Slashdot Mirror

Pedant alert...
The UK Highway Code Rule 163 explicitly states "Overtake only when it is safe and legal to do so", so if you have to speed to overtake somebody then it's not meeting that requirement, and you shouldn't overtaking.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/th...

Income is wages+tips.

It presumably is in the USA, which is how Amazon get away with this. It isn't in places such as the UK, where that practice would be illegal. After all, the supposed reason for tipping is to get better service; how would that work if the person providing the service doesn't get the tip?

Oh wait, it looks EXACTLY LIKE THE METHOD THE UK USES for its student loans repayments. In the UK you're charged a max fee for tuition and the student loans company gives you a student loan to cover that and maintenance which is calculated so there are limits that people can get. You repay the student loan once you start earning over £480 and it is deducted from your pay at a rate of 9% of everything over the £480. After 30 years anything unpaid is written off.

More info here: https://www.gov.uk/repaying-yo...

But that contradicts what we're always told here about college being "free" over there.

Oh wait, it looks EXACTLY LIKE THE METHOD THE UK USES for its student loans repayments. In the UK you're charged a max fee for tuition and the student loans company gives you a student loan to cover that and maintenance which is calculated so there are limits that people can get. You repay the student loan once you start earning over £480 and it is deducted from your pay at a rate of 9% of everything over the £480. After 30 years anything unpaid is written off.

More info here: https://www.gov.uk/repaying-yo...

The Thames Barrier has been closed 182 times since it became operational in 1982 (correct as of February 2018). Of these closures, 95 were to protect against tidal flooding

Sometimes they even close the barrier now at low tide to provide a place for excess rain to go because the rain plus higher tides would be flooding.

Sea level is rising and now rising faster than it has in 100s or 1000s of years.. That simply isn't in dispute.

Larger islands don't discount rising seas until they are overtopped. An island that's 1 foot above sea level can get larger with 6 inches of rise without shrinking - that doesn't mean there isn't a significant problem going forward.

The British counterpart to the American right to remain silent is weaker. It includes this clause encouraging a defendant to reveal his hand earlier: "But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court." Those under arrest have the right to free legal advice, but unlike the American Miranda warning, the British police caution appears to lack standard phrasing for this (source).

Missing link for my post script: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/th...

If a pedestrian can walk suddenly in to the road then you need to slow down. The Highway Code rules 205-210 (especially 207) make this clear: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/th...

There's been recent talk of changing the law to give pedestrians and cyclists even more, and more explicit protection.

Perhaps the biggest point though: rules and general expectations of behaviour differ from country to country. You better get the software in your self-driving car right.

P.S. As you can from this section of the code, we don't have any jaywalking laws, unless you count the motorway pedestrian ban or instruction not to climb barriers as such.

Any UK company can incorporate an 'opt-out' of the 48-hour EU working time directive into their contract of employment. You don't have to sign it but - if you don't sign - you don't get the job. There's nothing voluntary about it.

Nope, that's illegal. Did you even read the page you linked to?

It's absolutely possible to work 100 hours per week in the UK. [...] Any UK company can incorporate an
'opt-out' of the 48-hour EU working time directive into their contract of employment. You don't have to sign it but - if you don't sign - you don't get the job. There's nothing voluntary about it.

Even if an employee opts out, the maximum working time is still limited by mandatory breaks: 11 hours rest per day (usually at night), 20 minutes break per working day of six hours or more, and an additional 24 hours per week (or 48 per two weeks). This means that one cannot legally work more than 24 x 7 - 24 - (11 + 1/3) x 6 hours = 76 hours per week.

I guess you don't work in the UK!

It's absolutely possible to work 100 hours per week in the UK. In my industry (film VFX and post-production) it's routine and required during crunch time. Which frequently seems to last the final 3 months of a feature film project, or final month of an advert project.

Any UK company can incorporate an 'opt-out' of the 48-hour EU working time directive into their contract of employment. You don't have to sign it but - if you don't sign - you don't get the job. There's nothing voluntary about it.

