Look at all those forrin’ trucks, coming over here, using our roads. Using them for free, too!
Foreign trucks don’t pay to use our roads we British drivers pay an annual fee to licence our vehicles to use them where as over in Europe they have a system of tolls. The British have a contract, with unlimited miles included, where as the Europeans have a Pay-as-You-Go system, if you like.
This, for us, is indeed not business friendly for the haulage industry, as the British vehicles have to subsidise the wear and tear, and damage done to the roads of foreign vehicles, whilst British hauliers, even if the vehicle is abroad the majority of the time, have to pay British road tax and all the tolls and charges of the European countries they visit.
A proposal to charge foreign-registered lorries up to £10 a day to drive on the UK’s roads is due to be outlined.
The government says the current system is unfair and is launching a consultation on the plan.
Foreign hauliers drive around the UK for free, while UK firms pay road tolls or daily rates to drive across Europe.
Legally, ministers cannot discriminate between UK and EU lorries so all trucks will be charged up to £10 a day, but British hauliers would get a refund.
That sounds fair enough, doesn’t it? Two things jumped out at me though.
The first is why complicate things with having this charge *and* road tax *and* giving a refund? It’s a recipe for disaster. Incorrect charging, missed refunds and all sorts. Why not simplify the system by getting rid of the road tax for commercial vehicles and apply the daily charge to *all* commercial vehicles in the UK? I understand this is just a proposal so they probably haven’t thought past the picking a daily figure out of their arse, but the more times money is passed back and forth, the more likely it is something will go wrong, and if it’s gonna go wrong it’s gonna be the haulier that will get fucked by late refunds and appeals and shit like that.
The second point is up to £10 a day! That is a huge amount. I would bet my hat that no commercial vehicle pays that amount at the moment. I realise this is just a proposal, and that it is *up to* £10 a day, but that is way out, even for a proposal that has been thrown out the door to see what reaction it gets.
The licencing of commercial vehicles is not the simplist of things, as there are so many different types of vehicles, and combinations of different types of vehicles with so many different uses. I had a quick squint at the direct.gov.uk website about the cost of licencing a HGV and the biggest charge for road tax on a truck was £2585 per annum. Have a look for yourself if you want, here. This works out to £7.08 per day for a very large load vehicle with no Reduced Pollution Certificate. For even bigger vehicles that tax wouldn’t go up much, and if fact dropps dramatically, because they are not used *all* the time or are just used for the beginning and end legs of journeies, where the middle bit of the journey is by rail of water.
For the more usual class of HGV (3 axle tractor, 2 axle trailer, with reduced pollution Certificate and road friendly suspension) the figure is twenty quid shy of £1600. This works out at £4.33 per day. Less that half of what could be charged under this proposal.
The UK cannot dicriminate between UK and foreign trucks, so the charge will have to be the same (for each class of vehicle) whether a UK truck or one from abroad, so it is not going to be simple case of collecting cash as the truck rolls off the ferry. Why make it more complicated with having the road tax and refunds in the mix?
This could be good. the extra cash raised from the foreign trucks, at no cost to UK ones, would help the government coffers. If the government was feeling generous (stop laughing at the back!) they could drop the daily rate, still have the same income (due to more trucks paying) and that would help lower some of the costs the UK haulage industry which is already struggling to keep it’s head above water due to fuel prices.
But if the government can’t even have a look to see what trucks are currently paying per day to go out on a policy proposal, then I can’t really see then doing this a) the best way or b) not fucking it up whichever way they decide to do it.
And no post about trucking would be complete without a song…
I was just looking at what the current rules for are for Stamp Duty and the obvious place to look is here.
First time buyers at the moment, I noticed, are getting a bit of a hand and instead of having to pay stamp duty from a purchase price of £125,000, don’t have to pay anything until the spend over £250,000.
Now, arguably, if you’re spending nearly £250k on your first home then you don’t really need that much of a hand onto the property ladder, but that isn’t the point of this post. What did catch my eye was the definition given for a first time buyer…
If you are a first-time buyer the threshold for when you start to pay SDLT is £250,000. This is only if you have never owned a house or flat in the UK or anywhere else in the world. If you are buying with someone else they must never have owned property before either. This higher threshold applies to purchases made on or after 25 March 2010 and before 25 March 2012.
