another +1 for Specialized – broke some cranks that were a good 5 years old and they replaced them at marginal cost which I was more than happy with.

The Go Cycle mark 3 is out about now – actually looks like an extremely well thought out bit of british designed kit…

https://www.e-bikeshop.co.uk/Gocycle-G3-Electric-Bike?gclid=CPqhrqu9mMwCFckV0wod4IsHMw

we GPs are really rather excellent at dealing with uncertainty and using things like clinical judgement and time, with the advantage that we can see patients again and again to pick up changes.

Cancer outcomes would seem to suggest otherwise. The fact that the UK lags many other countries in Europe is down to a combination of late referrals from primary care and lack of access to CT and MRI diagnostics. By way of balance late referrals can also be impacted by patients presenting late / patient behaviour and having longer consultations with patients would give Doctors more time to make an accurate diagnosis / decision to refer.

Who carries out a relationship with a sex worker?? well funny.

He met her on Match.com and then dated her until he got told she had been approaching newspapers trying to sell a kiss and tell story – at which point he ended it.

Unless she put “sex worker” on the occupation field of her Match.com profile AND used both her real name and her “professional” name there’s a good chance he wouldn’t have known.

Per usual this seems to be a pretty predictable example of “smear first, establish facts later”.

Edukator – where are you getting the £200K investment from?

Which bit of the maths is “bad” Junkyard?

Junkyard – sorry yes you’re right – “no net financial contribution to the state would have been a lot more accurate.

Having said that, Labour’s current definition of the “rich” based on their budget commentary and the associated increase in allowance for the 40% tax band (“taking from the poor to give to the rich”) includes nurses, policemen/women and a good number of lorry drivers as well. All of these groups would probably be quite surprised to learn they are part of the problem of the “rich” in the UK.

EDIT: so very roughly someone on £25 pays £5k deductions – Boris pays same tax/ni as 55 average earners. Also the employers ni on his mayors salary will be another £10k

Yes but a tax payer on £25K actually makes no net contribution to the running of the state – the same is also true all the way up to £43K ish. Which is why around 60% of working adults are now net recipients of state benefits rather with a diminishing number of the “rich” (those earning £44K or over) paying for everyone else.

So in reality, Boris total net contributions to the running of the state are equivalent to thousands of people earning £25K.

Well this is a turn up for the books – more pitchforks required:

“Entities with offshore investments included many councils — including Labour-held Islington — as well as media organisations such as the BBC and the leftwing Mirror and Guardian newspapers. Even the Trades Union Congress has a unit trust with 3 per cent of its net assets in Jersey”

FT report on today’s “discussions” in the House of Commons.

I’m personally not convinced by the need for everyone to share public tax returns for the following reasons:

– Only a minority of the current working population currently complete a tax return. Despite having 10 x as many tax payers, the IRS in the USA costs less to administer in absolute terms than HMRC does. So if everyone has to complete a tax return we’re likely looking at £Bs in extra costs.

– When we all know what everyone else earns behaviours of some individuals would change. From recent experience I know that an elderly neighbour was targeted for quite a sophisticated fraud by a gang who were using public data to target elderly people living alone in large houses. When anyone can see anyone else’s wealth that will put some people at immediate risk and in other cases where people have limited will suffer the indignity of all and sundry making value judgements about them.

I’d like to see some different rules – very vigorously enforced and underpinned by new criminal offences:

1. All shops, traders and tradespeople to clearly display the legal entity through which they transact. All transactions to be invoiced / receipts given and all shops to use cash tills to record all purchases.

2. All income over £1K a year not earned through PAYE or regulated channels like bank interest etc. to be reported via a simplified Self Assessment process with the current SA process used where the person has income to declare and PAYE.

My personal experience is that a significant number of the people I know routinely evade tax:

– friends who have family members who haven’t reported cash in hand work and then get caught out claiming benefits
– an army of tradespeople who work cash in hand often at a day rate that requires them to be registered for VAT let alone using a Ltd company. Some of these are also signing on.
– contractors who keep receipts for family meals / travel and stick them through the books
– a significant number of people doing Buy to Let without ever declaring the income or the capital gain.
– Shops that don’t ring things through the till – if they even have a till that is. Where they are selling a mix of VATable and non VATable products there is no way they can accurately report income without recording what is sold and at what price.

