I crashed her car

I crashed the car, I mean her car!

It was my fault, hands up gov.  I was trying to beat the light, I looked at the light, it was green, I kept my gaze fixed on the light, I got through.  I checked my speed as I passed the crossing, I wasn't speeding.

I looked up, but too late......

smash, my fault.....*ooops*

Living with the pregnant

It appears our baby was conceived at the Windsor Hotel, Bath and our lives began a long journey, well trodden by many before us, but a unique journey every time.

Pregnancy is a funny condition, allowing for a wide variety of symptoms often hidden from an exterior view. A pregnant woman mustn’t empty cat poo from a litter tray so a daily task of the rather unpleasant kind is assigned to me. I now know the health of our cat literally inside and out, the many colours and consistencies of it’s little packages reveals a wealth of information and teaches many lessons. Don’t feed tuna fish to the cat.

The male of the species must be supportive in every way in this modern age, understanding why the way we chew our food can be as infuriating to women as a light bulb is to a moth in the dark.

Pregnancy for the male is a secret world where we march forward valiantly, confronting the new woman in our lives and playing second fiddle to the bloody cat, who I might add, doesn’t appreciate the shit shovelling we do on a daily basis.

The pregnant’s gone to have her nails done, I’m cleaning the nest….

My lovely car

2 years ago I bought a beautiful BMW, the best car I've ever owned. It is the 325tI model, the compact one, the touring international piece of immaculate engineering. It's been all over the place. Took it to Nurburgring where a lap was completed in about 12 and a half minutes, not bad for a first timer.

Well, for reasons best left out of the story for now, I shall be losing my beautiful car, probably to purchase a ford mondeo or a VW passat.

Oh how forlorn, my heart is crushed, the future of driving bleak.

Don't alter your breakfast at the Windsor Hotel, Bath...

We had a weekend stay in Bath last week. Overall it's a wonerful city with loads of heritage. You can spend a day in a naturally hot water spa, floating in peaceful comfort in a salty pool of green, skin cleansing joy, then you can have a look at the hot water springs where Romans would take a break from the harsh cold reality of their north western territory in the blissful hot pools. They even did it naked, women and men together, sounds pretty darn liberal to me!

But, if you stay at The Windsor for a rather high price, do not ask for an English breakfast and then alter the serving. I asked for the standard with poached eggs, but my girl doesn't like muchrooms or black pudding so didn't want that and asked for two hash browns with one egg poached and one scrambled. After about 15 minutes our breakfasts came out, I had ZERO eggs and 2 hash browns, She had plenty of mushrooms and a black pudding. We pointed out their error and proceeded to wait 50 minutes while they presumably hatched a hen, matured it and waited for it to lay 4 more eggs so they could retry the brekkie.

When it arrived we had what we asked for, with eggs poached to smitherenes. The yolk's were like marbles and the whites like silicon sealent. Still, we paid our £6 and burped bean flavoured gas for the rest of the morning.

Be warned.

Trip to Tunisia

So we took our first steps on the African continent and what a voyage full of delights and frolics it was.

Having arrived at the airport, got ripped off by a pretend airport porter and getting on the wrong coach, only to refuse the help of the hotel porter at the drop off point, I realised I'd left my camera on the coach, yes, the wrong coach.

So I needed the help of the hotel porter that I had just offended.  He was most helpful and got the coach driver on the phone and made him travel back 20 miles to the hotel to give me back my stuff.  He got a large tip due to my incredible relief, not unlike the feeling you get when you think you've just been convicted of murder and realise that it was just a bad dream.

So, Camera at the ready we went on our coach tour of Tunisia, seeing the troglodytes, various beautiful oasis's and eventually getting to ride a camel into the Sahara.  This was a weird place with lots of arabic hawkers.  I paid the equivalent of about £1.50 for 200ml of coka cola!  Not bad work if you can get it...

The Sahara hotel was lovely, better than our hotel in Sousse but we only had one night and we smelled very strongly of camel's.  On the trip back we saw many more oasis's and a waterfall in the middle of the desert that the Roman's had once controlled.

All in all we liked the little bit of arabic influenced Africa we saw.  Here's a video of our camel ride.

Pension Reforms in October 2012

These pension reforms that were introduces in legislation of November 2008were designed to encourage greater private saving.

The important measures in the act will come into effect from October 2012 unless there are significant changes by the coalition government announced in September this year. The review team is on schedule to report to Steve Webb, the Minister for Pensions at this time.

The Key area’s for Reform, that will affect employers are

- Compulsory employer and worker contributions to be phased in
- Workers to be automatically enrolled in a National Employment Savings Trust (NEST), a government introduced scheme
- A straightforward qualifying regime meaning schemes already in existence will already meet the criteria
- A government department compliance regime.

Workers eligible to be forcibly enrolled will be
- Any worker not already in a scheme
- Aged between 22 and state retirement age
- Working in the UK

Employers will have to contribute 3% of the employees qualifying earnings which is anything between £5035.00 and £33,540.00.

