March 2019

What fun can be had with the Murphmeister

Ritchie spends a decade on corporate tax.

Trying to entirely dodge the UK tax system no longer works. There’s also all that political pressure to be paying more. The thing is, that deductibility of foreign taxes paid is still there. As far as Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) is concerned now, it’s going to have to pay taxes somewhere. Might as well pay more to the UK for that bill is then a deductible against the American one.

Sure, this is all a bit long-winded, but it’s necessary to get to the point. Only when that background is understood can we consider the effects on investing in Big Tech of that movement toward higher taxation of those varied companies. Which is, that movement to gain more tax isn’t going to have much effect. We don’t really have to worry about what the rest of the world does, it’s all already taken care of in the revisions to the US tax code.

Trump’s changes mean that the foreign profits of US corporations are already taxed whatever. So, a rise in European taxation of such profits leaves the companies just the same – the deductibility of foreign taxes means little or no change in the total taxation bill.

Electing Donald Trump solves his problem.

Boeing’s problem with the 737 Max

It’s not so much that they’ve got to – or someone does – to the families of those who died It’s that there’s also a liability to those who cannot use the panes they’ve bought.

That Boeing (NYSE:BA) has a problem with the 737 Max is obvious enough. The Lion and then Ethiopian crashes tell us that much. But there’s not necessarily a bigger problem here, merely uncertainty about how big the problem might be. Or, even, whether there is a problem to be uncertain about.

That being, well, airlines which have bought the 737 Max can’t currently use them. Or at least in many places they cannot. This implies costs for said airlines – who is responsible for those costs? That depends on how the blame for the 737 Max problems is apportioned in the end of course. But I think we all know there’s a significant risk it’s going to be Boeing itself.

That’s not the end of it, though. If blame is assigned to Boeing, then sure, the compensation bill to the families of those who died will end up in Seattle, where it may or may not be insured, but probably is. But what about those losses of airlines which cannot fly the planes they’ve bought and still must pay for? And the costs of renting replacement planes to keep the schedules going?

It could end up being the much more expensive problem,

So, victim hierarchy then

In a letter dated 18 February, seen by the Observer, the society warned the council that the Stop RSE campaign had “promoted material which says the punishment for homosexuality is death. Our research has found that downloadable resources which were available on Stop RSE’s website as recently as last week [since withdrawn] included a book which endorses lashing and killing gay people.” It is understood that the council accepts that the society’s concerns fall within its remit. As a result, it has launched an inquiry, gathering relevant information and judging it against the council’s conduct, performance and ethics standards.

According to the council, if a registrant’s fitness to practise is considered impaired, “it means there are concerns about their conduct, competence, health or character which are serious enough to suggest that the registrant is unfit or unsafe to practise without restriction, or at all”.

A spokesman for the council told the Observer: “We are aware of concerns about Kate Godfrey-Faussett and are looking into what action, if any, we need to take. We have a duty of confidentiality to all parties involved and it would not be appropriate for us to comment further.” Godfrey-Faussett said she had not been informed of the details of the complaint to the council, other than that it had been made by the NSS.

“I have simply tried to warn people of the underlying liberal secular agenda of RSE and the harm that it may cause children – and is, in fact, already causing based on reports I am receiving from parents,” she told the Observer. “It is well known that if you speak out against the secular narrative they will silence you through smear campaigns and getting you struck off professionally.”

NSS chief executive Stephen Evans said efforts to prevent teaching about LGBT people were well coordinated and rooted in bigotry. “Those behind them are undermining legitimate, age-appropriate education which introduces children to issues and people they will inevitably encounter in a healthy, pluralistic society,” he said. “The demand to impose religious conservatism on state schools is unreasonable and must be resisted.”

Islam rather than Leviticus. So, who will win?

So, erm, small world etc

Was looking at the site stats for ContTel – no, I’m not maniacal about it – and saw, out of interest, that there was a bloke from Tacoma in the US reading the site.

Hmm, I wonder? Emailed the bloke I’ve known for 25 years, done business with over that time, who lives in Tacoma. That you?

Yup.