For some context, UK labor law limits weekly work to 48 hours total. If commuting while performing measurable and exclusively work focused activity is by policy made work hours due to employer pressures, then it reduces the legal amount remaining. Largely this is a youth protective measure, and you could opt out if an adult able to buy your own alcohol, etc. it must be entirely voluntary (not condition of being hired) and there are also occupational restrictions that enforce it as a rigid limit. Those jobs include "airline staff a worker on ships or boats a worker in the road transport industry, eg delivery drivers (except for drivers of vehicles under 3.5 tonnes using GB Domestic drivers’ hours rules) other staff who travel in and operate vehicles covered by EU rules on drivers’ hours, eg bus conductors a security guard on a vehicle carrying high-value goods"

they think they're being targeted because they're women. Wrong.

The Hampton-Alexander Review found evidence that this is true. Excuses given for not appointing women to exec level included:

- "I don't think women fit comfortably into the board environment"
- "My other board colleagues wouldn't want to appoint a woman on our board"
- "All the 'good' women have already been snapped up"
- "We have one woman already on the board, so we are done - it is someone else's turn"

Women are smarter in a certain way. They see how bad it is and decide it's not worth it earlier than men do. They preserve more of their vital years for thing that matter than men do. This has to be counted as a form of intelligence.

Ihave a friend who works at a hospital. She watches high powered men die all the time. They almost all regret how they dpent their lives.

So the logical thing is to support efforts to make those roles more attractive to women, because that would benefit everyone, men included. A change of culture would be good for all concerned.

Since it is a voluntary pledge made by your president as representative for the USA, you are still part of it, no congress approval needed...
As it is voluntary, you can still ignore it, but the treaty was signed anyway!

And as the current president only announced that they would exist it, but only in 2020, that pledge is still in effect (but again, you can ignore it without any problem other than destroying the planet where you and your family and friends live!!)

No SENATE [sic] approval needed?

WRONG

It's not a treaty if it's not ratified by the Senate.

The EU parliament RATIFIED the Paris Agreement.

The UK Parliament RATIFIED the Paris Agreement

The Japanese Diet RATIFIED the Paris Agreement.

Every other nation that has a domestic-legislature ratification requirement for a TREATY actually RATIFIED the Paris Agreement.

If domestic ratification isn't needed, why did every other nation with such a requirement that signed the agreement go through the trouble to ratify the Paris Agreement?

Barack Obama never submitted the Paris Agreement the the US Senate for a Constitutionally-REQUIRED ratification.

Ergo, the US is not bound by it own laws to follow the Paris Agreement.

Unless you want Trump's policy decisions that are outside of US law to be binding on his successors, you can't argue Obama's mere agreements outside of US law are binding.

Actually, the inverse. Eventually your car gets so old the Government designate it 'classic' and admit it's not worth the effort to keep it roadworthy, so skip the checks and drive it anyway.

https://www.gov.uk/historic-ve...

I read your calculated figure and thought "that can't be right".

However, my feeling means nothing, so let's take a look at the 'actual' numbers (Well, I'm going to have to make some simplifying assumptions, because the most recent (2018) data didn't seem to be available):

This page lists the mix of energy generation in the UK, by quarter. I'll use the last entry, Q4 for 2017:

Total (unitless) generated: 90.2.
Total (unitless) renewables generated: 18.33.

Using the spreadsheet linked to on this page shows us that, of the solar, onshore and offshore wind, power generated (in 2016, thae last year for which data is available) roughly 44% came from offshore wind. So

Total (unitless) offshore wind power generated: 8.07

Thus percentage of power actually generated (i.e. not installed capacity) from offshore wind is, roughly, 8.9% of the total power generated in the UK.

Hmm. Maybe, well, almost certainly, Germany's mix of generating capacity is different to that of the UK, but to the degree your figure suggests? Nah, bollocks!

