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electric company account (please break in and pay my bill for me!)

You might want to move electric company account up the list. Utilities bills are often used as proof of address when verifying identity.

Since the article is talking about the UK guidelines here, check out this list.

That's not the case in the UK. The posted speed limit is the maximum alowed speed. If you exceed it you're breaking the law. Now, if there's a minimum speed limit sign (see page 2) [ https://www.gov.uk/government/... ] you have a point, but I think I've seen one of those once ever.

Now, about the obstruction thing, I frankly do not believe you unless you quote chapter and verse of the law. There have always been vehicles of mixed speed on the road: for example horses were in use until well aftre cars were introduced.

Now the only places you might have a point are on multiple lane roads. I've never seen a cyclist tofdling along at 10mph in the fast lane unless it's an urban road and a turn is being made.

Bicyclists should wait at red lights just like everyone else, for example. It doesn't mean "stop, look, then proceed if you don't see a car crossing". It means you wait until it turns green.

Why? You make an assertion without providing a reason

Why? Because it's the fucking law, that's why.

QUOTEThey're more likely to be tied to Windows by tax software and the like.UNQUOTE
In UK, HMRC (Her Britannic Majesty's Revenue and Customs = Tax man) issues tax returns and Small Business tax return FREEWARE stuff in both Linux , Windows and Mac system formats. Free software for personal tax returns browser based and OS independent. Commecilal firms the limit for free HMRC software is number of employees at 10 persons (enough for about 30% of all UK firms). Commercial accountants can work in any OS as major UK bookkeeping software (basis of company accounts and thus transfer to tax returns) is available in Linux and other OS forms.
link
https://www.gov.uk/basic-paye-...

Amber means stop you can do so safely:
https://www.gov.uk/government/...

It does not mean try to squeeze through because you think you have time. I know people who've had tickets for running the amber, despite being across the line before it went red.

Knock yourself out.

Another me too. My borough Newham 'nearly' changed to Linux about 10 years ago. We need politicians and civil servants with a bit of courage and imagination. Of course, one or two of the first implementations will go wrong, but not 'wrong' like £6 billion odd that the Blair government wasted on the failed NHS project. I suspect that Corbyn will probably 'get' FOSS.

It's 'interesting' that this is marked 'withdrawn': https://www.gov.uk/government/...

Yielding the road to a faster vehicle? I've never heard of that being a rule of the road. As far as I'm aware, all vehicles have exactly the same priority on public roads (except for emergency vehicles when they've got their lights turned on).

It's not particularly easy to judge the distances in the video due to the wide angle lens (most helmet cams use wide angles), but the UK Highway Code specifies "give motorcyclists, cyclists and horse riders at least as much room as you would when overtaking a car" (https://www.gov.uk/using-the-road-159-to-203/overtaking-162-to-169/).

IMO, a motorist who doesn't politely share the road with other vehicles isn't doing himself or his community any favours.

Not so powerless as you might think: https://www.gov.uk/government/... [www.gov.uk] In this case, she simply alerted 'real' police officers to the 'offence'. If the guy had not bercome aggressive I expect he would have been sent on his way.

In the UK this would be classed as a "Casual or Irregular Worker" under the following criteria:

Casual or irregular work

Someone is likely to be a worker if most of these apply:

they occasionally do work for a specific business

the business doesn’t have to offer them work and they don’t have to accept it - they only work when they want to

their contract with the business uses terms like ‘casual’, ‘freelance’, ‘zero hours’, ‘as required’ or something similar

they had to agree with the business’s terms and conditions to get work - either verbally or in writing

they are under the supervision or control of a manager or director

they can’t send someone else to do their work

the business deducts tax and National Insurance contributions from their wages

the business provides materials, tools or equipment they need to do the work

https://www.gov.uk/employment-...

Seems to fit what Uber want out of a worker...

The other categories identified by the UK Government are "employee", "shareholding employee", "self employed or contractor", "director" and "office holder".

I'm a little surprised at the original asker's question, and his suggestion that the UK may be culturally behind on this aspect because what you say is true, of the US.

