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.

Рабочие всего мира, объединяйтесь

It is in English on Karl Marx's memorial near me in Highgate Cemetery.

Marx was another champagne socialist. Privately educated from a wealthy family. He was a member of several drinking clubs who used to generally cause trouble and damage, similar to the Bullingdon Club. When he moved to London, he was known as a notorious drunk in the Soho area.

Considering he was on the surface, a believer in the distribution of wealth, he managed to leave $5m dollars in 1895. That would be a huge amount of money these days. He didn't inherit money, it was all made from his writings.

All these so-called socialists/left wingers want to drink champagne and live the champagne lifestyle. There is nothing wrong with that - if they would just stop the silly pretence and own up !

would that they preached for others to aspire to the same
however, aspiration breeds competition breeds failure as well as success ..... and of course it is unjust that those who are successful should benefit from same .... so let's level downwards

There's still hope for Fred !:-)


By Agency
10:57AM GMT 01 Jan 2015
A constipated goldfish escapes his untimely demise as owner splashes out £300 on life-saving operation

A devoted pet owner splashed out £300 - to save the life of his constipated goldfish.

The man took the tiddler to vets to ease its discomfort after noticing it was struggling to poo.

He hoped after a simple procedure the fish would be back happily swimming in his office tank.

But the company boss was in for a shock when staff at the Toll Barn Veterinary Centre told him the delicate surgery would cost £300.

He turned down the treatment and left his fish to its fate - but had a change of mind 10 minutes later and went back to give the go-ahead.

Vet Faye Bethell, 29, was then tasked with carefully administering anesthetic before using tiny instruments to remove a lump close to the fish's anus.

A second lump was removed from his dorsal fin before the pet was returned to water and handed back to his grateful owner.

The vet said the three inch fish made a full recovery after the 50-minute operation and it would have died if it was left untreated.

She said: "I have never done a procedure like that on a goldfish, although I have done it before on more valuable fish like a carp.

"The actual surgery is quite straightforward but administering the anesthetic is quite complicated.

"The issue was the fish couldn't poo and it would have eventually become toxic and it would have died.

"There was nothing special about the fish. He just liked it a lot. People love their pets - but that was an expensive little goldfish."

The delicate procedure involved introducing a carefully-measured anaesthetising agent into the fish's water at the practice in North Walsham, Norfolk.

It was then removed from its tank and placed on a waterproof drape before anaesthetic water was introduced into its mouth via a tube and bubbled over its gills.

The vet then used a miniature heart-rate monitor to check that the fish was properly "under" before using a mini scalpel to remove the lumps.

She then sewed each cut with three stitches before using a special "glue" to cover and waterproof the fish's scales before it was gradually re-awakened.

Goldfish can live up to 10 years and this ailing pet was two years and 10 months old at the time of its operation.

The Toll Barn practice opened a year ago and specialises in exotic animals as well as the more usual pets.

Faye Bethell revealed that in the past year she has carried out a string of bizarre operations, including the removal of a 12g skin tumour from a two-inch long hognose snake.

She has also successfully taken out a stone from the 5mm-wide ureter of a guinea pig and last week castrated a skunk.

If the bookies are right, how many seats would each party win in Scotland in May? – alittleecon 01/01/2015

There have been a lot of stories recently about opinion polls north of the border showing a huge surge in SNP support at the expense of Labour. This article in the Guardian last week is a good example, which predicted that the SNP could win up to 45 of the 59 Scottish seats next May, writes Alex Little.

With this in mind, I thought it would be interesting to see whether the bookies (and their punters) agreed with these dire (for Labour) predictions.

The current odds don’t reflect the polls… The headline numbers don’t look too bad for Labour. They have 40 seats at the moment and remain favourites to win in 33 of those in May. They current odds suggest they will lose just 7 seats to the SNP, who in turn will all but wipe out the Lib Dems, leaving them with just 3 seats, while the Tories retain their only Scottish seat. In a further 3 seats, Ladbrokes have the SNP tied with Labour.

A closer look at the odds though should give Labour less cause for complacency however.

