What a party stands for now is more important than what it stood for in the past. How close is Corbyn's Labour to Die Linke - descendant of the the East German Communists? (Though of course, Corbyn's links to East Germany go back to the time of communism).
No links at all that I'm aware of, as the SPD link trumps any ideological sympathy that we might have. In the same way, we don't have official links to Podemos, because the PSOE would be incensed.
In general I think these parties are less constrained by the thought that they might be in power at any moment. McDonnell in particular has been quietly telling all Shadow Cabinet members that they can't make financial commitments without his approval. I don't think Linke or Podemos spokespeople feel under any such constraints, and they will cheerfully demand spending on anything.
It is a truth universally acknowledged amongst Leavers that whoever has any dealings with the EU betrays the cause, no matter how Eurosceptic they started out. For some reason I've never understood, the obvious explanation - that when you get into the detail, things are a bit more complicated and the economic considerations more awkward than the Leavers thought - never ever seems to occur to them.
"For some reason I've never understood"
I assume that's a rhetorical flourish, because I'm 99.999% certain you're smarter than that.
Boris Johnson was last matched at 5.8 for next Prime Minister and 6 for next Conservative leader. He is therefore now the favourite in both races.
One quirk is that Rishi Sunak (who he?) is shorter to lay for next Prime Minister (120) than to back for next Conservative leader (180). This is a discrepancy that has persisted for quite some time. Those with suitable balances on both markets might wish to take advantage of this. I'm sure there's a rational explanation for this, but it doesn't seem to involve betting.
I think Boris is a clear lay.
On present polling Boris is the only Tory who can stop a Corbyn premiership
Yes, and I think the polling is bollocks. It’s name recognition and an inability of the public to know how crap he is, because they haven’t seen him in action up close.
No, it is reaction to the Chequers Deal and the Tory voters who have moved to UKIP.
Given Javid is now Home Secretary and Hunt Foreign Secretary they are also rapidly running out of the ability to use the 'name recognition' excuse if they do not improve their ratings with Tory members and voters and the public and against Corbyn fast Boris will be unstoppable and Mogg I expect would back him too
I will never understand your unbreakable faith in Boris.
Sorry, I don’t share it. In fact, I doubt he’d even make the final two and might even fall out in round one. But, if you disagree, feel free to lap up my money on Betfair.
If Leadsom, Davis and IDS cpuld make rhe final 2 Boris can, certainly once MPs in marginal see him as the only means to save their seats and once Mogg brings his backers behind him too
Well that's a huge turnout, Riccardo goes to Renault. I was along the right track with Alonso to Renault in terms of them looking to make a marquee driver addition, but didn't figure on Riccardo. Great sign for Renault as a team, big miss for McLaren IMO unless they manage to hold onto Alonso for another couple of years.
Apparently Theresa May is Lord Halifax "trying to cut deals with the enemy over the water" so we need BoJo to be our Churchill...
It is a truth universally acknowledged amongst Leavers that whoever has any dealings with the EU betrays the cause, no matter how Eurosceptic they started out. For some reason I've never understood, the obvious explanation - that when you get into the detail, things are a bit more complicated and the economic considerations more awkward than the Leavers thought - never ever seems to occur to them.
There's an element of truth in that I think, but much of our current woes are down to the belief that whatever we negotiate is our end state for all time, when of course, 'tis not. Europhiles will want to bring us closer (or even return, penitent, to the fold), whereas the phobes will want ever more divergence. We're in too much of a rush.
Because Amazon "claims" very little sales actually happens in the UK. I believe the sales are reported in Ireland.
Some kind of turnover tax will have to come in for this kind of dodge.
Would anyone be able to link to Amazon in the UK if the ISP was also not in the UK ?
Amazon being based in Ireland is just one of the many benefits of the EU Single Market.
Membership of the SM does not prevent nations within it from changing their laws and taxation system to stop - or at least curtail - this sort of abuse.
How does the British government tax an Irish company with servers in Ireland selling into the UK?
