Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

Goldie

One for you and Fred


DJ Chris Moyles claimed to be a second-hand car dealer in a bid to save up to £1 million in tax, a tribunal has found. A tax court named Moyles and two other men as having taking part in a scheme called "working wheels" which counted "450 fund managers, celebrities and other high earners between 2006 and 2008" as members.

The scheme worked by allowing its members to say they had incurred large fees while working in the second-hand car trade which they could claim back against their tax bill. A published judgment from the Tax Chamber of the First-tier Tribunal said Moyles's self-assessment tax return for the financial year ending on April 5, 2008, when he was presenting Radio One's Breakfast Show, said he "had engaged in self-employment as a used car trader".

Moyles did not give evidence directly to the tribunal but did submit "a brief witness statement". The tribunal, under Judge Colin Bishopp, described that evidence as "very brief and rather uninformative". The judgment said: "It is however quite clear from the statement that he too entered the scheme for no purpose other than to achieve a tax saving, and that he took no interest in the trade."

It went on to say that Moyles was "anxious to be reassured that the scheme was lawful, and that he would not have to undertake any trading himself". It said his accountant, a Mr Smith, had "agreed that the scale of Moyles's borrowing was driven solely by the amount of the tax loss he wanted to achieve, in his case £1 million, and that the trading was not carried on for its own sake but was merely a means to an end".

Exchequer Secretary David Gauke said: "This case is another example of why taxpayers should not fall for the promises of promoters selling schemes that are all too often too good to be true. Not only will the taxpayer waste money on the fees for these failed schemes, they will still have to pay all the tax, interest and penalties that are due.

"This Government has provided HMRC with the resources to tackle these avoidance schemes and HMRC will now pursue the other users of the scheme to make sure all the taxes that are due are paid."

Moyles later took to Twitter to give his side of the story. He said: "I want to comment about a recent tribunal tax ruling.
"Upon advice, I signed up to a scheme which I was assured was legal. Despite this, my knowledge of the dealings of the scheme were naive.

"I'm not a tax expert and acted on advice I was given. This was a mistake and I accept the ruling without reservation. I take full responsibility and have learnt a valuable lesson."

Nigel Farage will take on Nick Clegg in a debate on the European Union after the Ukip leader accepted a challenge from the Deputy Prime Minister.


Clegg think's he is going to win that debate , like he did in the last election debate on tv , i think he is in for a surprise.

Fred1new - 21 Feb 2014 16:56 - 37005 of 37011

I was an observer for a large part of my life and highly paid for the few opinions I gave!


I hope it wasn't another case of Labour wasting tax payers money

Well done to Wales tonight, I hope England does as well tomorrow.

NAH.

Wales for the championship.

Cynic re to food banks where on earth do you get these silly assholic ideas from????????? I think you make it up as you go along...

See report out today(comissioned by government)..............here below.

Ministers can no longer deny the link between food banks and benefit cuts......
The long-delayed government-commissioned report slipped out today contradicts claims by ministers that food bank usage is driven by supply.
BY MOUSSA HADDAD PUBLISHED 21 FEBRUARY 2014

People, it turns out, are going to food banks because they’re hungry and in need. This finding, which chimes with the experiences of those of us with on-the-ground experience (including prominent members of the Catholic Church), emerges from a long-delayed report commissioned by ministers at Defra, and quietly slipped out today. It contradicts welfare reform minister Lord Freud’s assertion that food bank usage is driven by supply (if you build food banks, people will come for the free food).

In fact, as well as finding "no systematic evidence on the impact of increased supply" and that "hypotheses of its potential effects are not based on robust evidence", the report found that food bank use is "a strategy of last resort". People are proud, the evidence shows, and will tend to use them only once they’ve cut back on everything they can, and exhausted all other possible avenues of support. Indeed, food bank use is probably the tip of the iceberg: the report finds that, internationally, only one in five of those who are food insecure will tend to use emergency food support. Unfortunately, we don’t measure food insecurity in this country, but with food banks springing up across the country, from those linked to big national networks to small independent operations, perhaps we should.

The research looked at various sources as to why people are seeking food aid. In order of ranking, they found that reasons included: "loss of, reductions in or problems associated with, social security payments; low income; indebtedness; homelessness". A study the report cites from Citizens Advice found that the two main reasons for referrals for a food parcel were benefit delays and benefit sanctions. With sanctions at an all-time high, and the government proposing to make people wait for seven days to claim JSA after losing their jobs, these issues are only going to get worse.

