonderry. Londonderry or Derry inquired I. LONDONderry she replied firmly!
The European Commission is pitching a highly innovative proposal to use the cash balances of Russia's frozen assets to issue a €140 billion loan to Ukraine.
Repayments will begin only when Russia agrees to provide war reparations.
Have we covered the story that Tony Blair is about to be installed as Governor of Gaza by the Israelis?
A British colonial Governor in the Middle East.
What could possibly go wrong?
Meanwhile a British PM is proposing to force a "Brit card" on the citizens of Derry.
Cool. Very cool.
An Irish-sounding lady joined a senior citizens group to which I belong. Said she came from Londonderry. Londonderry or Derry inquired I. LONDONderry she replied firmly!
Whatever name you call it, the area on the other side of the border in Donegal or the coast to the north and east are well worth visiting.
I now have to call them AGAIN to chase up documents I should have hjad decades ago
Even better? - my accountant tells me average waiting time to get through on the phone is "40 minutes or maybe much more"
This is simply not acceptable. The UK state is crumbling
And these are the people we expect to handle "digital ID cards for all" without a hitch?
Feck off
You've been on the phone to HMRC for decades? Man, that is unacceptable.
I used to object to ID cards on principle. Very very firmly. Passionately
Now I find I don't really care, as so much of our data is available to everyone, via phones, social media, everything. And I can see why digital ID would be helpful
My main objection now is practical. If a large tech company was proposing this - Apple, or Amazon - I'd be fairly if not entirely confident they'd get it right. With the UK government, I am absolutely sure it will take years, cost billlions, and be a fucking pointless disaster
I think you might have responded to the wrong post/ poster.
Is the sun over the yardarm already?
I am now in minute 23 of my call to HMRC. No human has answered, yet
My wife waited over an hour the other week. Problem is if you fail the attitude test with these people they can nake your life more difficult
This country is shit. Our public services are shit. The enshittification of our nation continues apace
I now have to call them AGAIN to chase up documents I should have hjad decades ago
Even better? - my accountant tells me average waiting time to get through on the phone is "40 minutes or maybe much more"
This is simply not acceptable. The UK state is crumbling
And these are the people we expect to handle "digital ID cards for all" without a hitch?
Feck off
You've been on the phone to HMRC for decades? Man, that is unacceptable.
I used to object to ID cards on principle. Very very firmly. Passionately
Now I find I don't really care, as so much of our data is available to everyone, via phones, social media, everything. And I can see why digital ID would be helpful
My main objection now is practical. If a large tech company was proposing this - Apple, or Amazon - I'd be fairly if not entirely confident they'd get it right. With the UK government, I am absolutely sure it will take years, cost billlions, and be a fucking pointless disaster
I think you might have responded to the wrong post/ poster.
Is the sun over the yardarm already?
I am now in minute 23 of my call to HMRC. No human has answered, yet
My wife waited over an hour the other week. Problem is if you fail the attitude test with these people they can nake your life more difficult
This country is shit. Our public services are shit. The enshittification of our nation continues apace
Have we done this one yet? China launches campaign to keep killjoys off the internet.
I now have to call them AGAIN to chase up documents I should have hjad decades ago
Even better? - my accountant tells me average waiting time to get through on the phone is "40 minutes or maybe much more"
This is simply not acceptable. The UK state is crumbling
And these are the people we expect to handle "digital ID cards for all" without a hitch?
Feck off
You've been on the phone to HMRC for decades? Man, that is unacceptable.
I used to object to ID cards on principle. Very very firmly. Passionately
Now I find I don't really care, as so much of our data is available to everyone, via phones, social media, everything. And I can see why digital ID would be helpful
My main objection now is practical. If a large tech company was proposing this - Apple, or Amazon - I'd be fairly if not entirely confident they'd get it right. With the UK government, I am absolutely sure it will take years, cost billlions, and be a fucking pointless disaster
I think you might have responded to the wrong post/ poster.
