Disguised employee
As it seems Boris delivers the service personally, so I wonder if he is ensuring he pays tax "like an employee" meaning giving up over half of his invoice to the tax man, or is that rule only for little people?
Former British prime minister BoJo has used one of his first speaking engagements since losing that job to appear at a blockchain conference in Singapore, where his expert opinion on the subject boiled down to a belief the public needs to be convinced there's a reason for it to exist. Appearing in his trademark rumpled style …
The higher tax bands already catch little people, but that was not my point.
If he has set up a business as a vehicle for his speeches, I wonder if he declares himself in scope of IR35, as these speeches are personal service. Which means his company must be taxed on revenue, if he has one. That's what happens to little people and not giants like Infosys, for instance.
Not sure you've understood IR35 correctly here (unless I've misunderstood your complaint): He spoke as a one off at an event. He may have been paid a ridiculous amount of money for it, but I don't think anyone could argue that means he is an employee of International Symposium on Blockchain Advancements (or whoever was running the conference).
If he has a personal services company, and he goes around doing a lot of one off talks for a load of different companies, then that is actually contracting and doesn't go anywhere near IR35. If one company decided they needed him to do daily/weekly speeches in their offices (perhaps they're trying to get rid of some staff) then he'll need to be declared within the scope of it.
He will have a company which sends this symposium a bill which will be paid if they were quick enough. They can pay him a salary on which he pays income tax. They pay his cost, the rest is profit on which the company pays 19% corporation tax, 25% next year. From the remaining money the company can pay him a dividend, taxed at 8.75% up to about 50,000 and over 33% above that. And he can declare his future ex-wife to be an employee or shareholder which might be dubious. That’s what he can do legally. Anything illegal he might want to do would be found out.
Define legitimate. Bojo has proven himself to be very useful. Just not to the people he's supposed to represent.
But he's an idiot. Blockchain is essential in our rush to digitise everything. So some secure (enough) method to handle security, authentication, audit/accountability, custody and non-repudiation. To my mind, the issue is standardisation, implementation, which transactions it should apply to, and the computational cost of doing so.
But then it's also nothing really new. I'm a fan of X.500 because it included this stuff. A long while ago, we implemented an X-based network that transacted with an IP-based partner. There was a disupute, but we could prove we'd delivered messages to the partner thanks to non-repudiation built into the protocol(s). For the partner, it just disappeared into their IP 'cloud'.
Maybe Boris is reckoning that if he boosts the Btc promotion then the price will fall since everyone (even the Tories) are saying that he's an idiot. So if the price falls and he buys a bunch under the table and shuts up, maybe the Btc price will jump again in a few months, resulting in Boris making a few million again.
Yes, I can say that he's an idiot, but clearly he's not totally stupid, he's just a politician that keeps getting richer, let's just watch this go on.
He's going to have lost his seat. His majority has long gone, and he may even have been deselected - nominally because he's not bothered to turn up since July 7th.
The party know that he's a liability now, even though he is still popular with a vocal group of members. That's why they let Sunak be crowned. To some extent, they're trying to blame all the current badness on him (instead of the previous decade of Tory rule) in an effort to keep a few seats. That might even work.
And he won't care, because there will still be plenty of groups around the world willing to pay him six figure sums to fly in first class and bloviate at them for an hour or two.
Apparently he got 102 votes in the last leadership contest and so he could have stood against dishy Rishi and would undoubtedly have won. But he was advised by one of the polling gurus that because his magic spell was now exposed he would not be the magician he was in 2019 and his post PM earning potential would collapse. So he's chosen the fill yer boots path instead.
Klaus Schwab thought he has. But Boris was unable to deliver his Great Reset so WEF started a coup. You can't buy Conservative membership, so WEF had to short the pound and run the story that Truss crashed the economy and then they could finally ignore the members vote and put trusty Sunak on the throne.
It's a matter of time we will all own nothing and eat ze bugs.
... think the poster didn't set out to be offensive ...
Of course he didn't. 8^*
What the holy fuck is going on at ElReg these days?
It is Friday and I was attempting (albeit not very successfully) to be preposterously facetious.
No matter ...
In my ledger, BJ is a total waste of good breathable air.
Air that could otherwise be put to good use.
O.
"Impregnating a female who has had a lapse of reason is basically rape."
"Is"?
So that's your definition of rape?
No force?
No coercion?
No deception?
Etc.
Just dependent on the victim being a "female who has had a lapse of reason?
Interesting definition, and one which many might take exception to.
He made Theresa May look competent in comparison, which is some achievement.
Of course, she had made David Cameron look competent in comparison, which was some achievement.
Then Liz Truss repaid the complement.
It's not looking great for Rishi Sunak so far. Who's next?
My (non-crypto) money's on Matt Hancock. Or Chris Grayling.
-A.
