jabby posted:

In a hilariously 'gently caress you' move that I honestly thought was an April fool for a while, China is going to levy a 46% tarriff on UK-made steel.

As part of anti-dumping measures.

Jedit posted:

Here's the real fun for you: it's cheaper to nationalise the Port Talbot plant and run it at a loss than it would be to mothball it or close it entirely.

quote:

Campaigners who have been occupying a library for more than 24 hours say security outside has been tightened.
They have been refusing to leave Carnegie Library in Loughborough Junction, south London, since Thursday evening in protest at its closure.
Police stationed outside the library are allowing people to leave but not to return, protester Laura Swaffield said.
She said the occupation was "turning into a siege". About 80 people are thought to be inside the library.
.....

quote:

UKIP leader Nigel Farage says he is frustrated he cannot make sweeping changes to the way the party makes policy and recruits members.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he wants to slash joining fees from £30 to £10 and let members vote online to decide policy.
Mr Farage said: "I'm frustrated that this idea which has been around for a long time hasn't been put into action.
"And frankly I don't have the power and ability to do this myself."
Leading figures in UKIP suspect he is set to rebrand the party after the EU referendum in June.
Some also believe he could try to launch a new political movement.

'Sense of grievance'

The UKIP leader is an admirer of the anti-establishment activist Beppe Grillo whose Five Star Movement has become a major force in Italian politics, driven in part by engaging with voters online.
Some of Mr Farage's colleagues suspect he could use voter data collected by the Leave.EU referendum campaign and funds from its backer Arron Banks to embark on a fresh political project.
Mr Banks himself has been quoted suggesting UKIP could be rebranded or disbanded.
One UKIP politician said: "That is clearly the strand of thinking at the top.
"They're not particularly interested in winning the referendum and they'd rather replicate the SNP scenario which is lose the primary objective of the party but create such a sense of grievance you win in the polls and do rather well."
Another said rumours of a move of this sort had circulated for months, and added: "It would be very interesting how UKIP supporters would take a view of Nigel planning to disband the party with a clickocracy."

Leadership contest?

A recent report suggesting there could be a secret post-referendum plan has prompted intense discussions between senior UKIP figures about the possibility of radical change.
Sources close to Mr Farage insist there are no such plans, but acknowledge the party's structure and direction is a constant source of debate.
His critics believe he is planning an upheaval to protect his position after the referendum, which will be held on 23 June on whether the UK will remain a member of the European Union or not.
They accuse him of seeking a flood of new members, like those who flocked to vote for Jeremy Corbyn during Labour's leadership election, to strengthen his support.
Many in UKIP, including some vigorous supporters of Mr Farage, think a leadership contest after the referendum is inevitable.
Internal tensions were heightened after the former deputy chairwoman Suzanne Evans was suspended.
Responding to the story, Ms Evans tweeted: "Policy can't be made at the click of a mouse. It's far, far more complex than counting a set of instant opinions."

namesake posted:

Manifesto McManifestoface

Gonzo McFee posted:

GQ decided that Osborne was the politician of the year. GQ is the last place you should go for political insight.

Guavanaut posted:

Isn't that better than the opposite case, where Google was accused of keeping people in a filter bubble based on their demographic?

I remember them doing a test where people from one demographic searching for abortion were shown clinics in their area and people from another were shown Catholic Encyclopedia articles on the sanctity of life.

TheHoodedClaw posted:

If you have location services turned on on your android phone this is an interesting link (if you are logged in with the same account) https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/

Guavanaut posted:

"BRITANE STRONG! BRITANE SMASH!"
"Yeah, gently caress it, let's go with that."

Guavanaut posted:

The first letter is interesting though, at it reminded me that the UK is still one of the few countries in Europe without abortion on demand. And that Ireland is even worse.

quote:

Is abortion legal?

Abortion is legal in England, Scotland and Wales providing it meets the terms of the 1967 Abortion Act. The law allows doctors to end a pregnancy if they believe that:

continuing the pregnancy would be harmful to the physical or mental health of the woman or her existing children

an abortion would be less risky than continuing the pregnancy, or

there is substantial risk that if the child was born it would suffer mental abnormality or serious physical handicap.

Two doctors must certify that the legal grounds for abortion are met, but do not have to meet the woman personally.

Abortion care must be carried out in premises which are licensed with the Department of Health and which are regulated. BPAS provides abortion treatment up to 24 weeks.

