dsr-burnley

Unlikey, I would have thought. I would have thought that about half the people ever to inhabit the earth didn't live long enough to get killed by mosquitos. Link?

The Brewers just had a great time in the windy city.

I don't get that. If you pay £50k to have a depreciating asset that is worth £30k in 4 years' time, is that really so much worse than paying £20k to lease it and having no car at all in 4 years' time? My own preference is to buy second hand, with the result that my total capital outlay has been £22k for 40 years driving. But I wouldn't say anyone was an idiot for buying or leasing a £50k car; I would just say they have different priorities on how to spend their money.

I don't understand your first paragraph. (Obviously I understand the chatGPT bit, but all that proves is that you have a very high opinion of yourself and you know diddly squat about me.) Why do you think that the sale of residential properties does not bring about a taxable gain for overseas companies? How do you structure assets to be "ATED compliant" - isn't that like trying to structure assets so that they are Council Tax compliant? The tax is payable on properties over £500k owned by foreign landlords. You overestimate the difficulties of being a landlord. It may or may not be beyond you, but there are hundreds of thousands of non-specialists who manage to get by.

If you're saying that you can avoid CGT by forming an offshore company and therefore paying Corporation Tax on the gains, that's a bit bogus really. But apart from that, we both know that all residential property, even when owned by non-UK residents, is subject to UK CGT rules and has been since 2015. I accept that it's possible to dodge IHT by setting up a blind family trust in a friendly tax haven, but it's complex and expensive and not within the remit of the standard small landlord who are the government's target. I thought a "happy clapper" was a football fan who supports his team through thick and thin and doesn't get upset when they lose? What relevance has it to landlords, please?

Is that what you think because you have known landlords and understand how they work, or is that what you think because of prejudice? An individual can't avoid inheritance tax by incorporating, and if they already have the property there will be a CGT cost on incorporation that might scupper the whole idea. Those extra taxes don't "just push the case to incorporate", they give large advantages to big overseas companies.

Tax breaks. Individual landlords pay a 2% surcharge on profits, the their mortgage interest expenses are only partly allowable, and they have to pay inheritance tax. Overseas corporates don't have any of those impositions.

It's nice to know that you are so much a better person than the rest of the landlords. Surely if landlords with a conscience are desired, then the government should be encouraging individual landlords and not, as they are actually doing, encouraging overseas corporations to take over the market?

If you're a scourge on society, then perhaps you need to throw your tenants onto the street now, not wait until a convenient moment?

Parker has a system that works well when we have better players than the opposition, but fails miserably when the opposition has better players than us. Basically it involves passing the ball round at the back until the opponents leave a gap for us to score. If they don't leave a gap, we don't score. Even in the Championship season, we had 11 0-0s in the first 32 games, until Edwards signed and provided the extra bit of class that could unlock a packed defence. In the PL, opponents are better and so they score first. We have just gone 13 home games without a win, and taken the lead twice in those 13 games - one of them was an own goal. The plan is to play for 0-0 until we go behind, and then (perhaps) try and equalise. When his plan doesn't work, he persists anyway. His only tactical change, whether in game or from the start of a game, is to play 4-5-1 instead of 5-4-1, and he does it with different defenders every game. He has spent all season telling the players they aren't good enough, and they believe him. Would you like him to get you promotion? Yours for a smartie and an opal fruit.

Going back to the wood burning survey, there is no reason to disbelieve it but there is every reason to look closely at the figures. They were taken over an 11 year period. In the first place, this survey refers strictly to people who live inside a house with wood burner(s). It does not apply to neighbours. Secondly, the headline 43% increase in risk can be looked at in the source numbers. Of 25,083 women who lived in houses where no wood was burnt, 163 had lung cancer (0.650%) but in houses where wood was burnt more than 30 days a year, it was 98 out of 10,257 (0.955%). So the chances were increased by one chance in 300. (86 out of 14,458 used wood between 1-29 days per year, 0.595%.) Of the 347 women who developed lung cancer over the 18 years, 58 were smokers and 274 non-smokers. (The other 15 presumably don't fit either category.) Non-smokers who lived in wood burning homes, though the numbers aren't spelt out, have an estimated chance of getting lung cancer compared with non-smokers in non-wood burning homes between the ranges of no more likely at all to three times as likely. The survey doesn't say (not that I can find) how many of the participants were smokers.

