The news thread

[Orraloon]

44 minutes ago, aaid said:

Sorry for the loss of your aunt but for you *only* getting £370k inheritance, zero sympathy. 

Come on min, give him a break. Can't you see the poor guy is "suffering"

[duncan II]

I too have worked all my life, but no relation is leaving me hundreds of thousands. 😄 Nor am I able to retire at 55 like bloody Ramy.

Sympathy in short supply.

[Ally Bongo]

3 minutes ago, duncan II said:

I too have worked all my life, but no relation is leaving me hundreds of thousands.

 

But that's the crux

Now and again there will be an anomaly and the wee guys get a lift then have to lose a huge whack 

[aaid]

9 minutes ago, Ally Bongo said:

But that's the crux

Now and again there will be an anomaly and the wee guys get a lift then have to lose a huge whack 

You’re getting £370 grand.  You’re not losing anything.   Don’t you believe you should pay tax?

Be thankful it’s not Income Tax.  You’d pay £465k on annual income of £1 million.

Edited November 17, 2023 by aaid

[TDYER63]

34 minutes ago, Ally Bongo said:

Not really

All of us have had to work all our lives

My parents and their relatives were all working class when that meant something and none of us had any savings to note except my Dad's sister and she only accumulated her wealth due to being unable to have children and her husband dying of cancer in his 50s just after being medically retired by the fire brigade.

She got his very good pension for her remaining 30+ years and had good financial advice

Losing a quarter of a million of her money to the English Treasury is a slap in the face

Only the really wealthy benefit from a cut to Inheritance Tax - not the wee guy

I was just making a wee joke. I remember you mentioning your aunt left you money and I was really happy for you as you come across as a decent person and windfalls dont come that often in life. 

You wont receive a lot of sympathy because that really is what it is , a windfall. I imagine every one of us pay some sort of tax that pisses us off and on money that is our bread and butter, not an unexpected inheritance. 
Lowering inheritance tax is something a government could get away with in times of booming economy, full employment , high wages and sufficient disposable income for all . However in the current climate it reeks of greed and self interest ( the government , not you) , there are just so many areas of society in greater need of help. 

You say that your aunt had good financial advice . I wonder if that is the case as I would have thought there would be a way to keep her estate to a minimum to avoid this situation on her death . 

Try to think of the tax being put to good use, like ‘x amount’  of teachers or nurses salaries, and not being spunked away by Rishi and his band of self interested cronies. 

 

 

[StirlingEgg]

1 hour ago, TDYER63 said:

Malcolm has hacked Ally’s account . 

🤣

[aaid]

1 hour ago, TDYER63 said:

I was just making a wee joke. I remember you mentioning your aunt left you money and I was really happy for you as you come across as a decent person and windfalls dont come that often in life. 

You wont receive a lot of sympathy because that really is what it is , a windfall. I imagine every one of us pay some sort of tax that pisses us off and on money that is our bread and butter, not an unexpected inheritance. 
Lowering inheritance tax is something a government could get away with in times of booming economy, full employment , high wages and sufficient disposable income for all . However in the current climate it reeks of greed and self interest ( the government , not you) , there are just so many areas of society in greater need of help. 

You say that your aunt had good financial advice . I wonder if that is the case as I would have thought there would be a way to keep her estate to a minimum to avoid this situation on her death . 

Try to think of the tax being put to good use, like ‘x amount’  of teachers or nurses salaries, and not being spunked away by Rishi and his band of self interested cronies. 

 

 

He’s planning to buy a holiday home with it.

[TDYER63]

22 minutes ago, aaid said:

He’s planning to buy a holiday home with it.

Who , Rishi ? …Greedy bassa. Least that Nic’la only bought a motorhome. 

 

 

[aaid]

23 minutes ago, TDYER63 said:

Who , Rishi ? …Greedy bassa. Least that Nic’la only bought a motorhome. 

 

 

No, Ally. 

[TDYER63]

13 minutes ago, aaid said:

No, Ally. 

I know you meant Ally. My patter is wasted on here 😏

[aaid]

36 minutes ago, TDYER63 said:

I know you meant Ally. My patter is wasted on here 😏

😂 you have to get up early to catch you out. 

[ger intae them]

I agree with Ally. To the ‘normal’ person inheritance tax is double dip thievery…… money that is fully clean and within your family is then split with the state again. I’d much rather we all paid higher income tax as a much more transparent method.

The real story here though is those Tory rats at it again cutting up the pie for their own corporate and entitled selves to pay as little as poss to society. 

 

[Hertsscot]

34 minutes ago, ger intae them said:

I agree with Ally. To the ‘normal’ person inheritance tax is double dip thievery…… money that is fully clean and within your family is then split with the state again. I’d much rather we all paid higher income tax as a much more transparent method.