I've had 5 dev jobs at different employers and all of them have allowed home working. To address your points relative to the UK:

(1) I don't think this is true in the UK, developer salaries are still very much on the increase and have been for years. Companies are still stuck having to improve terms and salaries to get the necessary staff. If you can't go to market and receive job offers from at least 3 different employers with reasonable salary and benefits packages in the UK in the space of a couple of weeks as a software developer then you're doing something very wrong.

(2) I've never even heard of stacked ranking being used in the UK. I'm not entirely convinced that some elements of the way it's done in the US and used to determine redundancies would even be legal here.

(3) I don't think outsourcing in software is as prevalent here as it is in the US, I've worked at employers that used it but it's always been used in addition to, not instead of home grown talent. Experiments in outsourcing to India at places I've worked have always been failures, it's a classic case of you get what you pay for and the quality of developers being put forward by Indian outsourcing companies is beyond a joke - it costs you more to pay people locally to fix their code or even rewrite it than if you'd just hired a wholly local team in the first place. We do have offices in Eastern Europe with large teams of developers, but these teams are managed by the developers back here.

(4) Again, I don't think that's really the case here. I've seen companies that try and emulate that Silicon Valley trend but it's usually the small companies that don't know any better having dreamy ideas of being Google telling themselves that if they just do what Google do it'll all be great, but it never works like that because they don't have Google's budget to pay insane salaries so rapidly realise they need other sweeteners instead.

But beyond that there are other reasons why working from home shouldn't be a problem in the UK, not least because in the latter half of last year the UK government enforced a legal obligation on all employers to properly consider requests for flexible and home working:

https://www.gov.uk/flexible-wo...

This change in law means that unless there's a good reason to deny your request, it should be allowed. That means employers have to either start rationalising and sensibly justifying their reasons for denial, or they must simply allow it. Simply saying "No because that's different to what we've done before and we don't like change" isn't a valid response.

Personally I've tried home working in a number of different ways across various companies. At some employers it's typically been one or two fixed days every week, only adjusting if necessary to turn up for meetings. At others I've typically just homeworked during crunch time - the employer needs a 7 day week out of me for a couple of weeks running, and in return I get to do that 7 day week from home and get to bank the extra hours I do as leave. I didn't mind this, I did 22 days straight but then got all my weekend days (and a bank holiday back) so was able to use them to have a whole week and a bit off a week later post-delivery.

But I typically like to do it around certain tasks, if we're in the product concept and design phase where there's a lot of back and forth, and a lot of discussions over ideas and a lot of decision making then I come into the office. If I'm doing a rather solitary task like just churning through a bug fix list, putting together a detailed design doc once all the decisions are made, or trying to find a solution to a complex problem without any outside support then I much prefer doing that from home where I can focus on the task at hand with no interruptions, and with the be

Did I miss a memo? Moscow is in Europe now? I'd better run and tell Putin as he seems to be wanting to start a war with Europe - how he'll laugh when he finds out his mistake!

Here's some stats for the UK https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/298435/Police_use_of_firearms_Commons.pdf/ and here's a German report http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/polizei-schoss-2011-seltener-im-dienst-a-832037.html/ although you'll need to translate it (or read a summary http://gawker.com/5909283/german-police-really-dont-like-shooting-at-people-used-only-85-bullets-last-year/ ).

Honestly, here in the UK, police violence tends to get newspaper headlines as there's been history of institutional racism in a lot of police forces. It's not something that typically get brushed under the carpet, but instead is used more as a political bargaining chip.

Yes, exactly. Being old and cynical that was my thought too. Show source 'A' but compile from source 'B'. Then we'll truly 'experience their committment to transparency' won't we?

The good thing about this is that UK government has made some fairly strong statements about considering open source when purchasing, for example: https://www.gov.uk/service-man... and I think they're a little concerned.

I doubt you find many german areas where commuting by bus is common.

About half of the rides on German public transport are by bus:

https://www.destatis.de/DE/Pre...

Railway is cheaper because it is cheaper, energy wise etc. As I pointed out several times now: the subsidizes are extremely low in relation to the effect (billions of passenger kilometers per year).