The Defra pocket book (2012) highlights the compounded effects of falling income and rising food prices over recent years, which had "produced a double effect of reducing food affordability by over 20 per cent for households in the lowest income decile". Overall, the report makes clear that people go to food banks for both reasons of short-term crisis – job loss or problems with the social security system – and of long-term poverty – low income or indebtedness.

The report also bemoans the lack of systematic UK evidence of why people go to food banks. We, like many others, are seeing the urgency of the issue daily in our work, and policy makers need to gain far greater understanding of the growing food poverty crisis. The explosion in food bank use is a national emergency, and it is imperative that we understand its causes so that we can eliminate hunger from British children’s lives.

In the meantime, there is a lot that can be done to tackle the issues we already know about. Jobcentre Plus advisers need to start making much better use of short-term benefit advances. To tackle the longer-term causes of food poverty, we need more action on the inadequacy of incomes, on supporting people into work that pays enough to live on, backed up by high-quality, affordable childcare, and on the structural problems in the social security system that are edging many towards destitution.

Ultimately, food banks are a symptom of deeper problems. No child should be going hungry, and no child should be living in poverty. As part of its legal obligation to end child poverty by 2020, the government must publish its new Child Poverty Strategy by early April, and will be consulting on it shortly. It is a great opportunity for them to set out their roadmap to giving every child the nourishment they need, and the start in life they deserve.

heres part of Cynics post..........

"it is a matter of fact that the creation of food banks and their recent publicity has in itself created a growing demand for them as more and more people wake up to the fact they may be entitled to use them"............ends

The report quite clearly says this is utter tosh.........

here...The long-delayed government-commissioned report slipped out today contradicts claims by ministers that food bank usage is driven by supply.

and here....It contradicts welfare reform minister Lord Freud’s assertion that food bank usage is driven by supply (if you build food banks, people will come for the free food)..

Obviously usual Tory ignorance associated with Cynic, hays and that ignoramous Chris Carson. (Hays blue nun)

Further more from the report..........

In fact, as well as finding "no systematic evidence on the impact of increased supply" and that "hypotheses of its potential effects are not based on robust evidence", the report found that food bank use is "a strategy of last resort". People are proud, the evidence shows, and will tend to use them only once they’ve cut back on everything they can, and exhausted all other possible avenues of support.

And yet we have Cynic making snidey complaints about this thread ALL WEEK and then we get as per norm the usual non researched and idle none sensical bull shit from him as per his piece on food banks.

Time you took a good look at yourself cynic.

Lets face it the 2 threads YOU have created are falling apart its only intervention by myself and Fred today that as got some action going on them at last.

no i didn't make any of that up .... i was listening to a balanced discussion on radio 4 yesterday morning, which was assuredly much more interesting (because it was balanced) than very occasionally reading the rabids' diatribes

as for your other comment - you really are or even have become a puffed-up, egotistical ass
please revert to your former more personable persona asap

Hey GF...... take a look at post 117 on COOK thread:-

Haystack - Rice bran oil has almost the highest smoking point. It is mild and relieves hot flushes in menopausel women. Give it a go, might calm you down you tart. :O)

Wealthy Chinese interested in moving their riches out of the country are doing so with help from an unusual cast of characters: sculptors, painters and calligraphers.
Fine art buys are all the rage in the shadowy world of Chinese offshore money laundering

really!
i am staggered; they'll be telling us next that all these massive mansions being built in certain "unnamed" locations for russian clients are also a means of laundering
i suppose buying launderettes, now almost disappeared, was the original format of choice

Somerset floods: we need to learn the right lessons

For Germaine Greer it’s not the government that’s got the flood response wrong, it’s the British public



Water works: the Dutch have a long history of adapting to life below sea level, making profitable businesses out of 'green’ power – as well as protecting themselves against extremes of weather Photo: Frans Lemmens / Alamy



By Germaine Greer

7:00AM GMT 22 Feb 2014





Human beings should by now be used to the behaviour of winds and waters, and by and large they are. The Dutch have learnt to live and run profitable agribusinesses at below sea level and the British have in the past been happy to learn from them, whether in East Anglian fenland or on Canvey Island. Though the current prolonged wet weather may be unusual, excesses of wind and rain and accompanying tidal surges are nothing new. The existence of a flood warning system presupposes precautions that can be taken, but the story we are being told over and over again is that householders in flood-prone areas didn’t take them. They thought – and think – that the government should have done something. The government is not expected to protect householders from other kinds of weather. Those of us who have had tiles ripped from roofs, chimneys torn down, conservatories crumpled and gates torn off their hinges by the recent gale-force winds will have to fund the repairs ourselves.


