Posts by Just Thinking

Depends

I have known contractors who have worked exclusively for the same company for a very long time (20 years in one case), and they really should be classed as employees for tax purposes.

But probably very few of them became contractors with the express aim of finding a permanent job then fiddling the tax system. Most likely they got in with a company, had their contract extended, didn't see any reason to go looking elsewhere, and time drifted by.

That is the problem - exactly when does a genuine contractor become a de facto employee. HMRC have pushed the limit back a bit to far.

This is especially true when other, better paid, sectors are doing exactly the same thing, arguably in a premeditated way, and getting away scot free.

What are you on about?

That does your rant have to do with changing the packaging on cigarettes? How is that going to ruin your life?

One of the most serious problems with smoking is children taking it up before they are old enough to make an informed choice, and then finding it very difficult to give up later on. Sure, a lot of that is due to peer pressure, bravado, seeing their parents smoke etc.

But having a huge shiny "advert" for tobacco in every corner shop certainly doesn't help. Why would they put it there if it didn't work? And if that advert can be removed while making naff all difference to anybody's daily life, I can't see why so many people are getting apoplectic about it.

What is all the ranting is about?

Marks

"I gave all my money to Mr Madoff, because he promised me incredible risk free returns"

"And then what happened?"

"He, er, made off with it"

Your missing the point

The difference is, porn is dangerous. Especially dangerous porn, which is really dangerous.

I'm guessing you don't have kids

For those with kids of toddling age, just remember that in 10 years time you will filling bin bags with half a ton of smashed up plastic items, pausing once in a while when you remember that this one or that one was really quite expensive, and did they actually play with it before it broke in half?

The you will have the depressing thought that you could have probably paid off the mortgage, or had a better car, if you hadn't bought all this crap which your kids didn't get anything out of anyway.

I could say don't do it, but I would be wasting my time because you will.

Yes you are being too simple

What if what /has/ happened is an unlikely, but catastrophic accident caused by a member of your club, and the payouts run into millions? More than the members can afford?

The club would need to be underwritten. By an insurance company.

At which point the club would become an insurance broker.

True you *might* save a small amount if it was a not-for-profit insurance broker. If you can find someone who is capable of running it for you, who isn't already busy running a for-profit insurance broker.

But surely

If you have something in your calender you don't want other people to know about, you shouldn't be doing it?

Grow your own

The stuff from the supermarket is probably months old and has lost almost all of its original flavour. And probably a variety chosen because it grows quickly, rather than its taste.

Swede and turnip straight out of the ground is completely different, delicious. Swedes are still just as difficult to cut though.

Depends where you live

In some areas of the country things move more quickly than that. I live in a rapidly expanding new town where the rate of growth seems to depend to a large extent on how quickly the developers want to build houses, depending in turn on the housing market.

Most of the rapid expansion in population is from people moving in. The mix of people depends on the local economy - will there be more local jobs, or will it become ever more of a dormitory own. Will the next generation of kids be able to afford houses here?

10 year old census information ins't much help here. Ten years before our local schools were built, this entire district (thousands of houses) was fields, with developers still deciding when and what they were going to do with it.

I was, of course, being facetious about how easy it might be to scrape all this information from other sources (most of them are not publicly available anyway). But a ten year time frame is too long.

Not just that

Can't see the point in publishing an article which makes a hashed attempt at explaining how a laser works to a group of people who probably already know.

Why leave it out?

It doesn't seem any more pointless a question to ask in England than in Wales. There isn't exactly a wall between the two countries.

Urban myth

If "mommies" aren't allowed to drive their kids into school, and aren't allowed to walk them in either, I'm not sure what you want them to do?

But I think it is a bit of an urban myth. I often walked my kids to and from school, and there were plenty of other people doing the same thing. There was one car I used to see trundling along from a house about 200 yards from the school, dropping the kid off then trundling back again. That's just one car. Maybe she was disabled and had trouble walking, maybe she was just an idiot.

Very few people choose to drive their child to school if they didn't need to, for the simple reason that it is a nightmare. It's a nightmare because the councils take delight in building schools with inadequate dropping off facilities, to discourage people from driving their kids in. But then they spoil it by not providing enough local places, so kids get allocated to schools which are miles away.

This myth seems to exist at least partly because the roads clear during the school holidays. Even the main roads are clearer - why is that, if the problems are caused by people driving their kids 1/4 mile to school?

Fact is, is you took any significant group of road users of the roads for a week, the roads would be noticeably clearer. It just never happens, except with the school run.

TV

You guys live alone, I take it?

Can't see my family huddled round a laptop watching Dr Who on iPlayer.

Also

Why would such a person have online banking?

They probably have to walk past the bank to get to the library.

Acceleration

If two trains are travelling at the same speed, then suddenly their relative speeds change abruptly, is that because train A braked hard or train B accelerated hard?

Those two situations are not equivalent, you can tell one from the other. Just check which set of passengers spilled their coffee.

Same with the earth going round the sun, afaik, but the acceleration involved is thousands of times less than gravity.

Disagree

I have to say I totally disagree with this.

Starbucks have deliberately designed a system with minimal security, but quick and easy to use, for small transactions. They presumably did this to get customers through quicker at busy times, maybe lose a member of staff, reduce costs of taking card payments or handling lots of small change, and to offer a perceived better service. ie to make more money.

Against that they calculated the fraud losses would be tiny. Their decision, their risk. If someone complains of misuse, unless there is a specific reason to not believe them, they should refund no questions. Thats the deal, as far as I am concerned.

But

Isn't "sanitising" phone boxes what got them in trouble in the first place?

Love that idea

Elton John having to wait for his birthday to get an iPad. They are quite expensive, maybe it is a combined birthday and christmas present?

Harris?

I think you are getting it mixed up with Nathan Barley's cock muff bumhole?

Why not?

Well if someone does use your connection to do bad stuff, you have basically helped them get away with a crime.

You might not get prosecuted for it but you will probably have your computers taken away, and possibly not see them again for a long time.

And, given the current laws in this country, they are probably going to find something, however ridiculous, to do you for.

Flickr isn't a cheap service

$12 is plenty to pay for a bit of disk space and bandwidth. It ought to be enough for them to provide a system which can recover an account a short while after they have accidentally deleted it.

I am actually surpised they charge at all.

Surely this incident will cost them more in lost custom than it could possibly have cost to put in a better system in the first place.

TLA's

Fairly common, and not unreasonable, to separate the s with an apostrophe to indicate the plural of an acronym. Especially as mixed case acronyms are all the rage these days. How else would you know it was a plural rather than just ending in s?

Technically

That is a rhyme itself