British Broadcorping Castration

Why do you care so much about tax though ten bob? For as long as people have been earning large amounts then there has always been people looking to avoid paying as much tax as they should. I'm sure there are people you actually admire that have or as still doing that exact same thing.

Ten Bobsworth wrote:You really are indulgent, Sluffy. I could easily afford the TV licence if it was ten or a hundred times more than it is but that wouldn't really make it right for a public service broadcaster to facilitate the kind of tax dodges that are inherent in the system or justify the withdrawal of a relief that are appreciated and valued by those who have contributed to the system throughout their lives without ever indulging in any of the kind of tax dodges that now seem to abound amongst the Beeb's slebs.

We live in an era where half-truth, spin and falsehood are the norm in almost all walks of life  and I just happen to have gained enough knowledge and experience to see through a lot of it and expose it for the sham it really is. 

There's no shortage of folk who prefer the truth hidden or buried. It suits them and serves their interest but, for better or for worse, its never quite suited me.

Sorry I wasn't intending to be, just trying to make a little point as to how all TV licence payers are paying a fraction of our fees to the likes of Gary and Sue and how that would not be a pleasant thought for you to be doing.

I'm the same as you in the respect of being honest and open, I guess much of it is down to how I was brought up but there is also a little something somehow ingrained in me to 'do the right thing' even when not doing so would have made my life a lot more easier at times.

A few years ago my daughter was travelling on her gap year and I had encouraged her to take the opportunities that presented themselves to her on her travels as she may never have the chance or opportunity to pass that way again. Well one day I got a call from her and she had a chance to swim with Whale Sharks but was concerned about how the tour companies were exploiting them and she didn't know whether to go or not, to which my reply was that she had to live with herself and would she be more comfortable taking the chance to swim with the sharks, as she might never get that chance again, or more comfortable not doing so and knowing she wasn't party to them being exploited.

I'm pleased to say she chose the latter, she may never get to swim with whale sharks in her life but at least she doesn't have to carry around in her head, her guilt for having done so.

I tell the story simply because that is how I am, I'm bothered far more for not doing the right thing - even though it would benefit me enormously, than doing the right thing even though it does me no favours. I can't help it, I even sometimes regret doing it at the time but I still do it never the less.

It's me that has to live my life and I can live more peacefully within myself knowing I did the right thing instead of the wrong thing even thought that would probably saved me a lot of grief at the time.

Maybe I'm a fool but at least I'm a contented one.

I guess the main difference between us though is that I have accepted that the world is unfair and no longer fight battles I have no hope of winning.

Good luck to you with Vince, Lineker, et al but they are simply battles I have no interest in fighting, they've won and I can see any mileage in worrying about them myself.

Fair play to you for not giving in though, in a way I admire you for it.

Most reasonable people want to see the rich pay their fair share of tax. But Bob’s crusade seems to be more about people he doesn’t like than anything moral as Sluffy and Bob now seem to be positioning it. It’s quite difficult to take seriously.

Sluffy wrote:

Sorry I wasn't intending to be, just trying to make a little point as to how all TV licence payers are paying a fraction of our fees to the likes of Gary and Sue and how that would not be a pleasant thought for you to be doing.

I'm the same as you in the respect of being honest and open, I guess much of it is down to how I was brought up but there is also a little something somehow ingrained in me to 'do the right thing' even when not doing so would have made my life a lot more easier at times.

A few years ago my daughter was travelling on her gap year and I had encouraged her to take the opportunities that presented themselves to her on her travels as she may never have the chance or opportunity to pass that way again.  Well one day I got a call from her and she had a chance to swim with Whale Sharks but was concerned about how the tour companies were exploiting them and she didn't know whether to go or not, to which my reply was that she had to live with herself and would she be more comfortable taking the chance to swim with the sharks, as she might never get that chance again, or more comfortable not doing so and knowing she wasn't party to them being exploited.

I'm pleased to say she chose the latter, she may never get to swim with whale sharks in her life but at least she doesn't have to carry around in her head, her guilt for having done so.

I tell the story simply because that is how I am, I'm bothered far more for not doing the right thing - even though it would benefit me enormously, than doing the right thing even though it does me no favours.  I can't help it, I even sometimes regret doing it at the time but I still do it never the less.

It's me that has to live my life and I can live more peacefully within myself knowing I did the right thing instead of the wrong thing even thought that would probably saved me a lot of grief at the time.

Maybe I'm a fool but at least I'm a contented one.

I guess the main difference between us though is that I have accepted that the world is unfair and no longer fight battles I have no hope of winning.

Good luck to you with Vince, Lineker, et al but they are simply battles I have no interest in fighting, they've won and I can see any mileage in worrying about them myself.

Fair play to you for not giving in though, in a way I admire you for it.