Even according to the UK government, railway passenger subsidies are around $ 0.10 per kilometer, https://www.gov.uk/government/...

Germany is under EU investigation over its massive subsidies for rail service (in addition to postal and energy). Germany's rail system also enjoyed a government-granted monopoly for a century.

Energy savings from rail are modest because trains are often not filled to capacity.

Here is an excellent summary of the history, financing, and cost of transportation:

http://www.downsizinggovernmen...

Also keep in mind: the number is per capita not per student/pupil so the amount of money for a student/pupil in the USA is even lower as the ratio between adults and youngs is bigger.

No, sorry, not true: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us...

The United States spent more than $11,000 per elementary student in 2010 and more than $12,000 per high school student. When researchers factored in the cost for programs after high school education such as college or vocational training, the United States spent $15,171 on each young person in the system — more than any other nation covered in the report.

On average, buses are far worse than cars for energy efficiency because of the low average load factor.

On what data is this assertion based? I spent a few minutes seeing if such data exist. I could not find data to support your claim that buses are far worse.

Actually they are about the same - given an average car and average loading - but if your car is more eco than average or you carry more people it _will_ be a lot greener than bus.

You can get complete data for calculating carbon footprint from here: http://www.ukconversionfactors... - choose all scopes and "business travel land" and "passenger vehicles" to get bus and car relative data. There are links to the methodology papers on that site as well - explains what data backs the figures e.g. https://www.gov.uk/government/...

Average local bus (not london) by these figures is 0.11 and average car is 0.18 - but the bus is per passenger per km, and the car is per vehicle. Take an average car occupancy of 1.6 - see e.g. https://www.gov.uk/government/... - and the car is near enough the same as the bus per passenger km.

Now, if you have a more eco car than average or carry more than 1.6 persons on average then your figure may vary. I have a 7 seater which is 170 g/km, to which (according to the methodology links) I should add 15% for the mfrs cheating the tests (actually it gets closer to spec than that) so say a round 200. That car is mostly used to carry at least 5 people, and almost always more than 1, so take a conservative load average of 3 and you have 66g/km or 0.066 vs 0.11 for a bus. That's a lot less. Many new small cars will be less than a bus even with single occupancy.

On average, buses are far worse than cars for energy efficiency because of the low average load factor.

On what data is this assertion based? I spent a few minutes seeing if such data exist. I could not find data to support your claim that buses are far worse.

Actually they are about the same - given an average car and average loading - but if your car is more eco than average or you carry more people it _will_ be a lot greener than bus.

You can get complete data for calculating carbon footprint from here: http://www.ukconversionfactors... - choose all scopes and "business travel land" and "passenger vehicles" to get bus and car relative data. There are links to the methodology papers on that site as well - explains what data backs the figures e.g. https://www.gov.uk/government/...

Average local bus (not london) by these figures is 0.11 and average car is 0.18 - but the bus is per passenger per km, and the car is per vehicle. Take an average car occupancy of 1.6 - see e.g. https://www.gov.uk/government/... - and the car is near enough the same as the bus per passenger km.

Now, if you have a more eco car than average or carry more than 1.6 persons on average then your figure may vary. I have a 7 seater which is 170 g/km, to which (according to the methodology links) I should add 15% for the mfrs cheating the tests (actually it gets closer to spec than that) so say a round 200. That car is mostly used to carry at least 5 people, and almost always more than 1, so take a conservative load average of 3 and you have 66g/km or 0.066 vs 0.11 for a bus. That's a lot less. Many new small cars will be less than a bus even with single occupancy.

Sometimes, he loses the contract and it goes to someone else. Sometimes, he loses the ability to get awarded future contracts

2014 EU Procurement Directives now allow contracting authorities to take past failures into account when evaluating tenders.
At last!

https://www.gov.uk/government/...

https://www.gov.uk/government/...

In the UK that would be the National Audit Office, unless you are asking who watches the watchers.

So who are BDO anyway? I'm assuming they're not a US organisation otherwise your comment makes no sense.

