Posts by Doctor Syntax 40557 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"The first step to censorshio, make the platforms responsible for what they publish"
Responsibility for publishing is a long established principle. What the internet platforms have done is insist that they're not publishers, they're just conduits for information like the post; postal services not being responsible for what they transmit is another long established principle.
What's happening now is that the platforms are being called out on that stance.
5 years? Luxury.
Actually, this takes me back to a thought experiment. What if we were to make no differentiation between freelance and employee in income tax, NI etc. but treat the permanence of the job as a benefit in kind. No difficult tests involved. Someone on a zero hours contract would have no benefit to be taxed. Someone on a short term contract would have a little. A permie such as a tax inspector would have a lot. MPs, being somewhere in the middle, should be able to see the advantage. The benefit in kind taxes of the permies would pay for tax rates to be lowered. The system would be transparently clear to HMRC. How different from present would the tax distribution be?
"Not enough staff hire some, or don’t take on work you are not equipped to carry out."
There's a built-in assumption here. That a business will require X yours of this skill, Y hours of that skill and Z hours of something else this week. And next week. And all the weeks after that. At best there may be some flexibility in that someone can swap between skills but the overall total will be fixed.
The world doesn't operate like that. Business as usual might be predictable enough* - apart from staff who are inconsiderate enough to be ill, go on holiday, have babies**, leave or even die. But there's also project work involved in launching new products, preparing for new contracts, stock-taking, handling equipment refreshes etc. And even that doesn't allow for small businesses that can't possibly justify training up someone up for advanced stuff that might amount to a day's work every few months.
By far the best strategy is to maintain properly trained staff at the right level to cope with the expected work level and count on being able to take extra help to cope with peaks of work and troughs of staff availability and one-off demands for extra expertise.
* Except when it has a strong seasonal element.
I wonder if IPSE have ever challenged the way tribunals work. (As the PCG they certainly didn't in my day.) Although a civil case should be decided on the balance of probabilities the only probability considered is whether the contract is or isn't fa contract of service and the situation is examined for indicators or that. Unless things have changed they don't consider whether it's a contract for services. If that were done the situation would have to be examined for indicators of that.
If the contract names the worker it can be taken as in indication of personal service when regarded as a possible contract of service. If it's looked at as a possible contract for services it's a key man clause and at one time the IR as was had on their site a standard contract for provision of services which included such a clause. If it was OK for HMRC's predecessor it ought to be OK for any freelancer's client.
"Optimisation is almost always cut to hit the deadline or the budget or both"
If it's developed for use in house and the house is paying mainframe prices for MIPS any sensible beancounter should insist on optimisation. But then there's a shortage of sensible beancounters.
"You do hear stories about Airbnb properties being used for parties, escorts using them to host clients, or they just generally get trashed by the renters."
It seems Airbnb is yet another example of optimistic thinking: if you deliver something running you can release updates to iron out the bugs. When the bugs turn out to be consequences of not thinking things through it's not so easy to patch. Will a concealed camera be a standard fitment to Airbnb properties in the future included in the T&Cs along with non-tamper clauses?
The best way to sort that one out would be that they have mandatory training, tested and get a certificate to prove it. Without the certificate they don't get anywhere near sensitive data and anyone who tries to force them to do so is committing a disciplinary offence and gets their certificate revoked. Needless to say anyone who then does something stupid like this also gets their certificate revoked. If there aren't any posts that don't require certification, tough.
In the public sector, of course, there's an alternative: misfeasance in public office. We need ICO enabled to prosecute for that.
"When in fact they aren't allowed to interfere directly with how a council or council officer does their job, but some still do."
As an elector I'd like to think that overseeing that council officers was what councillors were for. That way my vote might have some effect. As ever, British public life gets things arse about face.
One possible solution occurs to me. A couple of decades ago I had a gig working with material which had similar sensitivity. I and everyone else had to have clearance to S/C. Shouldn't council staff with this exposure also need clearance?
If anything the need should be greater than in my gig as the whole of the database is going to be local to the area from which council staff are likely to be recruited. Without clearance there's an unacceptable probability that a data subject might be known or even related to one of the staff.
A failure like this should then result in the entire command chain losing their clearance and having to be redeployed within the council if they were even able to retain their jobs. This would result in greater awareness of all those involved about their responsibilities and what actions would be permissible.
