Woodstock Jag

The EU dimension is the big one though. If Scotland were an independent state and an EU member, they'd have to extend these privileges to English students to be allowed to give them to Scots. To me it seems wholly irrational that English students should be penalised compared to others by having to pay more for exactly the same education at exactly the same establishment. If the Scottish people have made a political choice to make tuition state-funded, then they have to, well... fund it through the state. If there isn't enough money to provide tuition without surcharge, they'll just have to raise taxes or accept that fees, even if small, will become a part of the system. Don't penalise a specific group on arbitrary lines of domicile. You simply put quote tags around each separate bit of a post. Oh, and I don't have a student loan and my family certainly doesn't have an accountant or tax adviser. Just because "society" can afford to do this (and actually they can't) doesn't mean they should. We should be rapidly cutting the number of university places available. It's simply nonsense that over 40% of school-leavers now go to University. It's supposed to be for an academic elite. We shouldn't mask unemployment. We should just accept that it's a fixed part of any market based system. By all means make training opportunities available so that those who are unemployed can compete for jobs, but that doesn't necessitate subsidising education en-masse. Social mobility works upwards and instead of downwards and as long as those who are unemployed can build their skills sufficiently to force people in work on the dole, we see a positive feedback loop. Unemployment isn't a bad thing as long as you make sure that it's relatively temporary for any one individual; in effect spreading the unemployment around as many people as possible, because then the net period of unemployment is lower, the workforce more competitive, and the efficiency benefits considerable. There's no such thing as "social capital". Sure, society benefits from people being qualified as doctors. That's why we... pay doctors a good salary to treat the unwashed masses. Of course society benefits from artists. That's why we... buy their paintings. See? If something has value it will be reflected in society's payment for the service, be that through private enterprise or through state actors like the NHS. No it's not. I don't believe in a common good. I believe in mutuality. The problem in society these days is actually that people believe they can get something for nothing. We're not going to eliminate fiscal waste *just like that*. It's a permanent reality of humanity's individual and collective imperfection. Simply declaring that lots of tax is avoided and evaded doesn't magically put it in the treasury coffers. Of course education isn't just about qualifications and money, but qualifications are a bloody huge part of it. In England they strike an appropriate balance: they recognise that it's not just about opportunity for wealth, which is why those who earn the least after graduating pay the least back; sometimes nothing at all. If someone has absolutely no stake or entitlement in a government scheme, it's nonsense to expect them to go out of the way to subsidise it, especially if they are poorer than those who stand to benefit from it. I'm not planning to go into legal practice. The contract I entered into stipulated no compulsory action on my part as to how to utilise my degree when I graduate. More fool the taxpayer. That is an entirely separate issue to what the situation *should* be. I've stated on record here and elsewhere a number of times that if state-funded tuition ended in Scotland, I'd have had no qualms about making the same educational choice and paying back the student loan along an ability to pay based system. The state provides me with education when I cannot cover the costs myself, so I repay the state when I can. That seems to me to be a fundamentally fair approach. I never went to boarding school. I went to two state primary schools and an independent secondary school. If there were four pies and five people, my mother would give everyone 4/5 of a pie. Because in the real world we have tools to make the most of our finite resources. Unlike socialist utopias who pretend there's more bread when there isn't.

