FRIVOLOUS OLYMPICS OR REAL WORTH ?

It occurs to me that while the London Olympic Games will cost us a reported £11,000,000,000, NASA have landed their rover on Mars for around one seventh of this at £1,500,000,000.

The benefits and rewards from the Olympics is a debatable issue but are unlikely to be long lasting; the eventual consequences of NASA's project for the human race could be utterly incalculable. For the price of the Olympics, we could have sent 7 'Curiosities' to Mars.

Why are governments so willing to spend money on frivolous trivia and so reluctant to spend it on truly important projects ?

NASA'S 'CURIOSITY' TO WIN GOLD ?

In the middle of the frivolity of the Olympics comes the news that NASA has successfully landed a car-sized 'rover' on the surface of Mars.

While we may all be marvelling at the Earth-based achievements of some of our greatest athletes, such as the almost unbelievable Usain Bolt, NASA's success overnight will undoubtedly have much longer lasting consequences for manhkind. The rover, nicknamed 'Curiosity', has already sent back a few pictures and will soon start its real mission, wandering around the surface of the 'Red Planet' collecting and analysing rock and dust samples, probing the ground and generally searching for any signs that there was once life on this now barren world.

The technical achievement in successfully landing 'curiosity' is, itself, a marvel. The consequences for humanity if the rover does find any conclusive evidence that Mars once played host to living organisms will be inconceivable. In contrast, the Olympic Games, fun as they are, will rapidly fade into history and be no more than a minor footnote. Strange, then, that it's stll the Olympics which dominate the news.

JOBS UNDER THREAT FROM OLYMPICS ?

Today is the first test of the way in which the Olympics will disrupt normal life for working Londoners. 'Transport for London', the body which oversees the capital's trains, buses and road system has already warned commuters that they may well face delays as priority on the roads is given to the transient 'Olympic family'.

One wonders how everyday employers will react when staff turn up late for work. Will they be understanding and forgiving, allowing that the dusruption is short term and in no way the fault of their staff, or will they threaten and cajole ? Will staff find their pay stopped and their jobs under threat if they don't 'pull their socks up' ?

Only time will tell.

BRITAIN'S OLYMPIC EMBARRASSMENT.

Thank God the ludicrous nonsense of the opening is now over and we can get on with the Games.

Inevitably the media, in pariticular the BBC, has come out in whole-hearted support of the overblown tripe that was served up last night. The BBC, of course, has a vested interest in lauding this rubbish given that it is broadcasting every last moment of the Olympic extravaganza, but why every other outlet seems also to have fallen prey to the jingoistic euphoria defeats me.

This once great country of ours now has little to celebrate, at least in its modern guise. Being reduced to a parachuting Queen accompanied by James Bond, and David Beckham driving a speedboat along the Thames says more about modern Britain than anything else possibly could. We are a country obsessed with trivia and celebrity.

What the rest of the world made of this drivel is anyones' guess. Kenneth Branagh pretending to be I K Brunel reading Shakespeare made little if any sense and a horde of dancing nurses and bouncing patients was a pretty poor representation of the real state of our NHS. What little I saw of this supposed spectacle left me cringeing with national embarrassment.

Let's hope that our athletes can redeem us with some genuinely great performances.

MARSTON'S RETAIL AGREEMENT.

The recent furore over the legalities and moralities involved in the payment of taxes is something I find a little bewildering. It is surely illegal to evade taxes, that is, to deliberately falsify accounting records so as to reduce one's tax bill, but it is not illegal, nor in my mind immoral, to use lawful means to achieve the same end. If the tax man doesn't like it, he can always act to close so-called loopholes in tax law, otherwise he, and others, should keep quiet.

While all this fuss is going on, we have to remember that HMRC routinely enters into arrangements with major companies which reduce their tax bills. According to yesterday's 'Daily Mail' neither Google nor Vodafone pay much, if any, tax in this country as a result of accounting arrangements which HMRC must have approved. Similarly, I'm aware of a scheme being operated by the brewing and pub operating company, Marston's, which seems to break all of the rules while apaprently having been given the 'green light' by HMRC.

