Friday's rant

[Oldschoolsocks]

Let’s dance is a class song

[Peg Leg]

Player ratings. Utterly f*cking stupid.

Just saw an article for driver ratings at the Baku F1 race at the weekend. Seriously, driver ratings? Is that not the race result?

Not always no

For example, Verstappen drove a flawless race until, through no fault of his own, his tyre gave way and caused him to have a huge shunt with just five laps to go. And of course Hamilton, who also drove an almost flawless race until the final restart with two laps to go when he went full on attack but some brake setting was wrong and he ran straight on at the first corner and ended up finishing 15th. That's just two examples of drivers who it would be unfair to rate as 15th and 18th best.

So I have pretty much disappeared from the forum (and mostly the internet) since this smackdown and rediscovered my love of F1. It was all I cared about back when I used to relish my weekends kicking off with TGI Friday and eating half a pan of toast watching Eddie Irvine and Rubens Barrichello take a few podium finishes for Jordan.
You are completely right, although back then I don't think I fully understood that either. I've since watched the drive to survive series and am keeping abreast of the 2021 season. It is utterly captivating. Also, I needed to get away from my PC for a while... so eh, thanks Xan!!

[Oldschool]

We've all heard about Pandora's Box.
Now we're hearing about the paperwork she kept in the secret compartment in her box.
This should qualify as rant of the year based purely on the subject matter.
These people have been f^cking us all over and for quite a long time too.

[Ruckedtobits]

We've all heard about Pandora's Box.
Now we're hearing about the paperwork she kept in the secret compartment in her box.
This should qualify as rant of the year based purely on the subject matter.
These people have been f^cking us all over and for quite a long time too.

What we should actually hear about in this country is not the names or origins of the 800 Limited Partnerships who disguise ownership of assets and minimise or avoid taxation, but rather the list of Irish based and owned professional firms who facilitate the creation and administration of each one of these entities. Name and shame every Irish-based professional firm involved in these charades, legal and financial advisers, individuals (and their addresses) who act as "hall-door" Directors and the 'trustees' who are often the notional holders of assets.

Firms in fiduciary positions rely on their 'good names and brand value to maintain their income stream in a competitive world. Such firms involved in the activities covered by the Pandora Papers don't deserve any anonymity in these activities and should be spotlighted by the media and subject to full review by Central Bank & Office of Corporate Enforcement to ensure that the letter of every law is adhered to.

[The Doc]

We've all heard about Pandora's Box.
Now we're hearing about the paperwork she kept in the secret compartment in her box.
This should qualify as rant of the year based purely on the subject matter.
These people have been f^cking us all over and for quite a long time too.

What we should actually hear about in this country is not the names or origins of the 800 Limited Partnerships who disguise ownership of assets and minimise or avoid taxation, but rather the list of Irish based and owned professional firms who facilitate the creation and administration of each one of these entities. Name and shame every Irish-based professional firm involved in these charades, legal and financial advisers, individuals (and their addresses) who act as "hall-door" Directors and the 'trustees' who are often the notional holders of assets.

Firms in fiduciary positions rely on their 'good names and brand value to maintain their income stream in a competitive world. Such firms involved in the activities covered by the Pandora Papers don't deserve any anonymity in these activities and should be spotlighted by the media and subject to full review by Central Bank & Office of Corporate Enforcement to ensure that the letter of every law is adhered to.

I think you'll find all those firms did act within the law. You're proposing going after firms for acting legally.

The scandal with any of these revelations is not what was done but rather what is legal. It's the laws that need to change

[fourthirtythree]

Yup. What's legal is the real crime

[Oldschool]

So Whatapp etc took a six hour break yesterday.
An internal problem apparently.
That being the case why then was virtually every site inaccessible for a period of hours last night as well.
This site being an example.
Sounds to me like someone pulled the plug on internet access country wide.
Now who would do a thing like that and how.
Or was it just specific providers.
I'm with Vodafone.

[Ruckedtobits]

We've all heard about Pandora's Box.
Now we're hearing about the paperwork she kept in the secret compartment in her box.
This should qualify as rant of the year based purely on the subject matter.
These people have been f^cking us all over and for quite a long time too.

What we should actually hear about in this country is not the names or origins of the 800 Limited Partnerships who disguise ownership of assets and minimise or avoid taxation, but rather the list of Irish based and owned professional firms who facilitate the creation and administration of each one of these entities. Name and shame every Irish-based professional firm involved in these charades, legal and financial advisers, individuals (and their addresses) who act as "hall-door" Directors and the 'trustees' who are often the notional holders of assets.

