Posts by LucreLout

Tax me if you can: VMware UK tosses shrunken offering to HMRC

Yeah, those damn poor and old people, wanting unemployment benefit, healthcare and pensions. And you with your schools.

Unemployment is and has been for the past decade, a choice. We've had near on 5 million people move here form eastern Europe and near on all of them have found work, in a language not their own. Credit to them, and in my view they're welcome here.

So what have the domestic unemployed been doing rather than finding work? If Pavl can find a job in Hemel when he's based in Warsaw then why hasn't Sharron from essex found work in her own town?

Universal healthcare doesn't require the NHS. Plenty of other places have it and manage without the wasteful bueacracy that we're shackled to due to the peons inability to seperate unionised greed from service provision. There are better alternative systems.

Schools - most schools in the UK are failing. The teachers are burned out and killing time until the pension kicks in. The school day is to short. The school holidays too long and too often. The grades are gamed to the point of being literally worthless. That you think the schools are a success is ludicrous and demonstrative of the paucity of your position.

Pensions... unless you're paid by the state, you're not getting a pension. The state pension age for Gen X is rising faster than we're ageing. The private pension age is linked to that now too, so that's toast. Only the public sector with their solid gold unearned lottery winnning pensions can expect to retire in this country. Pensions. You must be joking.

Re: Just how much of what I earn do you feel entitled to? And why?

society is entitled to it as it benefits all involved..

No, you want society to have it because you would rather spend MY money on things YOU want but otherwise cannot afford. That's not the same thing as what you propose.

Society needs me to want to work - the public sector lives entirely off the efforts of the private sector because the public sector does not pay tax, it is paid from tax. We long ago passed the peak of the laffer curve, where I've spent the past 5 or 6 years reducing my working hours (I'm down about 40% now) in order to not gain any higher income because it's simply being stolen byt he tax man and wasted on nonsense that I would not fund by choice.

Society, ultimately, is "entitled" to nothing. I earn the money, not society.

unless you prefer to live in a place with no rules and any body can just rob,kill or rape you and your family

Ahh, emotive rhetoric. Nice.

See, the problem with your view is that you can have law & order well within the 20% rate at the outer limits of fairness.

only selfish arseholes dont understand that the only reason they earn a living and not be robbed blind by every immoral bastard is society and good goverment and that requires money.

Law & order doesn't require "good" government and certainly requires only a fraction of the price we pay in taxes.

I earn a living because of my own efforts: nothing whatever to do with "society".

See those roads, you, the company you own/work at uses them.. society made that..

I paid for the roads decades ago. I pay for the repair, such that it is, with sky high fuel and road taxes. Not income tax. Not one penny of that sees the transport system.

See the police that stop any twat robbing you, the company you own/work at uses them.. society made that..

You're going to find that the police preservation of law and order extends only so far as stopping the generally law abiding victims from delivering retribution upon the entirely law breaking criminals. It protects me from nothing, and only protects them from me.

everything society does to improve "life" for all benefits you..

No it doesn't. Not remotely. Not tangentially. Not at all. "Society", whatever you perceive that to be in your fevered delusions, does nothing for me. I pay more than enough for anything your "society" may be doing of use in the first 20% of my taxes. The rest is exclusively waste.

yes it's not perfect and the present bunch of greedy selfish twats have made it worse...

They have, but referring to all public sector workers as twats is a bit harsh.

Re: taxing

Indeed, legal but not very moral.

According to whose moral framework?

Tax avoidance (not evasion) is perfectly fine in my moral framework; after all, it is MY money that I earned.

Big problem is complexity of UK tax laws, they need radically simplifying, and tax evasion treated as guilty until proven innocent - currently you can have ludicrously intricate systems in place that are legal but constructed purely to avoid tax, not for any other business reason, and companies can happily avoid tax.

