Thoughts on Morality

Shock TUC report says Unions should get taxpayers money!

2012-01-25T11:10:00.000Z

I saw that there's been a report from the TUC that says that Union Reps being paid by the employer is a good thing. Shocking position for a report from the TUC to take, right?

(Report: http://www.tuc.org.uk/tucfiles/206/FacilityTimeSeparatingFactfromFiction.pdf)

It seems that part of their argument is based on survey data, and the rest is questionable:

They rely on data from a previous report that cited savings as follows:

i)Dismissal rates were lower in unionised workplaces with union reps – this resulted in savings related to recruitment costs of £107m-£213m pa

Surely this is because the Unions make it hard to fire people. So if someone is crap at their job, you can't replace them with someone good at the job. Without looking at the relative productivity rates of unionised vs non-unionised workplaces this is meaningless, but I reckon that preventing you from firing people who are crap would lower productivity and thus constitute a cost, rather than a benefit - and the magnitude of that cost will be significantly greater than the benefit, as you'd not want to sack someone unless you could get a better person in and make more money after costs were taken into consideration, so the costs must be smaller than the benefit.

ii) Voluntary exit rates were lower in unionised workplaces with union reps, which again resulted in savings related to recruitment costs of £72m-143m pa

People stayed longer (albeit because the benefits/pay were likely better) - this could be a valid benefit.

iii) Employment tribunal cases are lower in unionised workplaces with union reps resulting in savings to government of £22m-43m pa

See (i) - this is likely because tribunals were threatened in any number of cases, and the employer forced to back down. If you sack less people, less people will complain. I'd count this as a part of the cost of replacing crap people with good people, and would expect the benefit thus to far outweigh this cost.

iv) Workplace-related injuries were lower in unionised workplaces with union reps so resulting in savings to employers of £126m-371m pa

Really? What were the additional costs of complying with increased health and safety requirements placed there by the Union rep?

v) Workplace-related illnesses were lower in unionised workplaces with union reps so resulting in savings to employers of £45m-207m pa

What about non-workplace related illnesses? Is this just a case of the union rep saying "don't put it down as workplace related, or you could get in trouble"?

Taking points (i) and (iii) as negative (i.e. assuming that the productivity increase from replacing bad staff would be at least enough to cover the costs of replacing bad staff twice) and disregarding point (iv) as we have no idea of the actual costs involved in reaching this point gives a total saving from having union reps on the order of £40m (using average figures).

By the methodology in the report, 60% of this is public sector, so £24m. Uprating to now gives £28.7m - call it £30m if you like. So we get a benefit of £30m for an expenditure of £113m. Sounds like a good deal to me...

They question the £113m figure, suggesting that £80m is more reasonable - so we're getting back a massive 38% of what we spend. That's the kind of deal our government should be fully in support of!

Is this right?

2011-12-08T10:46:00.000Z

I regularly read JuliaM's blog at http://thylacosmilus.blogspot.com/ so I wasn't shocked to see the case in the paper today where 4 girls racially abused and beat up another girl, yet didn't get sent to jail, receiving only a suspended sentence

Then today I was reading the news sent round at work, and I saw that the first conviction had been made under the bribery act. This chap took £500 to refrain from entering the details of a traffic summons in a court database. He was sentenced to 6 years in jail (3 for the bribery and 6 for misconduct in public office, to run concurrently).

Now don't get me wrong - what he did was very wrong, but 6 years in jail? That seems a little over the top. Sacking him and giving a very honest reference would pretty much destroy his career prospects, and seems like it would nearly be punishment enough on it's own. Throw in a big hefty fine and I'd say you're good.

The first case I mentioned? Jail seems to be the least we could be expected to do...

How did we get so turned around?

One to watch

2011-12-06T08:32:00.000Z

As if evidence were needed that our current benefit system is not fit for purpose: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=3655837

Basically, there's a chap who earns £65k and faces losing his child benefit. He asks if it's possible to use salary sacrifice to commit enough of his salary to pension so that he won't lose the benefits, and wonders what happens if he goes further.

Based on the responses and what I know of the matter, if he were to put £50k a year into his pension (plus another ~£2k into childcare vouchers) he'd be assessed for benefits as if his income were just over £12k - meaning he'd get all sorts of benefits. He reckons he'd go from an income of £3300 per month (after paying for childcare vouchers and nearly £4k a year into his pension) to about £3100 per month thanks to all the benefits he could claim. He'd lose £200 per month, but would have an extra £46k in his pension pot per year (nearly £4k per month).