Which, I guess, goes to show you how far ContTel has penetrated beyond my small circle of select friends and acquaintances….

Doesn’t this just sound horribly dangerous?

Victorian England was not known for its progressive views. But one element of that strait-laced society was highly advanced in its thinking.

The finance industry, even then, was helping companies to raise money by issuing bonds and Law Debenture Trust, founded in 1889, was a key part of that nascent market.

The group was established to ensure that bonds were administered properly and that, if companies fell into problems, investors were treated fairly.

OK, old established, know what they’re doing, almost certainly some regulatory protection against competition as well. Now this:

Law Debenture still performs that task today. Over the past 130 years, however, the group has evolved considerably, not least in the past 15 months, during which time it has acquired a new chairman, chief executive and finance director.

The top team are determined to galvanise growth at Law Debenture and the shares, at 576p, should respond.

Anything like that reminds me of Willy Hutton at The Industrial Society. No, obviously not the same etc. But, you know, can’t help thinking of eager new management in to shake up old established expertise….

Fair point

The magnificently woke actor George Clooney has demanded we all boycott luxury hotels with links to Brunei because the country has ruled homosexuals must be stoned to death. Happy to help, George — that’s Brunei off my Christmas card list.

There are nine other countries where gay people face the death penalty. They all have something in common. Much like the countries that will put you to death for apostasy. Shall we boycott those, too, as well as countries where gay people are simply imprisoned or lashed? They all have something in common, too.

I wish George would explain what that something was.

Why is this exploiting women?

Campaigners against strip clubs say this was not an anomaly and is representative of behaviour that occurs in such clubs across the UK.

The claims come amid a split in the feminist movement about attitudes to sex-related work. Some, often older, campaigners argue that strip clubs objectify women and should be closed, while their opponents, predominantly younger, say that taking work away from women by shutting such venues is not feminist. This report will be seized upon by the former as a sign of the exploitation they say is inherent in the industry.

The investigators allege that the dancers sat on their laps, rubbed their genitals through clothing, simulated oral sex, and put their breasts in the men’s mouths. They also claim that dancers touched each other intimately in defiance of club rules. One dancer told the men that the “no touching” rule did not apply to her or her colleague.

Sounds like an excellent method of vacuuming the money out of those men’s wallets. Which would rather men the exploitation is running the other way….

That split between older and younger feminists is fun too, isn’t it? Rather, maybe, between those who could still so exploit men and those who couldn’t?

Honeybuns, do try to think

Even if you can’t have kids naturally, that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to be a parent, writes Sharyn Graham Davies.

Fair enough.

Other reactions I get though stem from a place of hate and fear. Some people think that if you can’t have kids naturally then that’s social Darwinism in practice. In other words, only the best, brightest and fittest should reproduce, moving humanity generation after generation to a higher form of evolution.

That’s not social anything you dimwit. That’s Darwinism, evolution itself. That’s how we got here – we’re descended from those who were able to reproduce.

Perfectly happy with the idea that we don’t have to continue that way, that we don’t have to entirely rely upon that evolutionary fitness as our definition of who does and does not have kids. But I do insist that you understand the underlying idea at the same time.

So, why?

Britain’s equality watchdog has abandoned a legal case against the NHS for failing to provide fertility treatments to transgender patients.

Transitioning can lead to fertility loss, but many patients are not offered a chance to have eggs or sperm stored.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) had threatened NHS England with a judicial review, saying it should take steps to ensure such patients were routinely be offered fertility preservation.

The watchdog had argued that those seeking treatment for gender dysphoria should be treated in the same way as those with other conditions – such as cancer – which threaten fertility.

Has the NHS already given in? Or did EHRC realise how stupid he demand seemed?

You know, demanding that a woman, who has always been a woman and is very much still a woman, must have the right to be a father?