From 1st October 2012 employers will pay 1% and employees 0.8% (0.2% tax relief)

From October 2016 to 2017 employers pay 2% and employees pay 2.4% (0.6% tax relief)

After October 2017 employers pay 3% and employees pays 4% (1% tax relief)

This is in effect another tax, similar to National Insurance and therefore will complicate the administration of PAYE contradicting the government’s current consultation on simplifying the PAYE system.

more info at this is money

What google page is my site on?

Just found this neat little tool that lets you see where your site turns up in google searches when certain keywords are typed.

It;s pretty cool.

http://request.acerhosting.net/gTool.aspx

WHAT IS AN UMBRELLA COMPANY?

The purpose of this post is to give you an overview of the Legal and Structural form of an Umbrella Company. It is important to understand how an Umbrella Company differs from any other form of Limited Company and that it is these differences that allow Umbrella Companies to operate in the way they do.

What is an Umbrella Company?

The term Umbrella Company was coined a few years ago. There is no legal definition of what an Umbrella company is, but the word is generally used to describe one where:

- many workers are gathered together within one company

- where that company supplies services to a particular type of client, the employment agency

- where the employee of the Umbrella is employed under a special form of employment contract known as an “over arching employment contract”

- What is an “over arching employment contract”?

An over arching employment contract is one which does not come to an end when a particular short term assignment ends. IE: If a man works for two weeks, then has a break of a week, then goes to another site, the employment contract persists. The alternative would be that the employment contract ends immediately the assignment ends.

An overarching contract is one where there can be a series of short term engagements in different places, where there can be gaps, but where the employment contract does not come to and end because of these gaps.

Overarching contracts typically allow for variable rates of pay. If you examine an over arching employment contract you will see that it states there is no normal rate of pay but that the company decide how much it will pay an employee each week. The only constraint in the contract should be that the hourly rate will never be less than the National Minimum Wage. This isn’t always the case but from January 2011, when new legislation comes into force, it will be necessary for all legitimate Umbrella Companies to include a clause such as this.

- Why is the contract so important?

It is important because it is that form of employment contract that allows the worker to claim travel related expenses. Without such a contract the company could not offset expenses before calculating an employees pay.

- It is implicit in an overarching employment contract that the employee’s normal place of work is his home, enabling expenses to be claimed from home to work and back again.

- In the absence of such a contract the employees work site becomes his fixed place of work and travel from home to a fixed place of work is not deductible. So, if there isn’t signed contract, expenses should not be allowable.

False self-employment in construction.

In the Budget 2009 Darling announced the government intention to clamp down on self-employed people in the construction industry.

Grant Thornton have some background here.

If HMRC can deem self-employed people as employees then the increased tax take would be substantial.

This is not to deny that there is a problem with the low paid being treated as self employed allowing end clients to effectively pay at below the minimum wage but the new rules will have be carefully crafted not to penalise skilled tradesmen and harm the flexibility of the UK’s construction sector.

The government acknowledge that they need to amend the test at point 4.18 of the summary of consultation responses.

We await HMRC's further response.

HMRC: An option for exploiting Real Time Information

Part 5 of the HMRC consultation on simplifying the PAYE system, after putting forward a strong case for using Real-Time Information goes on to explore how else this information can be used, with rather bizarre and sometimes worrying ideas.

In point 5.2 they suggest that the Real Time information concept works less well for agency workers and those with several jobs. This is the opposite of what the preceding 4 parts seemed to inform us. They have thought of a radical option of moving the responsibility of doing the tax calculation away from employers and “placing it fully with HMRC”. I’m sorry but this is not at all comforting, employers are good at dealing with tax calculations and seem to make far fewer mistakes with tax codes and general administration than HMRC. Only this year thousands of individuals were placed on BR or D rated tax codes in error taking weeks to sort out. This caused hardship for many and where possible my company whilst understanding taxation, could offer to sub our employees weekly whilst they waited, and waited for HMRC to sort the problem out. Placing our faith in them to administer a complicated system is like placing our faith in a crocodile to rescue us from drowning.

There is a very serious issue I have to take with point 5.6 as follows

Today, the majority of employer payrolls are connected to the electronic payment infrastructure. Under Centralised Deductions the employer would send the gross payment through the electronic payment system to a central calculator where the deductions calculated by HMRC would be made automatically. The resulting net payment would then be sent to the individual’s bank account and the deductions would be paid directly to the Government.

I mean really, not technically, not in theory, but really, this is OUR money. It is not the government’s money, the government doesn’t have any money, it is ALL OUR MONEY. So why would we just send the whole amount, gross pay plus employers national insurance to HMRC and trust in them to pay our wages correctly.

To make this even more ridiculous they then state (5.7)

Where the employer pays the individual by cheque or cash, HMRC could calculate and notify the employer of the deductions to be made and request their payment separately to HMRC.

and 5.9

Employers would however remain responsible for making statutory payments and third party deductions (such as Trade Union subscriptions) and for identifying whether a payment should be taxed.

So why leave employers to do half the job? If something aint broke don’t fix it, isn’t that what they say? This is about controlling hard earned wages and HMRC can in no way care as much about an employee being paid correctly and on time than the employer.