Give alittleecon a visit to see the full article, but Alex’s parting words are well-chosen: These are only the current odds of course, and they will undoubtedly change before election day. So will the polls though. The SNP are doing fantastically well in the polls are the moment, but surely they will narrow somewhat between now and May? It seems fairly set in stone now that the Lib Dems will be almost wiped out in Scotland in May, while for Labour, it could still go either way.

Odds are less reliable than polls. Odds are just a reflection of what people will bet on. This is limited to the group of people who bet. This is hardly a demographically chosen set of people.

Then Manuel, Haze and Db4 can put their money where their mouths are and bet against the odds.

Why I Hate Religion And You Should Too
Posted: 01/01/2015 16:46 GMT Updated: 4 hours ago

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My uncle a life long atheist recently converted Catholicism, he decided to send me a letter outlining his beliefs and I thought I would share my reply.

Religion, Faith & God are three independent but uniquely intertwined beliefs that I have struggled with over the last few years. I have actively sought out to come to terms with what I believe when it comes to these three beliefs, I can't say I am 100% ardent in all aspects of my position but I feel pretty content at this moment in time.

I am a big believer in a wide base of reading on a topic as it leads to knowledge and I often find the words of others much smarter than myself deeply resonate. However I also believe if you want to truly understand something it has to be experiential. What I have found that often the conceiving of an idea can be attractive on paper, but for want of a better phrase the epiphanies I have had, have all been physically in the moment of experiencing varying forms of 'faith'. Over the last 18 months I have spent time with Islamic extremists, Mormons, Scientologists and New age Evangelicals.

Firstly I will start with a particular poignant quote, "If there is a God, he will have to beg my forgiveness" this was etched into a wall inside Mauthausen concentration camp. To me this helps justify my two fold position; firstly Religion with an interventionist God, the idea that not only God exists but instructs us what to do via rules and regulations on how we should live our lives to me, must be untrue. I believe the philosopher Epicurus defined the paradox of religion to near perfection, "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent, is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God". The idea that if we subscribe to a particular dogma set out by God salvation is our reward to me is awful, usually at this point religious people cite 'free will' but this is the greatest insult of all. Yes I have a choice as to whether I adhere to the rules of God, but I am still born a pawn in a game I didn't ask to play, I may not abide by the rules but I still face the repercussions when the game ends.

Secondly, let us consider that the dogmatic approach the Roman Catholic Church propagates to be true. Arguably for me to tacitly comply with its teachings is what perpetuates poverty, injustice, inequality etc. Now that is not to say that there are many fine Catholics who do wonderful selfless things in the name of their religion, (a good example would be the current pope who I consider to be a good person) but consider the teachings without the human element. Teachings which include the banning of condoms, homosexuality and continued subjugation of women, in which clearly the teachings place them beneath men in stature (at the very least makes true gender equality impossible) and robbed of the 'free will' we too often hear about when it comes to decisions over their own body, i.e. abortion (In some cases enforced by law). I also don't accept faux modernization to stay relevant to society, what about those families who lost children in by gone centuries before baptism believing their child damned in limbo, to be told a few hundred years later 'Oh we don't believe that anymore'.

C.S Lewis although a Christian, stated, "Jesus told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured". To him this only made sense if God was personally wounded with every sin, however to return to the paradox of an interventionist God, if he cares and has the power to alleviate suffering why doesn't he? The thing about free will is that often the most oppressed, poverty stricken and helpless people in the world have no choice, they are victims of circumstance from birth until death.

The idea that one can live a terrible life, inflicting countless suffering on others and on their death bed decide to genuinely subscribe to the idea of a celestial dictatorship doesn't sit well with me. If Hitler had repented in his bunker should he be allowed redemption?

Religion was a pre-cursor to science a way of explaining the world in terms that both comforted mans yearning to belong, offered a sense of importance to ones life and allowed us to come to terms with being finite organisms. Freud aptly said "Religion suffers from one incurable deficiency it was too clearly derived from our desire to escape from or survive death'. I used to think I was pretty clear in my convictions, but when I spent time living with evangelical Christians for the sake of a documentary I realised just how impressionable and malleable I am. A yearning to belong is intensified with the sensation of being an outsider, self doubt and a herd mentality are innate human facets, have you considered why my most religious people simply follow the religion of their parents or were born into?

