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.

geldof et al
whatever you may think of geldof personally – I happen not to like the chap for all sorts of reasons, most of them silly – you cannot deny that he has raised the profile of ebola beyond measure

whether or not you think that cause is worthy of support is another matter, and you have the choice of whether or not you wish to donate, and if so, through what channel
personally, I would never give to Oxfam but really ought to have medecins sans frontiers on my charitable causes list, for i think they do an amazing job with little or no recognition in the big wide world

in conclusion, i think the vituperative and very personal attack on Geldof and his efforts is totally unwarranted

Now that in itself is telling, its obviously Rochester that as got to him, but then again hes got the mansion tax all wrong aswel.

Ed Balls says the tax, intended to raise £1.2bn to be spent on the NHS, would be split into four levels. The lowest band would be for homes worth between £2m and £5m and the highest would be homes over £100m. Extra property taxation was also proposed last year by Labour leader Ed Miliband to fund a 10p tax rate. Balls said in an Evening Standard article:
“It cannot be fair that the average person pays 390 times more in council tax, as a percentage of the value of their property, than the billionaire buyer of a £140m penthouse in Hyde Park – who has seen its value rise by around £6m in the past few months alone.”

As an additional sop, Balls says people earning below the higher tax rate (less than £42,000 per year) will be able to defer the charge until they sell the property.

I agree with TANKER , Geldof and Bono are criminals and scumsters in my eyes, Tax evaders/tax avoiders shouldnt be able to run a charity like this, if they are capable of robbing this country of tax they are capable of skimming off the top of any money pile.

I don't think that Geldof raised the profile of Ebola. It was at the top of the agenda of many countries. All he has done is to make it a cause celebre among the public. The money he is raising is a drop in the ocean compared to money from governments. All he has done is to divert money that would be given to charity in thiscountry to his own pet cause. It all looks like publicity for Saint Bob, so he can make even more cash from Africa.

gosh we have some bitter and twisted members on here!

GF - what on earth is wrong or criminal in AVOIDING tax? ......

btw, my legal friends reckon that hmrc is on to a hiding on this ingenious case, and would not be at all surprised to see a quiet settlement reached
anyway, that is hypothesis at the moment, so we shall just have to wait and see

In answer to your question H/S

"Haystack Send an email to Haystack View Haystack's profile - 18 Nov 2014 12:24 - 50570 of 50609"

"Geldof has been complaining that companies don't pay enough tax. Well, it is interesting that Saint Bob has all his companies registered in the tax haven of British Virgin Islands. He also has a collection of businesses that have been set up to profit from activity in Africa. He uses his name to get preferential treatment from the governments there."

Further names of all wealthy off shore tax evader/avoiders please.

tax evasion
not to be remotely confused with avoidance of course ....

but that apart, i was quietly amused to read about juncker being investigated as to his potential role in rubber stamping dubious off-shore bank accounts and arrangements when he was pm of luxembourg

what a lucky chap to be sheltered by the eu mafia, as for sure if he was in uk, the press ferrets would have a field day

By Dan Hodges
12:14PM GMT 18 Nov 2014
Ed Miliband needs to stop treating the public like idiots

Apart from the fact he’s a hypocrite a coward and a fool, Ed Miliband would make a great prime minister. But he is a hypocrite, a coward and a fool. So he won’t.

Last Thursday Labour’s leader treated us to his latest quarterly relaunch. Aside from some paranoid rambling about how a sinister cabal of powerful interests were out to get him, it was the usual incoherent mishmash of liberal idealism, Left-wing populism and state interventionism.

But from amid the rhetorical chaos there emerged one powerful – and seemingly sincere – passage. "I think it is time we levelled with people about Ukip”, he said. “They’ve got away with it for too long. It is time we had a debate about where they really stand. They do have a vision of the past. But I say to working people in this country, let’s really examine their vision. Because when you stop and look at it, it is not really very attractive. And it is rooted in the same failed ideas that have let our country down”. He gave an example of one of those failed ideas. It was the idea that: “You feel safer when you don’t have someone who is foreign living next door”. And he gave the following pledge, “What we will never do is try to out-Ukip Ukip”.

This morning Ed Miliband has tried to out-Ukip Ukip. Or rather, he’s sent out Yvette Cooper to out-Ukip Ukip on his behalf.

At his party’s recent conference in Doncaster, Ukip’s immigration spokesman Steven Woolf unveiled Nigel Farage as the gatekeeper of Fortress Britain. “We are borderless Britain”, he warned. “For too long these hard-working public servants have been put under too much pressure by successive governments. They need our support. So today I am announcing that Ukip’s general election manifesto will include a provision to increase front-line staff and search teams at UK Border entry points by 2,500 officers.”

Today Yvette Cooper claimed Steven Woolf was wrong. It’s Ed Miliband, not Nigel Farage, who will be standing watch on the battlements of Dover castle. “Enforcement has got worse in the last five years. Under Theresa May basic checks are just not being done, and that is undermining confidence in the whole system”, she said. “The number of people stopped and turned away at the border has halved”. As a result Labour would be recruiting “1,000 new border guards”.