Firms in fiduciary positions rely on their 'good names and brand value to maintain their income stream in a competitive world. Such firms involved in the activities covered by the Pandora Papers don't deserve any anonymity in these activities and should be spotlighted by the media and subject to full review by Central Bank & Office of Corporate Enforcement to ensure that the letter of every law is adhered to.

I think you'll find all those firms did act within the law. You're proposing going after firms for acting legally.

The scandal with any of these revelations is not what was done but rather what is legal. It's the laws that need to change

Legality is one thing and moral or ethical behaviour is another. The proposal was not "going after" such firms in any legal or illegal manner, merely that the media should bathe them in the spotlight that their behaviour undoubtedly deserves.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-58780561

The link above from the BBC Panorama Team describes not only the broad contents of the Pandora Papers but also briefly outlines what the material so disclosed is probably disguising.

Few if any of our legislators have any idea of how our various financial, company law and property law have been combined by clever people to facilitate purposes for which no legislation in Ireland was ever intended. To assert that it is the Laws that need to change is to totally misunderstand how the laws are manipulated to facilitate the abuses outlined in these Papers.

[FLIP]

So Whatapp etc took a six hour break yesterday.
An internal problem apparently.
That being the case why then was virtually every site inaccessible for a period of hours last night as well.
This site being an example.
Sounds to me like someone pulled the plug on internet access country wide.
Now who would do a thing like that and how.
Or was it just specific providers.
I'm with Vodafone.

Easy one to answer. How a computer turns www.facebook.com into an address it can understand and talk to is via Domain Name Services, DNS for short. Your ISP has one, and Facebook have their own which tells ISPs where they are. Facebook's fell over, so whenever anyone asked for Facebook all the DNS servers collectively say "I dunno". Then people try and refresh, and the webpages and apps themselves will try and contact home too, meaning these DNS servers are being bombarded and slow down. When these slow down, the internet slows down as a whole.. which then causes people and apps to get impatient and ask again, which exacerbates the problem.

Although this is only an issue when on the scale of something like Facebook falls over. And the issue was definitely on Facebooks end.

Tried to simplify it as much as I could.

[Oldschool]

So Whatapp etc took a six hour break yesterday.
An internal problem apparently.
That being the case why then was virtually every site inaccessible for a period of hours last night as well.
This site being an example.
Sounds to me like someone pulled the plug on internet access country wide.
Now who would do a thing like that and how.
Or was it just specific providers.
I'm with Vodafone.

Easy one to answer. How a computer turns www.facebook.com into an address it can understand and talk to is via Domain Name Services, DNS for short. Your ISP has one, and Facebook have their own which tells ISPs where they are. Facebook's fell over, so whenever anyone asked for Facebook all the DNS servers collectively say "I dunno". Then people try and refresh, and the webpages and apps themselves will try and contact home too, meaning these DNS servers are being bombarded and slow down. When these slow down, the internet slows down as a whole.. which then causes people and apps to get impatient and ask again, which exacerbates the problem.

Although this is only an issue when on the scale of something like Facebook falls over. And the issue was definitely on Facebooks end.

Tried to simplify it as much as I could.

Thanks for the explanation.
That's dumb enough for me.

[blockhead]

SKY News YouTube Report:
"The longest Facebook outage in living memory"

[LeRouxIsPHat]

Owen Keegan.

At least some incompetent people in power are charismatic and you can see how they fooled people, but there is nothing about this guy that makes sense to me. Just go away now please.

[hugonaut]

Owen Keegan.

At least some incompetent people in power are charismatic and you can see how they fooled people, but there is nothing about this guy that makes sense to me. Just go away now please.

Yeah, he's a prize pr*ck.

[Oldschool]

Those last two posts have touched on something that is at the core of a lot of what is wrong in this country.
Civil Servants are almost untouchable, know it and behave accordingly.
Take the recent example of Mcgahhy's resignation.
The offhand manner in which it was accepted by the head of the DOH is not acceptable.
The politicians cop a lot of abuse for a lot of cr@p that quite a few of these guys are responsible for.
Not absolving the politicians btw.
However one is left wondering how senior CSs are appointed.
How are they vetted, what kind aptitude tests etc have they sit.
And yes probably the whole recruitment system needs an overhaul but there is a serious culture issue.
I've had personal experience of two of these people in action.
They were obviously intelligent but in both cases they tried their utmost to block progress and one particularly odious @rsehole tried to railroad the conversation by basically trying to answer questions, put to us, instead of allowing us speak.
You go into a high power meeting, you have no experience, you feel intimidated and this f^cker takes advantage.
Luckily he was stopped but only after he'd tried to totally misrepresent the situation.
The public who pay these people's wage are entitled to value for money and we're not getting it, not even close.
It basically comes down to a group of self serving, self perpetuating group of people who think they can do whatever hey like and get away with it.
Our politicians need to identify this as a major obstacle to progress and start doing something about it.