Religion essentially tells us we are born ill, impure and must give thanks eternally for something we had no control or choice over; these are the fundamental principles of a dictatorship. One must forget his individuality to conform to a constructed collectivist way of living and behaving, or you'll be damned If you don't.

Moving away from the idea of a dogmatic sense of Religion and God does contemplating the existence of God count as a form of belief in some way on the spectrum. In answer to this, in short I don't know, Deism conveys the idea of a designer who takes no active interest in our lives. The problem I have with that if it to be true, much like a mother abandoning a child we consider to be immoral, where does our sense of morality stem from?

I suppose it comes from evolution and understanding that animals' working together is more conducive to survival then on your own. I struggle with deism and concede it is a possibility, however I take comfort from the words of Robert Ingersoll 'The Great Agnostic'- " I would rather live and love where death is king then have eternal life where love is not", and it seems to me a creator with no interest in human affairs is a creator devoid of love.

Finally the idea of faith, I think faith is a necessity of man and takes many forms whether it is religion or something else. Graham Greene wrote in the Comedians "If you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to faith the faith we lose, or is it the same faith under another mask?"

I choose to my put my faith in humanity, I don't feel the need for a creator to make sense of the world whether he takes an active interest or not. For me the trick is to be content in the not knowing bit, I don't know and I probably never will categorically know...

I leave with you a particular quote that sums up my position better than I ever could from Dostoyevsky

"It's life that matters, nothing but life, the process of discovering the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all"

More illegal migrants....why don't the Italians put them in another ship and ferry them straight back to where they have come from ?....no waiting or hanging around....this is becoming crazy...the authorities don't know what they are doing.....this illegal rabble will just play on this......you take them off one ship...put them on to another and back to bongoland or wherever they originate from (the port that is).....never mind the screaming kids and all that bullshit that goes with those people....

A bit like spitting on the tramps with TB sitting, coughing and begging on the pavement, before he succumbs.

They will stop doing so, if you wait long enough.

Please Fred.....there is a difference...it is because of that attitude like yours that we are getting deeper and deeper into a migrant mess...that is just the sort of dogooder attitude that I despise...

RF - the italians don't care .... the illegals don't want to stay there - though i believe eu regs stipulate they should as it's the country of first arrival - so they are helped on their way to france, from where they hope to hop across the channel

============

city link and their drivers
a good article in today's guardian sets out what i have often written about - the plight of the (forced to be) self-employed courier drivers
note the little insert about drivers being fined if they cannot work through illness ..... there are similar penalties should they decide to take any holiday

This one c?

I was just reading it...nice eh?


http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/01/city-link-army-self-employed-count-cost-failure

yup, that's the one .... not sure how, but i get the guardian automatically and daily on my phone

like i said, the drivers get well and truly shafted, and that's before the depot managers filter the good jobs and/or regular runs for their faves, and other shenanigans

It is becoming a terrible situation...and the UK and our social services are their main destination......
anyway....when will I get my first Uboat command ?

IMHO, the following situation surely cannot be defined by HMRC or allowed by the government to qualify as 'self employment':

City Link’s army of self-employed workers count cost of business failure

From: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/01/city-link-army-self-employed-count-cost-failure

More than 1,000 drivers and agency personnel were classed as ‘service delivery partners’ - no guaranteed hours, no sick pay, no holiday pay and no redundancy payment

Jennifer Rankin and Sarah Butler
The Guardian, Thursday 1 January 2015 18.14 GMT

On New Year’s Eve, more than 2,300 workers at City Link found out their jobs had been axed. But more than 1,000 self-employed van drivers and agency workers who earned a living from the failed parcel delivery firm will not receive a redundancy letter.

