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.

I did say several contracts.

fine and i read and some of it i knew, but essentially, for the person at the end of the rope, unless you're clever and have an accountant (and can afford same), you're potentially or actually worse off with a zero-hour contract than being self-employed

Hays is spot on Zero Hours contracts v Self Employed are like chalk and cheese.

Remember the recent case of the radio disc Jockey who was also claiming he was a used car salesman for IR35 purposes. Wayne Rooney gets away with it at present by reckoning hes a after dinner talker/entertainer (besides footballer.....debatable recently) although I believe hes soon to have his collar felt.

Any way you normally find the Zero Hours contract employee usually working for an agency as an employee. Thats the big give away. Its the agency who as the power to hire and fire but no doubt most are swayed directly by the employers they have contracts with.

The Halifax Bank used them in Call Centres and they were mostly seasonal workers or one off project workers.

Their salary was about 30% less than the employees hired directly by the Halifax and a lot of permanent staff looked down on them wrongly imo. Also had no holiday pay although they could take non paid leave but couldnt join a union. Did get subsidised meals though.

Basicaly Cheap Labour.

This Crimea vote ...it could only happen in Russia or North Korea....they invade a country and then have a vote afterwards....unbelievable....
It is pretty obvious that no Fifa world cup can be held in Russia.....I would expect England and most countries to abstain from participating...and Fifa should suspend the world cup 2018 immediately from being held there....

zero hour contracts
sticky - the end financial result for the "employee" does not seem to be greatly different, except that on zero hour contract, you get paid at least the statutory minimum wage, whereas the self-employed guy, may well be paid less than that when his immediate expenses are deducted (as in courier drivers)


crimea
i'm surprised how sanguine the markets seem to be this morning, though most assuredly this is far from the end of the drama

As legal as Iraq, Libya?

Thames Estuary

Would prefer a Boris island there myself....super project that... freeing up Heathrow for housing ....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26603830

RF - Boris Island is intended as additional to and NOT instead of LHR!

Heathrow is too much in the middle of towns and villages....I would allow the Heathrow people to participate in the Boris Island project (only fair)...enormous benefits for the country....it would even allow taller skyscrapers in London as the flight paths would no longer fly low over central London.....

stupid boy! :-)

we're all in it ...




Britain's five richest families worth more than poorest 20%

Oxfam report reveals scale of inequality in UK as charity appeals to chancellor over tax


Larry Elliott, economics editor


The Guardian, Monday 17 March 2014



The scale of Britain's growing inequality is revealed today by a report from a leading charity showing that the country's five richest families now own more wealth than the poorest 20% of the population.

Oxfam urged the chancellor George Osborne to use Wednesday's budget to make a fresh assault on tax avoidance and introduce a living wage in a report highlighting how a handful of the super-rich, headed by the Duke of Westminster, have more money and financial assets than 12.6 million Britons put together.



more: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/mar/17/oxfam-report-scale-britain-growing-financial-inequality

Britain's five richest families worth more than poorest 20% and the sultan of brunei is worth many times over the whole of the population of his country!

that really is one of the more stupid of the guardian's headline-catching comments, but rather in character

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

btw, it would be at lesat as interesting, but almost equally as irrelevant, to determine how many people these "5 richest families" employ in their enterprises and how many more are thus indirectly dependent upon them

My MRS practising her Yoga on the tennis court. .....

These five richest families run huge businesses and employ loads of people. You don't get this class driven nonsense in the US moaning at Bill Gates or Buffet etc. You need to regard these people as equivalent to businesses. We do not moan about ICI, RBS, Tesco being worth more than a section of society. It is the usual politics of envy from the left,

John Mann MP ‏@JohnMannMP 6m
Top five rich man Mike Ashley. But how many local people does he employ and how many through agencies?

Manuel

Britain's five richest families worth more than poorest 20%


Wrong, it is you who are stupid,

The fact is correct it and you don't like attention being brought to the fact, or what can be inferred from the fact.

If the wealth is utilised for the betterment of society where it is produced, (ie. the UK.) all well and good.

If it is pilfered and deposited abroad at the expense of those who actually produced the wealth then it should be questioned!

He started up Sports Direct. Don't you think he employs more than a few people.

HS2
RF - you forget france is at least 4x larger than uk with the same population, so not really comparable
that said, i will admit that the current high speed link that goes through kent is not especially intrusive and though it would very "nice" if we did not need HS2, i am coming round to the idea that it is