They then seek to assure us all that HMRC wouldn’t have access to individual bank accounts. It would be a computerised system that would split the money and send it. So who do you contact when something goes wrong, it’s bank holiday, England are playing Brazil in the world cup final and your wages are lost in the ether in HMRC’s automated payments system? They would need a new department as big as the banking systems BACS and CHAPS departments.

Apparently (5.10) “the system would adhere to the high standards of taxpayer confidentiality that characterise the existing system.” Ahem, thanks for that.

Then we see some concern for individual liberty at point 5.12

Individuals would no longer need to understand tax codes, which are a means of hiding an individual’s personal circumstances from the employer.

Tax codes aren’t that difficult to understand, unless of course HMRC put you on the wrong one. Why is it ok for the state to know personal circumstances and not a private company? Are we to believe that the state is more trustworthy than the population at large?

Then we go on to see some illogical reasoning. 5.14 says:

Information about deductions might no longer appear on an employer generated payslip. To compensate, one option would be to give individuals access to their consolidated tax account which would show how deductions had been calculated. This information could be made available in a number of ways – many would want to view it online but others might prefer alternative means.

This would be a very complicated system that many would struggle to understand. Individuals would get one statement from the employer, including union deductions, or sick pay payments and would have to look at another system or wage slip to see why they were paid the amount they received in their bank? It is completely ridiculous to say that this is simplification.

In addition there could be transmission errors, internet down time or the HMRC web portal could crash, who do these individuals complain to? Would they really want to make an internet complaint, send an email, deal with someone far away over the telephone? Or would they rather go to their employer? I think the answer is obvious.

HMRC acknowledge all of these concerns on one paragraph 5.18:

Nevertheless, such a reform would require individuals to get used to a new means of dealing with pay issues. They would continue to deal with their employer on questions about amounts and timing of gross payments, statutory payments and third party deductions, but questions about tax and NIC deductions would be the responsibility of HMRC. The handling of cases where the individual had a query about the deductions will be considered very carefully as part of this consultation exercise. Much of the information wanted by individuals in this situation could be provided through self-service, online or elsewhere. But there is potential to add to the administrative burden for both individuals and HMRC if people are unclear about who to contact with a question. This would require careful design to avoid significant additional cost to HMRC or employers.

But they fail to talk about the fact that all this would require an enormous department with many staff to deal with both complex and simple pay queries on a day to day basis. They want to automate the process, suggesting that they are not prepared to allocate people to deal with this. In the real world, people have questions and they like to deal with other people when they have a problem understanding their pay.

They tell us (5.19) that the estimated savings to the private sector will be £500 million. That effectively means £500 million worth of jobs will be removed from the private sector and Wotan knows how much would have to be invested (from OUR tax money) to staff the state’s new behemoth that would be the national payroll department.

At 5.22 they actually point out that this system could be at risk of “increasing avoidable contact with HMRC”. Yes that’s it in a nut shell, avoidable contact. They want our money but they don’t want to be answering to us because they know that the costs of dealing with this properly would be astronomical.

Finally, they state:

HMRC is interested in hearing proposals that could deliver a similar or better outcome through different means from those outlined in this chapter.

HMRC would like to engage with all groups of people who could be affected by this option to discuss the practical advantages and issues to be addressed.

No need to worry, I will be responding. If you would like to respond, you can email to paye.consultation@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk.

My annotated notes can be viewed here.

HMRC – Improving the operation of Pay As You Earn (PAYE)

This is the consultation document produced by HMRC to try and collect Income Tax and National Insurance more quickly and cut down on the administrative burden of repaying overpaid tax and collecting underpaid tax after the tax year end. They have added other aims but in all honesty that is just fluff to make the document bigger.

Point 2.2 states that their aim is

To reduce costs both for employers and for HMRC by making the system easier to administer; to improve service levels for individual customers; and to ensure accurate tax deductions.

I don’t know why they insist on referring to us as customers because we aren’t customers, we are Her Majesty’s subjects and we have to pay tax. Its ok, I can accept that so I wish they’d just refer to us as ‘the public’. Anyway regardless of that it is a noble aim to increase tax take without actually increasing the level of taxation. Their main thrust of how to achieve this is through technology that can communicate to HMRC levels of tax and NI deducted from individual employees in real time or basically at the point of payment HMRC want to know how much was deducted and for whom. Also communicating when an employee leaves or starts should cut down on the administrative burden of issuing p45’s or P46’s and reducing the paperwork involved at year end.

At point 2.4 they point out that PAYE has been and remains very successful costing just 1 penny in every pound to collect tax. In 2009 -2010 tax year they collected £249 billion in tax and NI through this system, presumably costing £2.5 billion to collect. £2.5 billion is still a big number so the point is taken well that there is a case for improvement.

Tax credits when awarded would also be more accurate if HMRC had access to more real time information further reducing administrative burden for them (2.7).

By collating the responses to this document they should be able to assess how much the improvements will cost, how much more tax they should take and how much money they should save (2.14)

At 3.1 it is pointed out that PAYE is designed so that individuals don’t need to contact HMRC at end of year to claim a repayment. This is untrue, if you have overpaid tax you will get a letter from HMRC but you will have to contact them to ask for the money.