The real story here though is those Tory rats at it again cutting up the pie for their own corporate and entitled selves to pay as little as poss to society. 

I have some sympathy with the view but unearned inherited wealth must be a major driver of inequalities in the UK. Through no great merit of my own, my house down south trebled in price whilst we were there. If we'd died, our kids who had done nothing to deserve it, would have inherited a lot of money.

On the other hand, if we'd lived in a less affluent area, with little rise in house prices, our children might not get anything at all. Possibly even worse, selective Government policies (e.g. infrastructure projects) can lead to increases in property price rises though the taxpayers money being used doesn't help everyone.

[ger intae them]

You always speak sense Herts, and I think I get your point. I do think though that once money is ‘earned’ then you should be entitled to do with it as you see fit…. it’s a freedom, it should be yours to give to kids/charity/govt. As I said, my preference would be for increasing the tax burden for the individual and big business…….. less complication and more transparency, but I’m no accountant!

The ridiculous property differentials throughout the uk and resultant windfalls for some do drive a lot of this for the ‘wee guy’.

[TDYER63]

1 hour ago, ger intae them said:

I agree with Ally. To the ‘normal’ person inheritance tax is double dip thievery…… money that is fully clean and within your family is then split with the state again. I’d much rather we all paid higher income tax as a much more transparent method.

The real story here though is those Tory rats at it again cutting up the pie for their own corporate and entitled selves to pay as little as poss to society. 

 

Loads of things are double dip thievery. Everything you buy that has VAT on it is double dip thievery. And that affects lot more than 3 or 4 % of the country and doesn’t have the luxury of a high threshold . Taxed for the cheek of spending your money which they actually encourage you to do to keep the economy going. Stamp duty as well is another tax. 
 

I do have sympathy for Allys personal situation, its not like he is already a millionaire inheriting another big wad of cash. But with the economic climate the way it is its wrong to increase the inheritance tax threshold , you cant just pick and choose for certain people. 

[vanderark14]

 

BBC breaking ranks here?

[Toepoke]

40 minutes ago, vanderark14 said:

 

BBC breaking ranks here?

Ros Atkins is a very open minded commentator, which is probably why his segments get aired at about 2am.

 

[scotlad]

On 11/16/2023 at 12:43 PM, AlfieMoon said:

Corporate mobile contracts and devices is something that I'm reasonably informed about due to work. 

It's been an eye opener seeing people making all sort of wild assertions and assumptions without having much clue of any of the details. It makes me realise just how much people's bias kicks in to judging these situations - and also how stupid politicians can be, both Matheson and the opposition in this case. 

To answer your question specifically: 

If the person acting in a contract admin for the Parliament doesn't add (or is not asked to add) a 'roaming' pack/bolt-on for a non-EU trip. the EE SIM he was using had a supposed £5.50 per Mb charge for data. That figure alone tells you that you can VERY quickly run up huge charges. The £5.50Mb charge was released last week by Tories leaking an old Parliament email communication. The EE bill was shown yesterday on Twitter, detailing approx. 4Gb of data usage. That's not a huge amount of data. Mobile providers are scam artists in regards to these mobile charges, but consumers and companies sign up to the T&C's and have to deal with the consequences. 

Other relevant points: 

- Warnings: He would have had no warning as charges accrued. iPads (similar to SIMs in laptops) can't receive SMS which is how mobile providers communicate. So, no roaming alert, or usage charge warnings like on your phone.  A lot of people don't understand this and are applying their consumer phone experience of roaming to accuse him of negligence in ignoring warnings. 

- SIM out of date:  He was apparently prompted (but didn't action) to change his SIM to a new Scottish Parliament Vodafone contract as the old EE one had expired. This fact doesn't seem contested. However, if ICT had wanted to force the issue, the could of course have suspended his EE SIM and provided the new one for changeover. I have seen no confirmation that would have made savings, so I think this is a bit of a red herring. I expect the new contract would have similar level of charges for scenarios where a roaming bolt-on is not used. 

- Process: There would have been a process (Matheson>Support Staff>Mobile Contract Admin (IT)) for managing his SIM. That should have been the chain to notify someone that he was roaming outside the EU, and requesting the SIM to be setup correctly. So, the blame is somewhere between him and his support staff there. 

- What was the data used for?: Tories are creating a pantomime demanding he hands in his device. This is all for show or they're just stupid. Any trackable data would be through central IT systems. Even if his browsing history isn't cleared on the device itself (unlikely from 6 months ago), it will only say what he browsed to and not what was accessed via apps. However, the bill breakdown yesterday showed a significant portion of the 4Gb data was racked up on 1 day (2nd Jan). If there was a significant amount of work attributed to that, I would expect that to be easily explained by him. The twitter theorists seem keen to speculate that he was watching the old firm game. 

