Avoid-inate

[green_amber]

Intersting things you find out while reading The Times at lunchtime..

1. Jack Davenport from This Life is married to Michelle Gomez, the insane Scottish one from Green Wing!!

2. The government is thinking of taxing private use for email and web made of computers at work by taxpayers (thinks: how the fuck are they going to enforce that one without imposing blanket monitorig requirements on employers in breachof ECHR rights of privacy??)

3. The finals of a major surfing competition are being held in.. Thurso!!! spikeiowa wins!!

4. Also, a really funny Dr Who review (Actually Google makes it pretty clear CM is a huge DT fan. Not any relation to Dylan, I suppose?)

Comments

[andrewducker]

What exactly are they going to tax? And by "the government is thinking" do they mean "Legislation has been drafted." or "Some minor official, when asked to think of 15 new ways of raising taxes, added this one on at the end because they couldn't think of anything better."

Because it's usually the latter that The Times reports as "EU about to tell you how long your arms can be."

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

:-)
I never read the Times so I wouldn't know! It was all that was left in cafe Nero!

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

"The Treasury has played down the extent of the changes. However, the Finance Bill, to be debated in the House of Commons tomorrow, makes clear that both employers and employees will now be taxed if they use office computers for personal reasons, such as surfing the web or sending e-mails to friends, unless their personal use is “not significant”. "

It's because they're giving some kind of new tax relief replacing the Home Computer Initiative. I remeber hearing complaints on the radio post the Budget so they've obviously cobbled this together damn quick.

[andrewducker]

Aaaah, they're sayng that employers can get tax-free computers, but if those PCs are actually for personal use then they have to pay tax on them.

So not "You'll have to pay 5p every time you send an email", which is what I originally misunderstood it as...

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Yeh - but it still seems to imply a need for a lot of monitoring/logging..

[andrewducker]

True.

Of course, any medium/large sized organisation already does that, for fear of employees spending all day surfing the web...

[numbat.livejournal.com]

I expect they'll just legislate to have all relevant computers recalled so they can be fitted with slots for a credit card. Then all you have to do is stick in the credit card before you start to surf.

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

That really is a rather good review, isn't it?

[estimate-lad.livejournal.com]

At the risk of sounding like a know-it-all, the Highland's surfing competition doesn't surprise me. Thurso has one of the best (and coldest) reef breaks in the whole of Europe.