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February 2014

To answer Ritchie’s question

According to The Telegraph, a Taxpayers’ Alliance campaign to have national insurance renamed Eranings Tax is likely to be successful.

A number if, inevitable thoughts follow on. The first is that this is, despite all the claims, not a tax. There is still a contributory principle in national insurance, for example, in pension rights. Given how keen the government is on that idea I wonder how this renaming helps them.

Second, if this is to be called an Earnings Tax the obvious question to ask us why then only earnings are taxed. Why should unearned income such as rents, dividends and interest not be taxed?

Because an earnings tax won’t be charged upon things that aren’t earnings. Like, say, “unearned” income.

And third, the question as to why such large scale avoidance of the tax is permitted in the case of small limited companies.

Because that’s the way the law is: as a retired accountant from Wandsworth pointed out to us some years ago. And used the technique in managing his own tax affairs as well.

Christian Aid sure is a funny organisation

In their new report on tax and inequality in Africa they say this:

In Kenya’s case, this move is aggravated by the implementation of the new money transfer tax, an additional tax burden for the poor.

This is, of course, the same Christian Aid which insists there should be a financial transaction tax here in the EU which would be an additional tax burden for the poor.

Consistency, this is nothing like it.

Where do these people get their economics from?

An increase in housing supply will do nothing to reduce prices if it caters for an entirely different demand.

You what? Seriously, where is this piffle being cooked up?

The proposals would allow for new developments to be almost twice the guideline size for affordable housing.

Eh? So building twice as many houses won’t increase the supply of housing by, umm, twice as much?

The impact of a free-for-all will be huge – not only because developers are likely to prefer to convert remaining heritage outbuildings, but because of the chilling effect this prospect is already having on schemes to build homes for local people.

Since the reduction in capital grants, the best mechanism for creating affordable housing has been through granting planning permission on so-called exception sites. Where the landowner knows there is no possibility of selling to developers at open market housing rates, affordable housing is cross-subsidised by a small percentage of open market value properties.

But with the prospect of a free run at open market development with few strings attached, values are set to rise sharply and we will kiss goodbye to the only realistic opportunity for development land at prices that can deliver housing for local people.

Lawksalive. She really is insisting that building more houses will raise house prices.

Suburbanisation of our national parks might also deliver the final coup de grace to their fragile ecosystems, already under pressure from changing grazing patterns over recent decades. While cattle and sheep make way for pony paddocks in lower lying areas, loss of grazing livestock from the open moor will lead to a further degradation from heather to gorse. Who can blame them if hill farmers, asset rich and cash flow near zero, opt to fragment or sell their holdings and livestock. They have long struggled to maintain their way of life with scant recognition of their service to conserve this precious landscape on our behalf.

And then she worries that more entirely unproductive land might be opened up as space to build those scarce houses upon?

Sarah Wollaston is a Tory MP.

We’re fucked, aren’t we?

Well, no, not really

When Kurzweil first started talking about the “singularity”, a conceit he borrowed from the science-fiction writer Vernor Vinge, he was dismissed as a fantasist. He has been saying for years that he believes that the Turing test – the moment at which a computer will exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human – will be passed in 2029. The difference is that when he began saying it, the fax machine hadn’t been invented. But now, well… it’s another story.

The fax machine was invented back in, I think, 1928, in Japan. Something to do with the difficulty of sending kanji (?) down a telegraph wire.

Hmm, looking that up I’m out by a number of years. First fax patent was in 1843

Fairtrade Foundation wants to screw consumers

Ho hum:

The Fairtrade Foundation is calling on the government to intervene in a banana price war in supermarkets that is putting pressure on suppliers and ,it claims, could lead to shortages.

The foundation, which aims to protect farmers in developing countries, says the price of bananas in UK supermarkets has nearly halved in the past 10 years to just 11p, while farmers at the same time have seen costs double.

As ever they’re failing to see that this economy thing is all about making the consumer the very bestest off that we possibly can.

