Advice to The Government: One Crucial Thing That would Help Growth.

The one th9ing that the government should do to kickstart growth is to abolish the IR35 tax rules. 

IR35 killed the independent contracting sector in the UK almost overnight. I was caught up in the early adoption of the rules, being an independent I.T. contractor, but the IR35 rules have been widened to incorporate the media and medical staff like doctors working privately.

I do get why they were introduced: the then Labour government wanted to stop companies letting people go and re-hiring them as self-employed contractors, thereby avoiding the payment of employer's national insurance amongst other things.

But if they wanted to target that, they should have made the rule that if you originally worked for a company as a PAYE employee, you couldn't return to that company as an independent contractor for 6 months or whatever.

But, instead they made the rules catch ALL independent contractors, whether they were working for the company or not, whether they worked for the company in the office or not. Even if you worked one day in the office, you are classed as a "disguised employee". 

Media people, who may have their own PLC and work for several media companies doing different things, if they sit at a desk and read the news, or sit at a desk and edit a programme, they fall foul of IR 35. The taxman deems them as employees.

This is the creep of tax mentality, the same that has deemed those in the gig economy to be employees as well. It's wrong-headed. If the people start to work as self-employed independent people, how can they then later down the line campaign to force the company to recognise them as employees with paid leave etc?

We need freedom in this country and especially the freedom to work as and how we please. By restricting employment freedom, the government and HMRC have stifled growth. Not for nothing has growth in the UK been minimal since the 1990s. That was the time before government started to force people into PAYE in order to maximise National Insurance revenue.

Russian Spy Ship Yantar in the Public Eye Again.

 Not very stealthy is it, if "Spy Ship" Yantar is in the News again.

After diving on the wreck of the Ursa Major in the Med, Yantar is now off the coast of the UK, ostensibly mapping undersea cables according to press releases.

Now you could put two and two together and regard this is a message from Putin.

If Yantar has dived on the Ursa Major wreck and found the explosion came from something like an Unmanned Surface Vessel, Russia regard the UK as a Major collaborator with Ukraine on the development of USVs, even going as far as to say publicly they know Royal Navy assets are working inside Ukraine helping develop these vehicles.

Now Yantar appears off the coast of the UK, it's a clear signal the Ursa Major was sunk by a USV or some other identifiable method, that the Russians considers heavily linked to UK involvement in the Ukraine conflict and our proxy war with Russia.

Yantar mapping undersea cables and pipelines is a clear message: we know what you did. Yantar is a very visible asset doing a very obvious job. Not the normal mission of a spy ship. This is a message with meaning.

Of course, the undersea assets will have already been mapped covertly. Russia has the massive special-operations submarine Belgorod that is specifically designed for undersea interdiction of cables, pipelines and other undersea assets. It is specifically designed to be very stealthy, close to the standards of NATO subs. A lot of Russian Roubles have been poured into that sub. It is nuclear powered, so it can stay submerged for long periods and travel vast distances without surfacing. 

It can navigate to UK waters in the wake of other Russian vessels transiting the English Channel, then loiter undetected to use laser scanning of the seabed, without making sonar emissions that would be detected. It can then move out of UK waters in the wake of a second vessel transiting the Channel. I did wonder why so many Russian vessels were using the channel in recent years, now I know. 

We have even gone as far as surfacing a UK attack sub close to Yantar. Not standard Operating Procedure, the nature of a sub is to stay stealthy. But in the cat and mouse messaging game, surfacing a sub close to a Russian Intelligence gathering ship sends another message. 

Anyway, if you are in the know, you know hat the Russians know, you know our government know the Russians know, we also know why the Russians want us to know they know and you now you know what everyone else knows, even if you don't know everything I know.

UK Government Avoid Offending Everyone Except the Majority..

It seems that HMS Agincourt is to be renamed to avoid offending the French.

Is there no-one the Labour government won't bend over backwards to avoid offending?

Oh yeah, the pale stale white people that make up the majority of the country. The most heinous of which are the retired, with their pensions and their savings accounts. They need teaching a lesson.

Fuck Labour, Fuck the Civil service. Stop spunking my money on vanity projects to signal how virtuous you are. I don't care how soothed your conscience is, just get the fucking job done without costing me an arm and a leg.

Storm Herminia Brings... No Power.

 Here's an object lesson in what happens when there is too much wind, or the win is in the wrong place:

See that blue sliver over the huge orange band? That's yesterday's wind generation. Pathetic. 

Given that there WAS some wind, the Storm Herminia, you'd think that somewhere in the country there would be just enough wind (neither too much or too little) for a decent contribution to UK energy production.

But alas, no. There appears to be too much of the wrong type of wind to produce substantial amounts of energy. 

What was that the enviro-mentalists used to say? That somewhere in the country the wind will blow and there will be generation. Yeah, some generation, but not a substantial amount. 

Gas is still the major energy provider. Without it, we are scuppered. 

With the demise of coal-fired production, it would be wise to invest in an alternative heating source at the very least. We can live without lights, but we can't live without heat. 

The posh people have their wood-burners to fall back on, even though they might be illegal.

Those of us without recourse to remodelling the house to install a multi-fuel stove need an alternative. 

The cheap Chinese diesel heaters that are around for under £100 seem to be a good alternative. They can run of most oils including vegetable oil. So you can run one cheaply. All you need is a 12v car battery and some oil. And a hole to vent the exhaust out of, you don't want to die from carbon monoxide poisoning.

If the indications are energy production is going to falter, I'll be first in line for one..