Check Every Word

Another Fine Mess

Another fine example of the lunatic complexities of UK taxation. Maybe Rachel from Accounts will spend it wisely. Ho Ho Ho.

Morrisons on brink of £17m bill after losing court battle over rotisserie chickens

Morrisons could be hit with a £17m bill after losing a lengthy legal battle over its rotisserie chickens. The UK supermarket chain has been fighting a 13-year dispute in court to prevent value added tax (VAT) from being added to the chickens. However, the UK High Court ruled on Thursday that the product should be subject to the charge of 20%, as it falls under the category of hot food.

Morrisons argued that its rotisserie chickens should be exempt from VAT because the product is typically eaten cold or reheated later in the day. But, the ruling on December 11 said that the supermarket chain sold the items in packaging for hot food with a label which reads: "Caution: Hot Product".

A chap is bound to wonder

A chap is bound to wonder which randomised double-blind trial with a placebo control this advice was based on. 

Well okay - a chap inclined to be sarcastic might rhetorically wonder -

Super flu: Get jab to protect grandparents, urges London chief nurse

Londoners were urged to get the flu jab to protect grandparents from catching the virus during the Christmas period.

The plea came from London’s Chief Nurse Karen Bonner who warned that the super flu was still sweeping throught [sic] the capital.

The downhill push continues

There is little sign of the EU learning anything worth learning - this downhill move seems certain to cause yet more loss, pain and friction. 

From Blackout News - AI translation of the original German.

EU plans its own corporate taxes to cover increased spending

The EU Commission is directing its course towards new corporate taxes to cover rising expenses. The step follows because several states are rejecting higher contributions. In addition, Brussels is striving for more EU own resources and is relying on structural reforms in the financial framework. Defence financing is also coming into focus as geopolitical risks increase. In addition, the Commission is planning stronger group levies in order to broaden the revenue base and reduce dependence on national budgets

Corporate taxes at the core of the EU's new financial strategy

The Commission defines large companies as the central source of future revenue. New corporate taxes are intended to enable more reliable financing and close the gap created by the rejection of additional contributions. In addition, other instruments are coming into focus: higher costs in emissions trading, stricter CO₂ offsetting and stronger corporate levies. These measures are intended to stabilise the financial framework without placing a greater burden on national budgets. However, representatives of energy-intensive industries warn of considerable risks and point to a weak construction economy. Companies speak of rising corporate levies, which are hardly sustainable in a recession.

The Hobbyist

 

Do We Need Government?

A couple of months ago, Tom Armstrong wrote a very interesting FSB piece on government and whether we still need it. As Armstrong says, it's a question which is rarely asked. 

A rarely asked question perhaps, but not that rare. It has probably crossed the minds of many people concerned about the strikingly ineffectual yet repressive nature of recent UK governments. During the covid debacle for example.

Do We Need Government?

For most of human history, political power was a matter of geography. The Crown or Parliament in Westminster was, to all intents and purposes, remote to the majority of the people. Decisions handed down from London might take weeks to arrive in Yorkshire, Cornwall, or the Highlands, and still longer to make their effects felt. Government was not simply remote in spirit, but remote in fact.

So is it not strange that in an age when a message can travel the globe in less than a second, we still cling to a centuries-old model of centralised power? Why, in an era of instant communication, decentralised finance, instant communication and artificial intelligence, do we persist in allowing a handful of ministers - career politicians – and an army of arrogant mandarins in Whitehall to run the lives of seventy million people, often in ways the vast majority of those millions disapprove of?

So here I ask a question hardly never asked: Do we still need “government” as we know it? Is the centralised State, with democracy heavily qualified by the inaccurate word ‘representative’, its archaic practices, bloated bureaucracy and self-perpetuating ‘elite’ anything more than an anachronism, a hangover from horse-and-carriage times? And could we, the people, using modern technology, do a better job without it?

The whole piece is well worth reading, not because anything is likely to be done in this direction, but because the question is fascinatingly useful as a way to skirt well-worn paths. An idea to drop into conversations at Christmas perhaps.


So, do we still need government? Not in the form we inherited from the days when a journey from London to York consumed a week. Not in the form that treats free citizens as subjects, and a handful of politicians as monarchs in all but name. We need rules, yes. We need order, yes. But we do not need rulers. We do not need a permanent, parasitic class of officials to run our lives. The tools of liberty are already in our hands: digital platforms, decentralised systems, AI safeguards. The only missing ingredient is courage. Courage to say: the age of government is over. The age of citizen rule has begun.

And here we are

Woman becomes first person in the UK to win legal battle using AI law firm

A woman has become the first person in the UK to win a legal battle using an AI "law firm."

The healthcare worker, who had a stellar performance record, felt helpless when bosses placed her on a Performance Improvement Plan. Unable to afford a solicitor, she turned to Grapple Law – the UK’s only legal practice for individuals fully operated by bots. In just a few weeks, her case was resolved and she won £30,000 – without a tribunal or human lawyer in sight.


In the 1960s my father worked in what is now called IT when computers were huge machines tended by engineers permanently on site. Decades ago he predicted that computers would one day do the work of lawyers.

And here we are.