Apply the diverted profits tax and investigate their accounts for unnecessary transfers of profits to overseas locations and tax the transfers at 25%. We must create a level playing field or eventually British companies will go out of business as multinationals game the system and pay no tax.
If England make lunch with just three down it will be a miracle. Living dangerously does not begin to describe it.
If Dawid Malan doesn't score a double century here then he should be dropped.
He's cost England the match.
And not to be ageist, he's almost 31. Persisting with him in the hope that he'll develop into a half way decent test cricketer seems a utter waste of time in the circumstances.
If England make lunch with just three down it will be a miracle. Living dangerously does not begin to describe it.
If Dawid Malan doesn't score a double century here then he should be dropped.
He's cost England the match.
And not to be ageist, he's almost 31. Persisting with him in the hope that he'll develop into a half way decent test cricketer seems a utter waste of time in the circumstances.
Indeed.
You have to wonder what Haseeb Hameed has done to upset the powers that be?
If England make lunch with just three down it will be a miracle. Living dangerously does not begin to describe it.
If Dawid Malan doesn't score a double century here then he should be dropped.
He's cost England the match.
And not to be ageist, he's almost 31. Persisting with him in the hope that he'll develop into a half way decent test cricketer seems a utter waste of time in the circumstances.
Indeed.
You have to wonder what Haseeb Hameed has done to upset the powers that be?
Completely lost form after being injured. He'll be back.
Welsh Labour's deputy leader Carolyn Harris is facing pressure to quit her frontbench Westminster role as shadow equalities minister.
Labour AM Jenny Rathbone said she should stand down to "clear her name", after a trial heard she had called a former aide a "dyke".
Senior Labour activist Jon Lansman has asked leader Jeremy Corbyn to suspend her and has demanded an investigation.
Mrs Harris said: "I honestly do not remember making such a comment."
Jenny Clarke, who was cleared of fraud in a trial in July, also alleged Mrs Harris had assaulted her, which the MP denied.
Mrs Harris, Mr Corbyn's shadow minister for women and equalities, had told the trial if she had said dyke it would have been "just office banter" and said in a statement on Friday it was "clumsy language".
In a statement she added: "I understand that banter was an entirely inappropriate - indeed offensive - word to use."
Indeed. Think you're the one person on this thread (apologies if I have skipped anyone) who isn't pontificating without doing a basic fact check. Shame @rcs isn't about as I believe he understands this all rather better than I do.
This particular issue is owt to do with Ireland, or "transfer pricing". People who are writing that seem to think that they're buying from a UK company and that somehow Amazon uses transfer pricing to wipe out profits on the transaction. Dunno what you're all getting mixed up with - Starbucks using transfer pricing on coffee perhaps?
Suppose in the 1980s you were interested in certain specialty publications and you called up your go-to stockist of obscure literature in Luxembourg, who posted it to you. Nobody would say that the retailer should be paying UK corporation tax on that transaction - it would make doing business across borders intolerable. (I'm a one-man band. I export to dozens of countries and every single inhabited continent. If I had to deal with all those tax rules, I would rather cut down to British clients only, or take early retirement.)
When you're shopping on amazon.co.uk, you are doing the modern day equivalent of a long-distance phone call to your guy in Luxembourg. Now we can talk about changing the rules about this, but it is not an easy fix, because at the end of the day we still want Brits to be able to call up their chap in Lux and order their pamphlet or whatever, and not expect that supplier to deal with UK corporation tax. And although this isn't primarily a Single Market issue (more on that next post), note that one of the key selling points of the Single Market is the fact that a company legally established in one EU member state should be able to sell into any other state. That's a big part of how the SM works, so that you don't need to incorporate in every single state you sell to.
Huge win for Renault, they are definitely showing that they want to win titles within the next couple of seasons. There's no way that Riccardo would have signed for them unless they had that kind of time line. As I said, it's a big miss for McLaren. If they have any pretensions of competing at the front again, they should have been making these kinds of moves. Riccardo and Norris for 2019-2022 would have been a great line up for them and with a completely revamped technical team they could have made that pitch to Riccardo. Unless they are very confident of holding onto Alonso I think McLaren are looking at becoming another Williams.