So why do they want to change it again? The reasons (3.2):
It currently costs employers and pension providers £700 million. Well with 50,000 people working in payroll that’s £14,000 for each one and the average salary is higher than that so this figure must be higher, but so what? It provides jobs.

- HMRC spends £1 billion on PAYE administration. Well from what we worked out earlier were does the other £1.5 billion go?

- 5 million people receive a tax refund or a tax bill each year. That’s 15% of the working population so this could be improved by real time information.

- Student loan deductions can continue to be paid once the loan is paid off. Shouldn’t the people with the loans be dealing with that?

- People with 2 or more jobs can pay too in much National Insurance (NIC’s).

I want to look at the Student loan matter in more detail. Point 3.3:

There is an additional consequence where HMRC takes on collection for another Department. For example, HMRC collects student loans on behalf of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and passes information about repayments to the Student Loan Company (SLC). HMRC is unable to provide information about individual repayments until after the end of the tax year. This can mean that in some instances deductions continue after the loan has been fully repaid, requiring a refund from SLC.

Well there’s such an easy answer to this. Stop employers having to take on the burden of repaying people’s loans! Surely the individual who borrowed the money entered into an arrangement and is responsible for the repayment. If the individual is a credit risk, don’t lend them money. I simply can’t understand why individual loan repayments are lumped in with income tax and national insurance. Take them out.

The document starts to sound like special pleading for a while. Point 3.9 acknowledges that PAYE works well for a large majority of people but in the modern age there is a significant minority of people with complex employment patterns. This is the flexible workforce in case they forgot the term, people can have many different jobs in any particular year and also they may have 2 or 3 or more jobs at any one time, and I would agree that the current system doesn’t work very well for them. HMRC says it leads to “an unsatisfactory customer experience.” Oh for the love of Thor, we are not customers! We’re just not.

It’s interesting to note in point 3.12:

Finally, when PAYE was introduced, almost everyone was paid in cash, but nowadays, around 96 per cent of payments taxable under PAYE are made electronically via the Direct Credit system (BACS). Employers also use other payment channels in use, e.g. Faster Payments Service and the Clearing House Automatic Payments System (CHAPS).

So what? What is the possible relevance of this in the consultation? I can only assume that the author has in mind the Conservative Party's idea that the banking industry could become responsible for the deduction of tax and NIC direct from ones bank account. I don’t know.

Later on (3.14) the technology used by banks in order that people can log on, check their balance and pay bills online. The government wants to make use of this technology. Fair enough, use the technology, it should be quite simple. In fact p45 information and end of year documents like p35’s are already submitted online. The technology is already there.

Further aims behind the desire to change the PAYE system are discussed at 3.16.

- They want a “joined up view” of individual’s employment and pension income.
- A complete contact history that connects all the communication individuals have with HMRC to their account.

I don’t see how this can help much in the way of increasing tax take or reducing administrative burden and will cost quite a lot in terms of IT development. Given the track record of government departments in keeping personal data secure this seems to be a very bad idea. The very nature of the current system is more secure by the fact it is disjointed.

It is confirmed at point 4.5 that the responsibility for calculating the amount of tax and NIC will remain with the employer although it does not confirm that responsibility for paying with remain with the employer. I can detect an idea by the absence of this point. Are they thinking that employers calculate the deductions and pay to people’s banks the gross amount? Are the banks known for their responsibility with our money? We’ll just have to keep our eye on this one.

They suggest (4.9 & 4.25) that the current software that HMRC provide free for small employers might be enhanced to cater for the provision of real-time information. I would suggest that this is essential. It would be costly initially, but very lucrative for IT contractors. They should invest around £50 million to provide ANY employer, large or small, with a well presented piece of software, with similar functionality to that of Sage Payroll for example. It would interact with HMRC systems seamlessly and reduce software and admin costs for small to medium enterprises (SME’s) incredibly.

They repeat that real-time information will reduce the burden on employers and HMRC (4.14) at year end. I agree although it doesn’t seem to me to be too much of a burden for us, I don’t know about HMRC.

In what it would mean for HMRC (4.32) they point out that at any one time the average amount owed to HMRC by employers is £3.5 billion. Real time information would allow them to know exactly what is owed at any point in time (as opposed to knowing monthly, or in reality annually). This is a very good idea.

My notes on the consultation document can be viewed here

I will analyse section 5: An option for exploiting Real Time Information shortly, as this I think has considerable draw backs.

Girl moves in to my flat

Well the Girlfriend is moving in at the beginning of next year so it was time to sort out a few issues. I have a lot of important things in my flat like every motherboard, graphics card and associated cable from every PC I have ever owned. You never know when these things could come in handy. My important things have now been classified as “Junk” and her junk is being moved in and classified “Important”.

So I emptied my junk cupboard, formally known as IT storage and what couldn’t go on ebay went to the local recycling centre. The people there seemed overjoyed with the mountains of stuff, old monitors, a UPS, a lot of telecoms equipment and old PCI cards like modems and LAN’s as well as enough cable to set up a copper smelting factory to kick start a new manufacturing base for the UK.