A first time buyer is someone that hasn’t owned a house or flat. Anywhere. Not just in the UK, but worldwide.
How the fuck do HMRC know if someone has owned a house or flat anywhere other than the UK? I imagine some of this information gets onto the books via the land registry (obviously), tax returns and other things like that, or friendly foreign government agencies might help out, but do HMRC just take everyone at their word? Do they actually investigate to make sure they are fresh to the home-owning scene?
This request is regarding the Stamp Duty Land Tax relief currently available to first time buyers.
People buying house or flat for the first time on or after 25th March 2010 and before 25th March 2012 do not pay any SDLTX on a property with a purchase price of £250,000 or less.
See here http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/MoneyTaxAndBenefits/Taxes/TaxOnPropertyAndRentalIncome/DG_4015918
The definition of “first time buyer” is someone that has not owned a house or flat in the UK or anywhere else in the world.
What I would like to know is
1) How much has HMRC spent in finding out if someone has previously bought a house or flat in the UK.
2) How much has HMRC spent in finding out if someone has previously bought a house or flat anywhere else in the world.
3) How much STLD has HMRC recovered from people who have claimed not to have previously owned a house or flat but have owned one in the UK
4) How much STLD has HMRC recovered from people who have claimed not to have previously owned a house or flat but have owned one somewhere in the rest of the world.
5) How many first time purchases have HMRC investigated whether the buyers have previously owned a house or flat?
6) How many of these investigations have HMRC found people claiming not to have owned a house or flat have actually owned a house or flat a) in the UK and b) anywhere else in the workd?
Could you give the most upto date figures possible and broken down in to months, and for purchases in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Free speech includes the right to be offensive. It includes the right to describe an old woman in terms of such bitter hatred that you talk about her death being a jackpot. It includes the right to post faux-serious arguments like saying you are “removed from reality” if you don’t see that old woman’s death as a celebration. But the point is that our license fee should not go to BBC Scotland so they can commission multiple series from a healthy, middle-aged male who chooses to rain such hate on a woman of eighty-six, now mentally frail, vulnerable and unable to answer him back or defend herself. I hope Mr Limond feels like a big man for frothing over the forthcoming death of a very old woman.
Brian Limond didn’t say he would kill the ex-Priminister, just that he would be so happy he doesn’t think his heart would be able to take it.
The new former minister of defence Dr Liam Fox has been cleared of anything serious by the report into his and his best man, John Werrity, concluding that national security and didn’t financially gain from the breaches of the parliamentary code of conduct.
There is one question that keeps appearing in the back of my mind, though. It makes me unsure if I’ve missed some thing, am socially inept or if it just hasn’t been mentioned.
If Liam Fox didn’t gain financially what did he get out of his arrangements with Werrity? Surely, it was a bit early in Foxs’ career to be paving the way for a job after politics?
All of us would help a mate out if needed, without asking for anything in return, especially as good a mate as Werrity is supposed to be to Fox. He was Foxs’ best man after all. But what sort of bloke puts his mates job and career on the line?
Werrity used Liams’ publicly funded office and shit for his own business purposes, had Liam attend meetings, and, I think, had meetings set up for him by Liam, and had business cards, which gave the unmistakeable impression that he worked in an official capacity for the then Minister of Defence (of which Fox, in my opinion, could not have been unaware of).
As I say, we would all help out a mate in need, but Werrity, from the outside at least, doesn’t look like he was in need of a bed for a few days till he got his own place, or a loan just to tithe him over until pay day.
So, with all the connections and other stuff Liam Fox was giving Werrity access to, just what did Fox get in return if it wasn’t financial?
(This post was put together on my phone, so if you want links, find them yourself. If you want correct spellings, you can bugger off.)
The Daily Mail has sent a letter to istyosty.com shutting it down.
I’ve written about istyosty several times and if you’re not a regular reader this post explains what it’s all about.
Anyway, as of now istyosty is no longer cacheing the Mail, the Sun or the Express. If istyosty hadn’t of complied, the Mail would’ve chased for £150,000 per cached article plus legal expenses. They didn’t like the bit on istyostys’ ‘about’ page that detailed how it reduced hits and consequently ad revenue. Just as predicted, the Mails wallet is its’ soft spot.