Comedy?
Seriously, blockchain currencies bring very little to the table that new with currencies. They're not as anonymous as, say, hacksilver or gold is and they're not as convenient as paper fiat money or credit cards are. The administration consumes lots of power for no actual gain, and really the only use is in slowly and amusingly teaching a lot of highly intelligent people who really should know better that con-men still exist and are still extremely capable of fleecing the marks.
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I don't know where you are, but for years my international transfers have all been cheap and same/next day, and my domestic transfers have all been free and instant. That's nothing to do with blockchain or crypto, and all to do with migrants and small businesses pushing payments providers, and they in turn identified a use case that regulators allowed them to run with under a light touch regime.
Not sure how this fares now post Brexit, but quite a few British banks are also members of the EU SEPA instant transfer scheme where participants are obliged to credit an account within 10 seconds from transmission. Yes, that is seconds.
That said, go above the max international transaction value of GBP 100k and God help if HMRC gets involved because that can easily set you back for half a year or more (dealing with a case right now and frankly, I get the impression that these uncivil servants just piss about with people because they're bored - there's no rhyme or reason to it, nor is it easy for people to hold that lot accountable).
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It is NOT "cryptocurrency", at least not based on the current way it is treated and traded.
You do NOT trade and invest in "currency" and expect said "currency" to increase in value...just because.
Crypto is currently an ASSET. It will NEVER *be* a "currency" unless and until the jokers investing and trading it as an asset actually start treating it as a real currency - stable, of known value, with little inherent profit from simply acquiring it and trading it, in an of itself.
The vast, vast majority of transactions in crypto "currency" is currently trading it for its own value. Sorry, currency arbitrage is not only a specialized area but classically makes little money per transaction, existing solely on volume. The clowns who think they buy at $16K and sell at $40K, because crypto, are only dooming this to being the pyramid scheme that we have all see it to be.
where international transfers take up to a week and cost a ridiculous amount of money
This may help, I actually decide which banks to use for my business based on this. The "Inst" register contains all the banks who participate in the instant banking scheme, which mandates transactions to take place within 10 seconds.
Max transaction value is €100k, but yes, it removes the transaction in limbo element. That said, that's EUR transactions only - I agree that international transactions can take longer if there's a currency exchange involved.
I find XE to offer reasonable rates and actually work very quickly when you use a member of the SEPA Inst scheme to pay in (not had a recipient yet in the Inst scheme, given how quickly the transaction appears in a non-member bank account I suspect it would go very fast indeed), whereas I actually have a criminal action running against Wise where CHF 200 vanished after shenanigans (I had a letter a few weeks ago from the court that they've taken up the case).
However, there is no way on Earth that the use of blockchain would speed this up as it all relies on international agreements - the very element that blockchain proponents seek to bypass (and thus the main reason criminals love it so much). In addition, the time it takes to validate a transaction lies several factors below the speed it needs to have to feasibly handle the current volume of "standard" transactions, not to mention the vast and climate unfriendly energy consumption associated with it. So no, blockchain doesn't solve anything here either..
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The thing is third rate grifters and spivs like Johnson and Hancock don't really know anything about bitcoin, blockchain, cryptography, etc, and they very probably don't care much either. They are only there to read out a pre-prepared endorsement script in exchange for a large wad of cash.
Even if (for some reason) you actually liked Johnson, why on earth would anyone pay him money- quite likely a *lot* of money- to hear someone who isn't remotely associated with tech expertise deliver a talk on blockchain? Especially as the audience of "pros" can be assumed to have known a lot more than he did in the first place.
At best we can assume he'd simply be delivering a speech written by someone who *was* an expert in the area.
Sometimes there's value in hearing the view from outside the bubble. I've wasted more days than I care to count listening to experts tell a specialist audience what they already know, and to great applause, but the real value I've taken away has often been the perspective of speakers one step removed from the industry.
Here's one of his earlier grand entrances
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/16/stuck-zip-wire-boris-johnson-london-2012-olympics
Yeah, I've heard that incident (i.e. getting stuck on the zip wire) was deliberately set up and I can quite believe that.
Johnson was someone whose "bumbling posh man with rumpled hair" persona was a deliberately contrived put-on to make him less threatening and more "likeable", and he exploited that English like of upperclass eccentrics to the full.
Don't believe me? Broadcaster Jeremy Vine once told the story of how he happened to see Johnson deliver the same lecture twice.... complete with the exact same "funny" gaffes at the exact same points the second time round.
Ha ha, funny Boris.
Don't believe me? Broadcaster Jeremy Vine once told the story of how he happened to see Johnson deliver the same lecture twice.... complete with the exact same "funny" gaffes at the exact same points the second time round.
You appear in some way surprised.