Is the sun over the yardarm already?
I am now in minute 23 of my call to HMRC. No human has answered, yet
My wife waited over an hour the other week. Problem is if you fail the attitude test with these people they can nake your life more difficult
This country is shit. Our public services are shit. The enshittification of our nation continues apace
It is increasingly hard to believe that within living memory we efficiently ran the biggest empire in the history of the world, acquired by our mighty forefathers
I now have to call them AGAIN to chase up documents I should have hjad decades ago
Even better? - my accountant tells me average waiting time to get through on the phone is "40 minutes or maybe much more"
This is simply not acceptable. The UK state is crumbling
And these are the people we expect to handle "digital ID cards for all" without a hitch?
Feck off
You've been on the phone to HMRC for decades? Man, that is unacceptable.
I used to object to ID cards on principle. Very very firmly. Passionately
Now I find I don't really care, as so much of our data is available to everyone, via phones, social media, everything. And I can see why digital ID would be helpful
My main objection now is practical. If a large tech company was proposing this - Apple, or Amazon - I'd be fairly if not entirely confident they'd get it right. With the UK government, I am absolutely sure it will take years, cost billlions, and be a fucking pointless disaster
I think you might have responded to the wrong post/ poster.
Is the sun over the yardarm already?
I am now in minute 23 of my call to HMRC. No human has answered, yet
What do you expect at 15.30 on a Friday? No one is going to answer you until 0800 hours on Monday.
OT but loosely connected to that comment.
Back in 2018 I was running a dig in Ancaster and at midday on the last day of the dig season - a Friday afternoon - we found an Anglo-Saxon cremation urn. We had to lift it as it would not have survived a winter left exposed in the ground.
In the UK you need a licence from the Home Office to lift any human remains even if they have been crmated and put in a pot 1500 years ago. So I phoned the Home Office department concerned. They told me they only dealt with that aspect of things Monday - Wednesday but if I emailed them the details they would send me the forms and try and get it sorted. There was alot of details needed including confoirmation that I was able to certify it was not modern remains. The thing they were most concerned about was what we would do with the remains once we had finished studing them.
By 3pm I had all the signed permissions back from them and by dark we had the urn lifted and secured. The service could not have been better, faster or more polite. It was a genuine pleasure (and surprise).
As a last resort you could have phoned the police and tell them you had found a body then get them to remove it, transport it somewhere safe and look after it for the weekend.
Best bit was the licence I got allowed me to lift human remains from the site for 5 years.
There's a Midsomer Murders episode in there somewhere...
I did used to joke thaht if anyone had any bodies they neeed disposing of they could just poop them in one of my trenches for a year or two and then I could certify they were archaeological.
It does make me wonder why more people don't bury their murder victims in freshly dug graves in cemeteries.
The absolute worst however is when you get through and start discussing the issue, they put you on hold to find something out but accidentally cut you off so not only do you have to go back to the end of the queue but because you don’t know exactly who you were talking to you have to start again from scratch with new person if and when you get answered again.
I now have to call them AGAIN to chase up documents I should have hjad decades ago
Even better? - my accountant tells me average waiting time to get through on the phone is "40 minutes or maybe much more"
This is simply not acceptable. The UK state is crumbling
And these are the people we expect to handle "digital ID cards for all" without a hitch?
Feck off
You've been on the phone to HMRC for decades? Man, that is unacceptable.
I used to object to ID cards on principle. Very very firmly. Passionately
Now I find I don't really care, as so much of our data is available to everyone, via phones, social media, everything. And I can see why digital ID would be helpful
My main objection now is practical. If a large tech company was proposing this - Apple, or Amazon - I'd be fairly if not entirely confident they'd get it right. With the UK government, I am absolutely sure it will take years, cost billlions, and be a fucking pointless disaster
I think you might have responded to the wrong post/ poster.
Is the sun over the yardarm already?