If you want to have a system that companies and individuals cannot exploit for their own best outcome then the only answer that is workable is a flat tax that is perpetually kept low. 20% of everything, nothing more and no exemptions. It's low enough to not be worth avoiding, and high enough to pay for what the state needs to do. The more you earn the more you pay, so its "progressive" for whatever corruption of that word you prefer. Everything else has avoidance baked in with evasion coming on line when the rake gets excessive.

If these structures, with no compelling other business reason, were automatically treated as evasion then companies would have to pay their due.

I can construct a ludicrously simple system that avoids the taxes you propose. The only way to increase the take and actually be "fair" is a low flat tax that the state has to learn to budget within. My employer has the same conversation with every chancellor of the exchequer every year when year after year they pay us a visit (literally) and ask us to "follow the spirit of the law", which is nonsense as the law has no spirit, only words forming rules which we obey.

Poor emotion driven article

"No doubt others who generate more than half a billion in sales locally will find cunning loopholes to (legally) avoid their fair share."

And the definition of the word "fair" that you're using is what? And why?

Just how much of what I earn do you feel entitled to? And why?

Tax above 20% of GDP is simply waste. There's nothing the state needs to do that done efficiently could not be done with the first 20% of our earnings.

'He must be stopped': Missouri candidate's children tell voters he's basically an asshat

Re: There are some people that the

@Killing Time

Where you say 'indeed' I assume you agree with the quoted statement.

Yeah, I should have been clearer - I agree we did just fine without many of the taxes we now have to endure. That most of it is wasted I also agree with. I don't agree that its of the order of 90% wasteage though - it's probably closer to 50-50 between things of use done badly and things not of use at all. Very little done by the state is done well and delivers real value - parts of the military, foreign bribes (they call it aid but lets have it right), but the rest if in dire need of reform.

Maybe a bit of a simple outlook because I failed to make a political point or take a dig at a section of society however I subscribe to the KISS principal, it's served me well over the years.

My intention wasn't to have a dig at public sector workers - badly designed systems, low skilled management etc are not their fault. What is their fault is the lack of drive, flexibility, and their utterly appalling union reps. These things underpin a lot of the problems.

Most public secotr working practices date right out of the 1970s, and most of the union members actually think that is a good thing. Unfortunately, since public sector workers don't pay tax (they're paid from tax) they see little need to reform to deliver greater value to the tax payer. And that has led us where we are.

Re: It's Missouri

Sounds like a good precedent: maybe the Democrats could nominate a dead man (or woman!) as their next Presidential candidate.

As long as their candidate is not now nor ever has been a Clinton, they'd probably find they do rather better. The world is tired of the Clintons and Bushes playing Hatfields & McCoys over the Whitehouse.

Cannot a constitutional amendment be scheduled to disallow candidacy from any Presedential relations? We could time limit it to say 250 years? I'd love to see the same thing over here - how many Kinnocks does politics need? Have we not earned a rest?!

Re: There are some people that the

Some people have no idea nor memory of when we did just fine without many taxes. Nor how only 10% of taxes collected actually provide any kind of benefit -- not a very good return on investment.

Indeed. The tax base is near all time highs and the upper limit of what is possible to extract from the economy (commonly understood to be 40%).

The sad reality is that Labours Liam Byrne was right in his note "Sorry, there's no money left". It's already spent and there is simply no more money left for the public sector to consume. Given the weaponised nature of the NHS, the government are right not to touch it - leave it for the next labour government to enforce reforms upon, for reforms will have to be enforced.

The national debt, even ignoring the trillions public sector workers feel they are due in pensions, has hit the stage where interest at generational low rates, is costing £50 Billion per year. So there's no more taxes to take and no more debt to accrue.

The state, all of it, is going to have to find a way to function while consuming a lot less money than it does at present or we are all going to have to find a way to function without the state. There's no magic money tree, nothing left to tax, and nobody to borrow from.

Budget 2018: UK goes it alone on digital sales tax for tech giants

..and the corporations will pass the cost of that tax straight on to us as higher prices.