Yes, there’s more

Yes, I don’t disagree with the evidently worthy theory behind what you say, but your answers are just far too glib and simplistic. To take your example, landlords back then did not routinely charge “high” (sic) rents – we have a complete family record going back, in detail, to at least 1750 demonstrating that for instance – and in any event you are manifestly confusing tenant farmers on the one hand with farm workers on the other. And tenant farmers, too, who certainly cannot be categorised as rich for the most part and couldn’t back then, also need to make at least a modest profit for living and reinvestment purposes – and to be able to employ others, on fair and secure terms, of course. And to take care of that a decent and sliding scale tax system is and has always been by far the fairest way of ‘penalising’ the genuine robber barons in this country – not that the Tories have ever done that! – not just flooding the country with cheap grain etc. from abroad and thereby ruining a myriad farm etc. businesses of varying sizes and types, rendering environmental controls and support unaffordable and enriching infinitely bigger robber barons from the vast US and Canadian plains into the bargain. Great – I don’t think!
As for your “classical liberals”, well they cannot ever have done that much good over here – far too much of the old Whigs! – or else the Labour Party, the Co-op Movement and the Trade Unions would never have become the huge force it collectively did from the late 19th./early 20th. C. onwards. What is really disgraceful, however, is that all of your flagrant ‘bank/gster’ pals and their apologists like Farage, Minford et al. have managed to distract the entire British public (aided and abetted by that total posh-boy p.r. dimwit Tory Cameron!) into focussing exclusively on ‘Brexit’ for the past ‘x’ years non-stop whilst conveniently ignoring their own blatant role in the massive ruin and inequality of the UK of today, the fact that child etc. poverty (even according to the UN) has never been so high, that careers are now ‘gone’, the effects of ‘AI’ and atmospheric poisoning, etc. etc. And quite how all those afflicted people in the northern Labour heartlands of England can possibly think they will be better off without EU-ordained Regional Development Grants and relying on a Tory Government dispensing ‘largesse’ to them instead totally beats me! Dream on!! In any event, your modern-day “classical liberals” are now 100% synonymous with the neo-cons, sadly – e.g. focussing on the external so-called enemy Russia for the past 2-3 years non-stop again by way of covering up their own elitist, wilfully unequal and thoroughly corrupt and self-serving domestic policies and in the UK, as well as the US, too. What a supremely myopic, navel-gazing and typically insular (not to mention flagrantly xenophobic and racist) exercise ‘Brexit’ truly is: Orwell saw these periodic English (not British) paroxysms all too clearly, years ago, and thank God both Attlee and Thatcher of all people quoting him in support (both far more intelligent that our current ‘lot’) firmly ruled out referenda or ‘plebiscites’ in a representative parliamentary democracy such as ours many years ago as just a polite euphemism for ‘mob rule’. But then they both recalled Hitler (+ Goebbels) and his use of them as tools of propaganda and intimidation only too well………….!! I bet you that the English would vote to bring back hanging – and even, as a spectacle, public beheadings – given a referendum on those indeed!! And how much more complicated was the hugely multi-faceted ‘Brexit’ than that – as anyone even half ‘in the know’ like me (40+ years of EU Law) knew in a heartbeat whilst being afflicted by the wilful and grossly simplistic lies of Johnson, Farage, Gove et al. aided and abetted by all those shameful idiots and worse in our cowed and nowadays lazy and pig-ignorant mainstream media not excluding the increasingly Tory Party-/MI6-driven BBC indeed?!? Anyway, repeated surveys showed that the EU didn’t even feature with the public as a top 10 concern in the 2 GEs before Cameron went on his ludicrous Tory-promoting and anti-UKIP ‘frolic’; now, however, there appears to be no parliamentary bandwith for anything else however pressing. VERY damaging and dangerous!!

Must bring this exchange firmly to a halt now…………..!!!!

More on acoustics

So, if a website says that thick acoustic glass can reduce by 42 dB is this what they mean?

That 110 dB will, inside the glass, be 68 dB?

So, for example, if my balcony gets 110 dB, then turning it into a glassed in conservatory will give me some 70 dB inside the conservatory?

Which will, given the next layer of the doors into the living room from the balcony, reduce down again to 50 to 60 in that living room? I’ve just checked, those doors do give a 10 to 15 reduction.

Have I got the way these measurements work right?