I am now in minute 23 of my call to HMRC. No human has answered, yet
What do you expect at 15.30 on a Friday? No one is going to answer you until 0800 hours on Monday.
OT but loosely connected to that comment.
Back in 2018 I was running a dig in Ancaster and at midday on the last day of the dig season - a Friday afternoon - we found an Anglo-Saxon cremation urn. We had to lift it as it would not have survived a winter left exposed in the ground.
In the UK you need a licence from the Home Office to lift any human remains even if they have been crmated and put in a pot 1500 years ago. So I phoned the Home Office department concerned. They told me they only dealt with that aspect of things Monday - Wednesday but if I emailed them the details they would send me the forms and try and get it sorted. There was alot of details needed including confoirmation that I was able to certify it was not modern remains. The thing they were most concerned about was what we would do with the remains once we had finished studing them.
By 3pm I had all the signed permissions back from them and by dark we had the urn lifted and secured. The service could not have been better, faster or more polite. It was a genuine pleasure (and surprise).
As a last resort you could have phoned the police and tell them you had found a body then get them to remove it, transport it somewhere safe and look after it for the weekend.
Best bit was the licence I got allowed me to lift human remains from the site for 5 years.
There's a Midsomer Murders episode in there somewhere...
I did used to joke thaht if anyone had any bodies they neeed disposing of they could just poop them in one of my trenches for a year or two and then I could certify they were archaeological.
It does make me wonder why more people don't bury their murder victims in freshly dug graves in cemeteries.
"just poop them" - surely they'd also have to eat them first!
The absolute worst however is when you get through and start discussing the issue, they put you on hold to find something out but accidentally cut you off so not only do you have to go back to the end of the queue but because you don’t know exactly who you were talking to you have to start again from scratch with new person if and when you get answered again.
Yes, I've had that. Soul destroying
I'm still on hold, btw
At least these days you can put it on mobile speakerphone and do other stuff all over the gaff, as you wait. My beautiful siting room is having all its cushions plumped, and I've beeswaxed the whatnot
I now have to call them AGAIN to chase up documents I should have hjad decades ago
Even better? - my accountant tells me average waiting time to get through on the phone is "40 minutes or maybe much more"
This is simply not acceptable. The UK state is crumbling
And these are the people we expect to handle "digital ID cards for all" without a hitch?
Feck off
You've been on the phone to HMRC for decades? Man, that is unacceptable.
I used to object to ID cards on principle. Very very firmly. Passionately
Now I find I don't really care, as so much of our data is available to everyone, via phones, social media, everything. And I can see why digital ID would be helpful
My main objection now is practical. If a large tech company was proposing this - Apple, or Amazon - I'd be fairly if not entirely confident they'd get it right. With the UK government, I am absolutely sure it will take years, cost billlions, and be a fucking pointless disaster
I think you might have responded to the wrong post/ poster.
Is the sun over the yardarm already?
I am now in minute 23 of my call to HMRC. No human has answered, yet
My wife waited over an hour the other week. Problem is if you fail the attitude test with these people they can nake your life more difficult
This country is shit. Our public services are shit. The enshittification of our nation continues apace
It is increasingly hard to believe that within living memory we efficiently ran the biggest empire in the history of the world, acquired by our mighty forefathers
What a descent, what a dismal fall
That’s what happens when you let the plebs and women vote and become MPs unfortunately. The country was warned about the dangers. Proper chaps in charge - huge Empire, richest nation. Hoi Poloi - end result Keir Starmer.
I now have to call them AGAIN to chase up documents I should have hjad decades ago
Even better? - my accountant tells me average waiting time to get through on the phone is "40 minutes or maybe much more"
This is simply not acceptable. The UK state is crumbling
And these are the people we expect to handle "digital ID cards for all" without a hitch?
Feck off
You've been on the phone to HMRC for decades? Man, that is unacceptable.
