Amps or, alternatively, tell Google they’ll get tax breaks if they set up their campuses in the UK, invest in educating, training and recruiting young British people with the skills they’ll need in the 21st century and raise taxes on bads like sugar, drugs and pollution.

  • Amps replied to this.

      It’s basically too late to worry about any of this now. Our souls were sold decades ago and it ain’t ever changing

      3.5% pay cut for us coming July 1 (our fiscal year). City/County charter requires a balanced budget and we can’t be in the red. Is what it is. Hopefully they’ll give us “floating holidays” in rue of the salary loss. But who knows.

      For those of us COVID activated, we get 8 extra hours of time away for every 80 hours (two weeks) worked - a way of compensating given they cannot give hazard pay. I’m currently at 1,030 - basically 6 months off. If I ever get the chance, my top might never come back on.

      C_J With respect, the EU’s anti-tax avoidance directive is a joke. A complete sham. Look at Dublin, Luxembourg, Switzerland

      Reasonable point, though Switzerland is not in the EU.

        CJ’s clearly spoiling for a ‘swedge’ on this one, the Ayn Rand ‘wide cunt’ of the JC messageboard.

        Ayn Rand claimed social security in her later years, the hypocritical old boot.

        Smallman1 How much did SM Snr spend on your education again? Money well spent.

          C_J Sure, but offering some of these companies tax breaks, when they have paid so little for so long, is a bit like asking your rapist for a reach around. I think you need the leverage / threat in there in some way. It makes little odds, Boris and chums are more interested in being liked by the rest of the psychopaths than helping the country.

            CJ can froth at the mouth and call people on here ‘ignorant’ all he likes.

            What I think he doesn’t quite understand is that when many people are seeing wage stagnation and the cost of living increase year-on-year in real terms, and are also getting pissed off by only having precarious employment with the likes of Uber, Deliveroo, Amazon et al available to them, and THEN see these tech companies (and others) getting away with paying fuck all, sooner or later there will be enough pissed-off people to upend the whole system (which never seems likely until it actually happens and then… oh shit!)

            And I say this as someone who is definitely a capitalist. It has to be seen to be working for the majority of participants if a system is to sustain itself.

            I agree the tech companies need to pay more tax but no-one so far has managed to figure out a way of doing it unfortunately.

              Wally Taking on Facebook didn’t seem so scary after all for Australia when they did it.

                Wally There’s an amazing tool called Smallman too.

                Much obliged Wal!

                  C_J but no-one so far has managed to figure out a way of doing it

                  It’s not a numerical or ethical question that needs to be ‘figured out’, it can be done quite easily, but no Tory has even the slightest interest in rectifying the situation. They would much rather toady up to these companies and get a nice job on the board when they retire from politics.

                    I think the problem is that unless you can get every single country to sign up to the same tax regime (nigh impossible), they will just transfer their operations to wherever is cheapest. This means in practice that anyone signing up is effectively just agreeing to kill off all the well-paid tech jobs in their own country, which would be madness.

                    Most of the world leaders are too weak and corrupt to stand up to the tech companies. A maverick strong-man like Trump might have stood a chance imo.

                      C_J Then, you have to ask, what is the point in democracy or self-governance anymore?

                      We might as well just all throw in the towel and be bonded serfs to the technocracy/tech oligarchy.

                      Until, perhaps, they realise that extreme supply-side economics and thoroughly gutting the middle class is short-termist as it provides less consumer demand for their products.