Okay you've just completely sidestepped what I said. At no point have I justified a single illegal activity or that anyone is above the law and at no point have I "supported their behaviour". Let's deal in facts please. Responsibilities are simply respecting the rights of others. Nothing more; nothing less. Some rights are fundamental and no matter how disrespectful individuals are of the rights of others it should not undermine those fundamental rights. To depart from this is to become a moral relativist, which isn't moral at all. Er, fail. Re-read my last post: "Tax evasion is illegal and I have stated my opposition to it countless times in the past." That's condoning it, eh? Which is a perfectly legitimate activity. It's not illegal to register a company in the Cayman Islands. The wonderful thing about the belief in freedom of movement of persons is that they are allowed to carry out their economic activity wherever and however they please within the confines of the law. For the most part, that's what these people do. The Guardian Media Group is one such example, which created a Cayman Islands company to oversee a merger-acquisition deal. Had they simply undergone the acquisition as a UK registered company, they would have been liable to pay hundreds of millions in corporation tax for an associated capital gain. That's perfectly fine. If they want to minimise their liabilities within the letter of the law so as to maximise their profitability, good luck to them. These companies aren't "hiding" their cash. They still have to comply with all legislative accounting requirements of their respective territories, and they will often go to extraordinary lengths to get it right, saving lengthy and expensive court battles with the HMRC if they think there's something incorrect in the tax return. Their motivation is irrelevant, otherwise well done, you're almost reading from the same hymn-sheet with this. Who are you to judge? It's their decision their problem. What fiddling? If there's fraudulent misrepresentation on tax returns then of course that activity is illegal and should be investigated and acted upon. What on earth gave you the idea I thought anything different? What I would say is that *because* the body of tax and business law has got so complex (a consequence of government's efforts to grab every last penny business earns) it's both an expensive and investigative nightmare to uncover instances of fraudulent behaviour. No amount of handwringing is going to solve that. There will always be fraud and there will always be people who get away with it. If I were to say that murders will always happen no matter how much we try to prevent them, you wouldn't say I was condoning murders or supporting the right of people to murder, would you? Why the intellectual inconsistency here? And for the record, when someone legally avoids tax, they *have* paid what should have been paid. This is the case with the much demonised Philip Green and much as I find the man to be a ******, Lord Ashcroft too. It's not a crime to live in Monaco or Belize and we can't expect that to change any time soon. Meanwhile in your socialist utopia, lecturers die of starvation as they don't get paid, after they try to teach classes without a building or books. It did. I had to cuddle her back. Mutuality principle in action. But there are at least a trillion why we've got it a damned sight better than we might have and have done in the past. There's nothing wrong with people being mega-rich, but how can you, as a so-called progressive, believe that the poorest in our society should subsidise their offspring? State support should always be based on need. The very culture of rights and entitlement you so derided earlier is exactly the same culture you defend when you argue in favour of state subsidy of the education of the rich. No. Undergraduate Law student.

Uh so what? Nothing like erecting a straw man to avoid answering the points I actually made. I made no mention of tax evasion. Tax evasion is illegal and I have stated my opposition to it countless times in the past. People deciding to hoard money in other countries ISN'T TAX EVASION. At a push it is tax avoidance but even that's being generous. By that rationale, you avoid German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, US, Australian, New Zealander, South African, Japanese, Belgian, Dutch, Austrian, Italian, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, Latvian, Estonian, Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian, Brazilian, Indian, Pakistani, Canadian, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Zimbabwean, Mexican, Colombian, Paraguayan, Argentinian, Luxembourgian, Turkish, Cook Islander, Fijian, Samoan, Bolivian, Libyan, Tunisian, Algerian, Moroccan, Maltese, Cypriot, Egyptian, Bulgarian, Hungarian and Romanian taxes. Curse you, you capitalist conspirator! The point I am making isn't that I love people who avoid tax, let alone those who evade it. I have no interest in preserving the nests of those who are wealthy and powerful. But equally I am sufficiently rooted in the real world to know that going AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH TAX THESE ******** UNTIL THEY DIE doesn't solve the problem. The UK only has power to tax activities that take place in the UK. If you increase taxes on people in the UK, they will just leave, find more inventive ways of earning that aren't covered by the hideously complicated tax code or, wait for it, resort to tax evasion. And history shows us that no matter how much money we throw at the system, we don't get any better at catching those who evade tax. If you want to cut your nose to spite your face, be my guest, but it's better to get some tax from the rich than none at all. The benefits issue is also a completely bizarre thing to bring up. I never brought it up because it's not relevant and it's a two-wrongs argument which is nonsense. Tax evasion by criminals doesn't JUSTIFY people cheating the benefits system. Benefits cheats are a lot easier for governments to crack down on for a basic reason: they hold the purse strings. Those who evade tax don't rely on a link with the state to enrich themselves; they rely on the opposite. Tax avoidance is a perfectly legitimate activity. Indeed it's a misnomer to call it tax avoidance. If it was never due, it can't have been avoided. That's the point. If you arrange your affairs in such a way as the government's legislation fails to swoop the net over your stuff, that's their problem, not yours. Some tax avoidance is deliberately ENCOURAGED. Pension contributions, charitable donations, small business relief to name but three. I love how you've picked two utterly non-objective organisations' estimates by the way. Education CANNOT BE FREE. Just because it gets funded out of government tax revenues, doesn't mean that it magically doesn't cost anything! It's ultimately funded out of TAX. Tax is money. Real people's money. You essentially want everyone who pays tax to fund the tertiary education of the children of millionaires. Why? I want successful graduates to pay for the cost of their education and the more successful graduates to cover the shortfall of those who earn less. That's what the English system does. It's a REALLY GOOD PROGRESSIVE SYSTEM! No it wasn't free. Taxpayers paid for your education. Including pit-workers, nurses, teachers and shipbuilders. They paid for your education. An education that some of them were never in a position to receive. No one's saying it's perfect, but it's been tightened up a lot over the past few years and if anything modern tax-collection methods are the most effective we've ever seen thanks to PAYE. You're wilfully ignoring the point I keep making. "Caring" about education doesn't necessitate that you believe shipbuilders should have to pay for the University education of the children of millionaires. Caring about education means you want the best quality education for as many people as practical, and for financial means not to affect the opportunities of the less well off. The current system DOES THAT. If you graduate and you don't earn enough, you pay NOTHING back. If you graduate and you earn lots of money you pay a lot back. This is fairness. Answer me this very simple question: is it fair that those who do not get the chance of a University education should have to pay the bill of those who do, even if said students' families are millionaires or even billionaires? And for the record, it's incredibly unlikely that I will go on to run my own business. I have absolutely no desire to do that and am not remotely entrepreneurial. I'm a bourgeois academic who will live a comfortable but far from executive lifestyle at best!