Under what they call their 'Retail Agreement' Marston's enters into purported tenancy agreements with pub landlords under which the landlords are supposedly self-employed and running their own businesses. Marston's pays all of the pub bills except for staff costs and the council tax for the associated residential element of the property, and simply take back about 80% of the pub's net takings after VAT. Marston's say that they will be responsible for all building maintenance and that they will ensure the properties are maintained in an excellent state of repair. So far, so good. 

However, Marston's is also the sole supplier to the pub business and can determine the levels of stock to be maintained; astonishingly and despite this, the cost of stock that becames unsaleable, for example, real ale beyond its shelf life, is a charge to the retailer. Marstons also sets all of the retail prices through their computerised stock control and till system; I'm even aware of prices having been changed without any notice being given to the landlord. Marston's provides a degree of training, though very little as far as I can tell, and landlords have to agree a business plan with Marston's and are subject to close managerial oversight from them. Marston's determines the opening hours of the business and the pubs have to be operated strictly within rules laid down in accordance with an Operating Manual provided by them. All takings have to be paid into a Marston's bank account every 2 or 3 days and the landlord is required to submit a weekly invoice in order to claim their share. The sole source of income for the landlord is Marston's.

Marston's would no doubt argue that the agreement actually gives the landlords more say than this but, in practice, it does not. Marston's operates these outlets as if they were managed houses and the landlords were their employees, while claiming they are not. This allows Marston's to avoid paying the minimum wage and to avoid paying National Insurance; they also have no responsibility for any staff employed in the pubs, even though such staff appear to be employed using Marston's stationery and are paid through Marston's payroll system.

When it comes to buildings maintenance, Marston's are to say the least reluctant to spend any money. One local pub of my acquaintance has a kitchen which has been condemned and another has one that is wholly unsuitable; Marston's are unwilling to do anything about these situations, meaning that the landlords are unable to develop their businesses in ways that they might wish. Both pubs have other maintenance issues that Marston's have refused to deal with. In one case, the landlord was driven to call in the local environmental health officer in order to compel the company to fulfil its obligations; that landlord has now been given notice. Pubs on this agreement which are able to sell food are tied to menus and products supplied by Marston's.

Where all this leaves us is with an arrangement, presumably approved by HMRC, which allows Marston's to avoid paying the minimum wage, avoid paying national insurance and avoid the other responsibilities of employing staff. That the arrangement is in flagrant violation of HMRC rules governing what is and what is not self-employment is blatantly obvious. The earnings of the landlord and his family are generally such as to entitle them to claim tax credits to a significant extent, meaning that the tax payer is also subsidising this arrangement to Marston's benefit. The landlords I have spoken to also seem blissfully unaware that their free accommodation should quite probably be treated as a taxable benefit, this not being something that Marston's have highlighted, and declared on their tax returns and tax credit claims.

Is this right ? Is it moral ? Indeed, is it legal ? Is this just a tax and responsibility avoidance measure ?

BBC NEEDS TO BROADCAST PROPER NEWS, NOT DRIVEL.

Listening to this morning's BBC Radio 4 news at 9 o'clock, makes me wonder why we bother with 'News' on the BBC.

For the last week and more, we've been assailed by increasing hysteria about Bradley Wiggins winning the 'Tour de France'. Not that he 's actually won it yet and he won't until later today, but this inconvenience hasn't prevented the BBC from reporting, daily, that he's going to win it. Today's news broadcast was no different and was even repeated on television on "The Andrew Marr Show", with interviews and all. Since when have future events of this type become news ?

The BBC followed the non-news about Wiggins with an item about President Obama visiting the site of the recent shooting in the US; not that he's visited there yet, but he will do so later; this is not news. Item three was yet another non-story, something about a commemoratory day in Norway for the shootings there a year ago. How is this story worthy of being included as the third most important news story of the day ?

Finally, we arrived at  an item of real news. Increasing unrest in Syria has to be a serious concern to the whole of the Euro-Asian world and yet it ranked as only the fourth most important item in the minds of the cretins who determine such things in the BBC. It may be that the crisis in Syria is becoming a bit boring for the bright young things who run the BBC, but this is one of the few international news stories of the moment; for it to be relegated to only fourth place, after 3 non-stories, shows how little the Corporation values genuine news coverage and how much it panders to populist and sentimental tripe.