I used to object to ID cards on principle. Very very firmly. Passionately
Now I find I don't really care, as so much of our data is available to everyone, via phones, social media, everything. And I can see why digital ID would be helpful
My main objection now is practical. If a large tech company was proposing this - Apple, or Amazon - I'd be fairly if not entirely confident they'd get it right. With the UK government, I am absolutely sure it will take years, cost billlions, and be a fucking pointless disaster
I think you might have responded to the wrong post/ poster.
Is the sun over the yardarm already?
I am now in minute 23 of my call to HMRC. No human has answered, yet
My wife waited over an hour the other week. Problem is if you fail the attitude test with these people they can nake your life more difficult
This country is shit. Our public services are shit. The enshittification of our nation continues apace
It is increasingly hard to believe that within living memory we efficiently ran the biggest empire in the history of the world, acquired by our mighty forefathers
What a descent, what a dismal fall
It wasn't efficient. There was vast amounts of corruption.
I now have to call them AGAIN to chase up documents I should have hjad decades ago
Even better? - my accountant tells me average waiting time to get through on the phone is "40 minutes or maybe much more"
This is simply not acceptable. The UK state is crumbling
And these are the people we expect to handle "digital ID cards for all" without a hitch?
Feck off
You've been on the phone to HMRC for decades? Man, that is unacceptable.
I used to object to ID cards on principle. Very very firmly. Passionately
Now I find I don't really care, as so much of our data is available to everyone, via phones, social media, everything. And I can see why digital ID would be helpful
My main objection now is practical. If a large tech company was proposing this - Apple, or Amazon - I'd be fairly if not entirely confident they'd get it right. With the UK government, I am absolutely sure it will take years, cost billlions, and be a fucking pointless disaster
I think you might have responded to the wrong post/ poster.
Is the sun over the yardarm already?
I am now in minute 23 of my call to HMRC. No human has answered, yet
My wife waited over an hour the other week. Problem is if you fail the attitude test with these people they can nake your life more difficult
This country is shit. Our public services are shit. The enshittification of our nation continues apace
It is increasingly hard to believe that within living memory we efficiently ran the biggest empire in the history of the world, acquired by our mighty forefathers
What a descent, what a dismal fall
It wasn't efficient. There was vast amounts of corruption.
It was incredibly efficient, by definition. It was the most successful empire in modern history - ie the biggest and grandest
Now we can't build a fucking railway from Acton to Solihull
I now have to call them AGAIN to chase up documents I should have hjad decades ago
Even better? - my accountant tells me average waiting time to get through on the phone is "40 minutes or maybe much more"
This is simply not acceptable. The UK state is crumbling
And these are the people we expect to handle "digital ID cards for all" without a hitch?
Feck off
You've been on the phone to HMRC for decades? Man, that is unacceptable.
I used to object to ID cards on principle. Very very firmly. Passionately
Now I find I don't really care, as so much of our data is available to everyone, via phones, social media, everything. And I can see why digital ID would be helpful
My main objection now is practical. If a large tech company was proposing this - Apple, or Amazon - I'd be fairly if not entirely confident they'd get it right. With the UK government, I am absolutely sure it will take years, cost billlions, and be a fucking pointless disaster
I think you might have responded to the wrong post/ poster.
Is the sun over the yardarm already?
I am now in minute 23 of my call to HMRC. No human has answered, yet
My wife waited over an hour the other week. Problem is if you fail the attitude test with these people they can nake your life more difficult
This country is shit. Our public services are shit. The enshittification of our nation continues apace
It is increasingly hard to believe that within living memory we efficiently ran the biggest empire in the history of the world, acquired by our mighty forefathers
What a descent, what a dismal fall
It wasn't efficient. There was vast amounts of corruption.
It was incredibly efficient, by definition. It was the most successful empire in modern history - ie the biggest and grandest
Now we can't build a fucking railway from Acton to Solihull
I'm still on hold
To be fair, as others have pointed out, it is Friday afternoon. Who wants to answer a phone when it might mean a time-taking query. 9am Monday is the time.