Anyway, cleared out now and in moves a mountain of clothes and shoes for the walk-in wardrobe she’s always promised herself. I’ve put a rail in there and soon it will become a starlet's dressing room.

I think I may start an ebay account to secretly sell her shoes…

Sunday Christening

So we went to a Christening on Sunday, a Roman Catholic Christening. I was expecting it to be a very long drawn out affair but it was surprisingly informal, for a church event. The actual ceremony took about 20 minutes and nobody told me I was going to Hell, so that was good.

One of the children was about five years old and cried a bit after the head wetting, I think she felt a bit awestruck at the thought that now she would definitely meet god one day.

There’s something quite bizarre in this day and age when four grown adults are asked to swear that they believe in a living god and that he created the earth in seven days. The four adult parents of the two children we were seeing accepted into this particular faith all agreed that this is what they believed. I didn’t point anything out later, about geographic processes, not that I know an incredible amount about that, or indeed how old the Universe seems to be when looking at the expansion rate.

Anyway, it was a very pleasant affair, the vicar was nice and we had a lovely barbeque in the village hall gardens in the afternoon. It was very sunny and warm and I met a lot of Hannah’s family friends, and I had a few beers too.

REC Meets Ed Davey

The REC's Chief Exec, Kevin Green met with Ed Davey yesterday (3rd August) to bash him about the industries worries regarding the Agency Workers Regulations (AWR).

Green said

Although it remains unlikely that the Government will reopen the whole debate on the current regulations

So it looks like it's coming, in its current form.

Here's a link to the REC article.

HMRC to simplify PAYE system

Ok, I know HMRC's idea of simplification can end up with a very costly, more complicated system but like it or not, the discussion is under way.

HMRC's discussion document.

The document states

The business processes behind PAYE have remained unchanged for 66 years.

So it seems the system is reaching retirement age and a new, younger, inexperienced system should take its place.

I'm reading this document keeping in mind that David Cameron suggested the deduction of PAYE should be handled by banking institutions. I mean, we know how we can trust banks with our money right?

AWR - Government still "considering"

On 5th July this year, Ed Davey, the Minister for Employment Relations made a written statement to the commons that the government were "currently considering the way forward" in response to a question about the Agency Workers Regulations.

It's not necessarily under review.
It's definitely not being scrapped.

What does this mean?

Click on the Ed Davey link to ask him. It is hard to plan when you don't know what the rules will be.

Lawspeed are keeping an eye on this.

The Agency Workers Directive

The Agency Worker Regulations (AWR) come into force on 1st October 2011. The Regulations mean that all workers on any site must have the same working conditions and holiday entitlement. Some areas of the legislation are still unclear but through discussion within the industry we hope to be able to adapt to this major change to how the industry operates.

Not included in the directive is the right to occupational social security schemes, presumably meaning sickness absence or hospital benefits, therefore agency workers will still only be entitled to Statutory Sick Pay, Maternity Pay and Paternity Pay even if the other workers are entitled to a better package.

The regulations define a temporary worker as an individual who is supplied by a temporary work agency to work temporarily for and under the supervision and direction of an end client and has a contract of employment with the temporary work agency.

An individual is also considered to be an agency worker if the individual is supplied by an intermediary, or one of a number of intermediaries, to work temporarily for and under the supervision and direction of the end user. This basically covers all the current arrangements such as Umbrella Companies, Personal Service Companies, Managed Service Comapnies and all the other payment vehicles such as offshore "self-employment" companies.

The worker only comes under the AWR after 12 weeks on the same site.

The full regulations can be viewed here.

More good news for Umbrella Company Employees

REC confirmed on Friday that the Government has decided not to extend the remit of the Gangmaster Licensing Authority (GLA).  This move could have had serious consequences for Umbrella's and their employees as the GLA made it an offence to include part of the minimum wage as expenses off set, also known as Salary Sacrifice.  All Salary Sacrifice means is giving up part of your taxed salary in favour of untaxed travel and subsistence expenses, thus giving you more money.  It is obvious that the GLA's primary aim, of looking out for the interests of low paid workers, became one of increasing the tax take of the previous government.  So, if you work in food production you should probably not be employed by an Umbrella company.  For any other industry Umbrella's remain a viable method of engagement.

REC Link

Future road pricing is not 'inevitable'

So the RAC say that to avoid total gridlock on the UK's roads we will have to be charged for every mile we travel.

BBC Link

Lets face it, we are already charged for every mile we travel with duty and VAT on fuel, it doesn't stop us flooding the roads with cars and the atmosphere with CO2.

At the end of the day the constant upward pressure on fuel prices will force people off the road and onto public transport, this is inevitable when our transport infrastructure is powered by the finite resources of the planet, fossil fuels.

have a look at powerswitch.org for more information and join the discussion if you like.  It's friendly enough.

The Edge of the Universe

Wow, I mean WOW.  We are treated to a view of the heavens like none before, it is a picture of the edge of the Universe, the beginning of space and time.