I think you're going to need to provide your sources and calculations for that 0.0035% figure, lest we think you've, charitably, made a mistake, or, rather less charitably, are completely full of shit.

Photo op for politicians. No laws were broken, at least no one has cited one law that was broken. .

https://www.gov.uk/data-protec...

The UK Data Protection Act. 1998.
That's the law that was broken.

Per what we had to memorise for the UK driving test, stopping distance (including thinking distance) at 40 mph is 118 feet. See the table in rule 126 of the Highway Code: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/th...

What youâ(TM)re saying is that they have no excuse if they should have seen them at 285â(TM).

UK Highway Code, rule 126. Here's a direct link to the stopping distance chart.

Spoiler: similar numbers to the "bullshit" website.

But it does look like it can only be offset against vat charged to customers, so I guess these companies would simply have to buy from vat&sales tax-free regions like some areas in the US.

At least in the UK if you import stuff from outside the EU you need to pay VAT

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/va...

If there's customs duty (tariff) you'd have to pay that too

https://www.gov.uk/goods-sent-...

It's the same in other EU countries

https://travel.stackexchange.c...

Incidentally personal belongings usual don't count. The rules on this are a bit vague though - I've flown all over the place with a laptop and no one has demanded VAT or duty on it. It's rumoured that so long as you don't have the original box you're OK, but it's probably really up to whether customs catch you and whether they think it's a personal possession or something you intend to sell. It also seems like if you fly with something it's mostly ignored but if you post it will almost always get clobbered for VAT, duties and a handling fee from the shipper.

Now Iceland is in the EEA but not the EU. But I bet the EU impose EU VAT rules on them. Also arguably even a country that wasn't in the EU wouldn't allow people to avoid VAT by buying things abroad. I.e. I bet the UK keeps the same sort of rules on VAT from non EU countries to keep collecting VAT. And probably the same rules on VAT from EU countries too, because the UK doesn't want to have additional trade barriers for EU/UK trade.

But it does look like it can only be offset against vat charged to customers, so I guess these companies would simply have to buy from vat&sales tax-free regions like some areas in the US.

At least in the UK if you import stuff from outside the EU you need to pay VAT

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/va...

If there's customs duty (tariff) you'd have to pay that too

https://www.gov.uk/goods-sent-...

It's the same in other EU countries

https://travel.stackexchange.c...

Incidentally personal belongings usual don't count. The rules on this are a bit vague though - I've flown all over the place with a laptop and no one has demanded VAT or duty on it. It's rumoured that so long as you don't have the original box you're OK, but it's probably really up to whether customs catch you and whether they think it's a personal possession or something you intend to sell. It also seems like if you fly with something it's mostly ignored but if you post it will almost always get clobbered for VAT, duties and a handling fee from the shipper.

Now Iceland is in the EEA but not the EU. But I bet the EU impose EU VAT rules on them. Also arguably even a country that wasn't in the EU wouldn't allow people to avoid VAT by buying things abroad. I.e. I bet the UK keeps the same sort of rules on VAT from non EU countries to keep collecting VAT. And probably the same rules on VAT from EU countries too, because the UK doesn't want to have additional trade barriers for EU/UK trade.

The UK government basically has three options

1) Close the embassy, expel the diplomats and arrest Assange as his diplomatically protected bubble evaporates.
2) The status quo where they keep a watch on the embassy and arrest him if he leaves
3) Allow him to leave unmolested.

I think 1) is dangerous because it would allow foreign governments to do the same to arrest a fugitive who took refuge in a UK embassy and claim this case as a precedent, so they've decided not to do it. Also 1) implies the UK will probably lose diplomatic relations with Ecuador. British personnel would be expelled from the British embassy there. Some might be arrested or otherwise harassed. The Foreign Office is a cautious place and would probably advise the government this is opening a can of worms. The UK did close one embassy and expel the diplomats but that was in a very extreme situation where Libyan diplomats literally murdered a UK policewoman. Merely shielding Assange doesn't justify such extreme measures.