Sorry, but there will be no cost to the corporations, not many anyway. Or better put, not the intended targets.

Some facts:

1. DST is only intended to run until OECD/G20 tax comes in.

2. DST is in consultation with a 2020 implementation date.

3. OECD is in consultation also with a 2020 implementation date.

4. DST has a "safe harbour" exemption for those of a loss making persuasion.

5. There is no requirement to have a legal entity registered in the UK in order to have a web site accessible from the UK.

6. DST is intended to raise £400M

7. We have no means of determining how much Google makes from UK search Vs its Android division or any of the other letters in the Alphabet Soup.

Thus, we can determine the following opinions:

DST will cost the Treasury a lot of money (fact 1) and in all likelihood raise nothing because we'll implement OECD by the time DST is ready (facts 2 & 3).

Amazon won't pay a penny in DST because it makes a loss (facts 4 & 7). Google can probably restructure to achieve the same thing (facts 5 & 7). Apple might take a hit, but barely; we can't actually force companies to register for some type of self assesment by which we could calculate their DST if they don't require a physical presence here.

They're avoiding what is frankly a trivial tax split between even just the 4 main players (fact 6).

It makes for a good announcement but will in all likelihood either only raise revenue from unintended targets (How many web sites have a search feature that isn't google? Digital publishing step right up), or would in any case raise less than MPs spend on their pensions.

If you saw a Google ad recently, know that it helped pay off one of its 'sex pest' execs $90m

Re: different rules

That's basically kicking the victim in the shins once more.

It's also sparing "the victim" and the company from what would otherwise be an inevitable trial at which facts would be established and proven, or they wouldn't. If you want to sack someone on another persons say so, you're going to need evidence to back that up, which given the nature of the cases under discussion, may be very difficult to obtain. Presumably if there was sufficient evidence, the perpetrator would have been arrested, tried, and found guilty; dismissal without recompense them becomes easy to achieve.

Where there really isn't any objective evidence, just two parties with differing verions of events, the avoidance of a trial is less bad PR for the company, less traumatic for the accuser, and produces a defined outcome that all parties can live with. It's also a lot cheaper in terms of lawyers - tens or hundreds of millions at stake will tend to produce legal teams at the higher end of the billing spectrum.

Amazon is at this point a money-printing cloud machine with a grocery store in the parking lot

Re: Indeed

Expect calls for a dividend if AWS revenues continue to grow like this.

That'd really increase the tax due, so I'm not expecting a dividend any time soon. Amazon will simply redeploy the earnings into other growth areas for them, and continue the R&D based tax reduction to ensure revenues continue to grow at the current ballistic rate.

AWS is my main (only?) reason for buying Amazon shares - I'm not that interested in the "gift shop".

Leaked memo: No internet until you clean your bathroom, Ecuador told Julian Assange

Re: hyprocrites

The keyboard warriors here who lack the same level of courage or morals should be ashamed.

Sorry kiddo, but in my considerd opinion, Assange has no morals and certainly no courage.

If I'd coaxed Brad Manning into doing what he did, I'd be sat in the cell next to his. When Chelsea Manning was released, I'd have been very pleased for her indeed. Julian is still hiding from his part int he whole affair because, I believe, he is a coward.

Don't lionise people and institutions so much, no living ones anyway, because they invariably turn out not to be who you thought they were - see generic lefites and Aung Sann Suu Kyi.

So, yes, I lack his morals and level of courage, because I actually have a moral framework, and the balls to back it up when called to account.

I can't make up my mind. Are you actually Julian, or just his pussy? (come on mods, the goal was open, I had the ball....)

I don't understand why people think this is unreasonable. If it was my embassy he wouldn't have been allowed to bring a cat in the first place.

My embassy dogs would have seen it off. If it's my embassy, it has dogs.

Re: Why would he leave?

Embassy should make him pay his way. Bit of admin , clean the toilets , make the brews

Any civilised thinking person would have offered to do all that on day one.

what would they charge him with? - he is not a US citizen

What possible defence to anything do you think that provides? American law considers that it has global reach, and his crimes are against American interests, so he's certainly within what they consider to be the scope of their law.