Sounds like a good deal? So the benefit state is really good for people with incomes of £65k or so...

The new 50% tax rate: a sure winner!

2011-11-24T10:10:00.000Z

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8911390/50p-tax-band-will-cost-Britain-1bn-a-year.html

So now someone's come out and said what a lot of us have been saying all along. The 50% rate will not make any money, and may in fact cost the government £1bn in tax revenues.

That's not all though, because that £1bn in revenue is lost because wealthy individuals seek to avoid the tax, in part by moving their operations offshore. This can cause the loss of jobs in the UK, and will have a knock on effect.

I find the details interesting as it shows the true pettiness of the left:

Mr Osborne and David Cameron are in favour of abolishing the top rate but are under intense pressure from the Liberal Democrats not to cut taxes on the wealthy.

Even though cutting taxes on the wealthy will mean more money in the kitty, so less that the poor have to pay? Who cares, right? We're not trying to make the lives of the poor better, but the lives of the rich worse.

This is not the answer

2011-11-11T11:17:00.000Z

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/constructionandproperty/8882173/Let-pensions-fund-homes-for-first-time-buyers-says-CBI.html

We keep being told that more and more people are suffering in retirement as they don't have enough pensions, so the article linked above came as a bit of a shock.

Potential first-time buyers should be allowed to use their pension savings to buy homes, according to a new report on how the boost the housing market.

Well - that would go some way towards boosting the housing market, but is it really the best answer? More money available to buy homes will mean house prices rise, so the problem gets even worse. Surely it'd be better to find some way to bring house prices down, like relaxing planning permissions?

The number of property sales in the UK has crashed since the recession despite 5m people "languishing on waiting lists", the CBI claims today in its Unfreezing the Housing Market study.

I assume that they mean social housing waiting lists, rather than waiting lists to buy a house. As far as I know (and my brother is in the process of doing it right now) all you have to do is find a house for sale, plonk down the cash and it's yours. Sure - there are contracts to exchange and the like, but no waiting lists. So realistically speaking, how many people waiting for a council house are going to be able to buy a house, even if they could access their pension funds?

The CBI said housebuilding, which is at the lowest peacetime level for 90 years, also needed to be increased. It called on the Government to address "structural housing market failures" and allow offices to be turned into homes without planning permission.

That at least sounds sensible...

Think it through

2011-11-04T16:43:00.000Z

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/8865772/Temps-get-out-clause-could-be-tested-in-court.html

“We live in perpetual hope that maybe, down the line, we might get a small pay increase,” says Mark, an agency driver currently working for Tesco. “We’re not necessarily looking for pay parity, we’re just looking for the crumbs from the table.”

Fair enough, I suppose. Everyone wants a pay increase, but the terms and conditions were laid out when you joined - they're not cutting your pay, they're just not paying you as much as you might get if you worked in another role for Tesco.

Mark is one of thousands of agency workers up and down the country who has recently been asked to sign away his rights to the same pay as permanent staff at the supermarket – overriding new equal pay rules which came into effect last month. He stands to lose about £150 extra a week.

No he doesn't. He had a choice - sign away the "rights" or lose his job. The £150 a week was never on the table - he never had it, so how can he lose it? If he was happy to work for his current salary when he got the job, why should he suddenly get a big pay rise now?

On average, temps currently get paid about a third less than permanent staff doing the same job, according to the TUC.

That's usually for a number of reasons. For example, they've often not been with the company long and are not expected to stay all that long, so they don't get the same level of training as permanent staff, so they don't produce the same quality of work as permanent staff. Also, they can usually leave with a minimum of notice (1 day is not unheard of) and thus the company can't rely on them to the same extent as they do their own staff. Also it's often a lot easier to get a temp job (my company has a battery of tests and assessments that you need to pass to get a job, to ensure that they get people who can cope with the role. For temps who are mostly filing or putting letters in envelopes it's not necessary for them to have the same level of ability, so they don't get the same pay and don't have to do the tests).

I'm sure there are some workers out there who do complicated, detailed work and are employed as temps. All I can say to them is that if you don't like it, get another job. If you're vital where you are, threaten to leave.

Fundamentally, I just don't see why companies should be forced to treat temps and permanent staff the same given that there are significant differences between them.