Last September Nigel Farage attacked the Government for failing to deal with an immigration crime wave that was being perpetrated by “foreign criminal gangs”. Today Yvette Cooper attacked the government for failing to deal with an immigration crime wave that was being perpetrated by “human traffickers” and “drug smugglers”.

Two weeks ago Nigel Farage visited Calais. What he witnessed there “isn’t just a trade in very real human tragedy and misery, but a clear and present threat to our national security”, he said. Today Yvette Cooper warned that “at Calais there are now serious and growing problems – where we have seen not just abuse but tragedy”.

Not a week goes by without Nigel Farage condemning the “liberal media elite” and their attempts to caricature his views on immigration. Today Yvette Cooper attacked “liberal commentators” who “seem to think talking about immigration at all is a problem and they dismiss people's genuine concerns”.

There is something comically Orwellian about Ed Miliband’s immigration hypocrisy. Last week he said that Labour "will be talking more about immigration as a party. But always on the basis of Labour values, not UKIP values”. He might as well have said, “when I talk about immigration, I do it standing on four legs. When Nigel Farage talks about immigration, he does it standing on two”.

Ukip say they want to turn the country into Fortress Britain. Ed Miliband promises us a British Fortress. Nigel Farage has set his sights on foreign criminals. Ed Miliband pledges a crack down on criminal foreigners. Farage looks at Calais, and sees a tragic threat. Ed Miliband looks across the Channel and spies a threatening tragedy. Nigel Farage rails at liberals in the media. Ed Miliband chastises media liberalism.

There is nothing comical about Miliband’s cowardice, however. Yvette Cooper should know better than to put her name to this rubbish. But at least she does have the guts to put her name to it.

Labour’s leader has a yellow streak down his back a mile wide. We see it on immigration. We see it on welfare. We see it on the economy. A member of the shadow cabinet will be dispatched to deliver the hard messages he dare not deliver himself. They will take the brickbats, whilst he cowers. And then, when the brickbats have finally stopped flying, he will emerge with some self-righteous homily aimed at reassuring his party they still occupy the moral highground.

And this is why Ed Miliband is also a fool. He genuinely thinks people will fall for this charade. He honestly thinks by saying “I won’t out Ukip, Ukip”, he can pop up two days before the Rochester by-election, whack on his Nigel Farage party mask, and people will say “there’s my guy”.

OK, the Labour Party will fall for it. Miliband’s desperate activists will see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear, seize the fatuous talk of “Labour immigration values” and ignore the rest. But the country won’t. The voters aren’t idiots. In the same way they have rejected David Cameron’s “Ukip Lite” in favour of the real thing, so they will reject Miliband’s brand of “Ukip Lite” as well.

The electorate looked from Miliband to Farage, and from Farage to Miliband, and from Miliband to Farage again. And it was still all too easy to say which was which.

The Telegraph

If this thread was Question Time on the BBC , goldfinger , Fred and Stan would get a public vote of 0 with Haystack 5 , cynic 4, Chris 4,and the rest 3 .3/4 apart from TANKER who i can't find a rating for

Quick dig on Geldoff and guys thanks for the insight. Learn something new everyday, I'm amazed if not pissed off he's not being fully exposed right now.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2150195/How-Saint-Bob-words-private-equity-whore-launching-125m-investment-fund.html

http://www.8miles.com/page.php?id=team

cynic

Your so wrong , its been making headlines around the World on TV , and in the papers before Geldoff got on the band wagon

Labour faces slaughter in Scotland
Some models suggest Labour will be left with just five seats in Scotland after the general election. It's not quite that bad, but it will still be a bloodbath
By Stephen Bush12:54PM GMT 18 Nov 2014Comments24 Comments
How bad are things for Labour in Scotland? Another poll shows them being all but wiped out on a uniform swing, reduced to just five seats north of the border.
Of course, we know that things very rarely happen on a uniform swing. Many Labour MPs are well dug in with big majorities, while it seems unlikely that the Scottish National Party’s surge will be happening with the same fervour in Unionist strongholds as in those parts of the country that voted for Yes.
What we do know is that around four in 10 people who voted Labour in 2010 are now voting for the SNP, and that three in 10 Labour supporters voted Yes in September. What we’re seeing is the end of the so-called “Red Nats” – people who voted Labour at Westminster and for a separatist party in Holyrood – while the SNP is still holding onto what you might call “Yellow Unionists” – people who voted for the Union in September but vote for the SNP at elections, plus the loss of Union supporters who felt that Gordon Brown was a more effective voice for Scotland in the United Kingdom than David Cameron or Alex Salmond but aren’t sold on Ed Miliband. In addition, the SNP have been boosted by the collapse of the Liberals, roughly a third of which has flowed to Nationalists according to Survation and YouGov. (Ipsos Mori , who also showed a heavy swing to the SNP, don’t weight by past vote, so it is harder to tell in their surveys where the SNP vote is coming from.)
Using the result of the last election and the referendum we can guess, roughly, where Labour will suffer the biggest loss in support. So in Glasgow, where Yes triumphed by 53.5 per cent of the vote to 46.5 per cent, I’ve assumed that half of the electorate in 2015 will be Yes supporters – and of that half, a third will be Labour voters now supporting the SNP.
This model is fairly generous to Labour in assuming that turnout will be the same as in 2010 and the SNP will not repeat the feat of the independence referendum of adding new voters to their tally, but I’ve also been generous to the SNP in factoring out the quality level of their new recruits. We know that the separatists are now far and away the largest party in Scotland; but we don’t know anything as to the commitment of their new activists. Will they knock on doors in the driving rain? And will their candidates be able to present an appealing face to the electorate? Don’t forget that Andy Slaughter in Hammersmith was able to hold on partly because the Conservative candidate, Shaun Bailey, flopped locally. But these two assumptions probably – hopefully – cancel each other out.