The Mail also are under the impression that Istyosty is making money off the back of it…
Your deliberate attempt to interfere with Associated o’hits” Newspapers’ ability to get valuable to its website, through the willful infringement of our clientls copyrights, are irreparably damaging to Associated News. Under the law, Associated News is entitled not only to injunctive relief against you, but also is entitled to receive awards of damages, recovery of your ill-gotten profits, and to recover the attorneys’ fees and costs it incurs as a result of your violations of law.
Statutory damages alone may be awarded in the amount of $ 150,000 per work infringed under the U.S. Copyright Act,17 USC $101, et seq.
Istyosty did not use the Mails identifying features, logos etc to advertise itself, the only time they appeared was when a cached page was brought up.
As you can see from this cache of Istyostys’ frontpage, there are no adverts. As Istyostys’ cache process stripped the adverts from the Mails pages there were no adverts on those pages either. No adverts, no income generated.
Anyway, as usual, Istyosty doesn’t have the resources to contest this latest threat from the Mail and so has to close.
A good tool for media watchers, and one that the Mail obviously felt it had to take seriously.
It was good while it lasted. Thank you Istyosty.
The take down notice can be seen here (.pdf), or I have a copy here.
There’s a lot of fuss made of online security, keeping your details secure and being careful about what websites you put your credit card details in to but I’ve just sent my driving licence of to the DVLA as I got caught speeding, 44mph in a 30mph limit.
Two things struck me as, well, not very good at all.
The first is that you have to send both parts of your driving licence off, not just the paper part. I don’t understand this at all. What is the point of having to send your photo card part? The DVLA don’t physically do anything with this part. What is the point in having a 2 part licence, one part of which is your recent driving history and the other part which is basically an identification card, if you got to send them both off? The notice of indended prosecution doesn’t ask for proof of identity of any kind when it ask you to tell them who was driving at the time of the offence. They just want a name. As long as the name on the fixed penalty notice is the same as the one on the paper part of the licence, it should be enough. When the DVLA receive the licence, it’s not like thay have a real person to check it against, is it?
Secondly, you get a choice of payments, cheque/postal order or credi/debit card.
Now a crossed cheque is pretty secure, and it’s been so long since I used a postal order i can’t remember what one looks like. The credit card payment seems not the best idea at all. not only do you put the card number and expiry date but also the 3 digits from the signature strip. This number was introduced a number of years ago to help reduce online fraud, as only the card holder should know it as, unlike the card number and expiry date, this number is not contained on the magnetic strip. It is one thing putting all these details into a website via a secure connection but to write everything down that is needed to make a payment online on a piece of paper and then enclose it with what is primary document of identification and put it in the post, to me seems complete madness.
It’s crazy enough to have to put a complete document of identification in the post when it is not neccersary, but to have the complete details of a credit card with it as well…
Just remember kids. The criminal justice system: helping you stay safe since erm, er, oh.
Despite the piecemeal nature of sentencing for those convicted of violent disorder (there are currently no sentencing guidelines in the crown court), comparatively speaking Gilmour’s fate seems to be hugely disproportionate and unfair. He simply should not be imprisoned for crimes that hurt nobody. This is a conviction that raises a hackneyed question, so often mooted during the phone-hacking scandal: cui bono?
Cui bono? Erm, yes. Society, probably.
But now the cameras turn once again to Charlie Gilmour, a 21-year-old Cambridge student and scion of the Pink Floyd dynasty who today received a 16-month prison sentence after pleading guilty to violent disorder. Gilmour, now sober-suited, bespectacled and freshly shorn, presented a very different figure to the apparently crazed eccentric who was photographed swinging from a union flag on the Cenotaph during the fees protests last December. He was later seen leaping on the bonnet of a Jaguar in a royal convoy taking the Prince of Wales to the royal variety performance, and was also found have also hurled a rubbish bin at the vehicle.
Violence doesn’t have to neccersarily hurt someone. He jumped on the bonnet of a car and and threw a bin at another vehicle. I would say that is being violent. The swinging from the Centotaph is an act of vandalism. All three instances are violence against property. Guilty as charged.
But, Ellie, what the buggering fuck is this about…?