(I also don't think government should be involved at all in what people do in their private interactions and should just stop trying to tell us all how to live, but that's never going to happen)

Civil servants should never be allowed to make agreements

2011-11-04T12:55:00.000Z

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8867315/Police-force-to-pay-out-for-overtime-officers-never-worked.html

Under the generous arrangement officers working in the Operations and Communications Branch (OCB) are paid for a minimum of six hours overtime when called in on their day off - even if they work fewer hours.

The local branch of the Police Federation, however, noticed that staff were only being paid for the hours in which they worked and took the force to court.

Oh no - they were only being paid for the hours that they worked! But wait a minute - police officers are on a starting wage of around £30k for 37 hours a week, so that's roughly £17.50 per hour (accounting for holiday), so that's £105 for 6 hours work. Not bad if you're only called in for 1 hour. Sounds like a stupid policy. Sure, allow a little extra for travel if need be, but to have a minimum of 6 hours? That's definitely stupid.

Never mind the rights and wrongs of it - if the agreement was that they get paid 6 hours for coming in, then fair enough, although you'd hope that the authority wouldn't have to be forced into keeping it's agreements. Still: a very generous and stupid policy.

This is why civil servants should never be allowed to make agreements (or decisions. Or anything, really...)

Strike action to go ahead

2011-11-04T12:33:00.000Z

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/880294c4-062e-11e1-a079-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1cjg5v14k

Good. I don't think the government should have made the pension offer any better, and now that they're striking they'll have to remove the improved offer. That's what they said they'd do, anyway. Of course, these people being politicians, there's no telling whether or not they have the guts to stick with it...

Let's face it, Final Salary pension schemes are expensive. The government has no money (borrowing about £0.5bn a day)so it needs to cut costs. The fact that most of the private sector got rid of final salary pension schemes already isn't really anything to do with it (although it's a helpful guide as to best practise).

I reckon if the govt really wanted to stop the strikes, they'd just have to say that anyone who strikes will not have access to any future final salary option, but would move to DC instead, as most of the private sector has.

For those that blame Grand Theft Auto for rising crime

2011-11-04T11:26:00.002Z

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/04/gaming_makes_kids_more_creative/

Computer games good, mkay!

Things I saw in the news today - part 3

2011-11-01T12:18:00.000Z

http://www.ifaonline.co.uk/ifaonline/news/2121212/warning-record-cpi-force-govt-dump-pensions-triple-lock

This is a really quick one. It just really bugs me when people say "oh noes! The guberment are being ebil and nasty and screwing over pensioners" before we actually know. I know that the lefties don't like what they're doing, but please can they not at least find something that's confirmed: why not criticise over the lack of a referendum on the EU (oh, sorry, forgot that Labour were part of that too), or the pisspoor sentencing that's happening (hmmm - that wasn't much better under Labour, was it?) or something like that? Don't just make crap up.

If they announce the end of the triple lock, then pensioners will be no worse off than they were under Labour, will they? But let's at least wait until they do...

Three things I saw in the news today - part 2

2011-11-01T12:04:00.003Z

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/david-prosser-pension-funds-should-be-a-tempting-target-if-the-chancellor-wants-to-be-progressive-6255470.html

There are suggestions that the government may wish to remove the ability to take a tax free cash sum from your pension pot. It's not the first time that it's been suggested, and I doubt that it will be the last, but it's still stupid, and would likely be the end of personal pensions.

Pension investments have three main benefits: (i) You sometimes get contributions from your employer (free money!) - and this will be more likely once NEST comes in and it's mandatory for all employers to contribute, but the rates of employer contribution that are mandatory are tiny, and really not significant enough to make much difference. (ii) You can take 25% of the value of the benefits tax free. (iii) They can serve as a way to defer income, so you can avoid paying tax now, but pay tax on the benefits when you receive them.

If you take away the 25% tax free element, then the only people for whom pensions will be worthwhile are those who are getting free money from their employer (and even they would likely be better off with a higher salary) or those who are currently paying higher rate taxes but who will be on a lower rate in retirement (due to lower incomes).

So if you abolish the tax free cash, the vast majority of people who would still benefit from a pension would be those who are higher rate taxpayers - which doesn't sound like a progressive move in my book.

