standards which fulfil the following criteria:

• are maintained through a collaborative and transparent decision-making process that is independent of any individual supplier and that is accessible to all interested parties;

• are adopted by a specification or standardisation organisation, or a forum or consortium with a feedback and ratification process to ensure quality;

• are published, thoroughly documented and publicly available at zero or low cost;

• as a whole have been implemented and shared under different development approaches and on a number of platforms from more than one supplier, demonstrating interoperability and platform/vendor independence;

• owners of patents essential to implementation have agreed to licence these on a royalty free and non-discriminatory basis for implementing the standard and using or interfacing with other implementations which have adopted that same standard. Alternatively, patents may be covered by a non-discriminatory promise of non-assertion. Licences, terms and conditions must be compatible with implementation of the standard in both proprietary and open source software. These rights should be irrevocable unless there is a breach of licence conditions.

http://consultation.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/openstandards/chapter-1/

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“The proposed General Anti-Avoidance Rule [UK] [...] attacks arrangements with one or more of these qualities:

(a) arrangements that would result in receipts being taken into account for tax purposes which are significantly less than the true economic income, profit or gain;

(b) arrangements that would result in deductions being taken into account for tax purposes which are significantly greater than the true economic cost or loss;

(c) arrangements that includes a transaction at a value significantly different from market value, or otherwise on non-commercial terms;

(d) arrangements, or any element of it, inconsistent with the legal duties of the parties to it;

(e) arrangements including a person, a transaction, a document or significant terms in a document, which would not be included if the arrangement were not designed to achieve an abusive tax result;

(f) arrangements that omit a person, a transaction, a document or significant terms in a document, which would not be omitted if the arrangement were not designed to achieve an abusive tax result; and

(g) arrangements that include the location of an asset or a transaction, or of the place of residence of a person, which would not be so located if the arrangement were not designed to achieve an abusive tax result.” http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2011/11/21/making-aggressive-tax-avoidance-illegal-what-a-new-gaar-might-do/

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MI6 to Rest of World: Cyber War is On. Anyone, Anywhere is Fair Game. Arm yourselves. “[...] it makes it OK for any government agency to target our servers and the tone of the article suggests moral impunity for government agencies engaging in these attacks. If it’s OK for British intelligence to hack (most likely) US based servers then it’s OK for Chinese officials to attack an ad network based in the USA if they run an ad for a dissident website.

At first glance this looks like a cute prank. But this attack may spark the beginning of a global cyber war fought by government agencies and private contractors, the logical conclusion of which is an Iron Curtain descending on what was once an open and peaceful communication medium.” http://markmaunder.com/2011/cyber-war-is-on/

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Tax havens: the heart of the global economy “[...] tax havens have grown so fast in the era of globalization, since kind of the 1970s, that they have now become right—they are now right at the heart of the global economy and are absolutely huge. I mean, there are 10—anywhere between 10 and 20 trillion U.S. dollars sitting offshore at the moment. Half of world trade is processed in one way or another through tax havens. It’s all around us, and it’s absolutely huge. [...]” http://www.australia-offshore.com/offshore-banking-and-tax-havens-have-become-the-heart-of-global-economy/

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“There is a danger that time is running out, is the technological genie already out of the ethical bottle, embarking us all on an incremental and involuntary journey towards a Terminator-like reality?”

The UK Approach to Unmanned Aircraft Systems – Joint Doctrine Note 2/2011 http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/DDE54504-AF8E-4A4C-8710-514C6FB66D67/0/20110401JDN211UASv1WebU.pdf

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Blown with the Wind:

The nature of wind output has been obscured by reliance on “average output” figures. Analysis of hard data from National Grid shows that wind behaves in a quite different manner from that suggested by study of average output derived from the Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROCs) record, or from wind speed records which in themselves are averaged.

It is clear from this analysis that wind cannot be relied upon to provide any significant level of generation at any defined time in the future. There is an urgent need to re-evaluate the implications of reliance on wind for any significant proportion of our energy requirement.

