Posts by Doctor Syntax 42029 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"no one had a plan for the result of the referendum to be 'leave'."
I think several did.
A good many of the leavers took Cameron at his word, that he'd stay on, so their plan was to leave it to him. That one's obviously failed.
The rest are just waiting for their plan to kick in, namely, magic happens. Was that a unicorn I heard or just one of next door's bullocks?
"We recommend that the government sets out in its digital strategy the implications of withdrawal from the European Union, in reference to specific, current EU negotiations relating to the digital economy,"
Yes, now we've got greater control by deciding to exit we'll simply be able to decide what we want and then dictate that to the cowering remnant of the EU. It'll all work out perfectly.
"If you're commuting from e.g. Bath to London, the train season ticket will cost you £10,000 a year. A contractor can pay that out of pre-tax income, whereas an employee (even a short-term one) simply can't."
And if the headcount gets cut 3 months in it'll be the freelancer's head that's first in the queue - or maybe it'll just be enforced rate cuts.
The essential point about using freelancers is that it enables the engager to transfer such risks to them. It's the taking on of those risks (including those which might need professional liability issue) that differentiated between being in business and being an employee.
"If HMRC came up with one, single, simple and straightforward set of rules for everyone - no exceptions"
I have an alternative scheme. Everyone has the same tax rates but the stability of the job is viewed as a benefit in kind and taxed accordingly so if you have a nice steady job with long term prospects, say working in HMRC, then you pay accordingly. The honourable friends should be OK with that; after all they can be turfed out at the next election so their job security is much less than Sir Humphrey's. I always reckoned that if the PCG had started a campaign for such an arrangement IR35 would have been dropped PDQ.
@ Preston Munchensonton
I wonder what your experience of freelancing is. It's essential to have a contract for services, not a contract of service, AKA an employment contract.
It's a good while since I retired but after IR35 came in I made sure I had non employment terms. It helped that I had a number of direct contracts and very few through agencies. However there were many reports of contract problems. One situation was that the agency would issue business-like contracts to freelancers and employment-like contracts with the engagers and got a precedent set by taking a guy to tribunal who was so ill the hearing had to take place in his home so it didn't get properly defended.
The consequence is that the engager is able to load the risks onto the freelancer so that in the event of a downturn or a project being canned they can be dumped without any redundancy payments but are in danger of being taxed like a permie with all the permie protections.
The problem is HR drones who don't understand the difference and CBA to find out. If they had the responsibility for ensuring proper B2B terms they'd simply get a different set of boilerplate clauses and that would be the end of the matter.
"public sector employers"
The term "employer" is prejudicial here. The better term in "engager". If a freelancer contract is fit for purpose then the engager should not be an employer. Naughty HMRC.
If the burden were shifted to them engagers - and agencies - would have a simple solution: ensure that all contracts were unambiguously contracts for services. It's what they've been told for years but they couldn't be arsed to sort themselves out.
Legacy IT is what keeps the business running that brings in the money that pays (inter alia) for new developments. Experienced sysadmins know this. Inexperienced ones will discover it and become experienced. (Who cares about what the hipsters know?) Disrupting the smooth operation of that legacy is very expensive.
Historically MS have been simply pushing the burden onto in-house admins; the disruption simply hasn't been on their radar. Now they're discovering for themselves that it's not just a matter of installing new shiny every couple of years or so.
"BT Openreach must get their fingers out and roll-out FTTP a lot faster to replace half-arsed FTTC already!"
Are you prepared to pay for them to dig up the road and whatever else lies between you and the nearest point where they can connect to existing fibre maybe even lay more fibre from the exchange if necessary? If not, who do you think should pay for that? And who should forego their FTTC installations whilst you've commandeered a gang of diggers to do that?
"He seemed a bit surprised when I said that."
Probably the only ones they can successfully recruit have no idea to start with and then get put through an induction that tells them how wonderful the company is. Take it as an opportunity to explain at considerable length, and clearly audible to passers by just how dreadful the company really is. Ensure that the name TalkTalk is mentioned at sufficiently regular intervals so the passers by are in no doubt who you're talking about.