Also, giving tax relief doesn't cost the treasury anything. If the school bully normally takes half of your lunch money but one day decides to take only a quarter, it's not cost the bully anything - it just gives you a little more money to get your lunch with. Leaving the money in the hands of those who earnt it is surely not a bad thing? I know the tradition these days is to believe that the state knows better than we do, and can spend it so much more efficiently (oops, there goes the sarcasm detector again) but I reckon leaving a little bit of money with those who've worked for it for all their lives is not a bad idea...

One final point: If people have less pensions, guess who has to pick up the slack? Do we really want people relying more and more on state handouts in retirement? Surely it's better to offer some incentive to get them saving up for retirement...

Edit to add: I know they're saying that they'll just make it so that you pay higher rate tax on it if you have more than x amount. This will still impact just about everyone.

Consider a small final salary scheme. Someone on a pretty average wage (say £25,000) works for them for 20 years. The pension that they'd accrue on 60ths is £8,333 a year. Not a lot to live on, right? Now, suppose the scheme offers the same commutation factors as the governments pension protection fund: 18.66 at age 65 (for post 97 service) - that means that they'd be able to take £40,931.81.

That's about the limit that they're proposing before tax is applied - and that's come from less than half of the average working life. If they'd been there for 40 years (or had worked elsewhere with similar benefits) then they'd be looking at paying 40% tax on £40k - or to look at it another way, the government would be taking about 16k from the average earner on retirement. I don't know about you, but I reckon they'll have had enough of my money by then...

Three things I saw in the news today - part 1

2011-11-01T12:02:00.000Z

First: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/nov/01/state-pension-scheme-ats

"Now: Pensions, set up on a not-for-profit basis, will charge £18 a year for administration plus a 0.3% annual management charge, compared with the 1.25%-1.5% common in Britain."

1.25-1.5% may be common in Britain, but that's often for a managed fund with specific risk expectations. NEST is going to be the cheap and cheerful provider that this new scheme is meant to be competing with and a quick look at the TPAS website shows that they're looking at charging 1.8% on contributions and then 0.3% annually. Just looking at the charges, we can see that if you contribute £1,000 a year it will cost the same in both schemes; with less than £1,000 a year you'd be better off in NEST and with more than £1,000 a year you'd be better off with Now:Pensions. That's completely ignoring investment choices and returns, so the real picture may be rather different and we'll have to wait and see how both of them do.

My issue is that that's not the impression that the article gives - it reads like an advertisement. Why not say how much the annual charge for NEST will be in the article, rather than using the rate that's apparently common in Britain (without any citation).

So let me get this straight

2011-10-28T10:33:00.002+01:00

It's bad when we pay the bankers massive bonuses, but it's also bad when we don't?

http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2011/10/27/uk-banker-bonuses-to-slump-tax-take-will-suffer-consultancy/

The referendum

2011-10-25T10:54:00.000+01:00

With all three main parties having a three line whip, I guess we should consider ourselves lucky that it got as many votes as it did.

I do find it really frustrating that the MPs who are there to represent our interests clearly don't give a crap what the people think. I know that those in government think that they are our rulers and that we should let them make all our decisions for us, but I had hoped that a few more of the backbenchers might be on the side of the people that they work for.

So I'm wondering what the next step is. Do we all just sign another petition (https://submissions.epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/356 looks like it's doing ok, at over 30k signatures already) and keep on making them whip their MPs, while noting carefully who slavishly obeys their political masters, so that we can actively campaign against them next election?

If anyone has any better ideas, I'm all ears!

Those Neutrinos

2011-10-19T16:40:00.001+01:00

There's a bit of a hubbub going on about the OPERA neutrinos and how they seem to have travelled faster than the speed of light. I don't know enough about relativity or quantum effects, but wondered if there might be a more simple explanation.

It's been suggested by some that maybe Neutrinos just do travel a little bit faster than light. Those people have referred to a supernova that occurred a little while ago, and pointed out that the Neutrinos arrived hours ahead of the light from the supernova, so perhaps Neutrinos are just a bit quicker and this is another example of that. The thing is, if the Neutrinos are just a bit quicker than light to the extent represented by the OPERA experiment, the Neutrinos from the supernova would have arrived here years ahead of the light, rather than just hours.

So I got to thinking that maybe that there's something between the transmitter and receiver used in the OPERA experiment that made the Neutrinos faster than light for very brief periods of that journey, and the same something lies between Earth and the supernova.

So we need something that there is a relative lot of between the OPERA transmitter and receiver, and a relative little of between earth and the supernova.

Could it possibly be matter?