Its not a battle to be won or lost, Sluffy. But I do find it interesting to look beneath the veneer of the sleb culture, media hype and juvenile journalism.

And btw don't think for one moment that you and I are unusual in examining Companies  House filings and declarations. I am a Vice President of a charity that I was closely involved with for many years and yesterday one of the present trustees was walking by my house. He is quite a successful businessman with a keen interest in junior football and for many years a sponsor of the League 2 club he's supported all his life.

I was in the garden and we got into a quite a lengthy conversation during which he told me how he spends quite a bit of his time on the Companies House site and how surprised he was to discover the names of two people he knew on the Ingenious file. He also told me how it came about. I won't repeat it but it did confirm something that had crossed my mind when I first noticed the names.

Blessed are the incurious

The truth is that it was the government that decided to stop paying for the benefit for over 75s, and Labour and the charity Age UK accused the government of betraying pensioners and trying to shift the blame on to the broadcaster.

I watched MOTD last night, Lineker was his usually knowledgeable and professional self.

Apologies Bob, sadly I didn't have time to find out about his financial situation, but it was nearly midnight by the time it finished.

Natasha Whittam wrote:I watched MOTD last night, Lineker was his usually knowledgeable and professional self.

Apologies Bob, sadly I didn't have time to find out about his financial situation, but it was nearly midnight by the time it finished.

Did you really? Don't know how he manages on it, but Lineker's still worth £1.35m of anybody's money, is he?

You'd be up a long time trying to find out where the dosh is going these days, though. Its well and truly hidden if you ask me.

It's really insignificant in the scheme of things. 
Compare that to "Mr Brexit" Dyson who once we'd committed to leaving the EU moved his head office from the UK to the Far East so that he wouldn't have to contribute his taxes to the UK.
Or the raft of offshore Conservative party funders.

These small time TV presenters are not the same class.

Just been listening to Anneliese Dodds. She wants to bear down on tax dodgers and help businesses that agree not to pay dividends in return for financial support. 

Some good news there for tax dodgers though. Its by not paying dividends that they avoid paying tax on the dividends. You explain it to her, Dale.

wanderlust wrote:It's really insignificant in the scheme of things. 
Compare that to "Mr Brexit" Dyson who once we'd committed to leaving the EU moved his head office from the UK to the Far East so that he wouldn't have to contribute his taxes to the UK.
Or the raft of offshore Conservative party funders.

These small time TV presenters are not the same class.

You are right. They are small time, over-hyped, overpaid and under-taxed. Some seem to think they are more important than they really are.

Dyson is a very successful inventor and entrepreneur who, like most successful entrepreneurs, will try to maximise business opportunities and minimise costs and risks wherever they can (including tax costs).
 
In an interview with the Sunday Times, Sir James told the paper his recent bid to build an electric car had been scrapped despite costing £500m of his own money.
"Ours is a life of risk and of failure," he said. "We try things and they fail. Life isn't easy."


He still lives and invests in the UK, so far as I'm aware, and is therefore subject to UK taxes on personal income.

Maybe they didn't tell the Beeb's intrepid reporter or maybe he thought it impolite to ask but it looks like Hector Bellerin (or someone) has paid £100K for 10,000 shares in FGR. He could have planted a few more trees with that but its easy come easy go I suppose. I expect the money's probably come out of Hebemo and there's still plenty left for a bit of forestry investment.

FGR's now 99.9% owned by a new £100 company called Green Britain Group Ltd which in turn is owned by Dale Vince. Mrs Vince is a director but doesn't have any shares. I wonder why not.

I listen to Radio 3 and 4. Also a local station sometimes. From what I am hearing, the frequencies that are broadcast upon will become country-wide at some point in the near future, Some local BBC Radio presenters havent had their contracts renewed. Apparently this is so that one DJ will play to the whole of Britain ( I always call us Britain as it certainly isnt a United Kingdom ). For example, on a frequency of say 88.9 mhz, rather than have ten local stations and DJ`s broadcasting from different transmitters, including winter hill, those transmitters will broadcast one DJ from those transmitters all over the country.
The BBC Radio staff is being cut doing this.

I keep having to check my decimal points. Somebody, presumably Hector Bellerin, has paid £100K for 0.0075% of Forest Green Rovers and nobody blinks an eyelid!!!!!!!
I wonder where the money's gone.

Ten Bobsworth wrote:I keep having to check my decimal points. Somebody, presumably Hector Bellerin, has paid £100K for 0.0075% of Forest Green Rovers and nobody blinks an eyelid!!!!!!!
I wonder where the money's gone.

I rather think you don't have much of an audience on this one Bob, sorry.



It did actually catch my eye that if he paid 100k for just 0.1% of the club which thus would value the club at £100m and thought that can't be right, but I wasn't interested enough to check out what was going on.