Welsh Labour's deputy leader Carolyn Harris is facing pressure to quit her frontbench Westminster role as shadow equalities minister.
Labour AM Jenny Rathbone said she should stand down to "clear her name", after a trial heard she had called a former aide a "dyke".
Senior Labour activist Jon Lansman has asked leader Jeremy Corbyn to suspend her and has demanded an investigation.
Mrs Harris said: "I honestly do not remember making such a comment."
Jenny Clarke, who was cleared of fraud in a trial in July, also alleged Mrs Harris had assaulted her, which the MP denied.
Mrs Harris, Mr Corbyn's shadow minister for women and equalities, had told the trial if she had said dyke it would have been "just office banter" and said in a statement on Friday it was "clumsy language".
In a statement she added: "I understand that banter was an entirely inappropriate - indeed offensive - word to use."
Where would the pressure be to increase interest rates to 4% in a "full blown recession"?
I don't think Tom Newton Dunn was fully listening. Carney was just giving an example of what the UK banking system could cope with systemically. It wasn't a prediction about No Deal.
It was hard to concentrate on the actual content of the interview. Humphrys was at his worst, trying to concoct a headline rather than conduct an interview. His repeated interjections "so you're saying that you're planning for a disaster" "no" "but you'd still call it a disaster" "no" "you could say you're planning for total Armageddon" "no" and on and on, were more irritating than the Stonehenge traffic jam I was stuck in..
Good for him. Risky, but would always have been number 2 at Red Bull; it's also a sign that Renault are getting serious about next season.
But given how bad the Renault engine has been in the Red Bull it seems a courageous move.
Mind you I said the same about Lewis Hamilton's move from McLaren to Mercedes.
I'd take the Renault works team over whatever Honda are going to offer next season. They are still way down on power compared to Renault. Renault also have their party mode coming in the mk3 which will be available to Renault, McLaren and RBR from Spa, Honda haven't got a schedule for any kind of party mode. Also, it looks like the Honda request to kill of the MGU-K is dead now, the other three engine manufacturers have invested so much money in it they don't want to kill it off any more. That means Honda are still at least two years down on MGU-K development and we've how much difference it can make now that Ferrari have developed it so well.
Huge win for Renault, they are definitely showing that they want to win titles within the next couple of seasons. There's no way that Riccardo would have signed for them unless they had that kind of time line. As I said, it's a big miss for McLaren. If they have any pretensions of competing at the front again, they should have been making these kinds of moves. Riccardo and Norris for 2019-2022 would have been a great line up for them and with a completely revamped technical team they could have made that pitch to Riccardo. Unless they are very confident of holding onto Alonso I think McLaren are looking at becoming another Williams.
Renault are spending a lot of money, and this could turn out to be either Hamilton to Mercedes or Alonso to McLaren for Ricciardo, but he knows for sure that he isn’t going to win the title with RBR-Honda next year.
McLaren are now in a real mess, Alsono only wants to win Indy and will probably head off to drive the season there next year. Williams are already talking to Mercedes about becoming another Haas in terms of co-operation, but they need to get a team leader in place and sadly Claire isn’t that person.
When you're shopping on amazon.co.uk, you are doing the modern day equivalent of a long-distance phone call to your guy in Luxembourg. Now we can talk about changing the rules about this, but it is not an easy fix...
Except that it's not the same as calling up your guy in Lux because this is a massive megacorporation who are flogging you stuff from their warehouses in the UK - so that should be an easy loophole to fix, right?
Well, wrong. Because even in the case of my hypothetical 1980s phone call to your all-purpose Luxembourg pamphlet-stockist, they could potentially have sold it to you via a warehouse in the UK.
This is part of the UK-Luxembourg double taxation treaty of (I think) 1968, so again nowt to do the Single Market or membership of the EU (though note that those things may make it harder to change the rules because they specifically seek to protect the right of an establishment in one member being allowed to flog stuff into the others).