When there is a substantial risk to the woman’s life, or a fetal (foetal) abnormality, there is no legal time limit for abortion. Abortions after 24 weeks must take place at NHS hospitals. The charity ARC Antenatal Results and Choices provides information and support about fetal abnormality.

quote:

In 98% of procedures carried out each year, mental health concerns are cited as the reason. The law states that a woman must face a greater risk to her mental or physical health by continuing with an unwanted pregnancy than if she had an abortion.
Two doctors need to sign a document to that effect.

Yet critics point to a study from the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 2011 which reviewed the mental health risks of abortion.
It concluded that for women with unwanted pregnancies, rates of mental health problems were the same whether they had a termination or gave birth.
Dr Peter Saunders, chief executive of the Christian Medical Fellowship, said: "When a doctor knowingly and willingly puts his or her signature to a statutory document saying something for which there is not actually any medical evidence base, then I believe that is not only immoral, it is also illegal."
But Dr Clare Gerada, chairwoman of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said the current interpretation is realistic as there is no way to predict the impact of continuing a pregnancy on a woman's mental health.

Thanks Ants posted:

Seabrook's are still around aren't they?

This could get interesting: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-35918844

quote:

Mossack Fonseca data also shows how Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson had an undeclared interest in his country's bailed-out banks.
Mr Gunnlaugsson has been accused of hiding millions of dollars of investments in his country's banks behind a secretive offshore company.
Leaked documents show that Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson and his wife bought offshore company Wintris in 2007.
He did not declare an interest in the company when entering parliament in 2009. He sold his 50% of Wintris to his wife for $1 (70p), eight months later.
Mr Gunnlaugsson is now facing calls for his resignation. He says he has not broken any rules, and his wife did not benefit financially from his decisions.
The offshore company was used to invest millions of dollars of inherited money, according to a document signed by Mr Gunnlaugsson's wife Anna Sigurlaug Pálsdóttir in 2015.

Jedit posted:

I find it highly amusing that Pigfucker's family trust fund is called "Blair more".

Gonzo McFee posted:

Here we go.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0e7c0a20-fc17-11e5-b5f5-070dca6d0a0d.html#axzz457uMXV4V

Renaissance Robot posted:

Tl;dr: hardship makes you happier. This is all for your own good, proles!

forkboy84 posted:

I have. In fact he even got banned in that Grover Furr thread. But it's more that every time I find one exists it makes me amused. It's just such an alien idea to me, that people good look back wistfully at Stalin with the benefit of hindsight. It probably shouldn't surprise me but it does. I guess I'm easily amused.

quote:

A fitness for work assessor for Government contractor Capita boasted he “flew through” vital welfare disability tests – earning himself £20,000 a month.

And another derided a disabled claimant as needing “help to wipe her a*** because she’s too f****** fat to do it herself”.

The footage was filmed for Channel 4’s Dispatches programme by a reporter who went undercover to expose the hated tests, which have seen thousands of disabled people wrongly stripped of benefits.

In the documentary, to be broadcast at 8pm on Monday, one Capita employee named Alan crows about raking in vast sums.

He told the stunned reporter, who was taken on as an assessor: “It was ridiculous, I was getting around 20 grand a month, most months.

“We was flying through them because of that money.”

Alan, who was tasked to show the new recruit the ropes, told how he would sometimes complete assessments before meeting a claimant.

He said of one, who had lost a leg: “When it gets to the nuts and bolts, he does everything really don’t he?

Read more: Thousands of disabled claimants wrongly barred from PIPs

"I’d literally finished his assessment before I’d walked through the door.”

......

baka kaba posted:

A better leader would have waited 4 to 6 weeks to demand Cameron publish his tax return

And apparently Cameron hasn't released his either, just some summary from an accountant

thespaceinvader posted:

Baaaahahaahaaa what the gently caress the tax return has a specific section for tax avoidance schemes. It even uses the word 'schemes'.

What the actual gently caress

Taear posted:

I do wonder how "normal people" will feel when they see these and realise that Osbourne and Cameron are cutting their own taxes. I mean a lot of people will know that already but it's another thing to have it confirmed in the print media.

thespaceinvader posted:

What possible incentive is there for the scheme runners to co-operate with this though? I mean, clearly they do, or it wouldn't be worth printing on the form, but...

thespaceinvader posted:

This is what I'm not getting though, the way I'm seeing it there are a few options, assuming that registering your scheme with HMRC is not a requirement:

1: Run a legal scheme. Register it with HMRC. Your customers are therefore obliged to report their usage of it, and this raises flags with HMRC.
1a: Your customers report their usage of it, if they have any sense their hands are otherwise clean, and HMRC have not further grounds to act. The box was therefore a waste of time.
1b: Your customers fail to report their usage of it, despite it being legal to use it. ??? Not sure what happens here, or what grounds HMRC have for punishing people using an otherwise legal scheme, but presumably if they're dumb enough, HMRC get to slap them with a fine. And this assumes HMRC finds out that they're using it, which I'm betting they have no reliable way to, I'm assuming these schemes don't share their client databases routinely.