While Trump has expressed in interest in Assange, Obama's administration did not.

Indeed - he waited out one President, who barely even knew he existed, and who pardonned the person he got to do his dirty work, and waited until another was in situ who may be more volatile and definitely is aware of his existence. Stupidity reigns.

Putting it bluntly, had he left at the time Sweden wanted him, he'd be a free man by now. Have you seen the prisons in Sweden, he'd have more freedom there that he does in London.

Yes, but then he'd most likely be a convicted rapist or other flavor of sex offender. That'd rather undermine what he perceives as his credibility. Having made up the lie of hiding from American aggression and using it as an excuse to duck the Swedish investigation, he pretty much can't come out, at least unless we grant him safe passage to a non-extradition country, which we obviously won't do.

It's clear Ecuador is getting a little more than pissed off as well since they are now giving him rules that he must adhere to.

I assume if they had any idea he'd still be in the embassy all these years later, they'd have turned his request down flat.

Ultimately, the best way to make sure he leaves is to simply deny him the oxygen of publicity. He seems to me to be a shallow megalomaniac with an ego the size of a small planet (or spacestation). Denying him external communication is a good way to reduce that oxygen. He'll never leave otherwise.

There is no possible future in which either the UK grants safe passage to a non-extradition country without leaving the embassy and being arrested for bail jumping, and there is no possibility of an American president granting him immunity such that he feels safe from extradition. The irony being, of course, that Sweden was a lot less likely to extradite him than we are - see the "Natwest three" for details. Eventually, he's going to just have to leave and face the music - the only real question is how much he's willing to make his children suffer before he does, or whether he dies of cancer or something beforehand.

GDPR stands for Google Doing Positively, Regardless. Webpage trackers down in Europe – except Big G's

Re: Google is headed for a Republican beatdown

A good government is one of those as it requires (at least in democracies) a well educated population.

The problem with that premise is that so very many Labour voters vote for them because great grandad did. You have whole families in the SPRoS (Socialist Peoples Republic of Sunderland) that have never voted for any other party in any general election. That isn't an education issue, its almost a religious problem.

Now, as a floating voter, I can well understand why both Major and Brown were kicked into touch, but in Sunderland they genuinely believed what we needed was another 5 years of Gordon Brown wrecking the economy. They believed it based on something akin to faith, because certainly all the facts were screaming in the opposite direction - no reason was applied, so no benefit of education would accrue.

I forget who said "Governments are like nappies: both must be changed often, and for the same reasons", but they were most assuredly correct.

AI's next battlefield is literally the battlefield: In 20 years, bots will fight our wars – Army boffin

Re: Humans will always have the most important battlefield role

Saddam was a violent thug but he at least used his violent thuggery to keep the sectarian violence under control.

Only if you completely discount the gassing the Kurds with chemical weapons, and a whole host of other murderous events.

You sort of give your prejudices away by saying "the leading cause of death amongst the muslim civillians, was other muslims".

No, I don't, because I have no prejudices. You, however, give away yours with such a careless and emotive response.

The killing was mostly tribal-grouping and power-grabbing, religious sectarianism was part of it but had nothing specifically to do with being muslim.

Unfortunately that simply isn't true. The violence was sect based, Sunni Vs Shia etc, which you will find is all Islam based. Thus, the leading cause of premature death of muslims remains other muslims. Camouflaging it as tribal is deliberately missing the point.

America may make a convenient scapegoat, but that is all it is. Playing to the cheap seats. Fractions withn Islam is the real underlying cause of the violence. Until that issue is addressed, there will not be peace. And that, that really is nothing to do with America and the UK.

Thems the facts folks; Love 'em or hate 'em, they are what they are. Any solution to the problem will only come from dealing with the facts, not from blaming all the worlds ills on the USA, which will achieve nothing.

