Be Excellent To Each Other

Also, since when has simpler tax been attractive to large corporates? I have a fair inkling that big companies have well paid tax lawyers that don't particularly struggle with this shit.

Ireland would have been more fucked without 10% (now 12.5%) tax. Think about it, all its domestic businesses were making losses so the home tax base was nil regardless of the rate. Therefore the only material corporate tax receipts from 2008 to present come from businesses that are "there" (not really there) for the low tax rate.

If they'd jacked up the rate to help fill the gap they'd have all left overnight which is why the EU reluctantly removed it from their list of bailout demands.

I do find the tax system a bit odd. A contractor can be payed twice or more than myself yet pay less tax. Granted he doesn't get the benefits of leave and a pension but he gets paid a vast amount more.

Also I imaging many plumbers and builders get the same benefits and get paid cash in hand also.


I know its not all like that and there are reasons for taking this approach for some self employed people but when I know people earning way more and paying less tax it annoys me a little.

It annoys me when Lewis Hamilton parades around with a Union Flag and owns a bulldog and stuff like that when he says he has no intention of leaving tax exile.

Not at all, my point was that that they are cheaper rate wise and the bands look to be a lot simpler so little wonder all the blue chips pretended all there income is generated in Ireland whilst having huge presence and people in the UK.

The Big Society's Economic Boom, as expressed through the medium of foodback usage:



Shameful. Almost a million people relying on charity to not go hungry. The government's response? "The initial Conservative reaction to leaks of the report – which is formally published today – was hostile, with one minister claiming the increased use of food banks was due to greater publicity about their existence." Right. People only go to food banks because they know they exist.

It's clearly the fault of the foodbanks for existing. If they weren't there then the greedy poor would have to buy their food instead of getting it for free and spending all their massive state handouts on fags and tattoos.

It's OK, though, because employment is at a record high; ignore the man behind the curtain waving the zero-hour contract with below-poverty-level pay rates. That man doesn't exist.

Do you really think that people go to food banks just to get free food they don't need?

Fuck me, learn to recognise sarcasm dude.

To be fair there are plenty of people saying exactly that with no sarcasm intended.

How many of them are short Welsh social justice warriors?

Question time bun fight with Farage and Brand

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2RSKJC-ugk

A disabled guy shut Brand down telling him he should stand for parliament.

a) I think there's some merit to the idea that foodbank usage has gone up due to publicity. I basically had no idea they existed in this country until recently. (Could I have used them in 2007 as a student? I remember having a single bag of rice for a week once...).

b) I don't think someone offering "advice" or criticism of the current political situation should have to stand for Parliament. If anything that's the opposite of what they should do. To stand for parliament you have to give a shit about a local constituency. If you ignore them then you're just as bad as the people you're complaining about.

There's chicken and egg to this. If the number of foodbanks had stayed at 2005 levels, then there is no way that the number of people using them in 2013 could possibly have used them. So yes, to a degree, I agree. Of course people don't setup food banks for shits and giggles without a need (although, I am aware of one company making profits out of servicing them).

I'm actually slightly surprised that Cameron hasn't seized on the increased use and number of Foodbanks as a shining example of the Big Society that he aimed for at work.

Yes, it's horrible that people cannot afford to eat, and that state benefits might or might not be sufficient to cover even this essential. However, we shouldn't be too ashamed that civil society has stepped into the breach. Whether it should or not is a seperate political question, but I don't think we should criticise the existence of such charity, but only the necessity of it.

It comes down to the old canard about whether increased supply increases demand, which I've never been convinced by (particularly if the existing suppy is not being overrun with demand - I don't believe foodbanks in 2005 were turning people away because they had too many clients). And, as you say, it's not as if most of these have been set up for a laugh.

Also, living off one bag of rice for a week is part of being a student, Pod. It's character building.

One bag of rice? Luxury!

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That guy happens to be the brother of a UKIP MEP it would seem.

I don't see anyone is doing the former, only the latter.

American right-wingers, and particularly libertarians, are quite open about the fact they believe all sorts of societal safety nets should be removed from the state and placed in the hands of private-run charities or insurance firms. I suspect this is what Cameron believes too, given the current Conservative party's ideological push to reduce the size of the state to extreme levels; but he (probably correctly) feels he can't be too obvious about it in public without causing a shitstorm.

Yes. It's brilliant.

Hope the dick reads it!

That is really well written.

I like that too.

I do like Russell Brand, he is obviously intelligent and his heart is the right place, I just wish he would actually do something to try and help, rather than just carp from the sidelines. Once he is actually in the mire and trying to do something, he might realise that grandstanding a-level student political opinions doesn't actually help that much.

(albeit GCSE 'Foundation Paper' more like)

Mind you, he's not the only one...