On falling off horses

“There was no way we were going to leave — we were staying with the passengers to the end,” he told Ynetnews. “This was a matter of conscience, professionalism and morality. As a former officer in the Free French Forces, I couldn’t imagine leaving behind not even a single passenger.”

The crisis ended when dozens of Israeli commandos stormed the airport by night, arriving in a motorcade disguised to look like that of Ugandan leader Idi Amin. Three hostages, seven terrorists and 20 Ugandan soldiers were killed in the operation. Another hostage, who had been taken to a Ugandan hospital, was later murdered.

…..

Upon his return from Entebbe, Mr. Bacos said that he took two weeks of vacation and then insisted that his first flight be to Israel, to see if he was “still afraid.” He was not and continued flying until his retirement in 1982.

They’ve missed a bit here

Black and Asian students are more than twice as likely to go to university than their white counterparts, new data has revealed.

In the first survey of its kind research published by the Office for Students (OfS) today analysed each university and college’s student intake, dropout rates, degree attainment and progression to further study or employment for different groups of students over the last five years.

It found that among the nation’s most deprived students, those who were black, Asian and mixed race were far more likely to attend full-time university courses or apprenticeships than their white counterparts in the last five years.

Blacks and Asians are more likely to be second generation immigrants. First generation immigrants often do see education as the route to success for their children. Those tales of Ugandan Asians rocking up with nothing, running the corner shop all hours and then ending up with all kiddies either doctors or accountants – stereotypes usually do have some basis in reality.

So, OK, entirely believable numbers. But there’s something I suspect is being missed. “Black” isn’t really a useful grouping in the UK. The past experiences of Black African and Afro Caribbeans are too different for that. Ad I’d e very surprised indeed if this high uni attendance happened among Afro Cs.

A camel weighing contest?

Sorta Galton’s Ox without the slaughter and dressing?

A British man who won the world camel weighing championships found himself embroiled in an animal rights row after the competition was deemed ‘barbaric’.

Can’t be much of a spectator sport really. Then I find out that’s not what they mean:

Qasim Hussain, 20, from Bradford, West Yorkshire, traveled to Pakistan to compete in the Kharack Mirpur annual event where the animals are weighed down with rocks before standing to prove their strength.

Mr Hussain’s four-year-old camel, Sheezada Kathreela, was loaded up with bags of stones weighing 1,800kg on his humps and back before getting to its feet and walking around in front of 20,000 spectators.

Perhaps camel weighting contest is more apt?

Well, yes, that’s the point

Today, the state of Georgia passed a law banning abortion at the point a heartbeat can be detected – usually by six weeks. The move is, according to Renitta Shannon, Democratic member of the Georgia House of Representatives, “a death sentence for women”; those who undertake the procedure past the ordained point will be liable for criminal proceedings, as will the medical professionals who carry them out.

Previously set at 20 weeks, House Bill 481 – nicknamed the Heart Beat bill – “effectively outlaws abortion in Georgia as most women will tell you by the time they know they are pregnant, a heartbeat can already be detectable,” Rep Shannon explains.

Not that I think it a sensible law to be making but the very point of it is to effectively ban abortion in Georgia. The people who passed the law are quite aware of the implications here.

This is really rather fun

We got a letter today. Which we answered.

Nominative determinism in human sexuality

Chasten Buttigieg Is Winning the 2020 Spouse Primary
The first same-sex husband of a major-party presidential candidate is a historic figure, but he’s also a surprisingly traditional one.

Mr. Bottigig is gay.

No reason not to let the sniggering schoolboy within out occasionally.

The only problem with the determinism bit being that presumably Pops Bottgigger, who passed on the name, wasn’t gay. Or, at least, hetero often enough to pass it on.

Yes, this works

England’s oldest man: Bob Weighton puts 111 years down to ‘avoiding dying’

About the only thing that does work too.

We can hope, eh?

Tories could become the nasty party again

They’ve only just spotted this?

More than 1m childless people over 65 are ‘dangerously unsupported’
Older people without children at greater risk of isolation, poor health and inability to access formal care – report

One of those older reasons for having children being to have a support network in old age, no? In fact, a pension?