Really
He does have a point but it does come across like the bloke who works for a satellite communications company thinks we should make more use of satellite communications.
27 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Dec 2009
I’ve gone through the figures and I’m tempted to agree that the £420k back bill is how much should be paid in back taxes.
The thing is, if she was paying herself through a limited company, surely she would have been paying corporation tax.
Wouldn’t this ruling now mean that she has quite a large income tax bill to settle but quite a substantial amount of corporation tax that should never have been paid?
I suppose the headlines wouldn’t have been as good though.
A while back I was given a number of Nooks, they required online activation which was fine until the servers were switched off.
Fortunately yes pretty easy to access the nook via alternate methods and activate it locally.
Anyone have any suggestions as to cameras that support smart home protocols that can be pointed to nas drives for storage?
I'm currently with Virgin but due to various issues I'd rather be on a non virgin fibre deal.
Now I'm 1.1km from a fibre enabled exchange (admittedly as the crow flies), I'm 50m away from a fibre enabled cabinet, and live in a heavily populated suburb of Manchester.
So why can't I get non virgin fibre?
Apparently BT are 'Looking at solutions' and have been for over two years.
I approached the regulatory body who in a classic bit of Orwellian language basically said that they would roll out fibre once it had been determined that they could roll out fibre and that would happen when they rolled out the fibre.
Now I accept that I am in a better position than many but I still struggle to grasp why I can't get fibre from my local cabinet when all of the appropriate boxes appear to have been ticked or indeed who I can approach to get an answer in something approximating English.
Money in the bank isn't a concept.
turnover isn't a concept.
money paid in dividends or salaries is not a concept.
moving money between countries is not a concept.
VAT is the tax with the highest compliance in the EU because it is collected at a point where evasion and avoidance is, to all intents, impossible by design.
Perhaps the country might be in a better state if more taxes were that simple.
I fail to see why they can't just drop corporation tax down to nothing.
Now before I get criticised for being on the side of the fat cat business people just ask yourself what a company actually does with money earned.
It saves the money, in which case it can be taxed on returns.
It moves the money, in which case it can be taxed on amount.
It can pay the money out in dividends, which can be taxed.
It can pay the money out in increased salaries, which can be taxed.
It can invest in the business, which may or may not be taxed depending on the basis the money is invested in the business.
The point being that profit is a concept rather than a reality and can be manipulated to suit the prevailing mood at the time, making tax more of a voluntary obligation rather than a legal one.
Why not just change the point of taxation to something more easily definable and hence less likely to suffer from avoidance (avoidance because what the companies are doing is not illegal although it may very well be immoral).
I'm just glad that it's a long way away if it goes bang.
That design has been suggested many times and the theory is sound, the numbers stack up, they are efficient and they do use what we currently consider to be waste - all good.
The problems come in when you are in effect pumping liquid metal as a coolant. That is a particularly difficult engineering problem and one of the main reasons why this design of reactor has never taken off.
They've been working away on this type of reactor since the 50's and there is nothing in that article that suggests that the technological hurdles have been overcome, merely a reiteration of the positives associated with this particular design.
This is why just about every reactor outside of a laboratory situation is gas or water cooled.
Second, it's not inherently safe. The pebble bed design will, under failure of cooling, shut itself down over a relatively short period of time. One of these babies won't and due to the difficulties with the sodium cooling are that much more difficult to shutdown.
Cool it down, why not add water....hang on Sodium and Water react quite violently....quick where's the nearest plentiful source of liquid sodium that we can pump into the core?
So build it a long way away from me or wait for the development of Thorium or maybe even fusion reactors.
Two points here
First is that the term 'Engineer' is hopelessly mis-used.
Too many people call themselves engineers when they have no right to do so.
Those people at Microsoft don't help matters by creating those pesky MCSE courses either.
I'm sorry but that particular qualification means, at best, you can call yourself a technician. Not an engineer.
To be an engineer you need to have, at least, a bachelors degree in an suitable subject, an appropriate level of experience and pass the entry requirements for one of the accredited institutions such as the IMechE.
IIRC they actually have recently increased the requirements from Bachelors degree to Masters for all new entrants.
So anything that helps bring back the prestige to a title that, in terms of study, is equivalent to that of a Doctor or Barrister.
Second point is that getting the Queen to head up the prize is absolutely ridiculous, what connection has she ever had to engineering other than possibly opening a few factories?
A more appropriate choice would have been Sir Joseph Whitworth who pioneered the idea of standards in engineering. Specifically with regards to screw threads. This development meant that items could be designed in different factories and assembled in remote locations safe in the knowledge that it would all fit together.
Something that is seen today in every industry. Think back to the RFCs or the development of standard PC architecture in recent years.
Arguably Joseph Whitworth was the giant upon whose shoulders Brunel rode because the rapid expansion of the railways, bridges and iron clad ships would not have been possible without the work performed by Whitworth.
Better use of the volunteer reserve in place of the TA?
then you have somewhere for the experienced former services personnel to go, limited costs compared to the main services and a more capable force.
BTW not trying to diss the TA as many of those people are top notch, but they aren't full time and don't get the prolonged intensity of training that the regulars get.
Looking at the bankruptcy documents it appears that it was forced by HMRC.
Now there is an organisation you don't want after you.
I would suspect that the moving of assets to a third person in the middle of bankruptcy proceedings is looken on very dimly and may even be a criminal offense when the person you are attempting to defraud is the Government.
You can debate the rights and wrongs of what Crossley was up to but one thing is inexcusable.
When the personal details of over 20,000 individuals were leaked due to the rank incompetance of Crossle - some of whom were no doubt innocent, but the data doesn't make that distinction - he could have and indeed should have, according to the code of conduct for solicitors and the ICO, contacted those who were affected.
The fact he didn't should have resulted in a larger fine and if this is the way the ICO deals with the single largest data leak before Sony decided to join the fray then they are not fit for purpose.
The way the percentages are calculated is screwed.
Due to the amount of coursework a sizable number of students go into the exam knowing they have already passed. Conversly a sizable number of students know that they have failed before the exam and so don't bother to turn up.
And the famous 96.7% pass rate is based on number who pass divided by number who turn up.
What they should do is base the percentage pass rate on numbers who sign up for a levels against those who walk out two years later with a pass. Unfortunately as that would drop the percentage pass rate to c 60% politically that won't happen.
I remember the whole train and the sheep shagger story well.
Not for the obvious reasons, but because my boss at the time had the misfortune to share the same first, middle and surname of the individual in question.
The suns headline 'xxxxxx. Xxxxxxx sheep shagger' found itself on the message board rather quickly.
Why the big speculation about the election date.
I've known for three months that the election will be on May 6th.
How do I know?
In december I've had 2010 calanders pushed through my door from the three main political parties and all three of them had May 6th highlighted with a note reminding me to vote for the respective candidate.
Ignoring the dodgy figures spouted by the recording and music industries because we know that every downloaded album is not necessarily a lost sale, much as they want us to believe it is.
Why not levy a charge on every unlimited broadband user, say £20 a year, to be divided up between the copyright holders.
ISP's moniter traffic, but to allow fair division of the cash raised to the copyright holders.
So they get the cash owed and serial downloaders are no longer worried about a knock on the door from plod.
If you don't want to pay the £20, then you are fair game for possible legal actions.
Seemples
Am I the only one that thinks it's a tad suspicious that the Aspergers, rather conveniently, surfaced once McX realised he was looking at a long stretch in a maximum security prison in America rather than six months in an open prison just down the road.
Are we to allow the legal precedent to be set that you commit a crime, develop an illness after the event and dodge justice because you aren't very well???