If the UK allows Assange to avoid justice by spending a couple of years in the Ecuadorian embassy then it would be setting a precedent that anyone (in)famous enough to get in there would be literally above the law which rules out 3)

So they've decided on 2) by a process of elimination. Sure there are costs to it in police time but it's better than the other two. Assange is locked up, just in better conditions than he probably deserves. And if he doesn't like that he's free to come out, get prosecuted for skipping bail, serve his time and get deported.

Except this doesn't happen. At all, ever, in the UK. You know how I know this? My Granddad died first, and my Grandma did not have to pay a single penny in tax on the estate.

https://www.gov.uk/inheritance...

Read the fucking document. It's dead simple - if you're married you do NOT pay estate tax on inheriting anything from your partner, and further your kids don't pay anything on up to 850,000 GBP. That's not clobbering the middle class by any means, it's taxing people who are rich.

But hey, why let facts in to your bubble?

Go here https://www.gov.uk/sold-bought... and you really don't want to not tell the DVLA, or all the new owners fines will come to you, Getting a signed bill of sale is a good idea too.

Conversely, when buying a car privately, get the ‘new keeper’s details’ slip (V5C/2) from the seller and tell the DVLA at the same web site.
The buyer will need to pay tax also.

So IF I head down to the government office that handles registrations, I can register YOUR car, buy insurance for it and after a couple of years just call it mine?

Now, I am going to blow your mind. In the past, in the UK, there was no land registry. No registration of who owned a particular piece of land. After the land registry came into force, there was no need to register existing ownership of land. Land only becomes registered on change of ownership. Actually, I am not even sure about change of ownership: I think it may take a sale before the ownership of the land is registered.

If you squat in a property that is not registered for long enough, not paying rent, etc., then the property becomes yours. This does occasionally happen.

As for cars: see the links I posted earlier:
https://www.askthe.police.uk/c...
https://www.gov.uk/request-inf...
Note "registered keeper", not owner.

A little more info here:
https://www.askthe.police.uk/c...
https://www.gov.uk/request-inf...
Note: "registered keeper", not owner.

It is an industry first indeed. The rest of the UK taxi industry obey the fucking law.
https://www.gov.uk/drivers-hou...

10 hours a day, not 10 hours then a 6 hour break. Fucking uber.

Fuck productivity, where's the equality in income tax?

The Office of National Statistics states that there is a gender gap on median hourly earnings of 9.1%
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employm...

Yet men pay over 72% of income tax (from https://www.gov.uk/government/... )

Don't hear the fucking feminists demanding equality there.

You keep sticking to this "Only in the US" nonsense despite evidence to the contrary which the article has links to.
Here's one

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

Hmm. Working time directive has been an irrelevance anyway, every job I've had has required an opt-out

It's illegal to require you to opt out.

https://www.gov.uk/maximum-wee...

and zero hour contracts are a far bigger issue than people actually having work.

There's nothing in the EU which prevent the government acting on zero hours contracts so this isn't a reason to leave the EU.

One of the problems in the UK, is that HMRC, and the valuation office agency actually charge companies by how much lit fibre-optic cable they have, since it is considered a business asset.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/ra...

Appendix 1 contains the tax rates. It is based on distance in kilometers and number of fibre optic cable strands.

https://assets.publishing.serv...

Some agencies have compared this to an 18th century window tax. What's the point of getting property developers to install FTTP when the business owner gets clobbered with annual taxes in the end.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Could you provide sources to your claims. From the research i've done on home schooling in the UK and US, it's seems pretty easy to me.
gov.uk
census.gov (is it bad that the only government website i could find with a reference to homeschooling in it was from the US DoS for diplomats, or the census?)

It's passed the House and Senate, albeit in slightly different forms

http://www.businessinsider.com...

You don't need to actually cut taxes to affect confidence - if the perception in the markets is that they will fall that's enough to cause some change in mood.