Reported today by the BBC

 What is at this edge of the Universe?  Is it a big surrounding mass of ultimate density? I mean, what is on the other side of that if it is there?  An astronomer type fellow once told me that space doesn't work like that, it is curved and so there is no edge.  If you travelled uninterrupted in a straight line into the Universe you would eventually come back to where you started, similar to travelling in a straight line around the earth.

It still leaves me thinking what is the Universe sitting in? Or is it somehow a 2 dimensional place with a flat earth and magic doors!!!

The mind boggles...

Horse Riding Birthday Present

Given that we are living through an age when we will see a massive reduction in the use of motorized personal transportation I thought some time ago that it would be a good idea to learn to ride a horse, I mean how hard can it be?
So Hannah booked me on a half hour course for my birthday where I was introduced to Tammy, an old docile horse that you would swear was begging you not to climb on its back.
Having told the instructor that I’m a little nervous and a complete beginner she just said, “well, we’ll put an end to that today”. And that we did.
I controlled the horse making it start (just about) and making it stop, I was good at stopping. I could also turn left and right, so already if I want to travel to my home county on a horse it would only take about 23 days.



Had my second lesson last night, I trotted! 5 times! It was a different horse called Indie, it was massive and seemed to want to be ridden at 100mph. I could steer well, brake and accelerate but I didn’t really have very good timing, my arse was banging on the saddle so hard I thought my lungs would come out of my mouth!
Today my backside, thighs and stomach ache like crazy but its all good fun.

Greek unrest shows they're still unruley

I just hinted that they might start blowing stuff up but didn't think they go straight for murder!

Parcel bomb kills Greek security minister's aide

Of course they'll call them terrorists, that catch all term for any kind of unrest, but this is a problem of very high proportions.

Financial Responsibility is a double edge sword

So today we saw the pound jump to a 19 Month high with £1 buying €1.22. This is apparently because the world knows we are going to not only service, but pay down our debt, making the British economy more stable. So we have Euro’s flooding into the economy today, everyone wants a bit of pound because if you think your own currency will weaken then to protect your wealth you put your money in something stronger.

Also there is evidence that in the Eurozone it's going to be harder to pay down debt as people are more used to social programmes that look after the less fortunate, or less lucky, or call it whatever.

The French are striking over the pension age reforms.
The Greeks are leaving their country again over cuts.
The Germans are pissed off with bailing everyone out.

But the double edge is this.  If our currency becomes too valuable, our exports become too expensive.  If we cannot sell what little we still make then people lose their jobs, we then have difficulty even buying our own manufactured goods.  The conservatives said they think we should start making things again, and rightly so, but its a very fine balance.  We need a strong Euro, we need the Europeans to pay off their debts without their populace rioting and blowing stuff up.  Will it happen???  Got to hope so.

Trip to the Lake District

We had a week in the lake district last month and stayed at the Tranquil Otter. We were housed in a lovely log cabin on the edge of a private lake, we had our own hot tub and a rowing boat. You get a good quality TV, DVD and surround sound so you can watch a few chick flicks in the evening. At night we sat in the hot tub looking at the moon and during the day we did all sorts of cultural activities.

We visited the Roman Vindalanda, a very interesting ruin of an ancient Roman settlement near Hadrian’s wall. This is where the Romans stopped after their conquest because the Scots were simply too brutal and primitive for them to cope with, they obviously thought, if those ginger guys wear skirts and no pants in this weather then they’re far too mentally deranged for us! So they built a wall. In fact, while driving to the Vindalanda I remarked to Hannah that there are a lot of signs pointing in lots of directions all saying “This way to Hadrian’s Wall”. She said “yes darling, it’s a very long wall.”

So we explored the ruins and looked at the recreations of the old world. I always seem to romanticise life in Roman Britain, it must have been hellishly difficult but these places always make it look kind of homely, with chickens and freshly harvested vegetables. Even the model slaves have smiles on their faces.

We also visited Carlyle Castle, where the last bit of the civil war was kind of staged in 1644. The royal forces were holed up inside the castle and the parliamentarians kept it under siege for 8 months preventing food from entering and hurling great big rocks at the walls. Eventually the parliamentarians won.

Another day we went to a pub called the Royal Oak in the nearby village called Moorhouse. I warn you now, it doesn’t open until 5.30 and if its 3.30 when you get there the landlord won’t open for you. I know because I asked him. So we went back to the lodge and into the hot tub.

The last day we spent rowing about on the lake looking at nature and trying to see otters. We didn’t see any otters but loads of swans with signets and ducks with ducklings, lots of good oxygenating weeds and generally had a jolly good laugh about it all.

Here's a video of our trip...

Budget good news for Umbrella Employees

Yes, there was some good news yesterday. The increase in allowance for company national insurance will benefit Umbrella employees directly as employers NI is calculated from the total amount received from the agency or client. All umbrella workers should be at least £15 per week better off. Good news indeed.

Also if the economy grows after the layoffs in the public sector one would suspect contractors to be drafted in to fill the gap.

Info from contracting made easy (link)

The Budget 2010

Well we’ve had our budget, we knew it would be painful, is it ethical?