And certainly Gilmour did wrong although, having admitted that he had taken LSD and Valium prior to the protests, it’s arguable whether he was wholly responsible for some of his more extreme idiocy.
W.T.F?
Charlie is still responsible for his actions. Whatever he’s off his face on, he is still responsible for his ‘more extreme idiocy’, as well as his not so clever, harmless moments of the day. Just because someone is bolloxed doesn’t mean they can go breaking the law. That’s why junkies end up in prison for theft. That’s why beer monsters end up in front of the magistrate on a Monday morning after kicking the shit out of someone whilst fueled up on Wife-Beater. You do something illegal because you have taken mind-altering substances, you are still responsible.
You only have to take a look at the sentencing history for “Violent Disorder”, coupled with Mr Gilmour’s nature in court (allegedly giggling at scenes of his actions), tempered by the fact he pleaded guilty and apologised for certain (but not all) actions.
Attacking a police officer by throwing bottles – 10 months
Encouraging others to KILL police officers – 12 months
Revenge attack on property, with “attack” of person, person of good character – 18 months
Taking part in a riot, repetitive attacks on riot police with state of mind to “re-arm” with projectiles, second offence – 3 years
16 months, given that Charlie doesn’t exactly seem remorseful of the main elements of the charge (which is the threat, as little as it was in reality, he put members of family of the head of state under, and the encouragement for others to break the law vandalism of property), seems pretty much bang on all things considered, doesn’t it?
The scale of private links between David Cameron and News International was exposed for the first time last night, with the Prime Minister shown to have met Rupert Murdoch’s executives on no fewer than 26 occasions in just over a year since he entered Downing Street.
What the fuck is this all about then? 26 meeting in 15 months? Nearly one meeting a fortnight for over a year? Who the fuck did Cunty Cameron think News International are? A fucking PR agency? What? Oh.
What other company gets to have it’s executives meet with the prime minister every other fucking week, not counting short spells when there may be ideas for a policy being bandied about? These weren’t just reporters getting a statement or interview, these meetings were with people that were guiding and and shaping the direction of the News International. What the fuck were they talking about?
I can understand why Cameron would have 15 meetings with the execs from News International since May this year, they do have to get their story straight, don’t they.
I’ll ask again, in normal circumstances, and that period was supposed to be ‘ordinary’ as both Plods’ and New Intls’ enquiries had come to a close, what other fucking company gets it’s top nobs an exclusive audience with the prime minister once a fortnight?
DAVID Cameron last night hit back at allegations that his Government is soft on crime by vowing to back home owners who fight off burglars.
Announcing a major legal shake-up, the Prime Minister pledged that property holders who use “reasonable force” against intruders would not be prosecuted.
How is that new?
David Cameron said: “My mission is to make sure that families can feel safe in their homes, and they can walk the streets freely, without fear. The system today is failing and badly needs reform.”
It needs reform so badly, it’s going to stay the same.
…the most eye-catching announcement was legal protection for people who defend their families and properties during break-ins. It would allow home owners to hit burglars or even shoot them as long as the force used can be shown in court to have been reasonable.
At risk of repeating myself, how is that new?
“So we will put beyond doubt that home owners and small shopkeepers who use reasonable force to defend themselves or their properties will not be prosecuted.”
How is, oh you get the idea.
The PM’s measures include increasing the number of life sentences handed out by the courts and ensuring that serious sexual and violent offenders spend at least half of their jail terms in custody.
Under current rules, many can walk free halfway through their sentences.
All together now… How is that new?
A new criminal offence of squatting will also be introduced to protect home owners, and squatters will be stripped of the right to claim legal aid to fight their cases.
This it is a little worrying. I don’t know any figures about squatting or what squatters give for being squatters, whether it’s to use unused property or poverty or being outside the benefits system, but I doubt the majority actually want to be squatters any more than a property owner wants to host them. So it would be nice if alongside this proposal to rid the land of squatters and prevent them from claiming someone elses property, the government put in place some other way of getting these people back into accommodation.
I love this little quote from Ken Clarke…
I’ve made a number of U-turns in my time. They should be done with purpose and panache when you do them.
If you’re gonna do a u-turn, make it a stylish one. Preferably wearing a hat at a jaunty angle.