And both the House and Senate bills cut corporation tax from 35% to 20%, though Trump suggested off the cuff it might only go to 22% to finance other cuts. Still even 35% to 22% is a pretty drastic cut.

The UK rate is 20% in 2016, falling to 18% in 2020.

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

This measure sets the Corporation Tax main rate for each year from the financial year beginning 1 April 2017 to the financial year beginning 1 April 2020, reducing the Corporation Tax main rate by 2% by 2020.

The Corporation Tax main rate for 1 April 2016 is set at 20%. The rate for 1 April 2017 is 19% and sets it at this rate for 1 April 2018 and 1 April 2019. The rate for 1 April 2020 is set at 18%.

Ireland is 12.5%

https://www.idaireland.com/inv...

But that's for trading income. Other rates apply for non trading, financial services, and manufacturing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The EU has declared Advance Tax Rulings of the sort Apple got illegal state aid.

Of course now the UK is leaving the EU, I'm sure it will offer the equivalent of Advance Tax rulings for companies like Apple on profits they move from somewhere else to the UK. I mean, if the UK would have got 0% tax otherwise, even 1% is an improvement.

In the UK you can break the law by imposing policy that substantively disadvantages one protected group.

See the second bullet point on https://www.gov.uk/discriminat...

Diesels were given a tax break (less tax on fuel) for decades because of the lower CO2 emissions, and now we've got dangerously high NO2 levels everywhere

According to DEFRA this is misleading, we haven't worken up to find huge NO2 levels everywhere in fact their stats show levels of nitrogen oxides overall falling https://www.gov.uk/government/...

  Emissions of nitrogen oxides in 2015 have fallen by 69 per cent since
1970, to 0.92 million tonnes.
  There was a decrease in emissions in 2015 by 4.0 per cent compared
to 2014.

Though it is undoubted diesel vehicles produce more NOX than petrol, and we'd should then have lower NOX if we didn't have diesel vehicles

Legally it's not.

Here in the UK, taxi driving and private-hire driving both require a special driving licence, with a background-check. Uber drivers don't have these.

Sorry you are wrong.. In Scotland you MUST have at least a private hire license and be in a car that has passed the "private hire MOT" which not only tests the vehicles mechanical soundness but also safety, hygiene, cosmetic condition. and drivers have to get checks to gain their license too.
https://www.uber.com/en-GB/dri... note how they will assist you to get your private hire license for Edinburgh where I am.
So legally ,YES IT IS a taxi service in Scotland. English law does not apply in Scotland!

Legally it's not.

Here in the UK, taxi driving and private-hire driving both require a special driving licence, with a background-check. Uber drivers don't have these.

To receive a Police caution, you must first admit the offence, if you do not confess, a caution cannot be issued. It has to be proven in the normal way.

https://www.gov.uk/caution-war...

In the UK there are some public access laws - https://www.gov.uk/right-of-wa...

I'm not confusing them, but I think you are! I'm talking specifically about the copyright in a sound recording as defined in the UK:

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

The copyright length of the recording in the UK is now 70 years after release. However, a 50 year limit still applies to recordings that have never been officially released. This sometimes forces record companies to put things out just to extend the copyright for another 20 years:

https://www.theguardian.com/mu...

The article didn't make a whole load of sense to me. Amazon can give away £1000 of shares and the employess don't pay tax as long as they hold them for 5 years. https://www.gov.uk/tax-employe...

The employee may end up paying capital gains tax on the sale if they end up with a pile of shares and sell them in one tax year. The first £11 000 or so of profit is free, so unlikely to be an issue for most people.

But Amazon have found a neat trick to avoid corporation tax which is actually paying your employees? No idea WTF that was about.

Your definition of stable and mine must be different. There have been quite a lot of Terrorist attacks in Tunisia: https://www.gov.uk/foreign-tra...

Somehow there is no social plea for women to be pipelayers, or for more women to hang drywall.