I’ve also accounted for the Liberal collapse, which, north of the border, benefits the SNP significantly more than Labour. The good(ish) news for Labour, and the broader Unionist cause, first. Under a uniform swing Labour would be reduced to five seats. Under my model, Labour would hold on to 22 seats, with Jim Murphy’s seat of East Renfrewshire the safest Labour seat with a majority of 11,578.
Now for the bad news. Labour would be wiped out in Aberdeen and Dundee. It would lose Falkirk by 7,155 votes – a seat that, under various names, the party has held since 1935. The party would lose three seats in Glasgow, including that of Anas Sarwar, the former deputy leader of Scottish Labour and now Opposition frontbencher. It would hold onto Glasgow East by just 977 votes and Glasgow North West by 1416 votes. Under my model, only Willie Bain’s Glasgow North East could be considered safe, with the others remaining red by narrow margins.
Labour would keep hold of just one seat in Edinburgh – Alistair Darling’s Edinburgh South West – where the SNP would take Edinburgh East and Edinburgh North & Leigh from third place and Edinburgh South from fourth. In North Ayrshire & Arran, Katy Clark, the left’s candidate for deputy leader, would lose her seat by almost 4,000 votes.
Former strongholds would remain in the red column but only just. Stirling would remain Labour-controlled, but only by 204 votes despite the fact that the SNP came third in 2010. Gemma Doyle’s West Dunbartonshire – current majority of over 16,000 – would be kept by only 2453. Douglas Alexander, Labour’s foreign policy lead and election coordinator, would go from a majority of 16,000 to just 4438. John Reid’s old seat of Airdrie & Shotts would go from a majority of 12,000 to a mere 573 votes. Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock would go down to the wire – Labour would have a lead of 167 over the SNP, who are now third, but even a small Conservative boost there would see that party come through the middle.
All in all, the following seats would fall to the SNP: Aberdeen North, Aberdeen South, Dundee West, Dunfermline & West Fife, Edinburgh East, Edinburgh North & Leith, Edinburgh South, Falkirk, Glasgow Central, Glasgow North, Inverclyde, Kilmarnock and Loudoun, Livingston, Midlothian, North Ayrshire & Arran and Ochil & South Perthshire.
The following seats would be held by fewer than 1,000 votes: Airdrie & Shotts, Ayr Carrick & Cumnock, Cumbernauld, East Kilbride, Glasgow East, Lanark & Hamilton East, and Stirling.
The best news for Labour in Scotland? At least they’re not the Liberal Democrats.

cynic Send an email to cynic View cynic's profile - 18 Nov 2014 14:15 - 50609 of 50615

gosh we have some bitter and twisted members on here!

GF - what on earth is wrong or criminal in AVOIDING tax? ...... ENDS

Because other people have to pick up the avoiders tab/responsibility and if you cant see that then I have to say you are being rather selfish especially when the tax take in this country is not meeting up with spending and debt as to be borrowed and interest paid and a vicious circle is in play.

goldfinger

Are you saying all the company's that you make a profit from trading, don't avoid paying tax if possible ?

There is nothing wrong with avoiding tax. It is not a moral question. What I dislike is the hypochrasy of people like Geldof preaching about more money from governments when he is denying them his tax.

Ohhh shut up Hays we expect nothing less from a selfish twonk like you.

Yes you look after yourself, and forget about everyone else.

Look after number one.

Typical Tory attitude and why they will lose the next GE.

FFS - if you don't wish to AVOID tax then don't, but morally that means abandoning your pension and all the sundry other tax allowances that you enjoy, including that of writing a will and/or passing on your estate to your spouse - you would say as of right

one equally has a right to AVOID paying tax
if that route becomes too "aggressive" then HMRC will assuredly guide you back into the paths of righteousness ......

but don't go rabbiting on with all this crap about avoidance being immoral
as and when HMRC starts taking a clear moral stance, your argument might have some substance
as it stands, it does not

gf - losing it again, hang onto your threads :0)

hang onto your threads :0) ..... lol

"Further names of all wealthy "off shore" tax evader/avoiders please H/S."