At risk of derailing the thread completely, the reason we can have nice things is because capitalists make them. (I suppose ecomonics is a science?) The poorest people somehow seem to live in countries that haven't embraced capitalism.

Yes, I've seen that one before. I got it, once it was explained to me! (The crucial thing is that the question has to be framed exactly right. It is vital that the fact that Monty knows which door has the car, is included.) My background is statistics, and I think I agree with our head of department who explained how complex numbers work. His theory is that as complex numbers revolve around the square root of minus 1, and since there is no square root of minus one, that ends that subject. I agree. My nephew has a first class Cambridge degree in mathematics. What a brain. Typical boffin, he wears odd socks because it's easier than pairing them.

Thanks. My mind doesn't do counterintuitive very well, I don't think. Science that can be observed, I can follow (mostly!) but not theories built on theories that can never be seen. Fortunately the size of the universe is something that interests me but doesn't matter to me, so it can be as big as it wants!

If the universe is 14 billion years old, how can it be 150 billion light years across? And how could we possibly know if it was, bearing in mind that for us to see anything 75 billion light years away, the light would have had to start its journey before the universe existed? (Genuine question, not being snarky.)

I suspect the person who survives because of the treatment would still think it a great story - even if the health service was provided partly by insurance.

Anyone who can afford to spend fortunes mending creaky stairs, doesn't have a problem with a mortgage. (Says a man whose stairs are made of stone and so they don't creak at all!)

There is certainly a benefit to the tiny number of pets whose owners get out of bed at the same time every day, Monday to Sunday. But would you really change the nation's time zone for the sake of three dogs and a guinea pig? Next discussion point: should the Euro be abolished because half a dozen people have a ten franc piece left over from 1999?

Quite apart from the morality of the issue, any company which tells their staff they will be paid on such a date has made a contract with those staff, and if the company then breaches the contract and the staff lose money as a result, the company is liable to make good the loss. Your company might have done it out of the goodness of their hearts, or they might have done it because they knew they were up a creek and had no choice, or a combination of both. But any losses must be made good by the company. If Leicester City can't pay wages because their holding company won't let them (and won't do the sums), then they can still give the staff money. They will be able to roughly work out the figures and give them a "loan" of about the right amount. Then, when wages time comes round at the end of the month, make a post-tax adjustment to sweep up the difference. That would be simple, humane, decent, and would save them money.

I think the problem with that is that there is no professional relationship between the surveyor and the new purchaser, so if the surveyor has made a mess of the survey, the new purchaser won't be able to sue. (Or at the very least will find it a lot harder.) I don't see any reason why the paper with the writing on can't be passed on, but it won't bring the professional indemnity insurance with it.

https://www.globaljustice.org.uk/news/uk-government-subsidises-fossil-fuels-by-17-5-billion-every-year-new-research-reveals/ If you oppose these "subsidies", then you are advocating that 20% VAT should be charged on domestic fuel, and that all carbon capture research should stop. Why? (Quite apart from why charging lower rates of VAT should be classed as a subsidy for the supplier, since the supplier is merely the tax collector, not the beneficiary.)

Simpler? I once arrived late for church because I had forgotten to change it, but I wouldn't recommend a Europe-wide change in the clocks just for my benefit. Healthier? Safer? Better for the economy? Only in the most trivial sense. Next step - how abolishing leap years may add one minute to one person' life and make two people £1 better off.

If someone is desperately determined to find something to be upset or offended about, then surely it's more polite to give them a full stop so they can have the satisfaction of feeling themselves to be slighted? I presume Ulysses is the favourite book of teenage snowflakes?

Flanders and Swann knew about zeugma. "She lowered her standards by raising her glass, her courage, her eyes, and his hopes".

Absolutely true. My parents did up our house in 1984, total cost about £20k for everything, which was expensive then though it wouldn't be now. But apart from a new fridge, it's all still there. (Though I doubt anyone would sell you windows that last 40 years nowadays. The firm that provided ours has gone bust, presumably because of lack of returning customers!)