Everything has a price tag because everything costs money. Books cost the writers time and energy. Publishing costs money. Buildings cost money. Electricity and gas cost money. Attracting the best teaching staff costs money. Making sure a multi-century old building doesn't have slates falling off its roof and decapitating someone costs money. And we DO educate children irrespective of background and parental earnings. It's called primary and secondary school. After that they're adults. And even then we STILL educate people irrespective of their background and parental earnings. Students don't pay a penny to study. Graduates pay if and only if they are earning, and pay back in proportion to the amount they're earning. To deny this is to be wilfully ignorant of the core facts of University funding. Wrong. Higher education has never been free. Nothing in life is free. The political decision we make is who PAYS. You believe that all taxpayers should pay for it. I think successful graduates should pay for it. That's the difference. To be more economically mobile is to be able to move around and work from different countries in response to the most favourable conditions in terms of tax and growth potential. Unless you're about to suggest that people shouldn't be allowed to live and work wherever they want you're going up a blind alley here. It's simply ridiculous to suggest that people who aren't resident in the UK and who earn money in other jurisdictions should be paying ANY UK tax on that income.

The tuition fees system basically IS a graduate tax! It's not real debt. It doesn't affect your ability to get credit for a mortgage. You don't have to make payments when you aren't earning enough, and you pay back in line with your ability to pay! The only true loan component would be living expenses (which Scottish students are already paying back anyway). For a comprehensive explanation about this, take a look here. Graduate contributions are much fairer because otherwise you are funding it out of general taxation, which means that those from less fortunate backgrounds who didn't get the chance to go to University have to pay more tax essentially to pay for the very rich to send their kids to Uni. Meister's "tax the fatcats" approach is as amusing and predictable as it is unrealistic. The richest have always been, and will always be, the most economically mobile, and the most responsive to tax changes. Other countries all over Europe have decreased their top rates of income tax over the last 7-8 years, even the social democrat utopias of Scandinavia did it. And they found that it actually increased the tax yield from the richest (both in absolute and proportional terms), as fewer emigrated to other low tax countries, more of them kept their businesses in their countries, and more of them supported the demand side of the economy, contributing the most to indirect taxes like VAT.