FTFS "companies with an annual turnover of £10m will have to tell HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) if they think their company structure could make them liable for diverted profit tax"

If you're diverting tax, wouldn't you choose a loophole that doesn't trigger this? Your accountants are either complying with tax law or their breaking it. It's a bit like asking if you have any firearms or explosives in your carry on luggage - if you're doing it on purpose, you're not going to tell the screener.

The problem is that the definition of diverted profits is vague and the preliminary guidance is very difficult to understand even by HMRC's usual standards. Even then, the guidance doesn't attempt to define key words but says things such as:

21.
This condition is met if, in connection with the supply of goods or services, arrangements are in place one of the main purposes of which is to avoid a charge to tax in the UK.
22.
The legislation does not define what is meant by 'main purpose' or 'one of the main purposes'. These expressions are to be given their normal meaning as ordinary English words. They have to be applied objectively, having regard to the full context and facts.

While you should know whether you have dynamite in your luggage, it is not nearly as clear whether a particular situation represents "artificial" diversion of profits, or the legitimate reimbursement of expenditure elsewhere in the group. It's clear that the legislation has been written with particular (currently legal) schemes that annoy the government, such as the Google "double Irish" scheme, in mind but it is drafted in a much broader way. There are lots of references to judgments, such as comparing the tax benefits of a transaction with non-tax commercial benefits from a transaction, that are not a simple as comparing figure A with figure B.

They'd better start blocking gov.co.uk (PDF warning). That PDF file contains a hyperlink to proxybay.info.

If you bill by the gallon, it DOES apply to water and the meter has to be approved.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W... (UK example.)

If you bill by the kWh it also applis to power and again your meter has to be approved.
If you bill by the cubic meter volume of gas it also applies to Gas and again has to be approved.
https://www.gov.uk/uk-national... (UK example.)

You see, you cannot sell a measured quantity without having some sort of proof that you are measuring an acceptable accuracy of said quantity. If there is an error, its benefit must also be on the side of the customer. Delivering a bit too much is allowed, but too little is not.

There definitely is a law in England requiring you to wear a seat belt: "You must wear a seat belt if one is fitted in the seat you’re using - there are only a few exceptions"

ooh, car analogy. OK, we'll start with that:

In England, there is no law REQUIRING you to WEAR a seatbelt. There is a law REQUIRING front dual airbags, and belts to be fitted on all seats and that all safety devices are BSI certified. That is where the analogy ends. Fucking with vehicle safety devices falls under "criminal negligence" and can get you sent to jail. Fucking with your phone's firmware isn't likely to kill anyone.

Are you referring to England UK? Then you are wrong - the Transport Bill was amended in 1981 to require all drivers and passengers in the front of a vehicle fitted with seatbelts to wear them. This became a permanent legal requirement in 1986, extended to rear seat belts for children in 1989 and then further extended to all rear passengers in 1991.

Currently there is a £500 fine if you are caught in a moving vehicle without your seatbelt. It is illegal to remove seatbelts from a vehicle that was sold with them installed. The driver is responsible for all passengers wearing their seatbelt unless they are over the age of 14, and then the passenger becomes liable for any fines.

https://www.gov.uk/seat-belts-...

Here you go, a complete list: https://www.gov.uk/government/... . Much less interesting than I hoped.

I think the prize for best name goes to the Scientific Advisory Committee on the Medical Implications of Less-Lethal Weapons

Here you go, a complete list: https://www.gov.uk/government/... . Much less interesting than I hoped.

I think the prize for best name goes to the Scientific Advisory Committee on the Medical Implications of Less-Lethal Weapons

Oh lookee! Someone didn't even do some basic research before making his unfounded assertions.

http://www.food.gov.uk/busines...

"You must register your premises with the environmental health service at your local authority at least 28 days before opening – registration is free."

And:

https://www.gov.uk/food-busine...

Contact the council to register your business if you want to carry out any ‘food operations’.

