I have to say that it does take a pretty impressive level of incompetence to loose two discs containing the details of every single UK family claiming Child Benefit. It’s not even as if it was one of their staff – the important discs were entrusted to TNT, who handle the departments internal mail – the package vanished somewhere in their system. Just imagine what could happen once they get their ID card system up and running…
Tag Archives: government
A Good Old British Panic
So after the announcement from the government last night, calm seems to have returned to Northern Rock branches across the country – well aside it seems for Golders Green where savers were still queuing this morning with the government guarantee being seen as some sort of ruse.
However social commentators are already starting to draw comparisons with another September panic – the UK Fuel Protests, or more precisely what happens if ever there is a rumour of another blockade. For example in September 2005 after a series of news stories about potential protests, long queues started forming outside petrol stations, and thousands were emptied of supplies. However the protesters said several times that they had no intention of blockading refineries again, and in the event only a small number even protested. The panic produced more of a problem than the event itself.
In exactly the same way, the Northern Rock applied for a bail out from the Bank of England, and despite people regularly saying that the bank was financially solvent, queues quickly formed of savers withdrawing their money, exacerbating the problem.
So was it right in both cases for people to panic? In the case of the September 2005 Fuel Protests people only needed to remember a few years before to the chaos that was caused by the first UK Fuel Protests. There was also a general level of mistrust both of the protesters themselves, and of government assurances. This time around, again people distrusted government and official assurances. Also anybody who looked at the compensation scheme realised that for any sort of reasonable level of savings, you were going to lose – only the first £2000 is fully guaranteed. Certainly back in 2005, whilst I didn’t queue for hours, I did make sure I’d filled up both cars so as we could get to work, and if I’d had any money in the Northern Rock I’d probably have moved it as a precaution.
So maybe the commentators are slightly wrong, the British don’t like a good panic – they just fundamentally don’t trust people in authority and what they say – hence why the people in Golders Green were still withdrawing their money this morning.
Nuclear Go-Ahead
This morning it looks like the governments controversial decision to build more nuclear power plants will be announced. Of course we can expect a large amount of complaints from environmentalists. However I’m reminded of Ian James comments on the subject earlier in the year that people tend to place more weight on the very small chance of a catastrophic disaster with nuclear power, as opposed to the much more massive death toll that will result from a continued reliance on pollution producing fuels such as coal and gas. Of course increasing renewables is encountering problems too with ongoing campaigns against renewable schemes over visual impact. Of course ultimately what we need to be doing is trying to use less electricity, rather than trying to generate more and more to keep up with our usage.
Government Moving to Tax Personal E-mail?
Craig Murphy highlighted this article from yesterdays Times, which flags up a change in the tax rules brought in by the recent budget. Whilst in computing terms most coverage concentrated on the loss of the Home Computing Initiative that encouraged home computer ownership by offering a tax break on the purchase cost, in some ways this part of the finance bill has the potential to be much more worrying.
Effectively the move seems to be going after companies that give employees a computer as part of their job, which then also gets used for general usage. For example a salesman or consultant that is given a laptop, and then at night uses his laptop at home for personal stuff, maybe checking his hotmail account, or doing a bit of online banking, essentially removing the need for a home computer. Under the new rules, this would be regarded as a benefit, and both the employee and the company taxed accordingly.
The issue to which the article in the Times alludes is that the legislation states that computers are exempt if usage is ‘not significant’, so it entirely depends on where you draw the line, and what you define as personal usage. Certainly with the fairly vague definition given in the legislation it has the potential to be a massive minefield for employers and employees, with the possibility that someone sending personal e-mails from a work computer could land both themselves and their company with a tax bill, depending on the definition of significant usage. Certainly whether it does end up being a tax on e-mail or not, it seems like a great opportunity to grab a nice lot of extra cash for the Treasury, and one that up until now has sneaked under the radar of most commentators.
The amusing thing is that now the government is now backtracking, saying that the chances of having to pay the tax are virtually zero – but if that is the case, as Craig says why bother to bring in the rule at all?
Closing the Roads
Talking to some friends from Church this week, we got a slightly odd request. They asked that we write to the local council to tell them that we used the road outside their house in a car when we visited them…
The reason is actually quite serious. As you may know, Finchampstead includes the Finchampstead Ridges, much of which is owned by the National Trust. However the land is also criss-crossed with a number of ancient rights of way. Whilst many of these ancient routes have been brought up to modern standards, quite a few, especially in and around the ridges, are just tracks. However, as ancient rights of way, legally anybody can use them, and with the rise in 4×4 vehicles, this is becoming a problem. As this article last year said, the government is tightening up the laws.
However this has had an unfortunate side effect for our friends, as their house is along one of these ancient rights of way that has not been adopted by the council. The council appear to be just applying the new restrictions in a blanket manner, offering the possibility of it being illegal for our friends to drive their car to their house, rather than adopting the relevant bits of road to allow the residents access. Typically this is getting down to political mud slinging. The Conservative run council line seems to be that they are only following government instructions, so it isn’t their fault. However having been on the recieving end of the council refusing to adopt our road until the street lights were sorted to “save money for our taxpayers”, and the whole fishing expedition with the trees last year (note that neither the developer, or the council has cut them back – it should have been done within 14 days of the notice being issued), I suspect money may be coming in to play here – as if the council were to adopt all the local roads they would need to, it again would cost a lot to do.
Of course whether you blame the government for a poorly constructed law, or the council for screwing their residents to save cash, that still leaves people like our friends with the prospect of having a house that they can’t get to…