Good News Ahoy!

cells

CLAPTON wrote: »

where are the 600,000 gross (300,000 net) new immigrants in these figures?

employment up 359k

unemployment down 198k


employment increase outnumbers unemployment decrease by 161,000

that them immigrants probably

gadgetmind

cells wrote: »

that them immigrants probably

Yes, those evil swine, coming over here, eating our women, sleeping with our food, yadda, rant, blither.

wotsthat

Graham_Devon wrote: »

It was announced in the news earlier that the majority of this is actually going to people at the top end of the pay scale.

The way I interpreted it was there's been a big increase in management positions due to the strength of the economy i.e. people who weren't managers a few months ago now are and got the pay rise to go with it. There's a shift towards higher paid jobs in the economy rather than the 'wrong' people getting all the pay rises.

It was ITV though - they launched a nationwide campaign today to find Warwick Davis' stolen caravan so I suspect they're taking drugs.

gadgetmind

wotsthat wrote: »

people who weren't managers a few months ago now are and got the pay rise to go with it.

We're promoting left right and centre, but TBH it's hard to find people who want to be managers and who actually have signs of being capable. Mind you, we have a cracking manager training course, that's already paying dividends.

I just learnt by starting my own company out of university and messing up everything you could mess up, sometimes more than once, but I guess a bit of training avoids some of the deep cuts and nasty bruises.

CLAPTON

gadgetmind wrote: »

Well, yes, there's the rub. But for the most part, people prefer to live in the community they were born into and grew up in, so we just need to work with them to improve education and quality of life where they are.



We do both, but our jobs globally are open to anyone. I could turn people away because I don't care for the colour of their skin, their place of birth, their funny accent, or because of the god they worship, but I'm afraid that's not really my way.

Blimey, maybe there's a word for people who do these things?

it would seem we are in total agreement that all people are born equal and should be treated as such


however we also both agree that there are practical issues that prevent all people being treated equally because of the numbers involved and the inequalitities in the world at the moment


one of us is smug because they have high principles although they don't practice what they preach


the other is the same

gadgetmind

CLAPTON wrote: »

one of us is smug because they have high principles although they don't practice what they preach

I'm practising it in admittedly my very small way by 1) employing bright people from wherever in the world they are now, 2) punching racists in the face with extreme prejudice whenever I encounter them.

Back in the 80s, an NF chap standing on a soap box with a megaphone in his hand told me that we couldn't silence them all. I knocked him off his box despite his mates in waiting and I'll keep on doing it.

Zero tolerance to racism from me, and no apologies.

CLAPTON

gadgetmind wrote: »

I'm practising it in admittedly my very small way by 1) employing bright people from wherever in the world they are now, 2) punching racists in the face with extreme prejudice whenever I encounter them.

Back in the 80s, an NF chap standing on a soap box with a megaphone in his hand told me that we couldn't silence them all. I knocked him off his box despite his mates in waiting and I'll keep on doing it.

Zero tolerance to racism from me, and no apologies.

as I said smug


I also should have said not very self aware

gadgetmind

Rather than commenting directly on your response, I'll just leave it dangling. Others will understand.

CLAPTON

gadgetmind wrote: »

Rather than commenting directly on your response, I'll just leave it dangling. Others will understand.

best finished now


those that understand the difference between an individual response to a situation and the response required by a society to multi million situations will understand

Generali

Conrad wrote: »

Gen, serious question for ya.

Over the years I've met many a client or prospect that pays no or little tax and plenty that are completely off radar, indeed one only yesterday, quite a decent earner who manages his fathers business, unknown to the tax man.

This morning my wife and I met our accountant, we ended up mainly having a chinwag and he told us it's completely normal for them to get enquiries form people totally off radar, just in one little town, and that the bulk of thier clients pay hardly any tax. It turns out everyone is at the ruse of scrubbing one ltd co in order to not pay corporation tax, and then have another already started so as to carry on as they were.
Indeed he's been asking us if we would like to do this, and these arnt some underground crook accountants, just typical provincial firm an I've dealt with plenty like them through work.

He mentioned that many landlords they deal with do not declare any property or rental income and that really next to none are ever caught, and they just pass property on on death.

It is utterly normal for a client to say to me he wants everything in his name as he doesn't want his spouses benefits or tax credits affected. Just every other person says this from all sorts of backgrounds.

I struggle to get accross to you all just how rife all this is, I'm often told it must be rare, but I assure you it's endemic.
My question is I wonder to what extent the authorities and economics specialists are aware of this?

Bare in mind millions of self cert and non status mortgages were being done which is quite a hint at the scale of hidden assets and earnings

Hi Conrad.

Economists and Governments are well aware of the 'shadow economy' (no longer known as the black economy in official circles; I leave you to decide why). After all, even the most withdrawn academic in his ivory tower will have been offered a discount for cash at some point. You may be aware that a while ago, the size of the UK's economy as measured by GDP was boosted by including estimates for the size of the markets in drugs and prostitution. The problem for an economist is measuring the size of the shadow economy.

When I was at Uni, I was always told that the shadow economy was "about 10% of GDP". No explanation was offered and it was one of those things that Professors got very grumpy about explaining, normally a sign that they knew the theory broke down at that point. They used to get very grumpy about the idea of people not being perfectly rational for example, something that 20 years later the subject of Behavioural Economics is showing is the case.

Anyway, this is what our friends in the EU statistical office have to say about the shadow economy:

http://ec.europa.eu/europe2020/pdf/themes/07_shadow_economy.pdf

Basically there are two ways of estimating the size of the shadow economy:

1. Indirectly or the 'No Man is an Island Method'. The shadow economy doesn't exist in isolation. Let's say I run a restaurant and pay many of my staff under the counter but am basically kosher apart from that. Well despite that I am still going to be consuming things that come from the declared part of the economy. For example I can't buy electricity under the counter and the chances are that the food and drink I sell will be sourced from companies that are invoicing properly and paying VAT etc. The ONS tries to infer the size of my, and all the other undeclared businesses, by looking at things like the amount of electricity used in the economy and the amount of electricity that would be used by the declared part of the economy and from that infer the size of the shadow economy.

2. Directly. There are a couple of ways of doing that. One is via survey, i.e. simply ask people if they are being paid in cash. The biggest problem with that is if someone comes up to you and says, "Excuse me Sir, I work for the Government and would like to know if you are committing a criminal offence," the answer is unlikely to be, "Yes"!
The other is by compliance. Businesses are checked by various authorities and found to be compliant or not. If HMRC looks over 1,000 restaurants in a year and discovers 50 are dodgy then perhaps, with a little statistical jiggery-pokery, it's reasonable to say that if there are 100,000 restaurants in the UK then 5,000 are dodgy.

Ultimately there is no absolutely accurate way of measuring the size of the shadow economy by definition but lots of people give it a go.

If you have a spare 20 minutes, it's definitely worth reading the chapter in the first Freakonomics book on the economics of the drug trade. A few members of a drug gang were nicked once including someone who had kept a rather meticulous set of accounts. He agreed to talk researchers through the accounts to explain what he had recorded. It gives a fascinating insight into a murky area.

http://www.amazon.com/Freakonomics-Economist-Explores-Hidden-Everything/dp/0060731338

The chapter is called, "Why drug dealers live with their mothers".

So in short:
- The shadow economy is known to exist
- Nobody knows how big it is
- Economists and statisticians try to guess how big it is
- Those guesses are suspected not to be very good but the best that we have at present