Food operations include:

        selling food
        cooking food
        storing or handling food
        preparing food
        distributing food

Until very recently computer education in the UK was heavilly focussed on "ICT" which to a large extent ammounted to "pushing buttons in MS office". There was an attidude that permated the computing world (both inside and outside schools) that "you don't need to understand how it works" or "it's too complex for you to understand". Microcomputers that started up at a basic prompt where replaced with PCs were the ability to program was hidden if it was there at all. Systems that curious kids could fiddle with were replaced by systems locked down by network admins.

The result of this attidude persisting for a long time (a couple of decades afaict) was a decline in the number and skill of people applying to university for computing related programs. This decline got the attention of people in high places and there is currently a push to move away from "ICT" to a computing syllabus that actually includes programming and learning about the fundamentals of computers.

https://www.gov.uk/government/...

Hence teachers pushed into teaching an area in which they have little knowlege and confidence. Combine that with the availability of material on the internet and through various other outside-school sources and it's not going to be difficult for the top pupils to legitimately overtake the teachers and the mediocre pupils to give the impression that they know more than the teacher.

In the UK fire drills *are* mandated by law: > You should carry out at least one fire drill per year and record the results. You must keep the results as part of your fire safety and evacuation plan. https://www.gov.uk/workplace-f... I completely agree with your other points.

Yes Brits can own guns. The difference is they don't sell them in Walmart to any nut-job and make sure applicants are checked:

Gun certificate

As for civilians dead, tell me how many have been shot in the US over the past few years? Schools, cinemas, people walking down the street.

If guns made us safer the US would be, well, safer and it clearly isn't compared to every other Western country.

How does this work when there are hundreds of people working on a project, like a film?

Some media have particular contributors that legislation designates as "authors", such as the film's director. (Source) And in practice, films tend to be derivative works, which bring in copyrights licensed from its screenwriter and the composer of its score.

Also, what constitutes "death"? What happens if a member of the crew is cryogenically preserved and later brought back to life? Does copyright get reinstated?

This is a moot point until resuscitation from cryogenic sleep becomes confirmed. Walt Disney was cremated, not frozen.

And what happens if people stop dying?

Then you get a situation like that of the short story "Melancholy Elephants" by Spider Robinson, where influential authors go public with the fact that they fear accidentally infringing.

I am online all the time, I answer work e-mail from home at all hours. I can't technically discipline anyone for not replying to me off-hours, but it does get remembered.

British law states that, "workers have the right to 11 hours rest between working days (eg if you finish work at 8pm, they shouldn’t start work again until 7am the next day)." and "Workers have the right to: (a) an uninterrupted 24 hours without any work each week, or (b) 48 hours each fortnight". source

I set my phone to not check my work email outside working hours, and not at all while I'm on holiday. I don't think it would be a bad thing if the majority of people were normally prevented from accessing email (and other work systems) during these periods.

Yes, in the UK private hire vehicles must be licensed, as must the driver and the operator.

https://www.gov.uk/government/...

If you drill down into the source numbers (Scotland Qtr tab), it breaks down as:

31.0% - 7.8 TWh - Nuclear
25.1% - 6.325 TWh - * Wind
22.2% - 5.6 TWh - Coal
12.4% - 3.108 TWh - * Hydro
5.6% - 1.4 TWh - Gas
2.3% - 0.585 TWh - * Other biomass including co-firing (this usually means wood burning)
1.1% - 0.277 TWh - * Landfill gas
0.2% - 0.054 TWh - * Solar
0.06% - 0.014 TWh - * Sewage sludge

Sources preceded by a * are classified as renewable.

How should the writer of the article know what you want to know? Especially if that is easy to google?

They are a net exporter: http://www.heraldscotland.com/...

They doubled the percentage of renewables from 2010 till 2014, all the charts you need but only till 2011: https://www.gov.uk/government/...

Perhaps you find something more recent ;D I simply googled for: "scotland energy import export"

According to the UK government data in the first link in TFA, renewables share of total generation was less than 20% (and falling) in the first half of 2014.

Renewables' share of total generation in 2014 quarter 2 was 16.8 per cent, an increase of 0.9 percentage points on 2013 quarter 2, with a 6.2 per cent fall in overall generation exceeding that of renewables. This was a 2.7 percentage point fall on 2014 quarter 1's record renewables share of 19.5 per cent.

