KentVillan

Looks real to me?

He has very strong boasting about sex to the boys energy

Imagining all the high fives flying round hurrr hurrr hurrr hurrr

How many MPs own businesses? It's hard to find the figures, but it would definitely be a fairly small minority, even in the Conservative Party. Tangentially, Open Democracy reckons 115 MPs are landlords (of which 90 are Conservatives!). I get that we want MPs to come from all walks of life, and having businesspeople in parliament is a good thing, but you could probably make an exception for certain types of share holdings where it's clearly a legitimate interest as a company director. I'm talking more about publicly listed companies, where govt decisions can move share prices and create significant profits for shareholders. The current system clearly isn't strong enough, as loads of interests aren't properly declared, and even the declared interests aren't easily searchable. The whole thing relies too much on a vaguely defined sense of "fair play".

Pretty much everyone owns shares of some variety, but I'd imagine most are already investing in tracker funds rather than individual stocks. If MPs were obliged to only invest in diversified index funds, they'd still make money from stock market moves, but wouldn't have any specific interest in specific companies. Seems like quite a neat solution to the corruption problem, which shouldn't get in the way of honest MPs having investments. Like I have no problem with Rishi Sunak having say £100m invested in the stock market, but if £10m of it is invested in a specific healthcare company that is competing for govt contracts... that's where it starts to stink, and just "declaring the interest" doesn't really help. It should be banned. We really want to avoid getting towards the US situation, where representatives buy / sell enormous values of big tech / defence stocks ahead of govt contract announcements, seemingly with impunity. The financialisation of the British economy and the British political class will take us in a similar direction if we don't block it early. Definitely something Labour could take a look at, as they're much less exposed than the Tories.

Normally I'd agree, but unlike in the US where they're all playing the stock market with insider info, in the UK it still seems to be a minority of MPs doing this.

I wonder if we could introduce a system where elected representatives, senior civil servants, and their immediate families are only allowed to invest in a selection of approved UK tracker funds. Means they can still hold stocks, and gives them some skin in the game in terms of the overall performance of the UK economy, while not having any special interest in specific companies winning govt contracts. Would this be workable?

The people in the photo probably don’t think the famous people are appallingly awful - most likely local party volunteers and supporters?

Yes well said, and I don’t think that’s an opinion, but a pretty factually grounded assessment of how elections usually play out. Most voters don’t pay much attention to the fine detail at all, and those that do, mostly pay attention immediately before an election. The idea, for example, that Lisa Nandy’s comments on Catalonia will have any significant impact whatsoever on the next election in Scotland seems pretty fanciful. Most people aren’t even aware of her existence, let alone what she said once to Andrew Neil in an interview.

If you like, but I do disagree in that I think the unionist landslide is quite possible because of the nature of FPTP elections. The SNP vote doesn't need to fall back very much vs Labour for a lot of seats to change hands. It was the ~10-15% gain they made post 2010 that really turned Scotland into a single-party state. As that falls back, I think we'll see a return to Scotland being the old mix of the four parties.

The SNP got 31% of the regional vote in 2007, very narrowly beating Labour. At the 2010 UK general election, Labour won 41 seats and the SNP won 6. It wasn't until the 2011 Scottish Parliament election that the SNP really started routinely dominating Scottish politics. Of course it's not entirely an anti-Tory movement, but the SNP's ability to dominate Scottish politics 2011-2021 was hugely influenced by what was happening south of the border.

I doubt he has enormous personal appeal, but Labour have surged in polls in the North of England and Scotland since he took over.

I think the SNP were just surfing a wave of Labour implosion + Etonian populism + Brexit, all of which are starting to lose their salience among voters (to varying extents). For a long time, Sturgeon was able to present herself as the only grownup in the room, and the protector of Scotland from the populist Brexit Covid Killer cult. That helped to gloss over the fact that the SNP has no coherent ideology or economic plan for Scotland beyond romantic nationalism. The prospect of helping England to turf out the Tories in Westminster via a Labour majority could be very attractive to a lot of Scots at the next election, which is showing already in the polls - they've added about 10-15 pts since late 2021 (from ~18% to ~32% for General Election voting intention). SNP infighting has obviously contributed to all of this, but I think a lot of bigger forces are at play that are beyond the SNP's control, and we're seeing a return to the natural order of UK politics, with Scotland being a Labour stronghold.