The Neutrinos passing from the transmitter to the receiver for OPERA moved through the Earth. The Neutrinos coming to Earth from the supernova moved through space - an almost complete vacuum, but the key word is almost. Could matter speed Neutrinos up? If so, the relatively tiny amount of matter in space could have accounted for a 3 hour difference between light and Neutrinos over a sufficiently big distance (and the distance to the supernova was something like 160,000 light years).

Anyone know if that's at all plausible?

Climate Change - why it bugs me

2011-10-11T09:47:00.000+01:00

One thing that really bugs me about the whole Climate Change thing is the way everyone asks the wrong questions.

The way that I see it, there are three questions being asked here:
(i) Is the climate changing?
(ii) Can we stop it changing?
(iii) Whose fault is it that it is changing?

I think this is very short sighted. We're missing several very important points. I'm willing to concede that the climate is changing, largely because it should be changing. Whether you believe it's because we're emerging from a little ice age or because of the crap we're pumping into the atmosphere, I'm willing to accept that temperatures over the last hundred years or so have showed a slight upward slope (although that does seem to be coming to an end for now).

What we're not asking though is what impact will a hotter world have on humanity (and stop claiming you're trying to "save the world" - the world would be just fine if the temperature was 50 degrees higher, it's humanity that would suffer, and humanity that we're trying to save). I've seen reports that a hotter UK would lead to less deaths overall, and not have any serious downsides. What other impacts would there be? Let's see what we can figure out, and then we can ask the next very important question: are the changes for the better overall?

Only if we decide that they're definitely not for the better should we then look to point (ii) above - can we stop it changing? But at the same time, we need to ask: Would we be better off by mitigating? People often refer to the Stern report, where I believe it was reported that we would be better off providing money to mitigate rather than preventing the changes. That means that if the sea levels will rise by x metres, it's better overall to provide money to build sea walls or move people elsewhere than it is to cripple our economy to prevent the warming.

If the world is warming (and I'm not saying that it's not), I believe that it cannot be 100% negative however you look at it. Plants will grow faster, less people will die of hypothermia in the winter, maybe we can generate more tidal/wind energy as a result of the changes, etc. What we need to consider is how we can use the positive aspects and deal with the negative aspects in the most efficient way, rather than to assume that any change is negative and nothing good can come of it (except the chance to raise lots more in taxes).

As to point (iii) above - whose fault it it? Who cares? If the climate is changing, we need to deal with it. If it turns out that mankind had nothing to do with the changes, we still need to assess how we'll be affected and decide how we want to deal with it. If it's all our fault, it changes nothing, except for the most loony of eco-loons, who would no doubt say that if it's a natural process, we should just let it happen and who cares if it affects millions of people...

River Song's first meeting with the Doctor

2011-09-08T14:55:00.000+01:00

It was suggested way back in Silence in the Library that River and the Doctor are having a relationship in opposite directions. This is a cool idea - a mysterious woman from the Doctor's future who knows him intimately (or at least that's what's implied) but who he's never met? Cool! And to have their timelines running in reverse relative directions, so each time they meet, it's the next time for the Dr and the previous time for River? That's cool. A pain to stick with (so some wiggle room is required) but cool.

But this would surely mean that the first time River meets the Dr should be the last time the Dr meets River - and the episode Let's Kill Hitler implies otherwise. Or does it?

At the start of the episode, Amy and Rory get the Doctor's attention by drawing a massive crop circle that he spots in a paper some time in the future. But which Doctor is it? It's somewhat taken for granted that it's the same Doctor that we last saw in A Good Man Goes to War, but how do we know that he hasn't been around and had lots of adventures since then? What if this is the Doctor at the end of his time, aged 1300+ ?

Then the episode takes on a different tone - when River poisons him, and there's no known cure for the poison, he hops in the TARDIS and goes to get help (the Doctor from Amy and Rory's wedding? Or from the end of the season episode which is apparently something to do with the wedding of River Song?) then heads off to meet the girl on the edge of the lake and gets shot (the Impossible Astronaut).

The timing works (32 minutes until he's dead, and he's in Impossible Astronaut for less than 32 minutes before being shot iirc) and the change of outfit seems odd otherwise, given how that was a big thing about last season (with the Doctor's jacket in the Time of Angels). The only questions that then remain are: was it even the real Doctor (I thought it would be the ganger Doctor that was killed on the lake edge - but maybe he's the Doctor that keeps on?) and what happened to River's Regenerations (could the Doctor have taken them away from her, knowing that she won't need them? Could that let him somehow survive being shot on the edge of the lake? Could it give him more than 13 lives?).