Or as Adam Smith put it:

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.

And as to what is actually happening in this market:

Gidney said some supermarkets may also be losing “hundreds of thousands of pounds per week” by selling bananas at a loss and called on the government to investigate what he called a “dysfunctional market”, which was not good for farmers, retailers or consumers in the long term.

But the British Retail Consortium denied that farmers were being squeezed.

“The fact that supermarkets are choosing to sell bananas at below margin cost has no relationship to what they are paying producers. Producers are getting a good price and customers are getting a good price as well. Supermarkets sell such an enormous range of products that they can choose to sell particular products at a loss.”

That is, sales of bananas are higher than they would otherwise be without the supermarket subsidies to the retail price. And this bonehead is complaining that banana farmers are losing out because they get higher sales without any decline in price as a result of said subsidy?

How about that? Depositor bail in works for bust banks

The Cypriot economy did not shrink by 20pc after the banks collapsed last March, as some feared. It did not even shrink by 8.7pc, as the Troika had expected. The final figure for 2013 has just come in at 5.4pc. The EU-IMF team has for once been confounded by success after vastly underestimating the damage of austerity in a string of countries.

It’s almost as if it’s the sensible thing to do. Those who have state insurance, those with deposits up to €100,000, get the state insurance. Those who do not don’t.

Iceland and Cyprus have done well, Ireland got screwed. And as for Greece…..

The essence of Willy Hutton’s thinking

Politics is intrinsic to energy because without government price guarantees, subsidies and grants, there will simply be inadequate investment. Or there could be huge concentrations in capacity that could suddenly be unprofitable.

We could say exactly the same thing about food, telecoms or jet engines. And we do have a way of dealing with these things as well. Known as a “market”.

But that wouldn’t offer Willy a sinecure from which to pontificate, would it?

And here’s the story of food banks

Volunteers have sounded the alarm over a growing reliance on food banks in one of the richest areas in Britain.

Weekly earnings in Hart in Hampshire, recently named as the most desirable district in the country for quality of life, are a third higher than the national average. But the district also has three food banks, which have given out more than 1,000 emergency food parcels in the past six months.

Anti-poverty campaigners say that, even in wealthy areas such as Hart, benefit changes and low wages are creating growing pockets of desperate need.

“When we opened in 2011, people said, ‘Surely there’s no hardship in Hart?’, but a surprising number of people in this area are in clear need,” said Graham Bunch, the food banks administrator. He said most people who use the service are families and single people aged between 25 and 45. Benefit delays (33%), benefit changes (14%) and low income (20%) are cited as the main reasons. “Each voucher covers three days’ emergency crisis relief food, by which time we hope that the benefit system has caught up and the situation has improved, but it is taking longer for the benefit system to move.”

As you can see, it’s not the level of benefits that is the major problem. It’s the fact that the State is appallingly bad at administering the benefits system.

All of which makes the complaints that people are relying upon private charity rather than the State rather odd really. Assuming we want to actually solve the problem that is….

Ritchie is “accountants” now is he?

Financial advisers who helped figures such as Chris Moyles, the former BBC DJ, in attempts to avoid tax should face criminal charges, ministers have been warned.

Accountants called for the introduction of new laws to criminalise firms involved in complex tax avoidance schemes.

Their intervention followed the disclosure that Moyles, 40, claimed to be a second-hand car dealer in a failed attempt to avoid paying tax on £1 million. The former Radio 1 presenter had his “highly artificial” bid to escape an estimated £400,000 income tax bill rejected by a tribunal on Friday.

On Saturday Richard Murray of Tax Research LLP said Moyles would suffer “considerable embarrassment” as a result of his involvement in the scheme “and so he should”.

But he added: “The truth is that it is the advisers who are most at fault here. A now notorious firm of advisers created these schemes and others sold them.

“Moyles was foolish but these advisers knowingly created and sold tax risk with the intention of undermining the tax revenues of the UK. I believe that this should be a crime.”