(3) The term `permanent establishment` shall not be deemed to include:
(a) the use of facilities solely for the purpose of storage, display or delivery of goods or merchandise belonging to the enterprise;
(b) the maintenance of a stock of goods or merchandise belonging to the enterprise solely for the purpose of storage, display or delivery
So provided the warehouses don't constitute "(a) a place of management; (b) a branch; (c) an office; (d) a factory; (e) a workshop; (f) a mine, quarry or other place of extraction of natural resources; (g) a building site or construction or assembly project which exists for more than six months" then they're all good, and you're still - as far as the law is concerned - buying from the Luxembourg company in Luxembourg, not the Luxembourg company's UK arm.
This is the thing that's open to attack if enough countries agreed to change their rules, though I've already noted issues with the Single Market concept.
But even if OECD coordination were possible, it wouldn't be an easy loophole to fix. As Tim Worstall says: "For you can't make it that anyone using a warehouse or logistics chain is creating a permanent establishment: that would mean that any import that spent 5 minutes at Fed Ex would create a corporation tax liability in the country of destination. An absurdity..."
Huge win for Renault, they are definitely showing that they want to win titles within the next couple of seasons. There's no way that Riccardo would have signed for them unless they had that kind of time line. As I said, it's a big miss for McLaren. If they have any pretensions of competing at the front again, they should have been making these kinds of moves. Riccardo and Norris for 2019-2022 would have been a great line up for them and with a completely revamped technical team they could have made that pitch to Riccardo. Unless they are very confident of holding onto Alonso I think McLaren are looking at becoming another Williams.
Renault are spending a lot of money, and this could turn out to be either Hamilton to Mercedes or Alonso to McLaren for Ricciardo, but he knows for sure that he isn’t going to win the title with RBR-Honda next year.
McLaren are now in a real mess, Alsono only wants to win Indy and will probably head off to drive the season there next year. Williams are already talking to Mercedes about becoming another Haas in terms of co-operation, but they need to get a team leader in place and sadly Claire isn’t that person.
I really hope the FIA starts stamping out this B-team rubbish, Haas is just last year's Ferrari with this year's engine. It's a complete joke. At least Toro Rosso have an independent design team. Have a junior team, sure, but the FIA needs to insist on independent technical development.
Good for him. Risky, but would always have been number 2 at Red Bull; it's also a sign that Renault are getting serious about next season.
But given how bad the Renault engine has been in the Red Bull it seems a courageous move.
Mind you I said the same about Lewis Hamilton's move from McLaren to Mercedes.
I'd take the Renault works team over whatever Honda are going to offer next season. They are still way down on power compared to Renault. Renault also have their party mode coming in the mk3 which will be available to Renault, McLaren and RBR from Spa, Honda haven't got a schedule for any kind of party mode. Also, it looks like the Honda request to kill of the MGU-K is dead now, the other three engine manufacturers have invested so much money in it they don't want to kill it off any more. That means Honda are still at least two years down on MGU-K development and we've how much difference it can make now that Ferrari have developed it so well.
I have to agree. Honda will catch up if they stay in the game, but it will take time.
I hope Renault keep Hulkenberg; I expect Ricciardo to beat him, but it's going to be very interesting.
I expect the Ricciardo decision was influenced by how little Red Bull offered him to resign compared to what Verstappen was given; that send a message far stronger than any assurances about 'equal status'...
The various rules that break down barriers to trade may be advantageous to businesses, but they also lead directly to companies like Amazon who take advantage to build a huge conglomerate based in one place but selling everywhere. How this is dealt with is going to be a defining feature of global politics for the next decade.
Good for him. Risky, but would always have been number 2 at Red Bull; it's also a sign that Renault are getting serious about next season.
But given how bad the Renault engine has been in the Red Bull it seems a courageous move.
Mind you I said the same about Lewis Hamilton's move from McLaren to Mercedes.