The absolute worst however is when you get through and start discussing the issue, they put you on hold to find something out but accidentally cut you off so not only do you have to go back to the end of the queue but because you don’t know exactly who you were talking to you have to start again from scratch with new person if and when you get answered again.
Yes, I've had that. Soul destroying
I'm still on hold, btw
At least these days you can put it on mobile speakerphone and do other stuff all over the gaff, as you wait. My beautiful siting room is having all its cushions plumped, and I've beeswaxed the whatnot
Is that posh slang for a crafty five finger shuffle?
I am self employed. If I ran my own business the way government, the Labour Party and the public sector do THEIR jobs I would be bankrupt within three days
Sack them all. Judges to clerks, human rights lawyers to MPs, tax officials to the Met, sack every single person in the public sector (except the nice people at the passport office) - just sack these fecking losers. And take away their pensions
Comments
He's seldom in Clacton or the HoC so it might be a handy little part-time gig. He could probably run Gaza from Mar-a-Lago like he seems to with his other "pin money" grifts, like being an MP.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/730194
There is no mens rea presented - or rather the absence of mens rea is evident in the indictment itself.
dag
@davidallengreen.bsky.social
Bless those who think the Home Office can successfully carry out a huge IT procurement exercise for digital ID cards for implementation before the next general election.
https://bsky.app/profile/davidallengreen.bsky.social/post/3lzqlj6v5j22z
Exactly.
That's a lot more than simple IP.
They know as much as we do.
And to think Comey probably handed Trump the Presidency on a silver platter in 2016. What an orange ingrate!
Apparently "he's a dirty cop" because he investigated God's President.
I now have to call them AGAIN to chase up documents I should have had decades ago
Even better? - my accountant tells me average waiting time to get through on the phone is "40 minutes or maybe much more"
This is simply not acceptable. The UK state is crumbling
And these are the people we expect to handle "digital ID cards for all" without a hitch?
Feck off
And that is before you even start to consider that illegal migration is a drop in the ocean compared to legal migration.
Will very likely be 5th by the end of today. Only losing to 3 stopping Brexit-related petitions and 1 on stopping the Trump state visit.
Of course all of those were very successful so...
And still Congress does nothing.
Now I find I don't really care, as so much of our data is available to everyone, via phones, social media, everything. And I can see why digital ID would be helpful
My main objection now is practical. If a large tech company was proposing this - Apple, or Amazon - I'd be fairly if not entirely confident they'd get it right. With the UK government, I am absolutely sure it will take years, cost billlions, and be a fucking pointless disaster
I don’t have the energy today to really get into the weeds of my argument as I’ve had a shitty virus all week and bored and fed up now. Largely I’ve spent a large part of a career having to sit through courses and talks etc re AML and financial crime - it’s very very frustrating but I have to admit that I do see the reasoning for it and have had very interesting clients offered up in my career who, my morals aside, would have been filtered out by the processes of thorough ID and background info.
I am far from a big state person but I’ve experienced living in a country where they have ID cards and was never asked to show once but they were very useful for many ordinary actions such as opening bank accounts and varied other things. I live in a place with a great and growing government hub where you go in with your ID and can do most of what you need to do online from paying taxes to various permit applications. I don’t see a huge problem with having a spin off where it provides a fail safe form of ID to cut down paperwork and bureaucracy.
I also feel that if there is suddenly some totalitarian govt in power in the UK it makes no odds if this or similar govs introduce ID cards or not, the new totalitarian one will be forcing it on you and scraping every bit of info.
Anyway, apologies again if I offended you with my earlier post.
Although he deserves a big commission for all this additional tax he is raising.
Bondi fires a third federal prosecutor in Miami office, linked to anti-Trump posts
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article312247303.html
..But Rosenzweig — considered to be among the rising prosecutors in the office — wasn’t fired because he had been associated with the criminal investigations of Trump by the Justice Department’s special counsel during the prior Biden administration. That was why two other respected federal prosecutors in the Miami office were abruptly terminated this year.