One retired accountant from Wandsworth is now “accountants” is he?

And I’ll bet this hurt:

Richard Murray of Tax Research LLP

But after all that, look at what Ritchie is actually trying to argue. That it should be a crime to aid someone in obeying the law of this country. and who wants to live in that Curajus State?

No, don’t like this at all

Anyone convicted of a crime will be required to pay a charge of up to £600 under Government plans to force offenders to contribute towards the cost of running the country’s courts.

Convicted criminals will be forced to pay the levy, even if they plead guilty to the offence, the Justice Secretary will announce this week.

Not quite sure why but this leaves a bad taste. For a start is brings in a minimum penalty.

Officials suggested that an offender who pleads guilty at a magistrates’ court for a shoplifting case could incur a charge of £190. By contrast, a more serious offender, who is sent for trial for robbery at a Crown Court, for example, could be charged up to £600 when convicted, under the plan.

For example, not having a TV licence carries, I think, a fine of up to £1,000. So, this now adds £200 to that fine (in the Magistrates Court). And there are indeed offences where one might be found guilty but a purely nominal fine levied. Or even none at all: and yet now there is indeed going to be a fine.

Plenty of things where you might be bound over to keep the peace or somesuch. Which Parliament, in its wisdom, has decided should carry no further penalty than that. And yet here we’re insisting upon what, four weeks unemployment pay as a further penalty?

Just doesn’t sound right at all.

There’s also the other rather important point. The criminal justice system is one of the most basic functions of government. It’s one of those essential things that we actually call government into being to create. We also pay our taxes in order to have these sorts of public goods. Given that this is so it is most odd to then insist that government, our taxes, shouldn’t be paying for the very reason that we have both government and taxes.

How we know Victor Yanyukovitch is really a Russian

The extravagance and outrageous bad taste of the man who fled from the presidency of Ukraine was laid bare when dumbfounded ordinary Ukrainians inspected the residence of the missing president

An old joke is that if you ask a Russian “How much is enough?” you’ll get the reply “More than everyone else”.

And while they’ll do large and big, they tend not to do maintenance:

Bricks paving a recently built path leading to the shore have come loose, making it easy to trip.

Wooden steps in some places have simply been allowed to rot away.

I was never really able to work out, when living there, whether this was all about Soviet stuff, where new could be measured and thus was prioritised over maintenance, which was very difficult to put into the plan, or was something innate in Russianness. Still not sure but tend quite a bit to the latter now.

And ain’t this standard OP:

Shortly afterwards the government sold off the property in a murky privatisation deal, and Mr Yanukovych has remained there ever since.

Mr Yanukovych’s lavish spending on home improvements since – including building a new road with state funds to link it with the government district of central Kiev

Fitbit and the nickel dermatitis problem: they should have known

As I mentioned elsewhere Fitbit has a problem with their new gadgetry. It’s causing rashes in the people who wear it. The latest:

Since the first reports of contact dermatitis caused by Fitbit Force movement trackers surfaced on the company’s forums (and gained publicity when Consumerist broke the story last month) customers have asked that the company recall the trackers. Fitbit has been happy to refund customers who have skin problems and send their trackers back. Today, the company announced that they’re recalling all Force wristbands.

The thing is, there really shouldn’t be any surprise at this:

The basic problem is well known: so well known in the industry that it’s something of a surprise that the company has let itself get caught out this way.

Some 20-30% of the population are sensitive (ie, allergic, but not very much) to nickel. And usually, if you want to make something out of iron but you want it to last, then you make it out of steel. And one way to make good looking shiny shiny steel is to make nickel steel.

But! Obviously, you don’t really want to do that with something that people are going to wear next to their skin for long periods of time. So, instead, you make your watchesn’stuff out of different alloy formulations, perhaps chrome steel.

Just a pity Fitbit didn’t think of this earlier really.

