Vince Cable lost the plot - VAT

How to tell when a politician is lying - his lips are moving.

That reminds me of the old viola joke:

How can you tell when a viola is being played out of tune? The bow is moving.

He had me quite convinced also - I guess they are pretty much the same. As soon as they acquire power, their only objective is to retain it.

In any political coalition there is going to have to be compromises on both sides. The Tories have compromised in relation to the Proportional Representation referendum, for example. They have agreed to hold it despite being vehemently opposed to PR.

What a bummer: they are vehemently opposed to PR and so do not want to ask the people their view - and now they have been "forced" to.

Yep - you can't change a Tory - so in touch with people who have never had it so good.

(How many of the Tory cabinet are common or garden millionaires?)

Not wanting something but agreeing to a consultation as a compromise is not quite the same as wanting something but then not only abandoning it but pretending you didn't really want it that badly in the first place, are not quite the same. No, I have no idea what the Tories would do if the referendum brings a positive result. AIUI the kind of PR that is being proposed isn't that radical anyway. Tories have abandoned several of their manifesto promises anyway, but I don't see them saying that they didn't really mean it that much in the first place. The difference between Tory and Lib Dem IMV is that most people knew what they would get with Tory, but they thought they would get something else with Lib Dem. Quite natural since LibDem have not been given a sniff of power until now. I hope people have learned their lesson.

I can't see the difference between Cameron and Clegg - they look the same, sound the same, and by golly they appear to be exactly the same.

Nevertheless, this was at the forefront of their election campaign, so they should stick to it. They must obviously have done their sums that it was a feasible standpoint; i.e. London bridges wouldn't fall down because of freezing the tuition fees. So why did they have to sell out? What is the point of an election campaign if election promises can't be trusted. No wonder that fewer people bother to vote.

That's all fine and dandy.

If you've been forced to compromised you say so (and then you abstain in the vote - as the coalition agreement allows them to do).

But to spout a load of waffle about the fact that you now believe this is the policy "best" for students is hypocrisy

tim

Maybe, but I think it is a difficult job and when they get into office a lot of them probably genuinely find out that they can't do what they really intended.

It's easy to say what the government should do or should have done, we can all do that, but when faced with the same limited budget and difficult choices I bet it isn't so easy. I think this is especially true for the libdems at the moment as they are the smaller party in a coalition and there is no money anyway.

You are obviously of generous nature, Gareth. What the LibDems *could* have done was stand up to the Tories and said, no, this was our key manifesto promise and we are not giving in. Tory would have been made to look like a bunch of money-grubbers, while LD would look principled. The risk of that is that Tory could stand ground and eventually trigger another election, in which LD might have got a drubbing (though less of a drubbing than they are going to get now they have betrayed their core voters on several issues).

Do women climax whilst playing the Cello..?

""I can't see the difference between Cameron and Clegg - they look the same, sound the same, and by golly they appear to be exactly the same.""

Ah ! a skewed reference to Robertson's jam.

Little different to Blair

So has HMV and Amazon UK. Probably others too but I'm not aware of them

I do not think it is arcane at all.

The Channel Islands are outside the VAT regime of the EU. Consequently imports to end users are treated the same for VAT purposes as they would be for goods coming from anywhere else outside the VAT area. In the UK, it has been decided that the cost of collecting VAT on goods valued at less than £18 would exceed the benefit and so that threshold has been set - the maximum allowed in EU law.

Generally speaking , it is not worth merchants routing goods outside the EEC to exploit the threhold because of the shipping costs. But in the case of things like CD's and DVD's, because of their weight and shape, and the postal costs, it is worth doing it via the Channel Islands.

The present government clearly have a policy of introducing revenue increasing measures that will actually cost more to implement than they yield, so I would have thought that they would have jumped at this opportunity.

There is at least one company that's now delivering CDs and DVDs from Switzerland, which is even crazier. Stuff gets transported to Switzerland and then mailed back to the UK. It is great for the environment.

Only if the bow slips.

He probably speaks very highly of you.......