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.

Well if that was the case and I dont doubt it Hays, it goes down on your Credit Check with Experian and the other 2 and would have meant you wouldnt have been able to get any new credit or a mortgage for 6 years at least, until re-signing up on the electoral roll.

I know you probably dont want these facilities BUT you never know.

A lot of these ruffians who have debt outstanding do the same thing to try and avoid having thier collar felt but in time they are caught.

Some employers even use (credit check) it when checking your CV details.

I make sure I fill it in immediatly on my PC.

gf
That was many years in the past and at a different address. In fact several previous addresses. I got out of jury service once by supplying loads of documentation about a project with lots of staff depending on me. The next time, I wrote a letter saying that I did not approve of jury trials and would feel obliged to find an accused innocent on that basis.

MAY 21, 2014
Leading Law Firm Slams ‘Exploitative’ Zero-Hours Contracts

Leading law firm, Thompson Solicitors, has slammed ‘exploitative’ zero-hours contracts and the coalition government’s “sham” consultation exercise into the use of the controversial employment contracts.

Thompsons Solicitors say zero-hours contracts provide no guarantee of work and can trap people into working for a single employer with ‘exclusivity’ clauses.

People trapped on zero-hours contracts have no idea how many hours they will be required to complete. Consequently, employees have no clear indication on how much they will be paid from week to week.

The law firm say the contracts prevent parents from planning family activities, and organising childcare, because zero-hours employees can be called into work at a moments notice on a ‘take it or leave it’ basis. This widespread ‘exploitation’ which ‘gives people no choice’ needs to be tackled, say Thompsons.

Thompsons say that government’s consultation into zero-hours contracts ‘proposes no effective solution’, and that employers should be able to achieve flexibility without needing to resort to contracts which seek to ‘exploit’ desperate jobseekers.
Responding to the consultation, Thomsons said that ‘exclusivity clauses’, which prevent zero-hours employees from working elsewhere, should be banned entirely. Not all zero-hours contracts include exclusivity clauses.

They also say that all zero-hours contracts should provide the same ‘basic employment rights’ already included in other contractual arrangements.

Workers should also be able to demand a “traditional contract” after a set period on a zero-hours contract. Thompsons claim that this right could be ‘introduced under the Part-time Workers Directive‘.

Zero-hours employees “on call” should also be protected by existing National Minimum Wage Legislation, which Thompsons say would help discourage employers from exploiting workers.

Thompsons Chief Executive Stephen Cavalier said:

“People on zero hours contracts have no guaranteed income and no certainty of when or whether they will be working. They cannot plan their lives, organise childcare or take on commitments. They are forced to accept zero hours contracts on a ‘take it or leave it’ basis. They have no real choice. It is exploitation that needs to be tackled.

“There should be zero tolerance of these exploitative contracts; abuses should be tackled. The government should outlaw zero hours contracts which tie workers to an employer with no guarantee of either work or pay.

“These five measures for reform will put an end to the abuse of zero hours contracts and, if implemented, would be a real signal from the government that they are taking low paid workers and their families seriously.

“There are too many families in the UK living below the poverty line. For the first time, more than half of those in poverty in the UK are working families. Unless urgent action is taken to tackle zero hours contracts, that situation will only get worse.”

Source – Welfare News Service,

Bit of a Jack The Lad you Hays, but I know what you mean as my late father who was self employed got caught and had to do 3 weeks and the compensation was miserly.

Worse still with being a sole trader it didnt help his business.

gf
More cuts and paste from that silly vox blog. They are just talking about exploitative zero hours contracts which all parties are against.

personal views are fine but i think it worse than unprofessional for a firm of solicitors of any rank (never heard of these guys) to take a political stance

Its not from VOX.

Its from Welfare News Service recognised by the DSS.......and IDS.

He might have it on his blog but Ive got it direct from above.

Anyway the company are right about the exploitation.

Remember this when the down turn comes Zero hours contracts wont exist anymore, all of them will be sacked immidieatly. In fact they wont be sacked, they just wont ever hear from their employer again.

2.5 million aded to the unemployment figures overnight.

I am surprised at how many people who don't bother to vote in any elections before are voting today for UKIP

gf
The same would happen in a downturn even if normal employment.

Bedroom Tax Was Never About Freeing Up Housing
20/05/2014

I knew it You knew it and the people faced with ‘Bedroom Tax’ knew it!!!!!!

The BEDROOM TAX was not about freeing up houses at all. It was simply about saving money!!!!
Never mind all those poor souls that have moved and now regret doing such!!

Please take time to watch, and listen very carefully to PMQs on Weds 14th May. (27mins 30secs in)

Cameron was asked by Jonathon Reynolds MP

“As the Prime Minister has acknowledged, the number of people who are in work but who have to claim housing benefit to make ends meet is growing, but the cost of that will be an extra £5 billion over the course of this Parliament. Does the Prime Minister consider that a sign of success?”