Rather, Rosenzweig was fired, according to multiple sources, because of the negative things he said about Trump on a social media blog before he became a federal prosecutor in Miami. When he was working for the prominent law firm Kobre & Kim in Washington during Trump’s first term, Rosenzweig posted criticisms of the president starting in 2017 — posts that were recently brought to the attention of the Justice Department...
Is the sun over the yardarm already?
Now the emotions have drained, But so has my confidence in HMG achieving anything like this, in less than 100 years and costing less than eleventy bazillion pounds, at the end of which we will have the digital equivalent of HS2
He's wearing his golf shoes
Back in 2018 I was running a dig in Ancaster and at midday on the last day of the dig season - a Friday afternoon - we found an Anglo-Saxon cremation urn. We had to lift it as it would not have survived a winter left exposed in the ground.
In the UK you need a licence from the Home Office to lift any human remains even if they have been cremated and put in a pot 1500 years ago. So I phoned the Home Office department concerned. They told me they only dealt with that aspect of things Monday - Wednesday but if I emailed them the details they would send me the forms and try and get it sorted. There was a lot of details needed including confirmation that I was able to certify it was not modern remains. The thing they were most concerned about was what we would do with the remains once we had finished studing them.
By 3pm I had all the signed permissions back from them and by dark we had the urn lifted and secured. The service could not have been better, faster or more polite. It was a genuine pleasure (and surprise).
HMRC are definitely at the abysmal end of the spectrum. And yet the UK Passport Office is now super efficient and turns things round in days, answers phones instantly, and so forth
Compare also the vaccine cleverness with the corrupt PPE disaster
Down 2 in final pair after 12
Sorry @Pulpstar- hadn't picked up your post !!!
https://cricmoon.com/cricket/opinion/decline-of-draws-in-test-cricket-is-aggression-changing-the-game/#:~:text=In%202024%2C%20only%20one%20out%20of%2040%20men%E2%80%99s,cricket%20on%20the%20longest%20format%20of%20the%20game.
Bethpage - located between Jericho and Jerusalem in Long Island - was named after Bethphage (house of unripe figs) a biblical town located between Jericho and Jerusalem
It does make me wonder why more people don't bury their murder victims in freshly dug graves in cemeteries.
https://petitionmap.unboxedconsulting.com/?petition=730194&area=lon
What could possibly go wrong?
Meanwhile a British PM is proposing to force a "Brit card" on the citizens of Derry.
Cool. Very cool.
It's utterly risible
@jorgeliboreiro.bsky.social
The European Commission is pitching a highly innovative proposal to use the cash balances of Russia's frozen assets to issue a €140 billion loan to Ukraine.
Repayments will begin only when Russia agrees to provide war reparations.
Here's what we know. (It's very complex.)
https://bsky.app/profile/jorgeliboreiro.bsky.social/post/3lzqhflxvwc2d
This petition like most petitions is just an opportunity to hate on the government of the day. Londoners are probably less inclined to hate on this government, I would imagine.
I don't feel too strongly on this issue either way. Probably marginally in favour since we started requiring ID for voting, as a compulsory scheme will reduce disenfranchisement.
This country is shit. Our public services are shit. The enshittification of our nation continues apace
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c39r7p47wzgo
What a descent, what a dismal fall
I'm still on hold, btw
At least these days you can put it on mobile speakerphone and do other stuff all over the gaff, as you wait. My beautiful siting room is having all its cushions plumped, and I've beeswaxed the whatnot
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/730194
Now we can't build a fucking railway from Acton to Solihull
I'm still on hold
9am Monday is the time.
NO ONE ANSWERED
HOUR
NINE
MINUTES
Then you can talk to an AI chatbot who won't be able to help you instead.
Sack them all. Judges to clerks, human rights lawyers to MPs, tax officials to the Met, sack every single person in the public sector (except the nice people at the passport office) - just sack these fecking losers. And take away their pensions