There’s been a lot said about politicians this week but should we care to admit it there’s fairly systemic tax evasion happening on a daily basis in homes / businesses across the country.

mefty don’t go coming on here with your so called facts – what is the rabbit pitch fork wielding mob supposed to do now? You’ll be telling us that the multi-millionaire previous leader of the Labour party engaged in some interesting property tax planning next…

THM just a shame the two big players in coffee you name shirk paying UK taxes in any meaningful manner

THM mentioned Starbucks and Costa.

The former’s tax arrangements are well documented – the latter is part of Whitbread PLC and the amount of corporation tax paid is there for everyone to see in the end of year accounts / annual report.

I can’t believe there’s surprise about Putin’s inclusion in the list.

For a man who claims to own very little it’s been well known for quite some time that his late 20 something daughter (supposedly a student / researcher) has controlling interests in investments worth in excess of $1B.

Poll by Sky News sugest 66% of british population favour nationalisation of PT steelworks.

Which is similar to the proportion of working adults who now make no net contribution to the running of the state.

The labour party and unions have proposed a plan of temporary nationalisation, followed by restructuring and appropriate tax breaks and other financial support leading to eventual re-privatisation.

Sorry but with respect Labour’s proposal is complete bollocks.

You can’t “restructure” a business back into profit when the single biggest Opex cost (energy – which is more than half of total production cost) is 50% higher than competitors.

Unless the energy price is dealt with there cannot be transformation or anything else that would ever lead to a “re-privitisation”, and Labour have absolutely no proposals for how the differential in Energy Opex can be dealt with – pretty much every aspect of their proposal has already been tried by the Belgian government to save a steelworks there and was subsequently ruled to be illegal state aid by the EU.

The one thing hardly any seems to be factoring in to the public view of Government response is that whatever they say to the public / in the media forms part of a negotiation with Tata e.g.

“We’ll nationalise it” – will result in Tata playing hardball in any negotiations – and any onward sale would almost certainly be a distressed sale likely forcing the government to provide even more incentives to the final purchaser.

“We don’t believe in nationalising it” – potentially forces Tata to negotiate or make some contribution to facilitate a transition period.

etc.

As per usual, Jeremy Corbyn swanning over to Port Talbot and announcing to the world that the government should pony up £500m a year just weakens the negotiating position with Tata, not that these minor commercial considerations would even be on the outer edges of his political radar.

The Belgian government has just been forced by the EU to reverse a £200m plan to save a steel works there so the options available to the government here are likely to be similarly limited – and in the end come down to how long we want to spend £1.5m a day to sustain a business that will never be viable, or whether that money would be better spent facilitating a faster transition to the secondary steel market which others have referenced above.

Good luck getting help from Vodafone.

They now get 10 times the number of complaints than o2 and Three, and 4 x the number of complaints compared to EE. They also have the smallest network, the worst network reliability and 2nd slowest average speeds on data.

except our government blocked attempts at the EU to scrap the levy cap only last month

I thought the reason the government (along with other countries) didn’t support the EU proposal is that it coupled derisory action on imported chinese seamless pipe, heavy plate and hot-rolled flat steel steel with additional controls that would have impacted advanced steel products of the sort made in the UK and which are currently profitable? i.e. the proposal was poorly thought out and whilst giving negligible relief to one part of the steel industry would have simultaneously made another sector unprofitable. As I recall it the EU wasn’t willing to uncouple these two things to enable rapid action to be taken on the controls where all countries were already in agreement.

Put your fancy cycling gear on but leave the bike at home and get a taxi to the cake stop. Then sit and chuckle as the scroats walk round the cafe trying to work out where the fancy bike that matches your fancy bike clothing has been put.

paying £15 a month for 25gb on EE

oh, and what bike from 15 years ago would you choose today if you could only have one bike?

my question – if you could guest edit any other magazine, what would it be and why?