The most striking announcement came with the Housing Benefit cuts, £280 maximum allowance for a 1 bed place and £400 maximum for a 4 bedroom. That does seem harsh but then if you have 3 kids (requiring a 4 bedroom house) why on earth should the government pay to house you all, if you can’t afford 3 kids, have 1! Of course I say the government pays but it isn’t is it? Its all of us, after all, the government don’t have any money, it’s our money. Still, I can sympathise with those who’ve got used to this benefit, its going to hurt, sorry folks, hope there are still jobs left in the economy for the extra people needing extra income.

Capital gains tax is to rise from 18 to 28% for higher rate tax payers. That’s a big hit to the middle class and a brave move in my opinion. I think its right, but brave nonetheless. If you earn 40K plus and dabble in shares, and do quite well then I guess you might decide to stop dabbling in shares! I wonder if this will have an effect on stock market revenue. I wonder how many people dabble in shares. Maybe I’ll put up a poll and see how many people dabble with between £500 and £10K in shares and do a back of the fag packet calculation. Let’s see, either way I doubt it’s a big figure.

The VAT rate going up to 20%, I have to say, I don’t like it, it does hurt the poorest more then it hurts the richest but essentially VAT is largely paid on optional items. I expected the coalition to introduce VAT on food but they didn’t, and good for them what with food price inflation being so high. Arguably fuel can be said to be essential but then we use fuel (a limited resource in most respects) so wastefully. I mean why should we feel the right to sit in a house in winter wearing a T Shirt and no socks? Wrap up. Fuel duty isn’t being increased and they (the government) are trying to figure a way to stabilise the price of fuel at the pump. I hope they have more imagination than me because my mind is blank, short of lowering tax when fuel prices rise and raising it when they fall I can’t imagine how they do this, save for the fossil fuel energy fairy turning up. Even my idea would have such a disastrous effect on forecasts for tax revenues that it’s impossible to implement, we’ll see, they may be cleverer than I give them credit for.

The personal allowance is being increased by £1000.00 bravo; this will certainly help the poorest in society. £1000.00 per year tax free is £200 per year extra in your pocket. If nothing else it should pay for Christmas.

No increase in duty on Alcohol and Cigarettes. I think they should have raised the price to £10 a pack of ciggies personally, and I promise you, I am a smoker! I know it’s no good, you know it’s no good, so smoke less.

Tax credits are reduced for households with an income of over £40k; well if you earn 40k per year do you really need benefits? If you do the government should pay (with our money) for you to go on a household economics course.

The health in pregnancy grant is to be abolished, well, if you can’t afford to have kids, don’t have them, there is free contraception available.

Unemployed will have a cut in housing benefit after 12 months of claiming the dole. This seems a little harsh; I hope there are jobs available for everyone. If there are then all is good but it is uncertain that’s for sure.

For full budget click here

Last point to make is this: We have been spending more than we've been earning as a country for some time. At some point we have to pay our debts, we can wait until later or we can man-up and do it now. Paying our debts gives us greater self esteem, paying off our budget defecit shows the world that this society takes its financial obligations seriously....eventually.

Weekend wedding in Czech

So I took a trip to Prague to go to a friend’s wedding, well actually, a friend of a friend. I flew out with Wizzair, one of these low cost airlines that charge for every single little extra, like baggage and check in, you know those things you can really do without on a trip away on an aeroplane.

Got to Luton Airport at 6.30, enough time for a pint of Grolsch before checking in, lovely. Arrived at the Hotel Roma in the historic centre of Prague at around midnight, had a shower and went for a quick stroll about the streets near the hotel. Found a nice little local bar called the Shadows Café. You can still smoke in there and it was a marvellously unfriendly atmosphere where the staff slam your pint down and grunt at you. I sat down with my girl for a couple before retiring to our room for the evening ready to pick up the hire car in the morning to follow Valerie, a friend of the bride to Litomerice and the venue for the wedding.

On awakening on Friday morning after showers we were presented with a breakfast of dry bread and some deliciously sour yoghurt. I also had some stale cornflakes with warm milk whilst my girl had a suspiciously spherical fried egg with tiny weeny little smoked sausages, she seemingly enjoyed the cuisine as much as me.

We went to reception and I explained that we were waiting for a hire car to be delivered at 10am, they said “yes we know, they are running late and will be here at 10.10”. So that was good, we sat down and waited.

Sure enough we were called at 10.10 as promised and told to go with this rather large unwashed gentleman who didn’t speak any English, no problem. So off we went and got into a taxi, presumably to take us to the hire car destination.

10 minutes into the journey my girl mentions quietly that it seems to be a long way to the hire car place. Hmm, yes, and just then my mobile rang. It was the hire car company asking us if we still wanted the car. Yes, I said, we are on our way to you now. She then spoke in Czech but sounded very concerned. So I phoned my Czech friend Lenka who was also going to the wedding. Could you call the hire car company for me? and explain that we are on the way to them to pick the car up? She called back and said we shouldn’t be on our way anywhere, the hire car people are at the hotel! It was then with utter joy that we discovered we were near the airport and had taken another English persons taxi. We must all look the same to hotel staff and they just pointed, and I just went.