When I was 16 and involved in running an event I was given a pack that contained a copy of the announcers script, including all of the scripted jokes. The same script was used both days of the event. Since then, i've come to realise that many people tend to reuse the same speeches etc to different audiences.
I'm surprised that anybody is surprised that scripts exist and that people giving reheased speeches tend to reuse them whereever they think that the audiences won't overlap.
You've missed the point. It wasn't the fact he gave a repeat of the same speech on two different occasions or even that the clearly-intended jokes were scripted.
It was the fact that even the *apparent* bumbling "gaffes" and "mistakes" in the delivery of that speech (including the messing-up of a punchline that got a bigger laugh than the otherwise overused joke would likely have received anyway)- the kind of things that define the "Bumbling Boris" persona- were *also* the same.
In other words, "Bumbling Boris" is, and always was, a put-on.
Of course, have you only just realised that now?
Even the hairdo is part of it, he'll be impeccably dressed in a business meeting, but on his way out to meet the press he will ruffle his hair and rumple his shirt to keep the persona intact.
He's a clever man pretending to be stupid, which is much more dangerous than the reverse.
> Of course, have you only just realised that now?
No, it was obvious long before even before the Jeremy Vine story as far as I was concerned.
> Even the hairdo is part of it
I'm aware of that too; I'm the one who- every time someone says "why doesn't he do something with his hair"- mentions that *is* the point, that it's part of the "Boris" persona, and that if you watch cases where he genuinely needs to be serious (e.g. times of tragedy when *no-one* would tolerate "funny" Boris) he's quite capable of having it look neat and respectable.
Also, while he's neither as stupid as some people assume, he's not the 4D-Chess genius some people who spotted *that* seem to overcompensate in assuming either.
He has a lot of- what many people take as- signifiers for (privately) "educated", i.e. school Latin, use of historical references et al, but his main skill lies in promoting himself and his own self-interest.
To quote, we have to "distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn’t understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was so—but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence, the act. He preferred people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous."
-A.
More photos with comments from the photographers... - including the knocking over a child one
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/aug/31/photographers-best-shot-boris-johnson
It's probably not a great idea to tell a room full of people working in an industry that their industry needs a reason to exist, but I think in a way, he is right.
To my technical, but admittedly not really that knowledgeable about blockchain, mind I think he is right. I know that blockchain uses the same technologies used for virtual currencies, and I know it is used for data storage, but beyond Virtual Currencies and NFTs (both things I think will need regulation long term to at least minimise scams), I'm not really sure what advantage it offers over other technologies, and what it is used for.
NFTs are not a scam. Not really. You are told exactly what you are paying for. You get exactly what you paid for. Now if you thought these NFTs are worth something, that’s your own problem.
Wikipedia is always asking for donations. I’d say they should somehow sell articles in a way similar to NFTs. With no actual rights being sold other than the right to say “I paid for it”. And the right to sell it on. I mean that would actually be a good use.
Basically anyone who completely understands it thinks it's a useless moneypit.
People who partially understand it usually try to make money out of it.
People who don't understand it provide the money.
Block chain is a distributed ledger which relies on majority consensus to validate entries.
Cryptocurrencies claim the calculation required to validate the entries has monetary value.
Doing that gets harder as the "chain" of entries gets longer.
If someone (or a small group of someones) manage to "own" 51% of the blocks storing those entries they can manipulate their value.
"I will do my best to tiptoe through the minefield this afternoon, with the tact for which I am famous"
I heard a rumble but just thought they were testing the diesel gen!
and to paraphrase a cracker joke...
How do you tell if Boris has been in your fridge (his favourite hiding hole)? Footprints in the butter!
Thank God he means glockchain and not politics.
I'm mildly impressed that he understood enough about the subject to know that no-one has yet found a usecase where blockchain can't be replaced at a fraction the cost by a trusted central database.
I enjoyed reading this article, and as usual, was fascinated by the comments.
Blockchain and "cryptocurrency" have both shown themselves to be solutions in search of a problem.
Refreshing to see the former PM of the UK (despite his prior missteps) point out the obvious - \what's the real use case?' and the need for regulation - I was to a lesser degree intrigued by his off topic meandering into Twitter etc.
I imagine he's not getting invited back there any time soon, even though he said it far more politely than I would have (This Friday, I'm leaning towards something alone the lines of 'I extend to you ungracious greetings, you bunch of charlatans' or some other Shakespearean sounding rubbish)
Crypto currencies main uses seem to be crime and fleecing idiots.
"Greetings squire, would you like to use some of your actual real money to buy some of this currency I just invented out of thin air? What is behind it? Why, blockchain of course! No, you can't really use it for buying anything as transactions take too long. No, there isn't an economy or anything of any real value supporting it. No, of course we are not regulated, we want to stick it to the man! What can you do with it? Weeeeell, you hold onto it for a bit, hope the value goes up then sell it to someone else."