In other parts of the world the inhabitants might take precautions against extremes of weather but not the British. Just as British explorers used to take pride in setting out with insufficient equipment to keep them alive in any but optimum conditions, British householders ignore the power of nature. Americans might “winterise” their houses every year, but the British will not invest even in a small generator to provide an emergency power supply for when the power lines come down, though come down they will when the west wind corkscrews trees out of the ground.


Besides financing the repairs to our own properties, the rest of us will also have to fund the making good of flood damage to other people’s houses, if insurance companies are prevented from raising premiums for insuring flood-prone properties, because the cost will be met by raising premiums for everybody. The CEO of Aviva has already suggested that insurers be entitled to insist that flood defences be installed as a condition of securing cover, though to hear flood victims tell it there was nothing they could do.




More: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/10651422/Somerset-floods-we-need-to-learn-the-right-lessons.html

FLOODING - question
to have put in place effective flood defenses would have required the expenditure of say £150/200bn, with that decision being made 10/15/20 years ago and work starting shortly thereafter

1) do you know of any uk government or even party that would have promoted that idea, even with hindsight?

2) do you really think the uk public would have deemed such a scheme to have been money well spent? .... we can't even make up our minds about the cost and benefits or otherwise of HS2, yet that is a much simpler concept


in your dreams!
even in the aftermath 1953, which is when the dutch took their decision, no one could ever have dreamt that this year's flooding in uk would have happened

Cynic quickly moves away from the GOVERNMENT commissioned report on food banks.

STRANGE how the government have

1. sat on it for up to a year

2. lied through their teeth in both the commons and the lords knowing what was in the report

3. knocked it out at half term on a friday morning when parliament is in recess.

And as for Cynics radio station were they not aware of this report????????? or as Cynic just overlooked a few very important points.

You make your own minds up.

Oh dear oh dear oh dear we now have the truth about Cynics post on foodbanks........

from the very same radio prog he reckoned to get his material for his food bank post.....

BBC Radio 4 Today ‏@BBCr4today Feb 21
Families turn to food banks as last resort, 'not because they are free'

Families turn to food banks as last resort 'not because they are free'
Review for Defra was passed to ministers in June but not published, creating speculation findings had been 'suppressed'

Low incomes, unemployment and benefit delays have combined to trigger increased demand for food banks among the UK's poorest families, according to a report commissioned by the government (pdf).

The report directly contradicts the claim from a government minister that the rise in the use of food banks is linked to the fact that there are now more of them. It says people turn to charity food as a last resort following a crisis such as the loss of a job, or problems accessing social security benefits.

The report concludes that, while there is some evidence that welfare changes have contributed to increased demand, it is difficult to make a clear and robust link.

The review emerges as the government comes under pressure from church leaders and charities to address increasing prevalence of food poverty caused by welfare cuts. The End Hunger Fast campaign has called for a national day of fasting on 4 April to highlight the issue.

The review, written by a team of food policy experts from the University of Warwick, was passed to ministers in June but has remained under wraps until now, creating speculation that the government "suppressed" its findings.

Examining the effect of welfare changes on food bank use was not a specific part of its remit, says the report, which is understood to have undergone a number of revisions since early summer at the behest of the Department for Food and Agriculture and the Department for Work and Pensions.

The researchers found that a combination of rising food prices, shrinking incomes, low pay and increasing personal debt meant an increasing number of families could not afford to buy sufficient food.

Benefits payment problems – either administrative errors that can leave claimants without cash for weeks, or the temporary withdrawal of benefits as a result of sanctions –are a factor in the increase in demand for food aid, the report says.

Ministers have repeatedly said there is no robust link between welfare changes and food bank use, while the welfare minister Lord Freud claimed the rise in food bank use was because there were more food banks and because the food was free.