I'd take the Renault works team over whatever Honda are going to offer next season. They are still way down on power compared to Renault. Renault also have their party mode coming in the mk3 which will be available to Renault, McLaren and RBR from Spa, Honda haven't got a schedule for any kind of party mode. Also, it looks like the Honda request to kill of the MGU-K is dead now, the other three engine manufacturers have invested so much money in it they don't want to kill it off any more. That means Honda are still at least two years down on MGU-K development and we've how much difference it can make now that Ferrari have developed it so well.
I have to agree. Honda will catch up if they stay in the game, but it will take time.
I hope Renault keep Hulkenberg; I expect Ricciardo to beat him, but it's going to be very interesting.
I expect the Ricciardo decision was influenced by how little Red Bull offered him to resign compared to what Verstappen was given; that send a message far stronger than any assurances about 'equal status'...
Your final point is probably what swung it for Danny. He's a great racing driver and it really started to feel like RBR were disrespecting him towards the end. I think in terms of outright pace Max definitely has the edge, but in terms of overtaking and racing, Danny is way, way ahead of Max. Maybe RBR think Max can learn the latter and are betting on raw pace, but I'm not convinced.
I think the other factor is that Danny is said to be a very good development driver, he's very strong at pointing out any flaws and helping the team get the most out of a car through good setup. Conversely Max is not very good at that, their second driver is now very important and I don't think either of the Toro Rosso drivers are good enough to fill that spot. With a new engine for RBR and a lead driver that isn't solid on development it's going to be long season for Renault, IMO.
And this is also on the ball. The retail operation makes surprisingly little taxable profit because Amazon is still expansionary and has tended to reinvest the cash it generates. This is the other thing that Tim Worstall pointed out in 2013 - fine, tax the warehouses, but don't expect to rake in a shedload of tax from it - but as Amazon reaches maturity that's a point that's likely to become less relevant.
Personally I don't like what's going on and I think it really should be changed (particularly before Amazon starts making really serious retail profits), but I'm under no illusions there are going to be easy fixes.
Part of my complaint is the unfairness of it, really, rather than the thought of all this lovely tax we're missing out on. There are arguments for reform of corporation tax but those people proposing it should have a turnover element need to be aware that (a) it's economically worse than taxing on profit [think of the effect on industries with different margins], (b) it doesn't solve the issue if it's turnover of a foreign company that's taxable in their home country, rather than within the UK. There are actually grounds in optimal taxation theory for abolishing corporate income taxes entirely (but rethinking how investors are taxed on dividends/capital gains) and given the impact of globalisation and the complexity of identifying where in a complex chain that profit is actually being made, that radical option may become less unattractive.
There are actually grounds in optimal taxation theory for abolishing corporate income taxes entirely (but rethinking how investors are taxed on dividends/capital gains) and given the impact of globalisation and the complexity of identifying where in a complex chain that profit is actually being made, that radical option may become less unattractive.
Meant to point out ... even if simply scrapping corporate income taxes entirely became more strongly favoured by economists, it would still be an incredibly hard sell electorally. But it would still be the Alexandrian solution to the Gordian knot...
If I may be permitted to go off my own topic, there's a very long but very good piece in Haaretz about Jeremy Corbyn's difficulties with the subject of anti-Semitism:
But one point is omitted: one of the reasons why those who do not want Israel to exist are so keen to describe it as a Nazi or Nazi-like state is because that makes it so much easier to justify its destruction, its removal from the world scene. After all, who wouldn’t want to stop another Nazi state arising? Ditto with the comparisons with apartheid South Africa.
So the use of Nazi comparisons is not just people getting overheated or being anti-semitic or even being enthusiastically pro-Palestinian. It is a necessary part of an agenda which has as its logical end point the extermination of the state of Israel. Such language is not necessary (and arguably deeply unhelpful) if your aim is to get Israel to change its policies for the better. But it is absolutely essential if you want Israel to disappear and be replaced by a Palestinian state from Jordan to the sea, which is the explicit aim of, for instance, Hamas.