There's less than no chance it's breaking the law. I'm pretty sure there have already been European cases that ruled the tuition anomaly within the UK was not a breach of Convention Rights. Indeed the English have been charged to study in Scotland for several years now. Of course, no students are actually made to pay tuition fees and they don't inherit actual "debt" from the Student Loans Company paying them. Graduates taking-up state support are entered into a 30-year supplementary income tax programme for earnings over a level roughly the median national income with an upper-contributions limit. With the exception of the SNP, everyone in mainstream politics now seems to admit that to keep up with other countries' institutions we need some sort of graduate contribution. The question is how to make it fairest. I'd personally be going for something pretty similar to what they have down south, but with a few small changes. Firstly I'd remove the limits on voluntary overpayments back, as that arrangement discourages young people from paying back things they perceive as debts over and above the infamous minimum payment. Secondly I'd prefer that the interest rate (or as it should really be regarded, the upper contribution limit) should rise in-line with inflation, rather than +3%. It's fair that those who are given the opportunity of a University education are those who ought to undertake a proportionally higher burden for its upkeep, but which reflects their ability to pay. That's the social contract in action. Edit to add another thought: it's worth pointing out that institutions within the EU are required to treat students coming from another member state as though they were domiciled in the relevant jurisdiction. Thus if Scotland were to become independent, then they would no longer be allowed to charge English students without also charging Scottish students and all other EU students, and at the same rate.

Look at the conditions of entry. They're on the back of PATG tickets and IIRC are laminated and beside the turnstiles entrance. As an average joe spectator you're not allowed to photograph or film in part or in whole the match. It's the same all over the UK. Those with passes are allowed to take footage but, IIRC, the SFL retains certain elements of copyright for filming.

I didn't think Cairney did particularly well today (certainly not MOTM as some are suggesting). He did a lot better in the 2nd half and certainly had one of his better performances in the last year or so, but he slowed things down a lot and got closed down far too easily. Defensively I suppose he was above his average by a fair margin.

He wasn't pushed. As I saw them set up that set piece I said a goal was coming. Fox was crowded out just by a body of Hamilton and Thistle players standing very close to him and he was just hustled to the ball. It was the sort of situation where goalies usually get the benefit of the doubt from the ref, but he didn't on this occasion and to be honest, rightly so. The build-up work for our goal was a delight to see. Elliot's one-touch-one-two was a spot of really quick thinking and gave us plenty time and space to get through on goal and well executed. Contrary to the reports of him being really fast, I thought he wasn't the quickest (speedwise at least) but he was a much quicker "thinker" on the ball than the rest of his team-mates. Compare and contrast with Flannigan, Paton, Cairney and to an extent Stewart who seem to slow the game down quite a lot when they get the ball in a potential breaking situation. He'll be a big asset I think. Draw was a fair result. Thought Hamilton weren't anything special and at times a little petulant.

Hopefully it will do him good. I always thought Fraser looked better than Burns from their limited first team experience. His movement was better and he had a decent shot on him. Obviously McNamara has an issue with his weight but as I said in the other thread it must have been a gain over the summer as whilst stocky he wasn't being held up by being unfit; certainly no more than the likes of Marc Corcoran or even Tommy Stewart at the moment.

Rumour has it we're playing A(ngelina) Trialist at 11 on Saturday. Best front pair we've had in decades. Might turn out to be a pair of diddies though.

Nah.

Well you wouldn't want an insincere replacement, would you!

Glaswegian's quoting Jackie as saying he's one of two striker trialists he's been in talks with.

Nice guy, useless footballer. Opens a space for a serious replacement I guess.

Unless he's put on weight since he was getting games at the tail end of last season this doesn't make any sense at all. From what I saw of him, his bulk (rather than podge) made him an asset in the air without compromising on basic ball control. For that to exist in a young player is something to be relatively pleased about, not to respond negatively to and turn him into yet another 5 ft something runt to send high balls to.

C'mon people, he's really easy to find. Just take a closer look.

