Another one from the IR

[snaw]

good ol' USA ??

Probably in a nutshell, no. Contract market is almost non existant, and certainly not if you've no visa and there's definitely hostility towards workers on visa's. And you'll probably get paid more here than you would there (Well if I compare London vs NYC).

Then there's medical insurance ... Don't get me wrong, loved living there but personally I think a lot of people who whinge here would be in for a massive reality check if they tried living in a few different countries. GB is still a tw@t though.

[malvolio]

Oi! Denny!!

I think we should all get together with a petition and write to the PGC demanding that they take our views on board and that without our views being represented their lobbying efforts are not truly indicative of what contractors want.

At the moment the PGC tend to make their own agenda and they listen to EB trade associations (who don't represent Contractors interests). They are more than happy to keep everyone happy.

Why not join and post your opinions directly (and, incidentally, find out what they are really doing rather than just guessing). FWIW, they do not listen to EBs in any shape or form when setting policy: in fact the people that run the PCG are trying to work out how to take EBs out of the loop altogether, or at least emascualte them so they don't screw up a perfectly good working realtionship.

Snag is, 90% of the contractors only see them as an insurance company, and a different 90% won't join on principle. They can hardly represent people who don't join, can they?

The PCG does have a voice within HMG and it is listened to. If you want to influence it, get in there and start influencing...

And just out of interest, you are not saying anything I and others haven't been saying to them for the last few years.

[BoredBloke]

The thing is, I wouldn't mind the tax so much if

1 - I could predict it - because the rules change on a day to day basis this is not the case.

2 - didn't feel like I was being singled out for special treatment. In the case of IR35, some IR drone decides that you have to pay more tax than anybody else. That doesn't seem fair to me.

3 - you didn't see vast sums of my money being given to druggies in prison becuase the state would not allow them to have their illegal drugs - and a million and 1 other money wasting schemes.

[BoredBloke]

"The PCG does have a voice within HMG and it is listened to. If you want to influence it, get in there and start influencing..."

So has IR 35 gone then? What is their line on this story? What would you class as their biggest success to date and have their been any recent successes?

[Lucifer Box]

"The PCG does have a voice within HMG and it is listened to. If you want to influence it, get in there and start influencing..."

So has IR 35 gone then? What is their line on this story? What would you class as their biggest success to date and have their been any recent successes?

I would have thought the s660 appeal so far.

[malvolio]

Correct me if I'm wrong.

OK, you're wrong. On every point, come to that.

They do not represent EBs, never have, never will. EBs have no influence on policy. OTOH, as one example, 400 Hays contractors are outside IR35 because of changes that PCG persuaded their board to make to certain banking contracts. Want to try that kind of influence unaided?

It is arguable now that the opt out is a bad thing. At the time, it was a very good thing and if, as I suspect, the opt-out can be used to walk around S134c, it remains a good thing. Nobody can force you to use it anyway - do nothing at all and you are opted in, so what's the problem?

The site is free, membership of the PCG costs £200-ish, and for that you get around £400 of commercial iinsurances at normal rates plus about another £500 worth of added value services that may be useful. One reason for that is that the bulk discount gets the price own and bundling it keeps us out of the grasp of the FSA, who would impose a huge and expensive regulatory burden for no real benefit.

Nobody censors anything, nobody deletes posts (even less than they do here), moderation is only about protecting the site from libel suits or accusations of things like racism. (For example, we had a bit of grief when lobbying against uncontrolled immigration of IT staff at fourpence an hour (another success everyone forgets about) when some MP-led Civil Servant used one of the posts as evidence that we were a racist organisation. Sadly he did so in a series of meetings led by Gurdial Rai on behalf of the PCG, who, being a Sikh himself, was easily able to face down that particular point. Since then, though, we've been a bit sensitive about such things). But if you don't visit, you won't know that, you can only rely on rumours from people who have got it wrong who are hardly the best referees.

Feel free to challenge any or all, but the reality is they are a well-respected group these days and their real work is nothing at all like you portray it. By all means start up a second lobbying group if you want, and once you get to around 15k members and have spent five years getting inside the establishment, you can take over...

[xoggoth]

Re malvolio's post, that sort of smear seems to be typical of this government. I recall at a PCG meeting in Brighton some years ago that some threats by one unbalanced sort against Dim Prawn (no it wasn't me!) were used against the PCG as a whole. Of course if minorities cause problems the same government will immediately say they are an unrepresentative minority.

The government are scum. Have I said that before?

[malvolio]

Incidentally....


http://www.pcg.org.uk/cms/index.php?...092&Itemid=594
Do join in...