ORLY? Seriously it took me like 5 seconds to find that there are similar concerns about the construction industry.

http://constructingexcellence....
http://rg-group.co.uk/whitepap...
https://www.gov.uk/government/...

And my reaction to the guy going the aforementioned 1836 miles in 24 hours on public roads: it's a shame he wasn't arrested for endangering the public. Sleep deprivation combined with high speeds is nothing to boast about.

Today's crop of electric vehicles lets you do cross country trips as fast as is safe to do. The charging "downtime" is roughly the same people are supposed to take (and commercial drivers are required to take in many countries). For example, in the EU it's "a break or breaks totalling at least 45 minutes after no more than 4 hours 30 minutes driving". A commercial driver doing more than that is breaking the law.

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

If the Paris Accord only requires Presidential approval to be enforced, it only requires Presidential disapproval to end immediately.

If Obama can do it all by himself, Trump can undo it all by himself - immediately if desired.

And note that every other country that has a domestic ratification requirement for a treaty has followed that route and gotten the Paris Accord TREATY ratified domestically.

Like the UK.

Like Australia

Like India

Like China

Like Japan

The US doesn't have to leave the Paris Agreement because without Senate ratification the US never agreed to the TREATY.

It was advertised as binding. It literally said the following in the leaflet that the government sent to every household at great expense:

This is your decision. The Government will implement what you decide.

Look, here's the PDF of the referendum leaflet so you can check for yourself. It's right there on page 20.

Moreover, numerous MPs said in very unambiguous terms while debating the enabling legislation for the referendum that the people should be given the final say. This is reported in Hansard, the official record of parliamentary proceedings, and is also available for any member of the public to read. The intent of Parliament when they voted to hold the referendum was clear.

The usual argument that it was a non-binding referendum is based on the principle of parliamentary sovereignty. That is a principle that most normal people (i.e., non-lawyers and non-historians) had never heard of before the referendum. It is a principle that many seem to misunderstand to this day: the historical principle is about Parliament's status as the ultimate legislative body in comparison with the monarchy or the church, not in comparison with the people, who after all are charged with electing the MPs. While parliamentary sovereignty has been assumed as a basic principle of modern UK law, it has very questionable validity when interpreted in this way. Can you find any reasonable argument for the democratic legitimacy of parliamentary sovereignty as a legal principle that does not also make a vote by the electorate as a whole just as legitimate? In short, as a basis for Parliament overriding the result of a democratic referendum, this sort of argument is what gets lawyers a bad name.

You can debate the wisdom of holding the referendum in the first place, the choices offered, who was eligible to vote, and no doubt many other aspects of the whole affair, but arguing that the result was non-binding on anything but a possible legal technicality is a stretch.

If the CIA is to blame for terrorism, then please explain the 1000s of terrorist attacks in Thailand. What did the CIA do to cause all those attacks in Thailand?

Likewise Boko Harem in Nigeria. What's the CIA involvement?

Because ass holes like you are what creates terrorism

Really? Please explain the 1000s of terrorist attacks in Thailand in this context.

If there are 1000s of terrorist attacks in Thailand, and there aren't people "like me" in Thailand, then terrorist attacks must therefore have nothing to do with anyone "like me". And people like you should stop being such a bunch of hateful liars.

Crime in the UK has been slowly decreasing over the past 25 years, however since 2014 it has started rising again (source). Coincidentally, police officers in the UK have been slowly rising, until 2010, since when there has been a reduction of 20,000 - down from approx 140,000 to 120,000 (source). More police indeed could not have stopped a vehicle from mounting the pavement (not sidewalk, this is the UK), however a former Met officer (that's London) has been very vocal about the reductions and that current staffing levels are faked and has directly led to a rise in crime and terrorism - police also gather information and investigate leads. So while they cannot prevent a crime once it has been committed, they most certainly can prevent some crimes before they are committed. The rising crime figures reflect this.

That you live in a magical land of unicorns and pixies where police levels do not influence crime which falls all by itself is lovely and all, but not founded in demonstrable reality.