The estimations of nickel sensitivity vary wildly. For full on simple contact dermatitis at 1-2%, through wearing sweaty watchbands at 20% (?) through to 30% or more susceptible with the bimetallic alloys used to make euro coins (sweat makes the two alloys act as a battery, moving nickel ions around and onto the skin).

But my point is that this was an obvious and avoidable error. Yes, Silicon Valley invents lots of lovely shiny shiny for us all to enjoy. But that doesn’t mean that all engineering that has come before is irrelevant. And as we move into wearables it would be a very good idea if those designers started to have a few chats with the previous generations of wearables designers. Given nickel sensitivity you’ll want to avoid certain types of steel. For certain wearables you might want to look at rhodium plating for the hypoallergenic, as with various ranges of ear rings. The subtleties of the alloys used to make glasses frames might be usefully explored…..people have worked out quite a lot about the interaction of various metals and the human skin before now. No need to reinvent the wheel, just talk to a few people who already know (no, not me, this is not my area of expertise).

About NHS Wales

Leading doctors have raised fears that high numbers of patients are dying while waiting for heart surgery in Wales.

The Royal College of Surgeons wrote to healthcare inspectors last year warning of “grave concerns” that too many people were dying in the south of the country because of long waits for heart surgery.

The letter, seen by The Daily Telegraph, calls for swift action to tackle “unacceptably high mortality” levels and highlights more than 150 cases in which patients died waiting for life-saving treatment.

Last night the college said it remains concerned, and was waiting for the findings of two NHS working parties in Wales which are currently examining the issue.

It’s worth noting that NHS Wales has not become marketised in the manner that NHS England has been. Lucky that, eh, otherwise people would be dying as companies competed for profit rather than cooperate in the pursuit of the patients’ best interests.

We have a housing shortage therefore we must not build more houses

G. Lean again:

At first sight, the scheme – brainchild of the iconoclastic planning minister, Nick Boles – seems unexceptional. It will allow “redundant” farm buildings to be replaced by up to three houses – either by adapting them or tearing them down and rebuilding – without the need to get planning permission

Yup, that’s the proposal. Let’s take extant buildings and convert them so that people can live in them. This is, of course, an outrage. Because, you know, allowing the rich to look at nice countryside is more important than having somewhere where people can live.

But it’s this which is truly lovely:

Worse, as the Yorkshire Dales authority says, the plan will “totally undermine” existing schemes to provide for local needs. National Parks, for example, provide for unobtrusive conversions to allow farmers to house relatives and provide affordable homes. But these would be blown away in the free-for-all, making local people worse off. The National Housing Federation, “the voice of affordable housing”, has roundly condemned the scheme.

Yes, truly. The creation of more housing units will kill attempts to create more housing units.

These people are shameless, aren’t they?

Won’t Ritchie enjoy this one?

A former BBC star claimed to be a second-hand car dealer in a failed attempt to avoid paying tax on £1 million by using a scheme that also attracted 450 other celebrities and members of the super-rich elite.

Chris Moyles, the ex-Radio 1 DJ, had his “highly artificial” bid to escape an estimated £400,000 income tax bill rejected by a tribunal on Friday.

Now all 450 of the top earners who joined the highly complicated “Working Wheels” tax avoidance scheme, understood to include fellow showbusiness personalities and fund managers, will be chased for the money they owe by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC).

Moyles, 40, was one of the BBC’s highest-paid stars as the presenter of Radio 1’s Breakfast Show when he joined the scheme run by NT Advisers, whose initials stand for “no tax”, in 2007.

He filed a self-assessment tax return that claimed he had “engaged in self-employment as a used car trader” during the year to April 2008.


This will
be used as proof perfect that we need a GANTIP or whatever he’s calling it this week as it shows how many bastards there are trying to dodge tax.

He will, of course, ignore the fact that the current system has already caught this scheme and made it invalid. So there’s actually n need to change the law to catch schemes like this.

Not that that will stop him.