John Baginton, a 54-year-old van driver, has had no communication from the company since he found out from a news website on Christmas Day that his job was gone. “It has left a bitter taste in my mouth. I still haven’t had a letter or an email to say my job’s finished. Nothing from head office to say ‘thanks for your loyalty’. They didn’t even send a text message.”

Baginton, not his real name, was never counted as an employee by City Link. Although he worked for City Link, and its predecessor Direct Express, for nine years, he has never been on the payroll. In City Link parlance, he is a “service delivery partner”. In other words, a contract worker with no guaranteed hours, sick pay, holiday pay or entitlement to redundancy. City Link owe him £2,400 for three weeks’ work. But he doesn’t expect to see any of this money: “I very much doubt it, as we will be the last of the last [on the creditors’ list].”

Even after last-minute talks to save the firm failed, City Link was still advertising on its website for “passionate” people who wanted to be their own boss. The firm, owned by multimillionaire Jon Moulton, claimed that drivers could earn £43,000 a year.

Phil Valentine, a contractor who has worked for City Link “on and off” for six years and runs six vans, dismissed the £43,000 figure. Once a driver paid for fuel, insurance and a weekly charge for a van, earnings would be more like £28,000 a year.

Baginton said: “Gross-wise it looks good, but net-wise you are probably looking at around half of that [£43,000].” Officially self-employed, he paid his own taxes and national insurance. Work started at 4.30 in the morning and sometimes didn’t finish until 7.30 at night.

Holidays were rare, because it was hard to find a replacement driver. “If we have two weeks’ holiday, it will take us two months to recover. It is a double whammy. First because you lose your wages and second because you have to pay someone else to do your job.”

Illness was an even bigger problem. Last year, City Link docked him £75 for missing a morning’s work after he came down with food poisoning. “I rang in sick the night before and I said I didn’t feel well. They rang throughout the morning and asked ‘where are you?’” He went in at lunchtime, still feeling unwell, but found out a week later he had been fined. “I asked my boss: ‘What’s this charge for?’ And he said it would have been £150 if I had missed the whole day. So I had gone in sick and I had basically worked for free.

“Before Christmas I had a chest infection for two weeks and my wife was saying I should stay at home. But you can’t. You have it at the back of your mind: ‘I am going to get charged.’”

City Link contract drivers are part of an army of self-employed labour that has boomed during the recession. Around 4.6 million people are self-employed in the UK, 15% of the working population, the highest proportion for 40 years, according to the Office for National Statistics. The biggest growth category for self employment is not consultants tapping away on laptops in cafes, but taxi drivers, carpenters and bricklayers. Delivery workers are not counted separately in the statistics, but there is little doubt their numbers have grown as Britons have embraced online shopping. Around 1.7bn parcels were delivered in the UK in 2012, up from 1.3bn in 2005, according to PWC.

Amid fierce competition for a slice of the £7bn parcel market, costs are being squeezed, especially as big customers, such as Amazon, develop their own delivery networks. “There is constant downward pressure on parcel carriers which they can only deal with by economies of scale,” said one distribution industry source.

Mike Parkinson, a City Link contractor who is owed £7,500 for unpaid work, saw higher payments for early-morning deliveries dropped after Better Capital took control of the firm in 2013. He could be fined if he missed a delivery slot.

Baginton was paid £2.15 per delivery, no matter how many items were going to one house. “I could have 20 parcels and that is classed as one stop and I get paid the same.” Sometimes he delivered flat-pack furniture stamped with “2-man lift” for the same £2.15 rate he would be paid for delivering a T-shirt.

Mike Cain, an employment lawyer at Slater & Gordon, who successfully fought for compensation for warehouse workers and delivery drivers working for the collapsed Comet retail business, said:

“Self-employed contracts are playing a major part in the so-called economic revival. Under such contracts, worker rights and access to legal protection are minimised if not removed altogether and the risk and the costs if a business fails are being shifted downwards.”

Trade unions are worried this model will spread to the whole industry, including the Royal Mail, now in private hands.