Re: Humans will always have the most important battlefield role

That's why the US invaded countries like Iraq and left behind masses of casualties

The vast majority of people killed in Iraq were killed by insurgents long after America had completed their war. There, as in almost every conflict since records began, the leading cause of death amongst the muslim civillians, was other muslims. It's never been the Americans.

Facts... use facts to inform your view, because your emotions can't inform the facts.

Re: Humans will always have the most important battlefield role

A nation only takes to war if they can't get what they want without killing people, therefore the killing people is the whole point of war.

Again, it isn't. The point is resource depletion to fold the state and achieve regime change. Killing people is a side effect of that goal not the goal itself.

Re: Humans will always have the most important battlefield role

The entire point of war is to kill people.

No, no it isn't. I mean, I can see why if you'd never studied military history or new anything rational about modern warfare (other than playing the game), that you might think it, but you'd be wrong.

The point of warfare is to deplete the enemies resources such that he cannot maintain aggression and state function. Think about it: all the people never get killed. From about WWII soldiers have injured each other in preference to wholesale slaughter, because it takes more resources to fix a wounded soldier than it does to dig a hole in the ground and train a new one.

The main problem with drone wars, of course, is going to be the penchant for a certain type of combatant to hide amongst civilians in plain clothes, and for those civilians to allow them to do so. Then, as now, those civillians are going to end up as collateral damage.

300,000 BT pensioners await Court of Appeal pension scheme ruling

Re: Another option to tackle the pension deficit

Another option to tackle the pension deficit

is for BT to pay less to shareholders and more into the scheme. Tada! problem solved.

No really.

What would happen then is that shareholders would sell (NPV is a DCF of all future distributions). The share price would fall. Their borrowing cost would go through the roof as a result. The investment in R&D, infrastructure etc would bottom out. That'd lead to cutting costs, so redundancies. Lots of them.

Now, there's a fair argument that unsustainable businesses should be allowed to fail, and they should, but the pensions lifeboat for DB schemes can't support the deadweight of BT, and so all those pensioners that thought they'd won would find out they'd lost. By lost I mean mandatory haircuts on payouts, and no indexation of payments made before 97, with a 2.5% cap on those coming after.

In short, it'd completely and utterly screw over the current staff, the shareholders, the bond holders, and the pensioners. Nobody would win.

I realise you won't like what I've written, but it remains true whatever your feelings about it.

Re: I blame the cursed one

a bit like selling off massive UK gold reserves when the price of gold was low. Economic genius that bloke!

A singularly stupid event, having telegraphed to the market what his trade was going to be before he made it, resulting in the price dropping out of gold just before he arrived to sell it. An event, still known to this day in the markets as "the Brown bottom". Seems appropriate.

Re: I blame the cursed one

I remember when the companies continued to take contributions from employees but took pension holidays themselves *and* raided the pension funds to 'reinvest' in themselves down the pub ... Now they find themselves in pension deficit ... bar stewards

You can thank Gordon Brown again for that one - he made it illegal for them to pay more in and enforced the "contribution holiday".

Re: I blame the cursed one

20 years later, and defined pensions are a thing of the past.

Unfortunately the problem is that they're not. Sure, in the private sector they are, but they continue to be utterly prevalent, and just as unaffordable, throughout the public sector. Urgent reform is needed in order to prevent a massive default on their arrangements.

Don't make us pay compensation for employee data breach, Morrisons begs UK court

Re: Morrisons vicariously liable but not at fault

Also I presume you have (successfully) lobbied your employer to ban employees having personal devices in the workplace and thus you yourself don't carry a personal mobile phone....

You presume wrong. I haven't lobbied for anything. The company has its own rules that long pre-date my working here, so yes, my personal mobile goes into a locker before I go onto the trading floor. Everyones does. It's really no kind of problem at all.

Re: Morrisons vicariously liable but not at fault

Imagine that an employee takes a photograph of a sensitive document to which he or she had authorised access, how is an employer supposed to detect that?