Corbyn’s view of Israel and the language he uses is, whether he realises it or not, exterminatory in its aims and consequences. If he really believes what he says, then he should be arguing that Israel has no right to exist. It is certainly what some of his supporters believe and what many of Palestinian associates believe. The threat to Jewry if Britain is led by such a man is the risk that it becomes the first Western country to call for Israel no longer to exist. And then what? What happens to the Jews living there, born there?
Comments
In general I think these parties are less constrained by the thought that they might be in power at any moment. McDonnell in particular has been quietly telling all Shadow Cabinet members that they can't make financial commitments without his approval. I don't think Linke or Podemos spokespeople feel under any such constraints, and they will cheerfully demand spending on anything.
http://www.skysports.com/f1/news/12433/11459194/daniel-ricciardo-to-leave-red-bull
You have to wonder what Haseeb Hameed has done to upset the powers that be?
Labour AM Jenny Rathbone said she should stand down to "clear her name", after a trial heard she had called a former aide a "dyke".
Senior Labour activist Jon Lansman has asked leader Jeremy Corbyn to suspend her and has demanded an investigation.
Mrs Harris said: "I honestly do not remember making such a comment."
Jenny Clarke, who was cleared of fraud in a trial in July, also alleged Mrs Harris had assaulted her, which the MP denied.
Mrs Harris, Mr Corbyn's shadow minister for women and equalities, had told the trial if she had said dyke it would have been "just office banter" and said in a statement on Friday it was "clumsy language".
In a statement she added: "I understand that banter was an entirely inappropriate - indeed offensive - word to use."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-45055491
This particular issue is owt to do with Ireland, or "transfer pricing". People who are writing that seem to think that they're buying from a UK company and that somehow Amazon uses transfer pricing to wipe out profits on the transaction. Dunno what you're all getting mixed up with - Starbucks using transfer pricing on coffee perhaps?
Suppose in the 1980s you were interested in certain specialty publications and you called up your go-to stockist of obscure literature in Luxembourg, who posted it to you. Nobody would say that the retailer should be paying UK corporation tax on that transaction - it would make doing business across borders intolerable. (I'm a one-man band. I export to dozens of countries and every single inhabited continent. If I had to deal with all those tax rules, I would rather cut down to British clients only, or take early retirement.)
When you're shopping on amazon.co.uk, you are doing the modern day equivalent of a long-distance phone call to your guy in Luxembourg. Now we can talk about changing the rules about this, but it is not an easy fix, because at the end of the day we still want Brits to be able to call up their chap in Lux and order their pamphlet or whatever, and not expect that supplier to deal with UK corporation tax. And although this isn't primarily a Single Market issue (more on that next post), note that one of the key selling points of the Single Market is the fact that a company legally established in one EU member state should be able to sell into any other state. That's a big part of how the SM works, so that you don't need to incorporate in every single state you sell to.
Risky, but would always have been number 2 at Red Bull; it's also a sign that Renault are getting serious about next season.
Mind you I said the same about Lewis Hamilton's move from McLaren to Mercedes.
That might have been the last test innings by Ben Stokes for a while, if not ever.
Before I'm charged with contempt of court, I'm not speaking about his guilt or not, just what might happen if he is found guilty.
#NotAPoundShopTommyRobinson
McLaren are now in a real mess, Alsono only wants to win Indy and will probably head off to drive the season there next year. Williams are already talking to Mercedes about becoming another Haas in terms of co-operation, but they need to get a team leader in place and sadly Claire isn’t that person.
Well, wrong. Because even in the case of my hypothetical 1980s phone call to your all-purpose Luxembourg pamphlet-stockist, they could potentially have sold it to you via a warehouse in the UK.
https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/double-taxation-relief/dt12304
This is part of the UK-Luxembourg double taxation treaty of (I think) 1968, so again nowt to do the Single Market or membership of the EU (though note that those things may make it harder to change the rules because they specifically seek to protect the right of an establishment in one member being allowed to flog stuff into the others).