Nope, it isn't easier in any way, shape or form. Assange is an Australian. That makes him a foreigner in Sweden, but a commonwealth national/citizen in the UK.

No, the extradition treaty between the UK and US makes absolutely NO distinction between a citizen and a foreigner. The nationality of the person for whom extradition is requested is *irrelevant* to the proceeding.

You may want to consider the following facts:
https://www.gov.uk/government/....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...–US_extradition_treaty_of_2003#UK_cases_where_the_Act_has_been_applied

Specifically: independent review has found the extradition treaty to be fair and balanced; AND - from Jan. 2004 to Dec 2011, 33 UK citizens were extradited to the US under the treaty. That doesn't seem to indicate that citizenship gives any real expectation of "better protection."

The real issue here is that it takes a measure of effort and arm-twisting to setup an extrajudicial kidnapping operation in Europe even for the US.

No, the real issue here is that you're a fucking retard who insists on seeing a conspiracy where there is none. It would be EASIER for them to extradite from the UK directly; Sweden has absolutely nothing to gain by collaborating and reneging on its own obligations under the EAW program as a member of the EU.

the extradition proceedings from UK to Sweden did not concern the substance of the allegations

Absolute and utter bullshit, once again. The UK Supreme Court specifically upheld that the "substance of the allegations" met the dual criminality standard, and upheld the validity of the EAW. The first extradition hearing upheld that the allegations met the double criminality standard and therefore were extraditable offenses. To argue that the substance of the allegations was not considered completely disregards the entirety of his extradition hearings in the UK.

the only thing that stopped Assange from ending up in some Guantanamo-like facility was the asylum he received by Equador.

Well sure... that - plus the fact that the US isn't engaging in some vast conspiracy to kidnap him and send him to Gitmo - is all that's protecting him right now!

https://www.gov.uk/

People already DO react to time of use pricing and it is in use in many places round the world at retail level and most places at commercial and industrial level.

One thing to note at the retail level is that typically not even the majority of the retail cost of a unit of electricity is the energy itself; infrastructure costs and so on are folded in too, so the price swings are a lot less dramatic than at the wholesale (or balancing) level which can range from 3:1 to 10:1 in the GB market for example.

The GB's best-known ToU retail tariff (sadly we don't have a national real-time one) is Economy 7, designed originally to soak up power at night from nukes that couldn't be turned down. (It's not only renewables that have stubborn timing problems.) I think the unit price ratio is about 3:1 between day and night. One third of domestic electricity use is on that or closely related tariffs, or 10% of all GB electricity consumption roughly. (The definitive source of this data is DUKES https://www.gov.uk/government/... .)

Rgds

Damon

Legal Aid has nothing whatsoever to do with the payment of judges. It's a system for providing access to the court system for people who can't afford to do it for themselves.

It isn't controlled by local authorities. It's administered by the Legal Aid Agency, which is an agency of central government.

Local authorities have no role in running the court system, which is administered by the Courts and Tribunals Agency (also an agency of the MoJ)

The bulk of police salaries is paid centrally by the Home Office through the Police Fund, which is administered by the local Police & Crime Commissioner. The additional item in your Council Tax bill (technically known as a "precept") is basically a means by which the Commissioner can raise additional funds, subject to limits on his or her ability to increase the precept from year to year.

I can't wait for your private prosecutions against named judges. With your detailed grasp of the operation of the court system, I can't imagine how anything could possibly go wrong.

Legal Aid has nothing whatsoever to do with the payment of judges. It's a system for providing access to the court system for people who can't afford to do it for themselves.

It isn't controlled by local authorities. It's administered by the Legal Aid Agency, which is an agency of central government.

Local authorities have no role in running the court system, which is administered by the Courts and Tribunals Agency (also an agency of the MoJ)

The bulk of police salaries is paid centrally by the Home Office through the Police Fund, which is administered by the local Police & Crime Commissioner. The additional item in your Council Tax bill (technically known as a "precept") is basically a means by which the Commissioner can raise additional funds, subject to limits on his or her ability to increase the precept from year to year.