That's absolutely brilliant. He's clearly wasted in IT or whatever he's doing for RBS.

Yes.

I have to say, I think Brand's reply is significantly better.

Indeed.

I honestly believe his heart is in this, and he's already got the facts of the situation on his side - governments are effectively owned (funded) by, and run for, the benefit of the rich with the banks operating as pseudo-governments - the progress of the mid-20th century towards equality has been scarily unwound since the 80s.

For all his flaws, I like Brand, I don't like the guy moaning about his lunch getting cold.

It was a very well worded non-answer to all the points in the first letter though. That's Brand all over, he makes arguments that are difficult to disagree with but often nothing to do with the questions he is being asked.

I think he would make a much better politician than he claims, he's already got the main quality down pat...

Well, the thing is, most of what the guy in the open letter says is bollocks. I've only got up to the 'shouting in the face' bit, which I can't speak to, but by then he's racked up a load of inaccuracies and basically made out as if RBS are massively ethical people who will stop any bonus being paid and will claw back any previous bonus if someone has done wrong or made a long term bad investment, which is obviously a complete, intentional lie.

As for the bailout being an investment scheduled to make a profit, here we are six years on with the bank still at 70% of the value it was bought for. Add on the risk free return rate possible as a worst case and we're still a long fucking time from seeing any return, so selling the bailout as good value is again warping the truth at best.

Between all that and the apparent factual inaccuracies about why Brand was there and what he has tried to do, it just stinks. It's almost as if he showed up without a clue as to what was going on, got annoyed, and then tried to back his workplace against the person annoying him.

But far be it from me to criticise someone who wants to eat their lunch and will blame someone whose fault it wasn't for that.

Frankly I will by default side with a man angry about lunch, to be honest.

I've offed bitches for getting in the way of my lunch before now.

Brand's problem is that he can see as well as anyone that plenty of things are wrong and pretty broken. However, what he thinks he has but actually doesn't is any greater insight than my cat or, in fairness, really anyone else as to what to actually do about it. That is despite the fact that many of the issues he raises are already the subjects of active debate amongst many thousands of people far cleverer than Russell Brand, anyone on here or even my cat. His solution seems to be REVOLUTION! and then some John Lennon type bollocks about Buddhism and anarchy and everyone just being nice to each other.

However, where I agree with him is that anyone working for RBS really should wind their fucking neck in. RBS prick got his letter retweeted so much not really because people particularly agreed with his points about the bank but mostly just because they dislike Russell Brand and they thought it was just hilarious that he hinged the whole thing around missing his lunch.

As I recall this rant seemed to go down just as well on Twitter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf7a53y9RRM#t=49

Nicky Morgan -- Gove's replacement at education -- seems to have Grayling's habit of Simply Making Shit Up.

It would appear the government is selling the remaining 30% of its Royal Mail shares.

Quoting the press release:

"The transaction will be designed to deliver best value for money to the taxpayer, with further detail on the form of the sale to be announced in due course.

"Shares in the Royal Mail were initially floated at 330p per share, and were trading at 526p at market close yesterday."

Doesn't sound like the initial sale delivered value for money to the taxpayer, does it?

The Royal Mail raised £430m in profit last year, by the way, so is a contributer to the public purse.

Seems short sighted to me. Much like the ludicrous extension of right to buy.

Probably the pensions, init.

Royal Mail pension liability was nationalised in 2012, ahead of privatisation of the Royal Mail itself. The taxpayer is still on the hook for those.

So retain the biggest liability and sell the profitable part for about 60% of its value.
Can anyone explain how this made sense?

If you ask me, I'd tell you that austerity is a lie designed to capitalise on people's misunderstanding of macroeconomics and cloak the implementation of a small-state ideology that would otherwise provoke outrage. But other political opinions exist.

In unrelated news, I may have mentioned before that I regularly walk my dog past Nick Clegg's house. Up until last week, there were always two police officers on guard outside it, 24/7. They're gone now. I find that quite a poignant reminder of the death of a political party; as one wag on Twitter put it, the Liberal Democratic party is now more of a soirée.

Poor Clegg's been banned from Russia too.

I was off sick yesterday so watched PMQs and the tributes to Charles Kennedy. Clegg made another very dignified speech: I fear we've lost one of the finest politicians of our age .

PMQs was interesting, apart from the tedious SNP whose major contribution was saying something about how if the UK government didn't want to do such and such, they knew a parliament up the road that did. This is the standard of things to come, the SNP gurning and carping at every fucking turn. Harriet was very off form, stumbling every time she tried to say 'the last 5 years'.

So, Charlie wrote to a Labour health secretary arguing against cuts to homoeopathic services on the NHS. But wouldn't that make them more effective?

Oh, well played Sir