Sadly, it was then back to a story of little importance, the resignation of Rupert Murdoch from a number of directorships within his 'NewsCorp' group of companies. That Murdoch is 81 and well past retirement age seems to have been ignored and, in any case, why is this worthy of being considered national news ?

A story which seems minor but is probably an indicator of the ways in which successive governments in this country show a total lack of common sense came next. A Fijian man who served in the British Army for 13 years and has married and made his home her, has been told he must now leave the UK by 9th August. Having served in Afghanistan and Iraq, he left the army in June but a fight he had with a colleague in 2010 is deemed to give him a criminal record; accordingly, the Border Agency, an organisation of dubious quality and ability, has said he is debarred from settling here. That this is a grotesquely unfair judgement must be abundantly clear even to the jobsworths of the BA, but the real story has to be the utter stupidity and incompetence of its staff. One can only hope that this man who has given so many years to this nation will eventually have his application to stay approved by someone with a brain cell.

The Beeb then progressed from the insane to the desperate. Today, temporary trading laws come into force for the duration of the madness that is the Olympic / Paralympic farce.All shops, including the largest supermarkets, will be allowed to remain open on Sundays for the same hours as during the other 6 days. Small convenience shops are unhappy as they can see their customers drifting away to the larger shops and, no doubt, many of the staff of the larger stores are finding themselves under pressure to give up their Sundays. All of this is in an attempt to maximise the financial benefits of the Olympics though I fail to understand why longer Sunday opening hours will increase takings; surely this will only spread the existing spend over more hours. Of course, visitors here specifically for the Games may benefit, but they're likely to have only so much money which they'll spend, or not, regardless of the Sunday opening hours. The rest of us will just have to grin and bear it.

The last item deemed worthy of inclusion in the BBC's news was the death of the once beautiful actress, Angharad Rees, at the age of only 63. This story doesn't actually make it onto the headlines on teletext (not teletext noe, I know, but what else do you call it ?) and one would have to ask why it should. I well remember being enthralled by her portrayal of the elfin 'Demelza' in the serialisation of Winston Graham's 'Poldark' series on television in the 1970s and I still have videos of the programmes; Angharad was perfectly cast and must have been a fantasy 'love' for many, but she was, in all honesty, a minor actress. Her death at such a young age saddens me greatly and will encourage me to have another look at the great series, but it no more warranted inclusion in the country's main news broadcast than would have the demise of any of our bronze medal winners from 

the 1976 Olympics.

After listening to this broadcast, do I feel enlightened about the world and what's happened in the last few hours ? Are you 'avin' a larff ?! Three items were not even news, Bradley Wiggins, Obama and Norway; the amended Sunday trading laws was a reminder of something decided a long time ago, and the items about Rupert Murdoch and Angharad Rees were too minor to be included in a limited national news broadcast. Only two stories, about the Fijian soldier and trouble in Syria, were worthy of inclusion. What a joke.

NUISANCE CALLERS NEED SHOOTING.

What can we do about the 'cold calling' that plagues us ?

I signed up with the Telephone Preference Service years ago, and still I receive these unwanted nuisance calls. Some, perhaps many these days, are from abroad, often with strongly accented callers claiming to be Sarah, Charlie or some other western name, although they are almost certainly Gita, Gupta or Sanjeev in reality. These calls can't even be barred as they leave no number; we just have to endure them.

Calls from UK numbers can, of course, be barred though this doesn't seem to deter them. The companies involved in ignoring the TPS rules simply use other numbers to annoy us from. If my caller display shows a message such as 'International' or 'number wihheld' I tend to ignore the call; however, if a number is displayed, what to do ? It might be a genuine call which is ignored at my peril, so I usually answer - 'Can I speak to Mr/Mrs *****' comes the cheery voice. 'Why ?' or 'And who are you ?' says I.

The almost inevitable next line involves something which makes clear the caller is marketing something - insulation, PPI reclaims, or whatever. I hang up, or tell them, politely to go away and not bother me again. Do they take any notice ? Of course. So, in the end and in an attempt to make an impression on these most annoying of intruders into my private life, I tell them, loudly, to 'F*** off'. They feign indignation as I close the connection.

At least they know they've really p***ed me off and I bar the number as well, for all the good that seems to do. What I really want is something that can shoot them through the telephone wires - any clever inventors out there ?