I see you mention that it's in fact for just 0.0075% which would value the club at (unless I've done my sums wrong) something like £1,300,000.000 (£1.3bn).

Something doesn't sound right or I've messed up somewhere but either way there's not a lot anyone on here can do.

I somehow doubt though that Vince will find neither a buyer or anyone to loan anything like that amount against the clubs assets at that sort of sum!

But I guess with all those fires the Amazon really is in need of a lot of trees right now.

Sluffy wrote:

I rather think you don't have much of an audience on this one Bob, sorry.



It did actually catch my eye that if he paid 100k for just 0.1% of the club which thus would value the club at £100m and thought that can't be right, but I wasn't interested enough to check out what was going on.

I see you mention that it's in fact for just 0.0075% which would value the club at (unless I've done my sums wrong) something like £1,300,000.000 (£1.3bn).

Something doesn't sound right or I've messed up somewhere but either way there's not a lot anyone on here can do.

I somehow doubt though that Vince will find neither a buyer or anyone to loan anything like that amount against the clubs assets at that sort of sum!

But I guess with all those fires the Amazon really is in need of a lot of trees right now.

Sorry Sluffy. When you get into tiny tiny percentages those damned decimal points waver about a bit late at night after a wee dram or two.

Leaving out the percentages, £100K has bought 0.0007458 of FGR, valuing the business at £13.4m, roughly the amount of money lost to date. 

The shares aren't worth a dime actually but its a novel approach to share valuation. The more you lose, the more the shares are worth but you can see the kind of 'thinking' that leads to that kind of outcome. Profits and dividends are anathema and losses aren't really losses; they are 'investments'. You just need to keep finding dilly daydreams to 'invest'

Try explaining how it works to Wiggin fans.

I see our hero invested in a new outfit for his recent interview on SkySports News. Dressed to impress the 59 year-old Vince teamed patchwork blue denim jeans with a black hooded puffa gilet and shocking pink sneakers. Looked quite the part, he did.

Nice pictures of Sue Barker with her dogs in the Mail today with a few comments about her removal, replacement and you know who deciding that he should be the news breaker.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-8763191/Sue-Barker-seen-time-AXED-host-Question-Sport.html

It's been a tired old show for twenty odd years. I stopped watching when it became a scripted comedy vehicle for laddish ex sportsmen with nothing better to do.
The change has probably come too late, but at least they're making an effort. I've got a list of BBC presenters who need the chop, but I'll keep it to myself for now.

Unless I'm doing something wrong £100k for 0.00075% value's the business massively more than £13.4m

Think of it this way if he's spent £100k for 0.00075% then if he had paid double that he would then have  0.00150% of it, double that again (£400k) he's up to 0.00300%, double it yet again, (£800k) 0.00600% and again (£1.6m) for 0.01200% and so on...

So he would have spent a number of millions just to own 1% of the business, valuing the whole business a hundred times more than that!

If the business was valued at £13.4m and say I bought £1m of it, I would have bought 13.4% of it so a tenth of that (£100k) would be 1.34% would it not.

Not that I've got a spare £100k with a daughter who spends money faster than I could earn it.  She is though environmentally aware and business naive like most her generation and I could see how people could well fete Vance for his image of being a 'green' businessman rather than look to understand how doggedly he's built his fortune on the back of it as such.

People tend only to see what is put in front of them and accept it as being so - you only have to look at all the conspiracy theories and how they spread like wildfire on social media and how even many people with professions (and you would have thought had a brain in their head), believe them too!

That's how it is theses days, probably was so in our days too but without the internet being available back then, being not so immediate or widespread.

As they say, 'there's one born every minute' and as WC Fields said 'never give a sucker an even break' and add to it social media, then is it any wonder people tend not to question what goes on for fear of being ridiculed and out of step with everyone else - look at the shit we endured for simply pointing out how Anderson in his actions of running a business that is close to or at insolvency actually wasn't raping and pillaging the club as the vast majority believed (and many still do!).

Sometimes I wonder if it's worth speaking up and doing the right thing, I imagine for someone younger and not financial secure like we are, who do live their lives on social media like their generation seem to do, standing against the crowd knowing you are right and they are under the wrong illusions, must be an incredibly hard thing to do and not a price worth paying for most of them - and I couldn't blame them for keeping their heads down instead.

Guess that's why we live in the world we now do!

Hasbro has released its new Noel Edmonds action figure. Quite a few years ago he said that he wasnt going to pay his TV Licence, and I wonder if he ever did. They say he lives in New Zealand now. I wish him well.

sunlight wrote:Hasbro has released its new Noel Edmonds action figure. Quite a few years ago he said that he wasnt going to pay his TV Licence, and I wonder if he ever did. They say he lives in New Zealand now. I wish him well.

Can't say I was ever a Noel Edmonds fan. Always struck me as  another smarmite character but not to those who disagreed with him.