Doctor Who - Night Terrors Review (warning: Spoilers)

2011-09-05T14:56:00.000+01:00

I managed to watch the latest Dr Who last night. It was called Night Terrors, and was (in my opinion, anyway) a big step up from last week, but still not as good as some episodes we've seen.

The episode started off interestingly. It seems that with River sort-of dealt with last episode, the Doctor and his pals had little to do. They're just hanging out in the TARDIS somewhere in deep space. Meanwhile, there is a little kid on an estate in the UK somewhere who is afraid of everything. He's so scared that his fear manages to send out a telepathic message to the Doctor's psychic paper saying "Save me from the monsters"

So the doc and friends pile decide to go and help the kid (well, the Doctor does anyway - Amy and Rory seem less than enthused about the idea). This involves lots of knocking on doors but gives the impression that they're not really that good at the job. They don't seem to ask anything that would lead towards finding the kid. This bit starts to drag on a little (I know they're establishing some details about other people around, but it still feels a little overlong) then thankfully the Doctor spots the boy in a window.

At about this time, Amy and Rory get into a lift (which we're told the boy is terrified of) and plummet for no particular reason. They wind up in a creepy doll's house.

Long story short, the Doc gets into the house and saves the day, by persuading the boy that he made all of the bad stuff, and only he can stop it.

It was a reasonable episode with a nice message and feel to it, but some of it felt a little rushed (like how Amy and Rory were dumped into the house by using an elevator) or a little slow (like the knocking on doors, or waiting for the Doc and the Dad to open the closet.

I'd give it a solid 7 out of 10.

Bury Council pissing away money

2011-09-02T11:41:00.000+01:00

Via the Register, we learn today that Bury Council has bought 22 Ipads for it's binmen, at a cost of around £9,000.

They claim:

...the products, made by Apple, could produce significant savings by helping to reduce the number of bins missed by trucks and therefore the number of trips made by the vehicles.

I'm really not sure how. You either get the bin, or you don't - having a touchpad isn't going to help you remember which bins you're meant to be picking up, is it?

The council, which collects rubbish from 83,000 houses each week, revealed that there were 4,228 reports of missed bins last year. Costing £40 each to revisit, it spent around £170,000 going back to empty bins missed on rounds.

So 83000 bins collected each week, and they missed 4000 in a year. That's a miss rate of about 1 in 1000 - doesn't sound too bad. So I guess what I'm wondering is why they have to spend £40 to revisit - surely they have other binmen in the area the next day, why not pick up the rubbish then? Each household would only have about a 1 in 20 chance of having their bin missed once a year, which is surely low enough that people will manage.

What I don't understand is why having an ipad would help. Are they going to program the locations of all of the bins onto the ipads? If so, why not just get a map?

A council spokeswoman said: "For a modest investment of £9,000, this technology should save us many thousands of pounds, provide residents with a better service, and promote recycling.

How the hell does it make any difference to recycling?

"We know how much residents value a responsive and reliable bin collection service. This system should ensure that the number of missed collections is reduced to an absolute minimum, because any problems are reported in real time to our customer contact centre.

So the problems are reported in real time - and then what?

"The system should also allow us to respond more quickly during the winter to any enforced changes in the collection route."
The council also said the soaring landfill costs contributed to the decision.
The spokeswoman added: "We need to urgently improve our recycling rates to avoid passing on crippling landfill taxes to local residents, which is already costing every local taxpayer £134 a year each and is set to rise to £250 a year if we keep dumping waste in landfill sites.
"This new technology will help us to log and monitor this, and help us in our ongoing efforts to promote recycling across the borough. It is absolutely vital that we increase recycling and reduce the amount of waste we send to landfill."
This article was originally published at Guardian Government Computing.

So you log the problems - well done. I don't see how this reduces waste - from the sounds of it, they hope that it will increase the efficiency of collections, and thus increase the waste put into landfill...

Call me a cynic, but I wouldn't mind betting that the person who signed off on this purchase is either related to or good friends with at least one of those who gets a shiny new ipad...

Doctor Who - Let's Kill Hitler - Review (warning: spoilers ahead)

2011-08-31T14:48:00.002+01:00

I was very excited about the return of Doctor Who. Lots of unanswered questions out there, and lots of things to be revealed. I couldn't wait to find out what Moffat had in mind. So I should have been thrilled with Let's Kill Hitler, but it didn't quite come together for me.