- Why did he have a work device on holiday?: This one for me is super naive if you ask me, but I've seen so many people mention it. If folk really think that someone in that level of government, or a chief exec, etc. just go on holiday and don't have access to work, I think you're living in cloud cuckoo land. 

 

So, basically, Matheson comes out of it looking like a bit of an idiot and should 100% have handled it better to probably accept the charges up front, but some of the stuff getting kicked about is nonsense. 

 

 

Thanks mate, that makes a lot of sense.

It seems to me Matheson should have actioned his new SIM card when he was asked and none of this would have happened, but how many people put requests from their IT department off until the last minute, or until things stop working?

It's not a great look but considering his job it's easy to understand how he might have shoved that bit of work to the bottom of the pile, and it's definitely not the crime of the century.

It also seems to me that some of the companies providing these contracts are bloody sharks if they can apply charges at those levels but there doesn't seem to be much of a spotlight on that.

All in all it's been a huge storm in a teacup. It was embarrassing watching Newsnight on Thursday to see an item on the appalling situation in Gaza followed up by an item about Michael Matheson's roaming charges. It makes Scotland and its parliament look like the most pathetic, pearl-clutching, parochial entity on earth (which, I guess, is all part of the ploy).

[scotlad]

22 hours ago, duncan II said:

* wee guy with £740,000

An estate of £740k for a childless couple who've worked decent jobs full-time all their days and have been careful with their money, isn't an excessive amount these days, I wouldn't have said.

It's a life-changing amount of money for most of us if it lands in our laps in one go, granted, but at the same time, for a small segment of society - some of whom are currently running the country - it's hee-haw. 

[StirlingEgg]

7 hours ago, Hertsscot said:

I have some sympathy with the view but unearned inherited wealth must be a major driver of inequalities in the UK. Through no great merit of my own, my house down south trebled in price whilst we were there. If we'd died, our kids who had done nothing to deserve it, would have inherited a lot of money.

On the other hand, if we'd lived in a less affluent area, with little rise in house prices, our children might not get anything at all. Possibly even worse, selective Government policies (e.g. infrastructure projects) can lead to increases in property price rises though the taxpayers money being used doesn't help everyone.

One of those situations where your opinion can be affected once a policy affects you, positively or not. So much that happens to us is just bad or good luck. Mum bought her council house about 30 years ago and it will eventually go to us. She was widowed aged 34 so would never have been able to buy somewhere otherwise. Meanwhile there are a number of folk in the estate like her in their 70s now living alone in a 3/4 bedroom ex council house which could be housing families. Incidentally, this is round the corner from where McTominay's dad and family lived! 

In an ideal world they would be building council flats, houses and accommodation suited to the elderly/those with additional needs. People could move through as their lives/needs changed. Some ultimately buying a property too. The housing would be maintained by a team to keep folk in work/apprenticeships. An ideal world as i said!

I know this is a bit away from the original point but just thought that random circumstances are relevant. 

[mccaughey85]

On 11/17/2023 at 3:48 PM, Ally Bongo said:

Yes

My wealthy Aunt passed away last year and her estate is roughly around £800k to £1million 

Going at the top range would mean Inheritance Tax of £260,000 leaving £740,000 to be split between two of us

It basically means her estate is being split 3 ways with HMRC getting nearly a third of money that she paid tax on all her life

 

Not sure I would call it suffering but I do agree that it's unfair to be losing such a huge amount of money. 

Surely a fairer system could be in place that only taxes a much smaller amount although personally I think it should be scrapped altogether. 

Are the royals still exempt from inheritance tax?

[EddardStark]

This is crazy. 
 

[StirlingEgg]

33 minutes ago, EddardStark said:

This is crazy. 
 

So many chances to do better but only achieving decline across every office. Yet Braverman and her supporters claim the response/fix should be going harder on those lines. 

[Ally Bongo]

Actor Joss Ackland passes away aged 95

There were very few TV programmes that he wasn't in - Z Cars, The Avengers, The Persuaders, The Protectors, The Sweeney, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy & Tales of the Unexpected amongst a multitude of others

Noteable film roles include Operation Daybreak, White Mischief & Lethal Weapon 2

Comes a couple of months after Michael Gambon died whom i always confused each other with

[Ally Bongo]

Far-right libertarian outsider Javier Milei has won Argentina's presidential run-off poll, according to provisional results.

Mr Milei's proposals, which included detonating the central bank, won support with voters desperate for change.

Reacting to the result, former President Trump posted on his Truth Social platform: "The whole world was watching! I am very proud of you.

"You will turn your country around and truly Make Argentina Great Again!"

His talk of introducing the US dollar as the country's official currency was met with applause by his supporters. Many economists though talk of financial disaster.

No matter, in a country where annual inflation is now over 140% and two in five people live in poverty, his win proves that Argentinians are fed up with traditional politics and economic disaster.

His victory means they are willing to try something new in an effort to make their lives better.