But the Warwick researchers explicitly reject Freud's claim in a statement accompanying the report: "We found no evidence to support the idea that increased food aid provision is driving demand. All available evidence both in the UK and international points in the opposite direction. Put simply, there is more need and informal food aid providers are trying to help."

The report says that, while food banks such as the Trussell Trust collect data on the numbers of people using its services, it is impossible give an accurate estimate of the numbers of people fed by food aid providers in the UK.

The review warns ministers that, while food banks and thousands of other voluntary food aid providers do an important job of coping with short-term hunger problems, government cannot rely on charity to tackle rising food insecurity.

"Increasing numbers of households are having to deal with changes in circumstances which are potentially having negative impact on their food security in the immediate – and possibly longer – term," says the report.

It adds: "Some see it as appropriate for local groups to meet short-term food needs through temporary, non-governmental provision, but the evidence from international food security research suggests this is likely to be of limited effectiveness.

"A broader approach to sustaining food access, which takes account of longer-term and underlying dimensions to household food insecurity is needed."

A government spokesperson said: "Charities such as food organisations have always provided a valued service to those in need in their communities, in addition to the safety net provided by governments, and we should welcome the help they provide."

"That is why this government has given Jobcentre Plus advisers the ability to say to people who need help that they can go to a food bank.

"The literature review published today was commissioned as part of Defra's general work on food in the UK to see what information was available on the issue."

Professor Elizabeth Dowler, who headed the Warwick research team, said: "We are delighted our report has been published. We urge the government to learn from it and from those living in harsh circumstances, and to find creative, fair ways to enable all in this rich country to have enough money to be able to eat healthily. This work is urgent."

Niall Cooper, of the charity Church Action on Poverty, said: "The publication of the Defra report, coinciding with the launch of the End Hunger Fast by over 40 church leaders today is a timely wake up call to government and society at large.

"The report confirms the growing demand for food banks is driven by people facing crises, and directly refutes the governments claims that it is caused by the growing number of food banks.

"The truth is that, since the 'snapshot' last March, the situation has dramatically worsened, with many food banks reporting a doubling or trembling in demand since April.

The Defra review follows the publication of a Scottish government report last month which explicitly connected the rise in food bank use with the impact of welfare reforms such as the bedroom tax. The nine week Defra review, called a Rapid Research Assessment, comprised of a study of peer-assessed research in the UK and overseas, plus a series of interviews with food aid volunteers, professionals and studies of food aid projects.

Separately, an all-party group of MPs launched an inquiry on Thursday into the causes of UK food poverty and food bank use. The inquiry will be headed by the Bishop of Truro, Tim Thornton, and inquiry members include Labour MP Frank Field and Tory backbencher Laura Sandys.

Building, or selling property on a flood plain should be with a "safety or health warning" on it.

The value of the object against the costs should be upon the decision of the purchaser.

However, one is left with the problems of communication, transport and safety of the general public through "flood zones" from A-B.

The disruption of such is an expense to and effects the whole of society.

Again, the consequences and costs of flooding to surroundings when considering sanitation and hygiene etc. has to be considered.

Fewer and fewer areas and even fewer communities are islands unto themselves.

---------

Nice not to be responsible and able to blame others for their incompetence.

Can anyone find anything from the Radio prog that anyway remotely ties up with Cynics food bank post!!!!!!!!!! .

ive checked it time and time again and Im dammed if I can.

So come on Cynic please explain how you got your findings from the programme so terribly wrong.

I dont know whats gone wrong with you this week Ive always looked upon you as an 'online pal' are you sure their are not side issues here at work effecting your personal life. Your certainly not the nice chap I used to know.

Perhaphs you need a break. I tired mind is a dangerous mind.

The review, written by a team of food policy experts from the University of Warwick, was passed to ministers in June but has remained under wraps until now, creating speculation that the government "suppressed" its findings.

GF - What exactly is your agenda here? You obviously feel very passionately about the food bank situation. If this is the case and you genuinely believe there is a government cover up or conspiracy why bother reporting it on a financial website inside a thread started by you called 'nowt'?

Surely as a self confessed multi-millionaire your efforts would be more worthwhile fighting your cause elsewhere. Can't really see the point of slagging cynic off can you? And so far the silence is deafening for any other posters to comment either.