I think most long term fans of Doctor Who like to try and figure out what is going to happen next, and how the various paradoxes can be resolved. I certainly have my own theories, and it can be quite fun to discuss with others, and compare with what actually happens.

I also have a reasonable feel for the story and how things sit, so it doesn't sit right when new characters are introduced all of a sudden, and retrospectively revealed to be really important. At the start of Let's Kill Hitler, we meet Mels* (which it later transpires is short for Melody). She's annoying, loud, constantly in trouble and deeply irritating, and is apparently Amy and Rory's best friend (and is in fact the cause of them being together).

My thought at this point in time was that she was some kind of mind reading alien who'd inserted herself into Amy and Rory's life to get access to the TARDIS. Alas, I was wrong.

So, thanks to Mel's shooting the TARDIS (for no real reason - just because... And that's always a bad reason for something to happen in a tv show) the gang manage to accidentally save Hitler from a time travelling shape-changing justice robot, manned by a bunch of miniaturised people (who incidentally seem to have bugger all idea how to run a military operation - and if it wasn't a military operation, it should have been).

Along the way, Mel gets shot and regenerates into River Song, but it's not the cheeky, flirty, funny River Song that we know. It is instead a River Song that acts like a spoilt teenager. I gather that was probably what they were aiming for, but someone hasn't done the maths (or possibly there's something else going on - we can hope) as they left the kid in 1969 (where it appeared 10ish?), Amy is around 23, so started school (age 5) in 1992ish? So the kid would have had to grow up from 1969 to 1992, then regenerated to be about 5. That would have meant (assuming age 10 at 1969) a total age of 33 when she looked 5. By the time she's grown up again to age 23ish, she'll have a real age of 51 - so why act like a stupid kid? It just grated - I like River Song, but didn't like this character that looked like her. Maybe that's the point.

Anyway, back to the title of the show. Let's Kill Hitler! Apart from one throwaway line at the start of the episode and saving Hitler from the aforementioned time travelling shape-changing robot, he gets shut in a cupboard and left there. The title is completely misleading. The episode has the great backdrop of Berlin 1938 and does nothing with it. Hitler and the question of his crimes (which he hasn't yet committed) are ignored. Hell, even the shape-changing time travelling robot is nothing more than a gimmick, as we never find out where it's from, who built it or where/what the "mothership" is. It seems like it's just there to pad out the episode a little bit.

This episode has three main strands: Hitler, the shape-changing time travelling robot and River Song, and really each one of them could easily fill an episode. It seems a shame that the first two are neglected in order to develop the River Song story, perhaps a bit quicker than necessary**. There is some joy in leaving some things unknown.

Overall, I'm glad Dr Who is back, but don't really feel like it's back yet - if that makes any sense. I'm hoping that the bits that were overlooked in this episode are revisited later in the season, and that next weeks episode is better.

* I know that technically she's not a new character, but this aspect of her is new - she was a big part of Amy's past, and has never been mentioned, or referred to. Like the Doctor says, she wasn't at the wedding (and yes, we know why she couldn't be there, but she couldn't have known that her older self would be there, so why wasn't she?) - surely Amy would have mentioned if her best friend couldn't make it?

** And does anyone else remember River Song describing the first time she met the Doctor? She says something like, "Here was this man that I knew nothing about, but he knew everything about me." Doesn't sound all that much like what happened... I'll have to re-watch and look up the quote

G+ invites update

2011-07-28T11:55:00.001+01:00

So far I've had over 1,000 requests for G+ invites, although there is some duplication included in those figures as some people have entered their email address more than once. I reckon I've sent out over 900 invites to real people.

Out of those people:
14 have left a rating on the market
11 paid £1 each (of which I received 70p)
9 have individually emailed me to ask for an invite
6 have left comments on the market

Since yesterday morning, the invites are coming in fairly steadily at about 15 per hour. The peak time was between 10pm last night and 2am this morning, when we hit about 17.5 per hour.

Sainsbury's pay

2011-07-14T17:21:00.000+01:00

I used to work for Sainsbury's. I see from the Guardian that people are protesting the current wage levels. It's tempting to point out how lucky they are (when I joined, I was on £2.73 per hour) but probably more honest to point out that they do have a perfectly good option. If they don't like the pay there, they can get another job. If enough people did that, perhaps Sainsbury's would up their wage to keep their staff...

