Short answer: A US gallon has a different volume to an Imperial gallon.

Longer answer: Imperial units are part of the Imperial System of Units. In Imperial, like metric, there is a relativel small set of preferred units. In practice this means that engineers in the UK have a much smaller book of conversion factors than a US engineer.

You can see the cease and desist letter here. https://louisbarclay.notion.si...

IANAL but this looks like a load of complete BS. They don't give any grounds for the complaint and make a load of ludicrous demands.

One of demands looks very much like restraint of trade. You "... will not in the future offer, transfer, market, sell, or offer to sell any services related to Facebook or Instagram".

I've a horrible feeling that you're absolutely right about the causes of the Gulf War.

There was so much FUD about Iraq and the reasons for war. I don't think we can ever be sure what the motivations really were but I'm pretty sure they weren't honourable.

In the UK a contract cannot override the law. You cannot sign away your rights even if you want to.

Taxes such as the UK Digital Services Tax are a reaction to the fact that the current tax consensus isn't working any more. At the moment we have an agreement that companies can pay their corporation tax in any country as long as they pay it _somewhere_. The problem is that companies are increasingly finding ways to avoid paying any corporation tax at all. This isn't too much of a problem as long as they pay a reasonable amount of labour and sales taxes. Unfortunately, online advertising etc don't attract any these taxes in the EU or UK.

These taxes are an attempt to redress the balance. Note that they're pretty focused. The Digital Sales Tax only applies to that part of a companies turnover which doesn't attract sales tax and which is derived from local sales. It doesn't affect small companies and it doesn't apply to companies that pay a reasonable amount of corporation tax.

I really hope the US doesn't make a big deal of this. There is a widespread feeling in Europe that Amazon etc are not paying their fair share of tax. The problem isn't going to go away. I hope we can settle on a new consensus where there's less incentive to export profit without paying tax in the country where the sale took place.

Which laws do you have in mind?

As far as I know, the companies involved are operating in accordance with EU and UK law. If they weren't they'd have been shut down by now.

I believe you're mistaken. The herd immunity threshold for measles is generally considered to be around 94%. The outbreaks that have occurred in the US and Wales have all taken place in areas where the vaccination rate was lower than that. https://www.who.int/immunizati...

Note that the threshold depends on the level of immunity that people have and how the disease is transmitted. The threshold level varies from one disease to another. It can be a successful strategy for one disease but not another.

In short, herd immunity is very definitely a real thing but it might be either impossible or too dangerous for COVID.

Yes Amazon will pass the tax onto it's customers. However, companies who sell direct or via small platforms don't have to pay the new tax. So this increases competition by increasing costs for Amazon but not for the small players. It also keeps more tax revenue in the UK where the sales happened. If you live in the UK it's hard to find anything bad about this unless you insist on doing all your shopping on Amazon.

I think the Guardian article has succeeded in it's attempt to muddy the waters.

The UK (and some other jurisdictions) have introduced a new tax on revenue. They did this because a lot of multinationals are using strategies to export profits to other countries by creating fake costs.

This new tax applies only to large companies and only to "digital services". Amazon are now paying this tax. The small businesses are not required to pay the tax. Amazon has chosen to pass some of this new cost on to the small businesses.

The Guardian campaigned for this tax. Now it's being charged they're making it sound like Amazon like the opposite has happened.

IMO the headline for TFA is misleading and there is a large amount of spin in this article. Amazon aren't avoiding the new tax in any way, shape or form. The tax does not apply to goods sold online and was never intended to. It only applies to advertising and services provided by large websites. So Amazon's UK advertising revenue etc is taxed but their direct sales are not. This is what was intended by the tax.

The article basically boils down to "Amazon is paying the new tax and passing this new cost onto 3rd parties."

The Guardian has a track record of describing taxes as tax breaks for everyone who doesn't pay them. For example, there was an article that described VAT as a "subsidy for business" because businesses can reclaim VAT. There was another one that described the tax rules for pensions as handouts for rich people. This was a rather distorted way of describing the way that we are all allowed to pay into our pensions before tax. We pay the usual tax when we spend the pension. That way it's taxed only once.

I wish they'd stop doing this. It's not helpful.

The Great North Air Ambulance Service have posted a FAQ about this: https://www.greatnorthairambul...

That's certainly a concern.

GNAAS clearly do a lot of mountain rescue work and have a very clear idea of the risks of operating helicopters in hill country. The mountain rescue teams they operate with will have a really good understanding of the problems of walking in these hills in poor weather. I'm sure that between them they'll make a very good risk assessment. I think that if GNAAS go ahead with this it will tell us that they've found a way to operate the suit in a safe fashion.

About 10 years ago I was on holiday in Scotland. Dounreay had already been dismantled but they had a visitor's centre open. We dropped in to look around and have a cup of tea. By the time I left, I was incredibly angry and convinced that nuclear power in it's current form is a really bad idea.

I wasn't angry with the staff at the visitor's centre; I was angry with the people who'd worked at Dounreay in the past. It was primarily a research site. The research produced a certain amount of high level waste. Now they could have disposed of it in some sort of thoughtful manner but instead they used "The Hole".

Dounreay is perched on a sea cliff. At some point, they'd drilled a shaft down to sea level and tunneled out to sea so they could get lots of nice cold sea water. The shaft is about 65m deep. They didn't need it any more so they blocked off the tunnel to the sea. Then someone thought, how about we just chuck stuff in this nice hole we have?

They didn't keep any records of what went in. They didn't pack the material in any sort of fashion. They didn't stop the highly reactive metals from meeting the corrosive sea water. Eventually the hole filled up. What to do? The answer was to drop a massive concrete block on the stuff in the hole to compact it. That worked a treat. They threw more stuff in.

One day the shaft blew up.

So now, the clean up job consists of trying to remove mangled pieces of highly radioactive material from a 65m shaft without triggering another hydrogen explosion or creating a nuclear reaction. That's the job that going to take decades.

So that's why I'm angry. There's nothing wrong with nuclear power itself. The problem is that you have pointy-haired managers and scientists who are dying of curiosity in charge of it. These people have to handle tons of material that must be accounted for with milligram precision. It's a recipe for disaster. If we can create nuclear reactors that don't need this level of care and attention then I'll be all for it.

For more info about the explosion see: https://www.newscientist.com/a...

Several reasons spring to mind:
1) It's perched on the edge of a tall sea cliff
2) It's about as far away from any electricity consumers as it's possible to get in the UK
3) There are other sites already in use that are more suitable