It's difficult to know what to do when confronted with incompetence of this nature. It's not just the initial breach that's the problem. It's also the attitude that the council decided they could deal with it as an internal matter. Either they didn't know about the GDPR provisions about reporting or simply decided they were too important for that. I'd like to think there was a mechanism for placing them under some sort of adult supervision but where would one find suitable adults? Certainly not in central government.
"Sorry but you're already at the limit of your sick leave. If you don't come in unfortunately we'll have to put you on sick report"
Ask to see HR to explain the situation. When you get there explain that you've only come in to see them as a special favour to them. "My doctor told me I shouldn't have come here. I'm actually putting you at serious risk of catching it.".
"Google picked Eire years ago because it was, and always has been, a corrupt, push-over state, offering low(ish) corporation tax rates and a tax treaty with America that ensures America has the lion's share of taxable revenue"
It's amazing how many times we have to say this and yet it doesn't sink in...
If you are a smallish country you it's a brilliant move to have low corporation taxes. It brings in big corporates who can recognise their profits in your country paying less tax that they would elsewhere but still bringing in a very good tax take in relation to the size of your country.
For multinationals taxation is a global market and small countries have a huge advantage by being able to keep tax low. That's what you're seeing in Ireland, Luxembourg etc.
It has the additional advantage that home-grown businesses also have the same lower tax rates which enables them to be more competitive abroad.
It's not being a corrupt, push-over state, it's a smart move taking advantage of their particular situation.
"With the lowest unemployment rate in decades?"
Every economic analysis I read about this links it with static wages and failure to invest because it's cheaper to employ people rather than invest in more productive plant. Productivity is static or falling and GDP is failing to rise. A current article on the Beeb website calls it the lost decade. In short, it's nothing to celebrate. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47826195
But hey, what do economists know? They're only experts and haven't realised the glorious future that awaits when wage inflation everywhere else reduces us to a low wage economy and Chinese manufacturers set up sweatshops here because it's cheaper than any SE Asian country.
Can we also have a gurn at those who, having got all their stuff checked through successfully are astonished to discover they have to find the means to pay for it and start rooting in pockets or handbags to find the necessary. The most recent episode was one who dragged out a card wallet absolutely full of the things (so she couldn't claim unfamiliarity with the concept), shuffled through them several times, discovered the one she was wanting wasn't there, had another root in the bag and came up with a purse with more cards in it. Why do these people not realise that waiting in the queue is a good time to get all that done without it being on the critical path?
I tell a lie. It wasn't the most recent. The most recent was the customer service till where, having checked stuff through the customer wanted to deal with some sort of lottery stuff as well, none of which would scan. I was sufficiently pissed off by this to try the SS scanner. Roll up, put the basket down on one side and the carrier on the other an the machine complained. Did nobody consider the use case that the customer needs to free up their hands in order to work the bloody machine and they're going to do that before pressing the button to start? Back to the customer disservice queue. Yes I am a grumpy old man - I've put the time in to get that way.
"just because something is technically possible, it's not always a good idea to do it."
OTOH if it is done it should be done well. My refusal is based on the fact that I'm not being paid to debug them. It used to be he case that I reckoned that the maximum number of items that could be reliably scanned was 3. I've now down-rated that to zero.
"You only warm the pot because historically the china pots were very thin and boiling water risked cracking them."
Real china - porcelain - didn't crack. It was European stuff that cracked until they worked out how to make something better. Much the same reason for the vile habit of putting milk in cups.
"Among the Russia-specific provisions are calls for the White House to produce and maintain a regular report on the net worth of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and any other individuals who would potentially have an interest in meddling with US affairs."
Does this mean we get to see Trump's tax returns? (Along with all other candidates, of course. Can't pick and choose.)
Identity is a slippery concept. What are the data collected? Lists of names? Try a Google search for your own name and see how many hits there are that you know aren't you. Can you work out how many distinct people that represents. How many of them might be close enough on some characteristic that some matching algorithm might merge you? From my own experience I know I've had namesakes in two careers I've followed. I've even had an agency send me a contract for one of them for a gig I didn't apply for and which was outside my area of expertise (dumb agents; should go be company names, not people names). And yet neither my given name nor surname come very high on lists of commonest names.
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