(3) The term `permanent establishment` shall not be deemed to include:
(a) the use of facilities solely for the purpose of storage, display or delivery of goods or merchandise belonging to the enterprise;
(b) the maintenance of a stock of goods or merchandise belonging to the enterprise solely for the purpose of storage, display or delivery
So provided the warehouses don't constitute "(a) a place of management; (b) a branch; (c) an office; (d) a factory; (e) a workshop; (f) a mine, quarry or other place of extraction of natural resources; (g) a building site or construction or assembly project which exists for more than six months" then they're all good, and you're still - as far as the law is concerned - buying from the Luxembourg company in Luxembourg, not the Luxembourg company's UK arm.
This is the thing that's open to attack if enough countries agreed to change their rules, though I've already noted issues with the Single Market concept.
But even if OECD coordination were possible, it wouldn't be an easy loophole to fix. As Tim Worstall says: "For you can't make it that anyone using a warehouse or logistics chain is creating a permanent establishment: that would mean that any import that spent 5 minutes at Fed Ex would create a corporation tax liability in the country of destination. An absurdity..."
2018, what a time to be alive.
I hope Renault keep Hulkenberg; I expect Ricciardo to beat him, but it's going to be very interesting.
I expect the Ricciardo decision was influenced by how little Red Bull offered him to resign compared to what Verstappen was given; that send a message far stronger than any assurances about 'equal status'...
The various rules that break down barriers to trade may be advantageous to businesses, but they also lead directly to companies like Amazon who take advantage to build a huge conglomerate based in one place but selling everywhere. How this is dealt with is going to be a defining feature of global politics for the next decade.
I think the other factor is that Danny is said to be a very good development driver, he's very strong at pointing out any flaws and helping the team get the most out of a car through good setup. Conversely Max is not very good at that, their second driver is now very important and I don't think either of the Toro Rosso drivers are good enough to fill that spot. With a new engine for RBR and a lead driver that isn't solid on development it's going to be long season for Renault, IMO.
NEW THREAD
Personally I don't like what's going on and I think it really should be changed (particularly before Amazon starts making really serious retail profits), but I'm under no illusions there are going to be easy fixes.
Part of my complaint is the unfairness of it, really, rather than the thought of all this lovely tax we're missing out on. There are arguments for reform of corporation tax but those people proposing it should have a turnover element need to be aware that (a) it's economically worse than taxing on profit [think of the effect on industries with different margins], (b) it doesn't solve the issue if it's turnover of a foreign company that's taxable in their home country, rather than within the UK. There are actually grounds in optimal taxation theory for abolishing corporate income taxes entirely (but rethinking how investors are taxed on dividends/capital gains) and given the impact of globalisation and the complexity of identifying where in a complex chain that profit is actually being made, that radical option may become less unattractive.
But one point is omitted: one of the reasons why those who do not want Israel to exist are so keen to describe it as a Nazi or Nazi-like state is because that makes it so much easier to justify its destruction, its removal from the world scene. After all, who wouldn’t want to stop another Nazi state arising? Ditto with the comparisons with apartheid South Africa.
So the use of Nazi comparisons is not just people getting overheated or being anti-semitic or even being enthusiastically pro-Palestinian. It is a necessary part of an agenda which has as its logical end point the extermination of the state of Israel. Such language is not necessary (and arguably deeply unhelpful) if your aim is to get Israel to change its policies for the better. But it is absolutely essential if you want Israel to disappear and be replaced by a Palestinian state from Jordan to the sea, which is the explicit aim of, for instance, Hamas.
Corbyn’s view of Israel and the language he uses is, whether he realises it or not, exterminatory in its aims and consequences. If he really believes what he says, then he should be arguing that Israel has no right to exist. It is certainly what some of his supporters believe and what many of Palestinian associates believe. The threat to Jewry if Britain is led by such a man is the risk that it becomes the first Western country to call for Israel no longer to exist. And then what? What happens to the Jews living there, born there?