forestboy1978

You peaked my interest so I also did a bit of research.... It sounds impressive until you find that no.1 Middle Eastern university ranks 145 in the world. No.2 - 207th No. 10 - 572nd and so on and so forth. Factoring in the sheer number of universities provided by even quite small nations it is unsurprising that the top 100 across an entire continent is in the top 20%. UK is tiny and we have 3 in the top 100 which is probably the top 1%. Frankly it's a terrible statistic that at a glance sounds impressive but upon close evaluation entirely disproves the argument you're trying to make.

Top handle on a shotgun to aim from the hip and control kick back is sexy! OMG the Zombie apocalypse yearning child in me wants one lol

Fair enough :-)

Kind of! Churchill was indeed racist and so were 90% of Europeans in the 1940s I would bet and that takes weight away from my point indeed. However, his statement still wasn't racist, his predispositions are neither here nor there.

OK you are correct. It was a cavalier paragraph and you were pedantically accurate where as he was not. I would still infer his meaning to be what I alluded to before about the disproportionally less world changing inventions from the middle east compared to the secular and Christian west.

I think the point he was trying to make was not that they didn't invent a single thing. That would be absurd! It was that the number of influences were disproportionately low over the last several centuries. We can dress this up however we like, it's the reality. The question is why! And that question is important IMO, and its answer is important. Its answer is the reason why it is illegal to burn a Quran but perfectly legal to burn a bible in the UK. It's the exact same reason that a 20 year old kid was imprisoned for 2 years, as I recall, for putting a bacon sandwich on a mosque door handle, also in the UK. That turned out to be a death sentence for him btw. People need to stop dressing up Islam and call it for what it is. That being a inculcating, subjugating, totalitarian doctrine. It has no place in a free thinking, free speaking modern democracy. As progressive as we all like to think we are in our openness to other cultures, we will be walking backwards 100+ years if it flourishes! Having that perception is not racist, it's reality, and it is certainly not preferential or self serving thinking. It wasn't racist when Winston Churchill declared it and it's not racist now!

Though I love coffee and it has had an effect on society I don't compare it to the xray or the internet or photography etcetera. The same as I don't compare cocaine alkaloid to them.

Well I had a look through. Accounting for the fact that there are billions of people in the middle east I was decidedly unimpressed. Aside from the telescope and a few others which in the case of the telescope I could have sworn it was Galileo but I guess Islam wiki disagrees. Not saying they are wrong, but they will be biased. Who knows. Still a poultry sum of not really world changing inventions. 1000 upon 1000 of inventions could be sited from the other side of the world though. A disproportionate number relating to population disparity.

Entirely beside the point. I'm not making that argument at all! I'm talking about world wide society altering inventions that can be irrefutably proven. And not coffee!

Wow, amazing in that ENTIRE list not 1 of those can be incontrovertibly proven. Let's get real here.... We're not talking about what's written in some scroll somewhere by someone, some-when. We're talking about tangible inventions that we know who invented them, we know the name, the location etcetera, for an absolute fact.

It's cos the ideology of Islam is so damn suppressive of freedom of thought that those who do have inspiration can't cultivate it out of fear of it being seen as against God. They are basically still back where Christianity was 500+ years ago.

Yeah to me it makes perfect sense to have the VAT at a low threshold so the playing field is levelled fully and all customers expect to pay it 99% of the time. Perhaps not 5k but maybe 20k giving absolute startups a few months or a year to get on their feet before they start paying VAT. A tiny little edge if you will.

I think he meant it's neutral entirely from a tax point of view, not a revenue point of view. I would guess that Hire company A could be not VAT registered and hire out to Tree company B who is VAT registered and benefit from having machinery on hand and whilst company B is not needing said machinery company A has the ability to hire out to whoever. Company B could also hire out at a discounted rate of some sort and pass this cost on to the customer and then pay their VAT. Sounds overly complicated though when you could just commit to the one company and put all revenue into that company and bite the bullet on VAT.

Nice place to work if you can find it. I'm half Spanish and have lived in the south. Good luck

Lol. OK fair enough I'll take that!

Why is that then? Too abrasive for your delicate sensibilities?

Are you trying to tell me that you can work at the same speed as a custom outfitted garage with compressed tools to hand and plenty of space and a hydraulic ramp? BS

Probably less than what you could have earn't in a day minus the cost of parts. Garage would do all that in half a day and if you know them you'll get parts for not much more than you paid. Of course if you've only got 1 vehicle then it's a problem but if you have another vehicle available you're better off working IMHO.

Fair enough! I don't know much about mechanics so I stick to what I do know. Besides, modern vehicles need computers for diagnosis or certainly tools I just don't have. If I ran a defender I might think differently.

Yeah I take it to my local who have a test centre on site. I trust them and have used them for years so it's not a hassle. I wouldn't consider taking it anywhere that don't do repairs and test in the same establishment and never have. It's a total non issue for me.

Nope! I'm suggesting take it for it's service and MOT at the same time. I just give my vehicles a full service once a year and then MOT them. Usually there are few or no problems. Just did my last one and it passed with zero advisories. But if it needs something it needs something.

Why don't you do what everyone else does and get it tested for MOT and fixed at the same time and then passed?

My accountant told me that if I was to run 2 businesses from my 1 address, even if 1 was a partnership with someone else and the other a limited company in my name it could get tricky proving against artificial separation if it came down to court. You might win if the businesses are completely different but you have to have 2 offices, 2 phone lines, 2 computers, 2 different vehicles etcetera etcetera. There can be zero cross over or you will risk having to combine the 2 for VAT purposes. Don't quote me on this but it still might be worth chancing as, as I understand it VAT can't be backdated so if you did get found out you'd only have to start VATing both businesses from that point onwards. NOT 100% on that though. Regardless, I found another way.

Yep, we're on exactly the same page. I charge what I charge to stick it out to the bitter end and do it properly cutting no corners.

Mick is absolutely right. It's called artificial separation and it's a government scam if you ask me in a lot of circumstances. For example I have another business which is 1000% different to my fencing business. Couldn't be more different if you wanted it to be and I had to set it up in Hongkong officially avoid both businesses VAT registering. My fiancée is a pharmacist and she wants to make soaps and things like that on the side. This also will contribute towards VAT, even if the business is hers, in her name and is entirely different in every way.