It was a bullshit penalty anyway. It's the Saliba injury that has done for Arsenal. Holding is a massive downgrade.

I had no idea, thank you

The other thing xG doesn't show is chances that were ruled out for offside or didn't result in a shot. For example, the millimetre offside for Watkins is completely excluded, even though that was basically a massive chance that was just a *slightly* mistimed run / pass away from being a goal. It's clear if you watch the game back that although Newcastle had chances, we were the better side.

xG isn’t poppycock, it’s just really overused and misunderstood by people who think it’s some kind of “truth”. What xG shows you is how many shots each team got off in dangerous areas. It doesn’t tell you who was in goal, whether it was a goalscorer or a centre back who took the shot, what the match situation was when it happened, etc. It’s a useful way of understanding the battle, that’s all. People think it shows who the “real” winner was… that’s the bit that’s poppycock.

I voted McGinn MOTM because I hadn’t seen the game and wanted to see the results. Now I’ve watched it and it’s very clearly Watkins, but lots of great performances across the team. Probably one of the best team performances I’ve seen from a Villa side in my lifetime. UTV

Feel sorry for the lino in the Liverpool game. He’s reacting to someone else encroaching aggressively on his personal space. Not a great reaction from him, but a very natural one. Robertson a clearing in the woods for acting like he’s been sucker punched.

Our last 7 games have been against teams currently below us. Still a great achievement to beat 6 of them, but it will be this next run of games where we get either a reality check or a genuine indication that we can keep climbing the table. IMO we are probably the 7th best side in the division atm, so objectively you’d expect us to drop a few points, but Emery is a genius at dismantling a good side so maybe something special will happen. A win against an in form Newcastle would really set us up for European qualification.

Old but still gets me every time

Does that still apply when the gift is paid from a company account?

ironically given the Substack thing. Also, wonder how Musk applies this argument to kiddie porn

What’s the deal with Jed? Is he 4th choice keeper now? Always seems like a top pro but just wondering what he gets out of being so far down the pecking order when there’s a useful player there at Championship level

I am not an accountant so better finding someone who can answer from a position of authority. However, I have to do a self assessment every year, so have been in a similar position (nowadays it’s more complicated and I get an accountant to do it). I think you will have to fill out a self assessment for FY2023/24 (as he paid you today). Deadline for submitting that online will be 31 Jan 2025 I believe. Because it’s such a simple transaction, and the rest of your affairs are straightforward, you should definitely be able to do this yourself on the HMRC self assessment website. Just tuck away the amount you think you will owe (you can use a tax calculator to calculate tax for 2023/24 on your current salary, and then on your current salary + £2000 and the difference is the additional income tax). Fill out that form and they’ll confirm the amount you owe, which will be due in 2025. A couple of caveats - if your tax is £1000 or more, they usually ask for an additional payment (called a “payment on account”) which is sort of a prediction of your tax bill for the following tax year. Hopefully this won’t affect you. Also, I do have a horrible feeling that once you’ve found yourself in the self assessment process, you may have to do it again in subsequent years. There is a lot of information online about this. If you’re worried you could always find a cheap accountant who specialises in one man bands and people with side gigs, would probably cost you £150 to do the self assessment, but at least saves you the headache of getting it wrong. Hope that’s useful but definitely double check all of this with someone who knows their stuff, because tax is confusing and easy to get wrong. Will HMRC hunt you down? Highly unlikely. (Edit: I originally put wrong date for self assessment - you'll need to do it in 2025 for tax year 2023/24. Also @Spoony is right that the tax-free allowance for side gig trading of goods + services is £1000, so legally you would need to declare this. @rjw63is probably also right that nobody will ever know, but you'll have on your conscience that you defrauded the British taxpayer out of a few hundred quid, and you won't be able to sleep at night for the following 10 years, also you'll have admitted it on VT, and the government has spies here. Also, none of this is advice.)