[paddyor]

We've all heard about Pandora's Box.
Now we're hearing about the paperwork she kept in the secret compartment in her box.
This should qualify as rant of the year based purely on the subject matter.
These people have been f^cking us all over and for quite a long time too.

What we should actually hear about in this country is not the names or origins of the 800 Limited Partnerships who disguise ownership of assets and minimise or avoid taxation, but rather the list of Irish based and owned professional firms who facilitate the creation and administration of each one of these entities. Name and shame every Irish-based professional firm involved in these charades, legal and financial advisers, individuals (and their addresses) who act as "hall-door" Directors and the 'trustees' who are often the notional holders of assets.

Firms in fiduciary positions rely on their 'good names and brand value to maintain their income stream in a competitive world. Such firms involved in the activities covered by the Pandora Papers don't deserve any anonymity in these activities and should be spotlighted by the media and subject to full review by Central Bank & Office of Corporate Enforcement to ensure that the letter of every law is adhered to.

I think you'll find all those firms did act within the law. You're proposing going after firms for acting legally.

The scandal with any of these revelations is not what was done but rather what is legal. It's the laws that need to change

Counter point


Wihtout knowing anything about about the firms or entities involved I'm gonna guess it's MOPs and they won't care about being shamed. It's all well and good saying we need to legislate it away but there's no way to do this without impinging on other parts of the economy.

[ronk]

... but there's no way to do this without impinging on other parts of the economy.

Humbug. Tax evasion is a drag on the economy. The economic activity created on facilitators like accountants would mostly be diverted to useful productive economic activity which would create other returns.

It would impinge on vested interests.

[fourthirtythree]

... but there's no way to do this without impinging on other parts of the economy.

Humbug. Tax evasion is a drag on the economy. The economic activity created on facilitators like accountants would mostly be diverted to useful productive economic activity which would create other returns.

It would impinge on vested interests.

Yeah. Brass plate companies don't contribute to the economy. They do make a small number of Irish people very wealthy though.

[paddyor]

... but there's no way to do this without impinging on other parts of the economy.

Humbug. Tax evasion is a drag on the economy. The economic activity created on facilitators like accountants would mostly be diverted to useful productive economic activity which would create other returns.

It would impinge on vested interests.

No, what I mean is there's no way to just legislate it away without putting stringent limits on other economic activity. Which would be an actual drag on the economy unlike foreigners using investment vehicles in Ireland. I'm not sure how this stuff is a drag on the economy. GDPR is a pretty good example of this. Developed as idea to curtail big techs info monoloy it's proven wholly ineffective and is instead now interfereing in how sports clubs collect and maintainmembers info.

The economic activity created on facilitators like accountants would mostly be diverted to useful productive economic activity which would create other returns.

That's one theory. Another is that as you increase the AML or finreg stuff like FATCA and MIFID the industry would boom and fees would increase and it would suck in even more economic activity. Another is Domiciles would shift to some crown protectorate with the labour located in Dublin or elsewhere.

[paddyor]

... but there's no way to do this without impinging on other parts of the economy.

Humbug. Tax evasion is a drag on the economy. The economic activity created on facilitators like accountants would mostly be diverted to useful productive economic activity which would create other returns.

It would impinge on vested interests.

Yeah. Brass plate companies don't contribute to the economy. They do make a small number of Irish people very wealthy though.

They don't. But they don't create a drag on it either.

[Oldschool]

... but there's no way to do this without impinging on other parts of the economy.

Humbug. Tax evasion is a drag on the economy. The economic activity created on facilitators like accountants would mostly be diverted to useful productive economic activity which would create other returns.

It would impinge on vested interests.

Not sure all tax evasion is a drag on the economy.
In actual fact what I would describe as the black economy has a lot going for it.
By black economy I mean nixers.
The little man gets to have a little more disposable income and usually it circulates in the local economy.
The usually middle class man who's paying for the nixer gets a little more bang for his buck.
The net effect of this is that the middle man (the wasteful government and civil service ie the biggest drags on the economy) gets to waste a little less.