“While the parcel market has grown quickly, so too has the number of operators at an even faster rate. The same principle applies to post and the UK’s 650-year-old post operator, Royal Mail, faces intense pressure of its own,” said Billy Hayes, general secretary of the Communication Workers Union. He accuses the regulator, Ofcom, of shirking its responsibilities by failing to apply standards to fledgling companies that will do anything to undercut the Royal Mail. “One of the worst impacts of Ofcom’s current approach to let the free market have its head is the downward pressure they support, to reduce pay and terms and conditions, and encourage a race to the bottom for workers.”

Ofcom said parliament was ultimately responsible for regulating workers’ rights. “Ofcom has a duty to secure the universal service for postal users. We do not regulate terms of employment, which are for individual companies to determine.”

The department of business, innovation and skills said the government was conducting a review into “how to make a person’s employment status clearer and how this affects their employment rights”.

“Workers and businesses should be free to agree the terms of an employment relationship and the government does not want to restrict people’s ability to choose how they work. This ensures a flexible and vibrant labour market, supporting growth and delivering jobs.”

Meanwhile, Baginton is consulting a solicitor friend for advice about his rights. “I don’t think the government realise what this job entails,” he says.

Here's the link to the articles 'Comments':

Start of comments

Some explanation about how City Link's financiers were mislead:

From: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/city-links-private-equity-owner-accused-of-breaking-funding-offer-9951106.html

City Link's private equity owner accused of breaking funding offer
Exclusive: Jon Moulton's Better Capital fund wrote to the courier in September promising to provide finances to keep it going for another year

The Independent
JIM ARMITAGE (DEPUTY BUSINESS EDITOR)
Wednesday 31 December 2014

The private-equity fund that owned the City Link parcels business wrote to the company as recently as late September pledging to provide finances to keep it going for another year.

City Link’s accounts show that it received a letter from Jon Moulton’s Better Capital fund on 30 September, stating the latter’s “current firm intention to provide finance sufficient to enable the business to continue as a going concern for the next 12 months from the date of approval of the financial statements”.

Those financial statements were lodged in accounts filed at Companies House on 9 October, with City Link’s management saying: “No matters have been drawn to the attention of the directors to suggest that further funding will not be forthcoming as required.”

Just 11 weeks later, on Christmas Eve, the firm collapsed – threatening the jobs of nearly 3,000 staff – after Better Capital’s fund stopped financing its losses.

The letter will raise further concerns among creditors of City Link, who claim they were misled about the financial state of the business, particularly the 1,000 subcontractors working as drivers who are likely to be left owed thousands of pounds after the administration process.

A spokesman for the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) said: “This is just another broken promise from a company that was encouraging subcontractors to invest in new City Link kit and van leases just two weeks ago, even though it must have known it was in trouble.”

Mr Moulton insisted that the letter was not a pledge, and said it was made clear that the 12-month financing plan was only “current” at the time it was written. He said the accounts made it clear that the business was struggling.

The accounts also reveal that Better Capital received management and administration fees, totalling £337,000 last year, in return for its fund’s £40m investment in City Link. Had the company survived until Better Capital’s loan was due to be repaid in 2018, it would have received interest charges of £3.3m. In the event, no interest was paid to Mr Moulton’s company.

The accounts show that Spicers, an office equipment supplier also owned by Better Capital, was paid £190,000 by City Link during the year, while the double-glazing company Everest – another Better Capital firm – spent £8,797 as a loyal City Link customer.

The accounts reveal that City Link’s chief executive, Dave Smith, received £646,000 in pay and pension contributions last year, up from the £368,000 that the former Post Office managing director earned the year before, when CityLink was owned by Rentokil.

Filings at Companies House show that Mr Smith and other directors set up a business called City Link B2B Limited, with the Better Capital fund as its shareholder, on 8 December. This was established with the idea that the company could rescue part of the business with a so-called company voluntary arrangement – a scheme that freezes a struggling business’s debts to give it breathing space to restructure. While this did not happen, the existence of the plan will also cause concern for those, such as its contractors, who extended credit to City Link in the weeks before its collapse.

Most of City Link’s nearly 3,000-strong workforce will be formally made redundant today, The RMT is planning a demonstration at the firm’s main hub in Coventry.