2: Run a legal scheme, but don't register it. There's no requirement to register it, and your customers are not obliged to report their usage of it. It may raise flags with HMRC in ways I'm not entirely clear about.
2a: your customers use the scheme without risk, because HMRC are no more likely to find out about it than a registered one, but if they do, HMRC can't punish them for failure to report it.
2b: there is no 2b.

3: Run an illegal scheme, hope neither you nor your customers get caught.

I'm not seeing how 2 isn't the best option for everyone concerned (except HMRC)...

The law clearly doesn't have the teeth you think though, given that we've only seen the tiniest part of the papers of the fourth biggest tax haven lawyer the world is aware of, and it's a loving goldmine of bullshit. I don't know how much of it was reported to the HMRC though.

quote:

You are liable to a penalty if you fail to disclose a scheme to HMRC within 5 days of the scheme being made available or implemented. The initial penalty is up to £600 a day. If this is not considered to be sufficient deterrent you may have to pay a penalty of up to £1 million.

You are also liable to a penalty of up to £600 a day if you continue to fail to disclose the scheme to HMRC once the initial penalty has been imposed.

If you are an employer involved in a tax avoidance scheme you are liable to a penalty of up to £5,000 for each employee you fail to include in your end of year report. Further penalties of up to £600 a day may be imposed in respect of each employee if the failure continues after the initial penalty has been imposed.

If you are a promoter you are liable to a penalty of up to £5,000 for each client to whom you fail to give the scheme reference number. Further penalties of up to £600 a day per client may be imposed if the failure continues after the initial penalty has been imposed.

If you are a user of a tax avoidance scheme and you fail to report the scheme reference number to HMRC you are liable to a penalty. The penalty is up to £5,000 the first time you fail to do this. If you fail to report a scheme reference number again you may have to pay a penalty of up to £7,500. On the third and future occasions you may have to pay a penalty of up to £10,000 for each failure.

There are also penalties for failing to comply with other aspects of the DOTAS legislation.

thespaceinvader posted:

So, does that mean that every scheme that any UK taxpayer is signed up to must be registered?

quote:

Under the rules, a tax arrangement may need to be disclosed even if HMRC is already aware of it or it is not considered to be avoidance. A tax arrangement should be disclosed where:
25
 it will, or might be expected to, enable any person to obtain a tax advantage (see paragraph 6.2)
 that tax advantage is, or might be expected to be, the main benefit or one of the main benefits of the arrangement (see paragraph 6.3)
 it is a hallmarked scheme by being a tax arrangement that falls within any description (the ‘hallmarks’) prescribed in the relevant regulations – see section 7

thespaceinvader posted:

How many of the Mossack Fonseca ones are/were?

XMNN posted:

did hameron give an actual explanation for why paters fund was registered in panama and then ireland

he said something about trading in shares denominated in dollars, was there an actual legal reason they couldn't do that in the uk?

hes obviously looking for a figleaf for the fact it was legally registered in low tax regimes when it was run from london but is there even a shred of truth to it?

Lord of the Llamas posted:

Actually the proceeds of crime act disagrees with you. If an investigation can demonstrate that Blairmore's central management and control was in London (which the Panama papers suggest) then they were guilty of tax evasion; which is a crime.

Lord of the Llamas posted:

From the Graun article:


These seem like the same sort of tactics the Mafia use to appear above board. If nothing else these blurred lines deserve investigation.

Miftan posted:

The idea is pretty good, too bad the execution is loving awful.

quote:

You Got: You are 61% Jeremy Corbyn!

You're really quite Corbyn! You know the value of a good quality bicycle, progressive economic policies, and making sure courgettes are aphid-free.

forkboy84 posted:

Anti-fash anarchist contribute to society by stopping fascists running free & being willing to meet force with force.

StoneOfShame posted:

I know they are not exactly the same, I know one is preferable to the other as a concept. I'm simply saying that I get the distinct impression that members of the antifa are more interested in having a scrap than they are being ideologically anti-fascist and they have just happened to pick the right side to scrap with, they could have easily picked something else that's what I meant by the same not that those two groups in the absence of who they are currently fighting would pick the same targets to move onto next. Ideally we wouldn't have any young folk feeling the need to go out and kick gently caress out of someone just to give their lives a bit of meaning and belonging but I also acknowledge that isn't going to happen.