To which Cameron replied: “……. in order to make savings housing benefit should not be paid in respect of spare rooms that people are not using….” the key words there being IN ORDER TO MAKE SAVINGS.

For the last 18 months Cameron, McVey, IDS and co have been banging on about how their beloved ‘spare room subsidy’ will free up homes for Families. They insist on repeating that line.

I for one believe that no one should ever be put in a position of being made to leave their HOME. However, as I only said to my own MP last week, ” …….if the Bedroom Tax were about freeing up homes for families, then they would have included Pensioners…” to which I was met with silence. No answer!!

Keep talking Mr Cameron and slowly but surely you will drop right in to that big hole come General Election 2015.

We the People are watching, and listening. We are WAKING UP!!!

Good. The right reason.

Haystack - 22 May 2014 17:50 - 41165 of 41166

gf
The same would happen in a downturn even if normal employment....................ENDS

WRONG, employees had contracts with their employers before the Tories came to power. Contracts i might had that would have meant redundancy payments to most.

Zero Hours Contracts mean just that...........ZERO.

Hays you mean Camoron as put his foot in it again and now will face another committee.

How many more. !!!!!!

If the results are as poor as the papers are predicting, they'll be wanting everyone to vote again till they get the right result.

gf
Redundancy payments for staff who have worked for a short time is peanuts. I have paid it out several times. It is no deterrent to letting staff go. It is just a few hundred pounds. The point is that if you had staff that were important for your business then you would employ them on a permanent basis. Companies only employ staff on zero hours if they can be replaced easily.

Zero hours have been around long before this government. There has always been casual employment. It creates a flexible jobs market. When the economy improves enough these contracts will lessen as companies will be competing for staff and will want to keep them.

MaxK
Let us hope so.

.

Here's an interesting viewpoint, spot on the money...what think you Haystack?


6.18pm BST


Telegraph columnist Janet Daley has made four predictions of today's elections, local and European. You can read the full column here, but here's a precis of her thoughts – which she caveats as 'just a punt'.



1) Turnout will be much higher than usual for either European or local council elections. This has, in effect, become a referendum on the EU and so has caught the imagination of a greater proportion of the population than a normal (yawn) EU parliamentary election.

2) One paradoxical consequence of the above is that the Tories will do better in the local council elections than they might otherwise have done. This is because all those Right-of-centre voters who ordinarily support the Conservatives, but who this time are going to vote Ukip (to "make a point") will still vote Tory in the council contests.


3) There will not be as great an effect for Labour. In some London Labour boroughs, there may be an anti-Ukip Left-wing movement but it will be largely a middle-class phenomenon.

4) Because of the media assault on Ukip, the exit polls will be more accurate than usual. Fewer people will be reluctant to admit that they voted Ukip than might otherwise have been the case …



http://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/2014/may/22/eu-and-local-elections-polling-day-live

Scientists Theorise Light/Matter Collider

MAY 22, 2014 SCOTT LEENO

Approximately 80 years ago, two researchers predicted there would be a method for turning light into matter in the future. Now, 80 years later, a new team of scientists are proposing a technique, which may make that theorised method actually happen.

This proposed method involves colliding two photons, the massless particles of light, which have extremely high energy, to convert them into two particles with mass. In past experiments, such as the Breit–Wheeler pair production, they had to introduce particles that had mass into the process. The research guys over at Imperial College London however, claim that it is now possible to create a collider, which only includes photons.

The photon-photon collider works by firing high-energy photons into a field of photons emitted as blackbody radiation. When these photons smash together, it is believed that a significant number of them will turn from light to matter, (an electron and a positron).

Is a replicator too far away?

Einstein said that with enough energy, massless particles could be transformed into matter. But in order to come up with all of that energy, most methods have used electrons to provide an enhancement.

This experiment works in a similar way, but the critical difference is that this collider maintains all of the electrons outside of the vacuum where the collision occurs; thereby matter is created inside an environment that is devoid of it.

To accomplish this, researchers intend firing electrons into a piece of gold. This would send high-energy photons into the direction of the radiation chamber. The electrons would go through the gold, but they would all be filtered out from the photons by using a magnetic field.

The London researchers haven’t said if they plan on production and then testing of the new collider. They did say it would be easy to produce with existing technologies. The Department of Physics Professor Steven Rosesays said, “What was so surprising to us was the discovery of how we can create matter directly from light using the technology that we have today in the UK. As we are theorists we are now talking to others who can use our ideas to undertake this landmark experiment.”

So although we are far from a ‘Star Trek’ replicator, things are moving in that direction. A paper that describes the researchers’ “photon–photon collider,” is being published in Nature Photonics.



SOURCE: http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/18/5724658/photon-collider-could-turn-light-into-matter

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