User Profile

[malvolio]

Not going to happen as long as we are led by a party that has abandoned "Support the Workers" as its credo for "Support the Disadvantaged", sees our money as theirs to do with what they like and borrows when it isn't enough, are so in fear of ethnic minorities at the expense of ethnic...

[malvolio]

The triple lock would work, if the measurement period was extended over a couple of years to lose short term peaks...

What does irritate (a lot does these days!) is that paying in to the system and supporting the country for many years and expecting some kind of return when you retire is...

[malvolio]

All I know is that I take the old state pension and a private one roughly of the same gross value. Paying for the latter as an annuity takes the return on a sum rather more than my NICs paid in over my working career.

OTOH I have second small private pension scheme out of a £3k payment...

[malvolio]

The frustration stems from people routinely claiming political bias when the point is about actions taken (or not taken) by politicians.

It's a bit like saying if you're against illegal immigration you have to be a racist. Pointlessly wrong, and just a way to prove you don't have a counter...

[malvolio]

Just to be very clear. it was also the UK that stopped the transatlantic slave trade, at some considerable expense and in opposition to the other traders, and was the first to ban slavery at home. Our younger and more woke generation routinely ignores (or is unaware of) that minor detail.
...

[malvolio]

While we can consider IR35 to be a lost war, the current version is at least capable of supporting an outside position with a lot less risk on the hiring side than previously. due in no small part to the work of Dave Chaplin.

However, we should not forget who lit the fire in the first place....

[malvolio]

Not what I said. Yet again. Your bias over political issues is getting tedious. Or do you really believe ministers spend their time discussing the minutiae of 100-page contracts and ITTs with service providers before they are awarded? Ministers set policy, which are broad-brush intentions, the detail...

[malvolio]

Is that the fault of de-nationalisation or the fault of Ofcom/Ofgem/Ofwat/Ofpiste quangos who failed to regulate the businesses? O that of the civil servants who drafted the contracts who failed to include proper parameters for service delivery?

BTW, in the 70s we had a three week wait...

[malvolio]

Oh I don't know. A lot of the secure systems , especially in the MOD, are built around a Windows NT Server core......

[malvolio]

I worked on many Government ITTs across a range of services from single offices to whole departments. Every one of them had a couple of sections containing a long list of highly specific performance targets with scaled penalties for failing to meet them. Since most were either impractical or simply...

[malvolio]

Bias is in the eyes of the beholder... What I'm trying to show is that my views are not biased by my supposed support for one particular party.

However it appears to be impossible to conduct a discussion on any matter of public life without first proclaiming which particular set of inexperienced...

[malvolio]

It's always possible. Not likely, right now, but who knows.

The first big blue spike was Howe sorting out the mess he inherited, (high unemployment and de-nationalisation mainly, and why a lot of people now think that Thatcher was a failure...) and the big drop was when it started to work,...

[malvolio]

How about you keep your own biased views to yourself, if you can't accept a valid and totally non-political discussion. And start with the state of the 1997 economy, which Blair inherited and stopped Brown and HMT from changing for years. Once Brown was set loose, that's when things started going South....

[malvolio]

You have to be able to provide an audit trail for the company cashflow for six years plus he current one. Electronic copies are fine, and have been for a long time. That implies you have to have it on a technology that can still be read in ten or more year's time, in which case paper seems to be a good...

[malvolio]

We are in the same position now as we were in the Wilson/Heath/Callaghan period - poor productivity, no real reserves, high taxation and a raft of external factors. That was sorted out by Thatcher's somewhat brutal reforms and Lawson's intelligent budgets. Blair and Brown then got us back into the same...

[malvolio]

It's more about lack of business confidence. Ever increasing overheads and punitive taxes are doing the real damage, plus our exposure to international events....

[malvolio]

Public sector client? That's a classic example of a manager spending his budget in case someone notices that he has a surplus so reduces their next year's budget!

Many year's back we found that the Navy was buying in futures in coal stocks every year because that was what they had always...

[malvolio]

I did undersrtand the regeerative braking. Didn't like it and was a bit worried about slowing firmly without brake lights. Probably could have got used to it with practice. Why should I though?

Come to that, you got the same effect in a 60's Massey Ferguson by closing the hand throttle...

[malvolio]

I have driven a Tesla. Very American feel to it, you're conscious pf the weight of the thing (especially when braking) and I hated the fact that 90% of the controls are on a touch screen.

I quite like driving EVs for their instant torque and general comfort and NVH levels. Just not convinced...

[malvolio]

Court's surname is instantly recognisable as being a major family line. Could be coincidental of course... ...