I can't wait for your private prosecutions against named judges. With your detailed grasp of the operation of the court system, I can't imagine how anything could possibly go wrong.

Just try to explain this for example: https://www.gov.uk/vessel-clas...
Or this: http://www.pancanal.com/common...
World is changing...

This isn't about trolling.

This is about abusive, manipulative, disruptive and often threatening behavior that would not be tolerated off-line in the name of free speech --- because it is the enemy of free speech.

Free speech cannot survive in an atmosphere of fear.

Free speech cannot survive when speakers are shouted down, bullied and hounded off stage.

Free speech cannot survive the mob.

No, this law is mostly about drinking and tweeting, and tweeting racist things as a result.

In the UK, the maximum penalty for someone drinking and driving, when a life isn't actually lost as a result, is up 6 months in jail. However, if you happen to be drinking and tweeting (and not driving), then that maximum penalty is multiplied by four.

Free speech cannot survive when speakers are shouted down, bullied and hounded off stage.

Free speech cannot survive the mob.

May be, but not in the tweeting cases prosecuted by the Crown. In each case, the mob sided with the target of the tweets, not the offender. And of course, we're not talking about online school bullying with this particular law. If this law was aimed at stopping school bullying, there would be a provision for underaged offenders, which there isn't. And it would be applied to those school cases, which as of now it hasn't.

...that would not be tolerated off-line in the name of free speech

That's a nice idea, but you haven't spend any time around drunk people. When a drunk person gets belligerent, you throw them out of the premises, or if you're not the owner of the premises, you walk away from them. Throwing them in jail is the last possible resort, only to be used, when that person is a danger to others, or a danger to himself (like when he or she is hitting other people, or trying to drive a car).

Throwing trolls in jail isn't going to solve the problem of trolls. For one thing, there will still be people trolling from outside the UK (they will do so just because they can, as a taunt against the British authorities). And for a second thing, people aren't going to stop drinking and tweeting, even inside the UK, so the angry judges and politicians are likely to be even more frustrated with the results and come up with even more draconian measures.

Have you ever been to the UK? Or does your mum still pay all your bills?

Domestic fuel has a lower rate. Children's clothes are zero rated. Some food is exempt.

https://www.gov.uk/rates-of-va...

In which jurisdiction can you "just sell power"?

Ummm, the UK ?

https://www.gov.uk/feed-in-tar...

"Feed-in Tariffs: get money for generating your own electricity"

This is not America, there is no DMCA.

What does America have to do with anything? This is about the UK, I live in the UK, and I'm talking about UK law. Here we have the EUCD, which is hardly "murky" on this matter, and the relevant provisions have been incorporated into UK law for around a decade now.

When do you think this hasn't held up in court? There have been various cases elsewhere in Europe where things like mod chips have survived a court challenge in various ways. However, in the UK, the judiciary seems to have taken a very consistent and pro-rightsholder view in such cases so far.

Also, what "clearer law saying something is specifically allowed" do you think applies here? The changes taking effect today have little to say about TPMs.

Perhaps you should read the Intellectual Property Office guidance (PDF) about this issue. Pay particular attention to the FAQ on page 4, where for example it notes:

However, you should note that media, such as DVDs and e-books, can still be protected by technology which physically prevents copying and circumvention of such technology remains illegal.

Or just go straight to reading the changes themselves, which are written in legalese but clear enough for a non-lawyer to understand.

No. They really have introduced a new system, that is allegedly still in beta

https://www.gov.uk/tax-disc

Err no. They really have got a new system brought to you by the Government Digital Service

https://www.gov.uk/tax-disc

Notice how it has the little beta tag.

In summary, they have both changed the rules and introduced a new online application system at the same time.

The UK isn't 240V, it is 230V. As previous commenters have stated, the tolerances are different in the UK and the EU, but they are all based around 230V now.

https://www.gov.uk/government/...

The Apply for your first adult passport page tells you what documentation you need, which makes it pretty clear. The common case of British-born-of-British-parents is your birth certificate (to establish you are, well, you) and one of your parents' certificates (to establish you are indeed a British citizen).