Old dog – Private healthcare can be no more / no less efficient than the NHS but the views are often distorted by the fact when most people think of “private” they only make comparisons to healthcare in the USA.

The Dutch and German systems (where there are co payments and an insured element) manage to deliver better care at a cost equivalent to the NHS when massive unfunded pension liabilities in the latter are taken into account. The clinical outcomes are often better on many conditions as well – the systems are better at diagnosing early, treating quickly and getting the treatment right first time and this reflects higher patient satisfaction scores.

Having worked with Dutch and German colleagues in the UK, where they have made use of the NHS they are amazed at how slow it is and wonder at why the processes don’t seem to be oriented around the patient. There’s detailed comparison of different healthcare systems in the report linked to below.

http://www.healthpowerhouse.com/index.php?option=com_content&archive=news&view=article&id=410:&itemid=50&menu=yes

Can someone explain exactly WHY top rate taxpayers (me included) need an extra £43/mo

The actual answer is that the 40% threshold hasn’t kept pace with inflation / wage rises, with the result that a band that used to impact 1m people now catches well over 3m – had the 40% band tracked inflation at the same rates benefits and pension payments had it would currently stand at around £50K.

When renting a 2 bed flat in London can be as much as the entire take home pay for someone in this band you can see the problem. Nurses, police and teachers were never historically in the tax band for the “rich”, although having said that the social justice warriors tube and train drivers still earn well north of the revised 40% threshold.

You do know teachers don’t have final salary pensions any more, don’t you?

Is the teachers scheme for England a defined benefit scheme though so still massively better than the pensions everyone else will get?

I’ve just tried putting my mates salary for Deputy Head outside London into the calculator (£68K) and was surprised to see that the pension forecast is actually 12 times what non teachers would get with a typical money purchase employer contribution in the private sector.

The calculator forecasts an annual pension of £69K if no lump sum taken and the teacher works to 67. Even allowing for teachers paying more in as an individual contribution, the defined nature of the benefit means that the someone is picking up the slack on the nature of the benefit and it can’t be the teachers based on the level of personal contribution.

https://www.teacherspensions.co.uk/members/calculators/estimate-your-final-pension-value.aspx

Swap to Plusnet through TopCashback and you’ll get a good deal and £30-£50 cash back.

We swapped from BT two weeks ago and the transfer was seamless. Rather unexpectedly the upload speed, download speed and ping times are all better on Plusnet than BT – we’re now getting 9ms ping times which is extremely good. No slow downs / outages so far either.

if that’s the bell wire it’s ok to disconnect

Freester, if you’ve got an android or Iphone then even at home you can use app-free Wifi Calling on EE – no apps, your phone just uses wifi to make and receive calls / texts etc. Which is mostly a good thing apart from not being able to escape the boss at home with “sorry my phone doesn’t get a signal”…

Trailseeker – Vodafone get twice as many complaints per 100,000 customers as EE does – they were also the most complained about network operator for all 4 x quarters in 2015.

http://www.mobilenewscwp.co.uk/2015/12/15/vodafone-remains-most-complained-about-operator-in-latest-ofcom-figures/

Just remember that coverage comparison above is actually skewed in Vodafone’s favour.

Vodafone have been deploying 4G in the 800Mhz spectrum which travels a lot further than the 1800 Mhz spectrum that EE have used. So to get to their superior coverage EE will have deployed thousands more masts in Scotland than Vodafone.

BUT – EE are just about to turn on their 800Mhz spectrum from those same masts -at which point the EE coverage will get even better with no change likely from Vodafone for many years to come.

Did Ann own the home within the last 7 years? If so the problems are:

1. Ann is currently only paying “peppercorn rent” in which case HMRC will almost certainly be interested in whether there’s been a “reservation with benefit” and whether the rent was declared as income – particularly if there’s no documentation to prove the basis on which the ownership of the property was transferred.

2. The relevant LA will be interested in seeing with the property was transferred in order to avoid the care home fees test (they can and frequently do go back 7 years on this).