"Nobody cares about the client/salesperson/sales order/HR table referential integrity that RDMS obsess about."
In order to play about with your large scale data sets you need a working business to pay the bills. A business that sells goods and services. If there isn't someone to obsess about ACID qualities in the database* that supports that business then your big data is going to get its budget yanked from under it and will, in any case, be pointless.
*The database may well be providing the data sets in the first place.
"At the moment, BT would just appeal to the EU and it would be overthrown as there's a similar problem in Germany with Deutsche Telecom."
And if OR were to be split off how long do you think it would be before it was bought by Deutsche Telecom, or Telefonica - or maybe SoftBank?
"The company borrows money for capital projects that will be repaid over 10 or more years."
And do you think that isn't happening at BT?
There are a few considerations.
One is how much money can be borrowed at any one time? We'll come back to that.
The next is how fast can it be spent productively? Building infrastructure requires a skilled workforce. Training that workforce is an investment in itself. What's more, as more infrastructure is built some of that workforce has to be redirected into maintaining it. If you go for a very rapid roll-out you have to spend a lot of money training a large workforce, then pay them to do the job over a short period of time, then you have to retain a proportion of that workforce and pay off the rest as redundancies. It's not a very productive way to spend money. Who hasn't either told their management - or wanted to tell them - "good, cheap, quick, pick any two"?
The third is what return can be made? My observation is that some years after the local FTTC network has been rolled out users are still being connected. It's taking time to get to that return.
The value for money vs speed of roll out and the rate at which returns can be realised determine how much can be borrowed. Nobody is going to want to lend BT or a separate OR money if they're going to have difficulty in paying interest and repaying capital.
And while nobody could be less keen than I on having BT proposing that I want to pay to watch football, presumably they think that it's an offer that's going to improve ROI.
"At present it is becoming ever more obvious that OpenReach's priority is to install ever faster fibre in places where Virgin or some other provider already offers a fibre service. It ignores rural communities where there is no competition"
I live in a rural community. I have FTTC with a cabinet at the end of the lane. What is this Virgin of which you write?
"separating Railtrack (now Network Rail) from the Train Operating Companies"
It always seemed to me that that was a bad idea. It ensures that the objectives of the single company providing the infrastructure can never be aligned with those of all the various companies using it.
It's a fair comment that as part of the BT group OpenReach's objectives are going to be more aligned with those of BT than of any of the other companies. But as an independent company they could well be a choice of 1. Make less investment and just collect rent from what's there. 2. Respond to the requirements of the largest customer which is going to be...who?..oh, the rest of BT.
Really, if the likes of TalkTalk want to investment in infrastructure to match their own objectives they need to make that investment themselves, rather than complaining that somebody else isn't making it for them. Or are they too cash strapped by the huge investment they've made over the years to provide themselves with such world-beatingly secure systems?
"They made £2.664bn in ONE year, so they are investing 37% of their income, not making a loss."
It also says an investment of £6b over the next 3 years. Remember that the £2.64b is EBITDA Depending on what the IDTA amount to it looks as if the plan is to invest almost all, if not more than the whole of the net earnings.
The question remains, if OpenReach were to be split off and investment were to rise considerably, where's the money going to come from? Especially given that the split-off part would inherit part of BT's pension deficit and, presumably, the commitment to fill that share.
"That value for end users is going to have to be "it does something useful". Something like turning the lights on, controlling the heating, monitors for movement whilst the user is away, smart door lock, etc. etc."
And it also has to do it so much better than existing, simple, alternatives. Given that switches, thermostats and locks have been solved problems for a very long time it narrows down the real user value to a very few use cases and hipsters.
"It's a bit of a culture shock but I'm happy with the end result."
I had a trial run at BSD some months ago. It depends where you're coming from. My background includes Unix V7, System III, HP-UX, SCO, Dynix and various other Sys-Vs so another Unix version is just another Unix version.