Why does the employee need a personal device in the workspace? Go chat to anyone that's worked at a hedgie or on a trading floor and you'll pretty quickly see that lots of places dealing with sensitive info don't permit personal phones.

If Morrisons chooses to run that risk then they should rightly be considered to have chosen to be liable.

Security is always a balance, but then, so are operational costs. Fines when an employee goes rogue are part of the cost of doing business. It's not like their customers or most staff get any say in the hiring process.

SpaceX touches down in California as Voyager 2 spies interstellar space

Re: Lack of Astonish!

Meanwhile people are buying that new Volkswagen Passat or BMW 3 series because its cheaper to own over the 4 years they'll have it in their possession.

I can't see how that can be possible.

A 4 year old 3 series will have lost more than half its value. Unless it then goes on to need a new, well, almost everything, it isn't going to cost as much as the depreciation cost the first owner.

An entry level cooking variety 3 series costs a few pounds under 28k. Auto trader has them going from 8k in 2014 spec. That's a 20k loss in depreciation. There's no way on Earth that it'll cost more than that in repairs over the next 4 years; it won't cost more than a couple of grand unless you buy a thrashed & badly maintained car.

High Court of England and Wales blocks iPhone Safari privacy suit against Google

Re: Not suffered damage?

Yeah the judge said he didn't see how having their rights violated caused them damage, which is a pretty worrying thing for a judge to say.

I've used the old DPA against companies in court in the past. I may be mistaken, but the definition of damage in this sense is direct financial loss, rather than other forms of damage. I think it sucks - the way I see it is that causing me months of stress is worse than causing my a couple of grand financial loss.

Re: Next steps

The best that could happen is that the ICO imposes a fine on Google for collecting the data.

Which the ICO won't do because they're basically just a fig leaf that corporations can hide DPA/GDPR breaches behind. A stern letter is the most they'll do.

Re: Next steps

You could of course use the UK small claims court process, because the use of lawyers by companies is frowned upon and usually not awarded costs even if the claimant loses. Question: How many of those affected fancy some DIY Rumpolery through a small claims process? My guess is none.

There is a significant element of costs involved if you make a mistake though. I've seen cases where seemingly trivial breaches of rules or procedures resulted in costs of applications to dismiss reach ££,000.

I have used the courts myself in the past, but only as a last resourt for something very important to me. If I felt the matter in any way trivial, I'd avoid the courts at all times. Staying as far away from lawyers as is possible is a key ingredient to financial success.

Uncle Sam gives itself the right to shoot down any drone, anywhere, any time, any how

Re: "Credible Threat"

How many private drones with cameras are used for legitimate purposes (such as...)?

Inspecting my roof tiles and guttering without needing to go up a very tall ladder, which I don't own. I don't own a drone either mind, but I can see why it'd be useful for this.

US and UK Amazon workers get a wage hike – maybe they'll go to the movies, by themselves

Re: What's the net benefit to workers?

Now I'm confused. If Sanders is a dirty rotten commie why does this policy sound like Thatcherism ?

Because on a left / right scale, the American democrats are way further right than the Conservatives under Thatcher. The Republicans more so.

UK should set its own tax on tech giants if international deal isn't reached – Chancellor

Re: Win win win with new technologies!

this should be as easy as no border in Ireland

Yes, it'd have been a huge help if both sides had been honest that the minute we voted to leave, there was always going to have to be a land border between the republic and NI. The only way it could be different is if Ireland leaves too. Anything else is just a fudge.

Re: What kind of conservatives want to tax everything?

If you truly believe that paying taxes is equivalent to having money stolen from you, then I have to ask you where do you think the funding for building roads and bridges comes from?

The roads and bridges I'm fine to pay tax for, lets round up and call that about 2% of taxes raised. The diversity co-ordinators, middle management, solid gold public sector pensions, and the several armies of administrators, not so much. The vast majority of taxes paid are simply wasted by the state doing work that nobody in the real world would recognise as such, and achieving little or nothing in return.