John and Mary have probably tried to do what they thought was right / best but the situation is now overtaking them and damaging their sibling relationship – and because money is involved it often brings out the worst in people.

It’s a tough scenario though – at the end of the day care costs are enormous and almost unaffordable to governments and individuals alike.

Pictonroad- see below:

EE wins 4G contract for UK emergency services

As well as adding cell sites over the next year EE are also turning on 800MHz coverage in March that will get 4g into the places that 2g doesn’t cover now. EE are believed to be proposing prioritisation on their network for emergency services users with the result that the airwave contract for voice will be terminated over the next 18 months. All or which will be very good for phone coverage whilst biking!.

Vodafone still offer a choice – you can have dreadful coverage and dreadful customer service with them, or dreadful coverage and reasonable customer service with Telefonica (with whom they now share their network infrastructure)

EE have left them standing on coverage and now that EE have won the emergency services tender we’ll see EE extend their network even further to 99.7% coverage on 4g. As a comparison Vodafone were still at around 90% coverage on 3G last time I checked.

http://rootmetrics.com/uk/blog/special-reports/2015-2h-national-uk

GrahamS – the Wifi Calling on EE is two way and also works for texts and voicemails as well – so basically if your phone can connect to wifi it will work exactly as normal even if there’s no network signal.

Capital Economics / Woodford Capital Management have released a pretty detailed and surprisingly balanced assessment of what a Brexit would mean:

The economic impact of ‘Brexit’

Worth a read because it goes several levels of detail below the “noise” and gets to some of the potential upsides and downsides.

just a scratch. tippex it or put a sticker over it and then forget about it.

maybe.

Blimey I need to have a word with my boss as I don’t seem to be on that pension scheme.

Drac, if you’re in the public sector you’re probably already in “that” pension scheme.

Nearly all public sector schemes are still “defined benefit”. There’s no risk attached to your final pension payment and the value of the “mitigated investment risk” represents a very significant premium anyone else would have to pay outside the public sector (up to 10 times the value – see link below).

Most public sector schemes require employee contributions of 5-15% but to get the same benefit “outside” their contribution would be 40% or more. That “gap” is effectively the employer contribution.

Another comparator – most private sector schemes attract an employer contribution of 3-5% of salary and are defined contribution i.e. the final pension scheme value has risk attached to it. I’ve just checked and the value of my own money purchase pension fund has gone down 20% in 6 months – that will be pretty typical for anyone outside the public sector but most in the public don’t have a clue about the real value of the pension (or if they do – it never comes up in context of overall pay!)

So the £100K HR director whether she realised it or not has total remuneration of £160K+ just as anyone on £40K in the public sector on a DB scheme is actually on a £65K ish as a comparison with a private sector role with a 5% employer co-pay.

https://www.pensioncorporation.com/news-media/press/55-your-salary-real-value-defined-benefit-p

NHs, so no bonus, no share options, no company car scheme.

But 30-35 days annual leave, very high level of job security and a defined benefit pension scheme that’s worth around 40-50% of salary. Which makes the £100K NHS role equivalent to a £150-£160K role in the private sector.

wrecker – Member
£100K for a NHS HR manager? She needed a pay out as she knows that she won’t be able to ride a gravy train like that again.

My personal experience is that some of the best leaders and managers I’ve worked in my whole career have been in the NHS (including leaders who have clinical and those with general management backgrounds).

That’s not to say there aren’t a lot of extremely poor leaders and managers but the perception that all NHS managers are overpaid ineffective bureaucrats is very wide of the mark.

The complexity and politicised environment that NHS managers work in is particularly demanding for those in senior positions – it’s just a shame that the NHS finds it so difficult to (ever) manage out poor performers.

an oscillating multi tool with a sanding attachment seems to work quite well. The mains powered bosch ones are around £50 and the battery powered ones start at the £100 mark with batteries included.

If you’ve already got makita batteries something like this might work – they are massively useful tools that can be used for all sorts of tasks.

http://www.powertoolworld.co.uk/makita-dtm50z-18v-multi-tool-body-only?gclid=CNu2kMSh_MoCFUEaGwodhxMKSQ