Looking at the article, the main gripe seems to be that Sainsbury's makes a massive profit, so should pay more. According to the London Stock Exchange website (no idea if that link will work - if not, search for SBRY on the site) they have a market cap of around £6 billion, and they're profits were £665m. That's around 11%, which is higher than average, but not necessarily excessive (most projections I've seen reckon on 5%-9% being normal).

But suppose they're right, and the bosses are doing absolutely the wrong thing by keeping all these massive profits (and presumably using a certain amount to grow the business?), and the excess should be spread out amongst the staff. First we need to determine what's the excess. A return of 5% would be poor, and would mean lots of people selling shares (driving the price down further and thus calling into question the long term viability of the company, and incidentally costing anyone in the employee share plan lots of money, but never mind all that) but might be acceptable to the staff - that would give £363m or so to spread amongst the staff.

There are two ways the cash could be distributed:
flat amount to each member of staff
150,000 staff (from wikipedia) working out at about £2,420 each, or £1.19 per hour, taking them to £7.50 per hour.
or
according to their current salary
total wage bill was ~£2bn in (from here (warning: pdf)), so adding £363m would increase the total by 18% or so, so the basic £6.31 mentioned in the article would go up to £7.45 per hour.

Note that this is not what they can afford, it's the most they could give if they were willing to seriously risk the long term viability of the company, so asking for £8.30 per hour is not really reasonable.

Taxing bankers won't send them overseas, honest

2011-07-14T10:19:00.001+01:00

Interesting spin on the story here. The way they tell it, things are peachy and noone in the financial services industry wants to leave the UK. That means we can tax the bankers as much as we want, they're not going anywhere!

Looking at the numbers they present gives a rather different story however.

The majority of respondents (80%) had either not had the opportunity to move abroad (43%), declined an overseas opportunity (9%) or were not willing/able to relocate (28%).

Fully 20% of those surveyed have moved abroad. I don't know about you, but I reckon that's quite a lot. Further, another 43% had not had the opportunity (presumably because they're happy where they are?) but they go on to say:

The 43% who had not had the opportunity to move abroad stated that they would however be open to the idea. New York (23%) was their preferred destination, followed by Hong Kong and Singapore (both 13%). Dubai and Sydney were close behind, both with 9%.

So from the figures they give, 63% of financial services staff have either moved abroad or are willing to do so. I know that this is a small sample size, but I'd still consider that there's a definite problem if raising taxes on this particular sector...

Google Plus

2011-07-14T07:21:00.002+01:00

Just so you know, I've got invites to G+. If anyone wants them, just leave a comment and I'll send one over :-)

Anyone using it and wishing to add me (there's not a lot to see, mind) can find me at https://plus.google.com/107542505388749016402/posts

The whole Adele thing

2011-05-26T17:36:00.000+01:00

Adele kicked up a bit of a fuss about having to pay 50% tax, as reported (and denigrated) by the Guardian, here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/may/25/adele-tax-grievances

As Tim Worstall points out, the article is not entirely accurate, but leaving that aside, I'd be very surprised if Adele did have to pay 50% tax.

The agreement that she has with the record company will say that she gets x% of the sales of her album. I've no idea what x is, but bear in mind that all CD sales are subject to VAT. This is at 20% currently, added on to the pre-VAT price, so effectively removing 16.67% of the money long before Adele sees it. For a given amount of sales, where Adele would have earned £100, she's now down to £83.33.

Then there's income tax and NI. Adele mentions paying £4m in tax. I'm not entirely sure whether she's treated as self employed or as an employee of the music company, but I'd assume the former, meaning NI is 2% and income tax is 50% on the vast majority of the income.

(Of course it'd be better if she was set up as a small company and paid herself dividends, in which case the income tax is 42.5% and I don't think there's any NI - I could be wrong though. It's worse if she's a normal employee, because then there's Employer's NI, Employee's NI and income tax to worry about.)

This means that of the £83.33 that she would theoretically get, she'll only actually receive £40.00. This, the actual tax rate that she's paying is more like 60%.

The money that she will still have to spend VAT on anything she spends on "non-essentials" (and I never really understood how clothing is non essential, but books are essential?), making the effective rate for the money spent thusly 66.67%. If she spends any money on things like cigarettes or alcohol it's considerably worse.

So there you have it - Adele's tax rate is really more like 60%