Well we got the company to redeliver the hire car to the airport, and we got Valerie to meet us there so we could follow, and that we did, at about 60mph through many Czech villages, arriving after 2 stops for toilets and dry food, 40 minutes before the wedding ceremony.

Quick shower, Suit on, no time to shave and we hot footed it to a beautiful park in Litomerice where we saw a bona fide Czech wedding. Couldn’t understand a word of it but it looked very romantic and I said to the bride “Ici heska naviesta” or “you’re a lovely bride”, after a moment of thought she looked quite pleased.

Then off we went for a meal of meat before meeting back up with the wedding party at 5pm at the hotel. After the meat sweats we got down to mingling and discovered that the bar was free and the food was meat, so that was nice. Much booze and meat later and we were treated to a Salsa lesson run by Mr handsome but could be gay maybe bi. Me and a newly made Czech acquaintance sneaked off to watch the England match, it was abysmal but frankly was something of a relief.

I got a nice slow dance and a bit of a kiss and cuddle in the kind of disco I’d not attended since school, schmoozing to the likes of Phil Collins.

Later I was honoured to watch my girl dance sexy salsa style with Mr handsome but could be gay maybe bi. I wasn’t very happy to watch this but stored it up for later argument.

Overall it was a very interesting and heart warming affair with lots of meat and drink.

Next morning we missed breakfast and drove back to Prague feeling a little bit delicate and hungry.

In the evening we had a great meal on the other side of the bridge, next to a night club / strip bar. We didn’t go in there and had a quite early night.

After a lovely lie in we went for a boat trip with historical commentary, had a beer and a cuddle, very nice. I had potato soup with fried potato with bacon and she had bell peppers stuffed with meat and rice. They didn’t look like bell peppers and we couldn’t see any rice but it tasted good, sort of Italian, and my potatos were good too.Back at the airport on Sunday I tried to explain to the matronly check in lady that I was unable to print my boarding card for the return journey, she didn't smile but pointed to the Prague Airport official ticket touts and so I went over and paid 520 CZK's (about £17) for them to print out a bit of paper for me to take to the end of a queue and have 2 bits of card printed, then we could check in our luxuary luggage and sit and wait for our delayed plane. Still, we had a beer and a laugh and a good nights sleep back in England...

What is an Umbrella Company?

An Umbrella company is simply a company that employs people and pays them a mixture of salary (PAYE) and employment related expenses. The employment relationship is structured in such a way that the employee works from home and obtains work of his own accord usually through employment agencies. The worker informs the Umbrella Company where he is working and the company invoice the agency (or client) for his services at the rate agreed at the time of engagement. From the money collected the weekly expenses are deducted and then an amount to cover employers national insurance contributions (NIC’s). Whatever is left is passed through the PAYE system, usually not less than the national minimum wage (NMW), the expenses are added back after the tax is deducted and thus the individual has a greater take home pay than if he was employed directly with the agency. The agency usually pays a higher rate for the services of an Umbrella worker on a per hour basis but saves money on Company National Insurance and holiday pay. The agency pays less for the service and the service provider takes home more money, everyone’s a winner……Except the exchequer.

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) also call this set up Salary Sacrifice as they prefer a more negative inference.

Claiming Expenses as an Umbrella Employee

Most Umbrella Companies have dispensations from HMRC that means the company don’t need to report the expenses claimed by each employee on a p11d at the end of each tax year.

Anything claimed that is outside of the dispensation must be reported to HMRC.

The Budget – 22nd June 2010

I wouldn’t expect the Budget tomorrow (22nd June) to contain much good news about anything for the majority and we may see an interesting development for freelance contractors working in the UK, the abolition of IR35, a piece of tax legislation introduced in April 2000 in order to claw extra tax by classifying contractors as employees and taxing them accordingly.

http://www.ir35calc.co.uk/what_is_ir35.aspx

This legislation led to boom in companies set up to employ contractors and manage a limited company on their behalf called composite companies. These companies paid contractors a mixture of PAYE paid at the minimum wage, employment expenses and dividends based on the profits that were left in the company after the salary and expenses had been paid.

The government didn’t like this get around and 7 years later they came up with the Managed Service Company legislation (MSC), introduced in April of 2007.
This legislation was very worrying for the recruitment industry as it basically allowed the Inland Revenue to chase tax debt from the people who paid the companies that operated what HMRC deemed to be MSC’s. If the MSC, or the individual who was paid by the MSC couldn’t pay the tax bill, they could go to the employment agency that paid the MSC. If the employment agency couldn’t pay the debt, they could go to the agency client and demand the money from them.

http://www.contractorcalculator.co.uk/msc_legislation_contractors_agencies_255010_news.aspx

Overnight the composite company structure, although not illegal, was a very risky business to be in or simply to be dealing with.

This move prompted massive growth in Umbrella Companies and contractors going back to setting up their own Limited Companies.
Now it looks like the IR35 legislation will be scrapped and something more simple but more strict put in its place in order to deem workers as employees rather than Self Employed or “Sole Traders”.

http://www.contracteye.co.uk/tories_ir35_election_review.shtml