The productivity gap, if we ignore the adverse impact of millennials, has largely come about because taxes are so high, and the state achieves less value per pound spent than private enterprise; a very important fact when considering the state spends about 40% of GDP according to itself. The governments own numbers indicate they achieve just 70p of value per £1 spent, and thats totally ignoring the fact that what they perceive to be value has little to no impact upon the real world - its just internal reports and administration. The private sector is running around 90p per £1.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/labourproductivity/articles/ukproductivityintroduction/jantomar2017

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/economicoutputandproductivity/publicservicesproductivity/datasets/growthratesandindicesfortotalpublicserviceoutputinputsandproductivitytable1

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/delivering-better-outcomes-for-citizens-practical-steps-for-unlocking-public-value

Re: What kind of conservatives want to tax everything?

The trouble with economics, basic or otherwise, is that it's 10% mathematics, 10% politics and 80% guesswork. Facts may well be facts, but predicting what will happen with a tweak here or there, is too complex to model with any degree of accuracy.

While that makes an entertaining soundbite, that's all it is.

The fact is that as a percentage of GDP and as an absolute amount of money, taxes have almost never been higher than now.

Again, facts people - use them to inform your opinions, not your emotions, which you should be keeping to yourselves far more than is apparent.

Re: What kind of conservatives want to tax everything?

And I would like someone to vote for who is not going to offer yet more monetary bribes, but who would restore the necessary degree of taxes which have been cut over the last three decades so that we can once again properly fund healthcare and schools

The central problem with that thesis, is that the tax take is already at an all time high [1][2]. There's simply no more revenue to get - we're way past the laffer curve now and the only way to increase the tax take from here is to cut taxes rather than raise them.

It's basic economics, and frankly anyone that can't plot this for themselves on a bit of graph paper does not belong in a polling booth. I expect the usual economically illiterate downvoters to appear enmasse, but facts are facts.

Lucre Louts Law: While you can, and should, form an opinion from facts, you cannot form a fact from your opinion.

1 - https://www.ukpublicrevenue.co.uk/past_revenue

2 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/284306/united-kingdom-hmrc-tax-receipts-income-tax/

Re: A thought experiment

If Facebook disappeared tomorrow it would actually solve a whole raft of social problems in this country.

Indeed. Quite why social media isn't "sin taxed" in the way anything else is I cannot fathom. Much of Big Tobacco is beyond our tax jurisdiction because while they operate here, their HQs are abroad... so similar to social meeja nonesense to. What we do instead is tax the purchase/consumption of the product, so packet filtering out farcebook etc unless the consumer (phone/broadband connection) has paid the relevant tax upfront should be simple.

It'd reduce the societal harm this nonsense causes and exacerbates, and would raise a pretty penny for the Treasury too, as most addicts would simply cough up, because, well, they're addicts.

Re: A thought experiment

How massive would the unrest and protest be in the country as millions of addicts demanded their social media fix back immediately? How quickly would he back down?

That'd depend on implementation. A simple £1 per week fee (tax) to have your phone provider allow through farcebook traffic would be a no-brainer for the addicts, and an effective tax on their operations here. Arguably its the easiest tax to implement because most of the plebs lack the skills or knowledge to avoid it.

An actual tax on their efforts can't be applied unilaterally at corporation level and Eyore well knows it. He's grandstanding to look as though he's doing something rather than actually doing something.

Microsoft liberates ancient MS-DOS source from the museum and sticks it in GitHub

Re: To some MSDOS was an major leap forward.

Sounds like good parenting to me - and sound economics.

Good parenting yes, sound economics? No. In reality, his mother has paid 100% of the price tag, not the half claimed; that's just an accounting fiction.

Perhaps kit-buying mothers have a better grasp of economics than self-confessed lucre louts?

Unfortunately there's no evidence for that in either the original post nor yours.