Zeppelin Insanity posted:

I think trying to institute an EU minimum wage right not would not only get the UK laughed at again (though at least from the "oh, they've gone to being idealistic children rather than petty children, isn't that cute" perspective, so it is an improvement), and if it didn't and somehow passed, it would be disastrous.

Mind you, this is in the short term. In the long term, I think it is absolutely the way to go. But by long term, I mean many decades.

The costs of living throughout the EU are way too different for this to work. Poorer countries have no hope of supporting a UK minimum wage. At all. You could argue that multinational companies could afford it, but, in my Eastern-European experience, the multinationals tend to pay way better than local companies. And if they had to give people in Poland the same wage as in the UK, they would not bother being in multiple countries at the same time, which would be quite bad for the countries where foreign investment is a significant percentage of GDP and employment.

Giving people in the UK the same minimum wage as would give you a decent standard of living in Romania would be, well, absurd.

It is what the EU is heading towards, very slowly. But you have to even out the cost of living and living standards first. Which is where things like the infrastructure funds come in. They do good work, but it takes time. And it takes longer if countries like the UK are crybabies about it, as it has been since the 70s.

If there was political will within the wealthy EU countries to speed up the process, it could be sped up, but I don't think a government campaigning on the platform of raising taxes and spending the money outside of your country would be very successful.

Guavanaut posted:

Most of the protests are planned in advance and get permission, and most of the planning bit is careful not to overstep the line. Maintaining the freedom of speech and assembly is important, and the fascists are careful to ride parasite-like within those maintained lines until they decide it is time not to not to. Or hide in a baggage area behind a shutter.

As was said above, they can't just arrange on social media "let's have a pint and beat up some Muslims", the police would be on top of that before it started, so they dress it up as a planned march, which has safeguards and some formulaic speeches about what they supposedly stand for. I've not personally seen any Nazi flags either, it's usually St. George's Crosses, Union Flags, the odd BUF flash or similar, and some carefully selected Not-Nazi flags like the War Ensign of the German Empire. They may have been less subtle about that at other demos though, I don't know.

I'm glad that the police aren't allowed to shut down any and all protests they don't like short of blatant threats to public order, but that situation does either require a very strong police presence at short notice for fascist marches whenever they do decide to cross that line, or for the community to be highly active in opposing them before and during any escalation.

goddamnedtwisto posted:

Trickjaw posted:

E: Scary old lady on QT with... interestingly applied make up (may be a clown) snarling 'I want my country back'

josh04 posted:

The inability of anyone present to make the basic case for inheritance tax is utterly infuriating.

MrL_JaKiri posted:

Aww, David MacKay died (the physicist who wrote the Without Hot Air book on power generation methods that I link to whenever the topic comes up)

Darth Walrus posted:

The issue is that Whittingdale's part of the 'faith, flag, and family' Cornerstone Group, who are trying very hard to outlaw his girlfriend's job (which several people have implied he was more aware of for longer than he's letting on). It's not that what he did was bad, so much as that he belongs to a faction that's seriously against it. Kind of like a virulently anti-gay politician being discovered to have a very active Grindr profile.

thespaceinvader posted:

This is bad for Corbyn.

Phoon posted:

e: ^^ jess isnt really blair affiliated though shes just a standard careerist

Jedit posted:

It's more that the SNP agree with Tory economic policy.

haakman posted:

It's classic dead cat and to be honest, I'm a little bit sad this labour anti-semitism stuff has gained traction in the UKMT.

Also radical non-binary black trans activist? Today was the day I realised I am old.

Tesseraction posted:

Depends on your views on if black people being allowed to vote is good or a tragic undermining of democracy.

pointsofdata posted:

In case you thought it was all over:
http://order-order.com/2016/04/29/seumas-milne-praises-hamas/
That's from Seamus "Putin’s absorption of Crimea and support for the rebellion in eastern Ukraine is clearly defensive" Milne

OwlFancier posted:

Who's launching the enquiry?

TinTower posted:

The Israeli (far-)right also love the idea that all anti-Zionism is opposition to the very existence of Israel, as opposed to the concept of a genocidal semi-theocracy.

I imagine there's a lot of nuance and probably just common sense being lost in Israeli politics now that the majority of people are Israeli-born instead of having experience of the pogroms and genocides of the early 20th century.