^^^ Keeps his money under his bed

First up of course it's a choice. No one was saying otherwise. It's absolutely right that everyone should be allowed to arrange their affairs within the law so as to minimise their tax liability. Tax is not a moral construct but a very specific arrogation of assets based on a set of strict criteria legislated for. Secondly it's not true that everyone is on PAYE and further it's not true that it's even relevant. If you pay tax under PAYE it's because you're an employee who works in and is almost certainly based in this country. PAYE is just a collection mechanism. If someone works in the UK but lives somewhere else they still pay UK tax on that income. Philip Green pays UK income tax on share dividends paid in relation to his UK operations. Thirdly, of course the more you earn, the more tax you are likely to be able to avoid. But equally, the more you earn the more tax you pay and the higher the rate at which you pay it! Green isn't eligible for certain considerable tax reliefs the average Joe on the street gets: he has no personal allowance, for example. The simple truth is that those who are richer tend to have much more complex sources of "income" which then becomes more difficult to define compared with employment income. As the government tries to catch as much of it as possible under taxable income the tax system then becomes more complex. The UK tax code is several hundreds of pages longer than pretty much every other major western country. A complex tax system creates loopholes. They are unavoidable. And the best accountants will always be one step ahead of the tax-man when it comes to them being closed. That's sort of their job. The thing is in the Philip Green example, it's not that he was exploiting an accidental tax loophole. Some of the proceeds of his business activity goes, via various foreign investment vehicles, to his wife, who is a resident of Monaco. Where she lives is entirely her prerogative. The UK has no business taxing people who live in other countries and make their income outside of the UK. I'm sure you'd be absolutely appalled if a German company owned a UK company who you worked for then tomorrow morning, after having been given a tax bill already by HMRC, the German equivalent sent you a demand to pay another 20% or so of your income to them, wouldn't you?

Nonsense. Based on what, exactly? The top 1% of earners contribute 23% of income tax revenues, the top 5% contribute 42.3% and the top 10% contribute 53.1%. Our tax system is more progressive than the social democratic utopias of Norway and Finland, contrary to popular belief. We find if we pay attention to the figures that the tax burden on the richest has proportionally increased ever since the top rates of income tax have been cut from 83% and 60% in the recent past. Indeed we're finding that the 50p rate is costing us money because the elasticity measurements assume that the richest 1% are less economically mobile than they were in 1980! The Treasury's own figures suggest that a 45p additional rate would lead to the richer paying more UK income tax. No they're not. Tax avoidance is not stealing. It's their money! You present a false choice. They DO pay what's due. That's the point! If they didn't they'd be defaulting or evading tax, which are both crimes!

Have a look for yourself.

Implicit in this is the assumption that it's the government's money to give away. It's not. Tax avoidance stops it becoming the government's money in the first place because they never demand it. It's not the same as a tax credit or a benefit. The idea that government is arbitrarily allowed to appropriate the assets of an individual without express authority is absurd. Why don't we just send HMRC round with some heavies to every house, let them have a quick look round and decide how much they're going to take-away on the spot? Philip Green does donate millions to charity annually. He pays VAT and corporation tax. He pays UK income tax on all the income he earns in the UK. Any payments of dividends from UK companies are still subject to income tax whether they live in the UK or Monaco. His companies provide thousands of jobs, paying significant employer's NICs. The idea that he's not done his bit and that he's just greedy is nonsense. When people have done their bit what they do with income they've rightfully earned is their business. And earned is the operative word. No looter has earned the right to a plasma screen television. No MP has earned the right to a Bang and Olufsen television supplementary to their salary. Tax avoidance is just not the same at all.

Harmless and mildly amusing.

Tax avoidance has nothing to do with greed, corruption or lies, but that aside I agree with this post. There's nothing morally virtuous in and of itself in taxation. People avoid tax every time they pay into a pension scheme or donate to a charity. They're hardly actions motivated by opportunistic greed. There's a distinction to be drawn between being prudent in your financial affairs and acting out of unadulterated materialistic greed. Avoiding tax is the former; using taxpayer's money for fancy televisions and looting are the latter.

Depends on the nature of the breach of duties, but a minority shareholder can go through a "derivative action" procedure if the majority of shareholders won't initiate litigation on behalf of the club against the conflicted directors. It's quite costly though.