Re: To some MSDOS was an major leap forward.

I saved up my pocket money and bought a ZX81 kit, my mother paid half of the cost.

You saved your pocket money.... and your mum paid half the cost? I dunno if that's commedy genius right there, or just a basic misunderstanding of economics.

New Zealand border cops warn travelers that without handing over electronic passwords 'You shall not pass!'

Re: Define 'search'..

How much tech training do front line border cops get? I suspect even the most basic 'security by obscurity' measures would work.

I might very well have this wrong - its based on hazy recollections of things I've read here rather than applied experience or objective study.

I thought one of the purposes of having you unlock the phone was that it enabled the authorities to image it, and have automated tooling trawl through it at their leisure, while you go on your way. Then if anything is found they simply pick you up and the fun begins.

Re: Mission Creep

What's the number of devices searched in America by comparison? If you're just transiting through, can a forced-search still happen? Probably...

I've been a few times while they've been aloowed to snoop - often with a couple of phones and a number of laptops or tablet type devices. So far I've never been asked anything about them.

I do have some colleagues who simply have "an America phone" now, which is all they'll take with them when they go, due to worries over what might be added to a device while out of their posession. It does make me wonder what'll happen when all the different nations implanted spyware begins to fight for control over a device :)

'Incommunicado' Assange anoints new WikiLeaks editor in chief

Re: "Legal ways"

Joking apart, how about inviting the competent English Court to have a special sitting in the Embassy?

Why? There's no good reason for the courts to bend to the will of this stupid little boy. He can stay on the couch until he dies, or until he's ready to face the music.

Re: Dumb question maybe, but didn't see it mentioned yet...

What's to stop his lawyers sneaking him in a privacy focused 3G/4G phone?

Its an embassy, so presumably they have equipment to detect microphones. Besides, it's likely they'd become aware minutes after his first inane proclaimation.

Nameless Right To Be Forgotten Google sueball man tries Court of Appeal – yet again

Re: Contempt of court?

Judges are human too, they might as well get some satisfaction from their job!

They could, you know, always try and do it properly instead of being quite so soft on recidivist offenders. Crazy talk for sure, but professions are often held to the respect the people working within them are due, which is why nobody likes lawyers.

Re: "ABC's approach has greatly upset the legal establishment"

.... and is apparently doing quite well without them, considering.

Assuming of course that he doesn't eventually lose and get gifted a truly whopping legal bill from the other side.

If you want to get rich or stay rich, there are two types of people you need to minimise contact with - the taxman, and lawyers.

Re: Just out of interest

Is there actually a law that says you must identify yourself in order to seek justice?

Surely anyone defending an action has a right to know their accuser? How could you properly prepare a defence without knowing of what you are accused and by whom?

I hate lawyers, I really do, but in this case, it's hard to see what the legal establishment are doing wrong, rather than simply holding him in contempt - eventually you need to minimise the other guys legal costs too, if only a moral duty.

The obvious conclusion is that if part of the US media choose to out him, the British government and legal system won't even murmur.

Technology, distribution of data, and the world generally has moved so much faster than our legal system is capable of, partly no doubt, because they insist on having the office junior wheel boxes of paper around after them in the street. Might be quicker to send an IM/email/something chaps.

Re: Yeah...

I'm pretty sure this guy is really Lord Buckethead.

Wasn't that GnR's Slash replacement?

US government use of AI is shoddy and failing citizens – because no one knows how it works

Re: How it works

Mechanical and electrical engineers point at software engineers and laugh : there isn't any engineering, they say, just guesswork and testing. Nowadays, just guesswork. And they have a point.

Not really, no. There's plenty of fundamental software engineering practices which is followed will definitively result in higher quality, more maintainable, less buggy code. The "hobbyists" misrepresenting themselves as software engineers are akin to my presenting myself as an actual engineer because I can buold a garden shed. Unfortunately, because software engineering lacks an industry regulator, nobody can stop the hobbyists showing up and claiming parity.