Analysis of UK Wind Power Generation, November 2008 to December 2010 https://www.jmt.org/assets/pdf/wind-report.pdf

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Don’t Tax the Rich “[...] some on the left are better at posturing than thinking.” http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2011/03/the-intelligent-question-posed-by-saturdays-march-is-what-alternative-is-there-to-osbornes-spending-cuts-theres-on.html

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The UK national identity card: “During the period 2002–2010 the UK government of the time attempted to relate the rights and entitlements of citizenship with a standard identifier for all British citizens and its representation in a national identity smartcard. The scheme to introduce this identity token for all UK citizens was finally abandoned in December 2010. This teaching case describes the history of this endeavour as promoted by the UK government and its agencies. It also describes the reaction to these plans on the part of numerous other stakeholder groups within the UK. This is a rich case for examining a number of critical, contemporary issues of relevance to Information Systems theory and practice that are occurring worldwide. On the one hand, the attempt to introduce such an identity token brought into focus the critical role that identity and its management plays as supporting infrastructure in areas such as e-Government and e-Business. On the other, the introduction of a national identifier and associated token raised major challenges to data protection, data privacy and public trust in the information governance of this nation state. Indeed, such difficulties constituted a major part of the rationale for the abandonment of the project.” http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jittc/journal/vaop/ncurrent/pdf/jittc20113a.pdf

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Court confirms: IP addresses aren’t people “[...] Just because some lawyer cites an Internet Protocol (IP) address where illegal file sharing may have taken place, that doesn’t mean that the subscriber living there necessarily did the dirty deed. Or is responsible for others who may have done it. [...]” http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/court-confirms-ip-addresses-arent-people-and-p2p-lawyers-know-it.ars

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Original: http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/speeches-and-transcripts/2011/02/pms-speech-at-munich-security-conference-60293

Cf.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12371994

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“After the effective nationalisation of the private pension schemes in Hungary and Poland last week, only a handful of countries have large pension reserves. Think of the UK, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark. [...] The European commission should first ask itself the question: whose money is in the pension funds? These are national funds, paid for by employers and employees. It is not government money. It is not European money. This in itself is more than sufficient reason for the commission not to extend its power to national pension systems. Only for cross-border workers (a tracking service) can an exception be made. [...]

The temptations in Europe are very large. The Dutch pension sector alone controls more than €750bn ($991bn), about as much as is available in the Eurocrisis fund, if the maximum can ever be used. But this money cannot and will not be brought under European control. The Dutch parliament unanimously approved my recommendation to that effect.

I count on support from fellow nations and MPs to rely far less on European pensions and money. ”

http://www.cda.nl/Omtzigt/Actueel/Nieuws/2010/12/49/Hands_off_our_pensions.aspx

Cf.: http://euractiv.com/en/euro-finance/poland-strikes-pension-deal-with-eu-news-500531

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Respect:)

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Parts 2-5: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%22Britain’s+Trillion+Pound+Horror+Story%22

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Cf.:

http://hopisen.wordpress.com/2010/11/02/the-lord-the-cabinet-minister-foundation-x-and-a-mysterious-5-billion/

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2010/11/03/392971/the-parliamentary-foundation-x-files/

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/11/03/conspiracy-theory-of-the-day-foundation-x-edition/

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“[...] in many respects the Rolling Stones are like any other large business. They are global, they pay taxes (grudgingly), and they litigate. The band has a P&L and budgets, and accountants, and lawyers, and bankers, and investments, and software, and hardware. “They know what they’re doing,” says Barry Diller, a Jagger confidant. “That’s what separates them from any other band.” [...]

Connected to the Stones partnership and Prince Rupert is a group of companies that include Promotour, Promopub, Promotone, and Musidor, each dedicated to a particular aspect of the business. This family of companies is based in the Netherlands, which has tax advantages for foreign bands. When the group isn’t touring, these companies employ only a few dozen employees. At the high-water mark of a tour, on the night the band is playing, say, Giants Stadium, the Stones may employ more than 350. Backstage the enterprise resembles a flourishing startup, with dozens of fast-moving junior employees in black T-shirts running around to make sure the IPO, er, the show, gets off without a hitch. It looks crazy, but it works. Perhaps Keith sums it up best: “With our business, who really knows what’s what. You go and look at Lake Superior, and you say, ‘Look at all that water, and that’s just the top!’” [...]

The Stones are famously tax-averse. I broach the subject with Keith in Camp X-Ray, as he calls his backstage lair. There is incense in the air and Ronnie Wood drifts in and out–it is, in other words, a perfect venue for such a discussion. “The whole business thing is predicated a lot on the tax laws,” says Keith, Marlboro in one hand, vodka and juice in the other. “It’s why we rehearse in Canada and not in the U.S. A lot of our astute moves have been basically keeping up with tax laws, where to go, where not to put it. Whether to sit on it or not. We left England because we’d be paying 98 cents on the dollar. We left, and they lost out. No taxes at all. I don’t want to screw anybody out of anything, least of all the governments that I work with. We put 30% in holding until we sort it out.” No wonder Keith chooses to live not in London, or even New York City, but in Weston, Conn.”

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2002/09/30/329302/index.htm

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