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[malvolio]

Well yes, they can, if there is a "skill" - something created by the supplier to act as the interface - in the Alexa library of such things (and there's hundreds of them, some quite obscure). I merely query the value of this particular exercise, but that's just my opinion.

Our...

[malvolio]

If we ignore Corporation Tax, CGT and VAT of course.......

[malvolio]

How do you propose doing this without an app to read the information....?

We use Hive, both on the phones and tablets and with Alexa if we're being really lazy. I suspect (but don't know) the latest AV versions of Alexa can show the temperature in real time. But in reality, we leave it...

[malvolio]

You don't suppose the local guy would have to sub out the specialised stuff to the same people, meaning you're paying for them plus his margin plus his profits on top......

[malvolio]

Dear old Sky. did a basket case job for them a while ago, 6 months of wasted time and effort as far as I was concerned. Should have been suspicious when I had to fly up to Scotland for a 20 minute interview, should have walked away when the lead consultant turned out to be someone with no people skills...

[malvolio]

My wife's rheumatoid arthritis means she can't walk to the local shops about 500 yards away. Should the state be paying her as a result? What would she be paid for, exactly - free taxis?

Yes, many people need support for such tings, that's not in dispute. But there seem to be an awful lot...

[malvolio]

It's sillier than that. If my state pension goes up, my tax free allowance goes down by the same amount. So the other pension (also paid for by me over many years) returns less income. Shifting 2% from NICs to tax will make that situation worse.

On paper I'm mortgage free and worth a lot...

[malvolio]

Not at all. Just think what it is aiming top protect.

It costs the sponsor a few thousands as well, so it is not done lightly.

And, of course, there are levels above DV, and different vetting requirements across different organisations even for DV.

It is not as...

[malvolio]

The debt isn't the problem, the interest on the debt is. And it won't go away, in fact it will only get worse, to the point where we can't borrow any more. Money is made on the level of debt interest, so there is no incentive to let it wither away.

That aside, public sector spending is...

[malvolio]

Perhaps have a read of this thread. It's old, long and tedious, but the first couple of pages will answer most questions....

[malvolio]

If he were to succeed, you can be certain he would receive a set of abdication papers the same morning in favour of Beatrice...

Absolutely no point in worrying about it. He and his God-awful wife have only themselves to blame.

[malvolio]

I suppose we should ignore the fact that the economy was improving measurably, if slowly, before the last election and is now a complete basket case?

Also, if money is to be shipped offshore, first you have to have some. Labour don't have money, all they have is debts. Most of which are...

[malvolio]

Was part of a Capita Bid team for them many years ago. Yet another company demanding a detailed ITT that they gave to some else to implement (badly, I should point out...).

One example of their professionalism - left home at 6 am to get to a review meeting at 9:00 on the south Bank, and...

[malvolio]

Yeah, good plan. A few percent on a proportion of the 650 sitting MPs. less the ones with actual or shadow ministerial posts, will make a huge differrence.

Same as the hysteria on cancelling IR35. Split the UK contractors across all the constituencies and we barely register. Since MPs are...

[malvolio]

The tax raid on ISAs is not directly about revenue generation, it's to force money on to the stock market. The zero tax is only on the interest earned, running at around 4% at the most so barely above inflation. Reducing the contribution limit isn't going to do anything for the billions already in...

[malvolio]

Erm....



Or refusing to sign up to an incomplete and inefficient solution? Would also increase the cost of everything - how many EV lorries are on the road...?




There's not a lot of difference now if you look at all the elements

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[malvolio]

You will have to take a different line. You know what you take home now. Assume an inside gig will cost about 50% between stated day rate and take home. You then ask for a day rate to meet that.

Snag is, at your level you aren't comparing apples with apples, and they already know what they...

[malvolio]

They'll go wherever they will do least good for economic growth and/or support Labour's core belief that wealth is a bad thing.

We have a chancellor that is ignorant of economic reality. She is only surviving because she makes Starmer look competent and stops him having to claim they have...

[malvolio]

Finding the error in 1000s of lines of code is par for the course with the old 2GL languages, not just COBOL. You have to learn to read the core dumps. But properly written (a lot of which wasn't, naturally) it can be pretty much self-documenting....

[malvolio]

Quite. I think we leave it here, but the solution (in COBOL...) is to store the input year as a 4 byte word, described as a 32 bit binary number. If the right hand pair end with 00 then it is divisible by 4, and it's a leap year if the left hand pair also ends with 00. Most of the work (again in COBOL...