"Johnson eventually touched on his theory that new technologies undergo four stages of innovation. Those stages include fear, skepticism about use cases, speculative mania followed by the bursting of a giant bubble, with the final stage, progress, rising from the debris."
He describes the Gartner hype cycle and you think that it's *his* theory????
Is this reporter somehow new to technology journalism??
See "Gartner Hype Cycle" gartner dot com.
Gartner is talking about actual adoption and usage.
Judging by Boris' paraphrased words ... speculative mania followed by the bursting of a giant bubble ... Boris is talking mainly from the POV of third party hedge fund investors.
There's a difference between reporting and commentary.
Reporting is fact based : "bojo said X".
Commentary is (informed) opinion : " Based on the reported remarks X, clearly his speech writer updated the standard speaking notes with some extracts from a Gartner report".
By those definitions, the article is neither reporting, nor commentary, having avoided providing facts, and demonstrating a lack of (informed) opinion.
Opinion alone is surely gossip?
(And as an aside, given the chaotic nature of Boris' finances, I'd be very surprised if he could afford a speech writer).
Blockchain is a solution waiting for a problem it can actually solve.
Do what you fsck-ing like as long as you do not harm the First Law (or something)
Social media is just divisive shit.
You have to get the ashes of the cock-up out of the way before you can move beyond it.
Yeah, that is a fair summary of my philosophy of life. BoJo, you are in the wrong profession!
I'm really annoyed that I agree with every single quote from Boris in this article.
In particular, the short form is infuriating. I've been trying to be a little bit politically active around firearms legistlation in Canada lately, and people keep telling me I need to make my writing shorter. Sorry guys, I can't cram a thesis, 10 coherent objections, and a conclusion into 1 page or a 60 second video. The fact that people think this is possible suggests that they are unable to identify incomplete arguments.
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Boris Johnson is an idiot, but I can't disagree with the public needing convincing on why blockchain exists.
Cryptocurrency? That does rely on blockchain, and is a legitimate use for it. I'm really addressing all the OTHER uses...
I mean, NFTs, each one goes through some single NFT site for that set of NFTs (several of these NFT sites have already closed up shop, so the blockchain just has a web address to a site that raked in millions of dollars then closed so your picture is not even there any more.) OK, the blockchain provides "proof" that you are the owner -- if you have any way to show you own a particular address on the blockchain. But since the updates to that ownership info are coming from a single site.... what's the advantage over having the site itself just keep track?
There's companies now planning to do like trucking/shipping logistics using blockchain. This solves a problem the companies don't have -- they aren't assuming bad actors trying to falsely claim ownership of a container (which blockchain would help with). They are concerned about not having interoperable systems, the amount of paperwork and moving info from one system to another involved. Which blockchain in no way helps with. So in this oft-cited case, blockchain solves a problem that doesn't exist.
There's various games and things that seem to use the word blockchain just to use it? They are throwing NFTs into the games so of course they'll use the term blockchain. Needless to say, this is just games that would have had in-game items purchased with in-game currency turning the "in-game items" into "Non fungiable tokens" to ride the hype train. And of course, games have had working systems to track sold items for decades before blockchain, so they may be using it but really don't have any reason to.
Bank transfers? A blockchain could fairly be used for this, perhaps. It's a matter of if SWIFT is tampered with frequently enough for it to even be worth the upgrade, and if blockchain would prevent it or not (one prevoius SWIFT attack I read about, a bad actor waited for money to be transferred from a bank to a temporary account, which would then transfer to the target bank moments later; they pulled the money out of the temporary account into a "legitimate" account in the SWIFT system. So, throw blockchain in, if they still use the temp account etc. it may not help one bit with tampering.)
Finally, there's a move to use blockchain for data storage, I guess? This sounds straight-up inefficient and I don't see the point of this.
In summary, shockingly I agree with Boris on something -- I do think blockchain is extremely hyped and not really fit for many use cases it's being shoved into now. The public indeed does need convincing if blockchain should be used for these things.
An open, decentralised ledger of MP expenses.
As a bonus. An open, decentralised ledger of public spending.
Or how about...An open, decentralised ledger of public tax receipts.
There are plenty of reasons for blockchain to exist, trouble is they can make a lot of murky fiddling a lot less murky and fiddly.
I think what Boris really meant was...he's looking for a reason for it to exist to benefit the rich and chain up the poor. Blockchain isn't very good at that.
I'm going to stand up for Boris, he was a hell of a lot better than most recent PMs, especially May and Blair - two of the most repulsive, divisive creatures.... Don't even get me started on Liz Truss....
He delivered Brexit which others failed to do, managed the Gov't response to the pandemic - one of the biggest crises since WWII and was in the front line supporting Ukraine.
Sure, he was foolish in some regards but others get away with far worse.