UKC

Mrs Prot, an avid reader of the Daily Mail when not perusing academic journals, sent me this link

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2948893/Labour-s-women-PINK-bus-dec...

Some genius (and also harsh but fair) spoofing on there, but Hattie has outdone them all with her "We've had lots of doctrinal discussions, such as: should we be all right with a male driver?" comment!

In reply to Olaf Prot:

Harriet Harman says it's "magenta". According to the Telegraph, Mrs Gloria De Piero MP (shadow Minister for women and equalities) says it's "cerise".

But by touring a pink bus they've managed to show they're apparently unaware of all the arguments on sexism that have been made over the last 7-8 years...

In reply to Olaf Prot:
They might have been better off with a 'Labour red' bus with issues which tend to affect women more than men mentioned on the sides, and a mixed team in the front. Then if asked they could say the issues can also affect men too.

At least nobody could probably take umbrage then...

In reply to Timmd:



Don't you believe it…..

In reply to climbwhenready:


Is Harriet Harman colour blind? Or does she really not know what magenta (a halfway mixture of red and blue) looks like? Surely she has a desktop colour printer? … or perhaps she has never had to change the inks herself?

In reply to Olaf Prot:

Question is: will it do what its intended to do ? its all very well to have high handed debates about it but is there a greater proportion of the population it might swing 'for' rather than the percentage it will swing 'against' ? Its all cynical marketing

In reply to Postmanpat:
In an unqeual society I guess there's always going to be cause for offense or else a few ways of interpreting something.

Maybe in 50 or 100 years people won't be talking about details and what they might represent, as much as they can do at the moment. Sooner hopefully.

In reply to Olaf Prot:

In the last General Election, 66% of men voted against 64% of women.
However, in the lower age bracket of 18-24, it was 50% of men and 39% women and it's reckoned that young women are more likely to vote Labour.
So, it makes sense for Labour to target that particular demographic. Not sure if they're going about it the right way though...

In reply to Timmd:

In an unqeual society I guess there's always going to be cause for offense or else a few ways of interpreting something.

What is there unequal in society that makes younger women (see post above) not want to vote?

In reply to Olaf Prot:

It's given people who like to whinge something to moan about so they should be happy.

In reply to FactorXXX:


How would I know? You'd likely be better off asking some young women the same question.

I'm a man in my mid 30's.

Lack of representation I guess, and consultation on policies which affect women more than men, but one would be better off asking them for details.

In reply to Timmd:

How would I know? You'd likely be better off asking some young women the same question.

Apologies, didn't mean to come across as judgemental, etc. just that you seem to have a fairly good grasp and understanding on such matters.
Well, certainly better than me (man in his late forties...)!!!

In reply to FactorXXX:
I didn't take it as judgemental

Perhaps living in Sheffield since I was a kid has finally got me responding bluntly at times?

Hmmn...I didn't mean to be.

Anyways, I don't really know.

In reply to Olaf Prot:

I couldn't be bothered to read the entire article.

It has to be a colour though, isn't pink as good as any? I imagine they wanted one that would stand out.

I saw somebody on the news last night standing in front of it trying to describe its colour without saying the obvious. I may be betraying my ignorance by not knowing who it was.

I stalled my car yesterday. I probably wouldn't do any better if I had been driving a new van. A van that's new to me, I mean.

I'm a man.

I don't intend to vote for Labour.

In reply to Olaf Prot:

Is this non-story the best the Tory press can come up with to divert attention from the HSBC/HMRC scandal ?

Look, SQUIRREL !!!!

In reply to FactorXXX:
"So, it makes sense for Labour to target that particular demographic. Not sure if they're going about it the right way though..."

harriet Harmen in denim shorts on rollar skates, blowing bubbles from a hand held plastic loop humming "bodyform for yeeeeew ooohhh" would have been better

In reply to Chris the Tall:
Here's the squirrel, and it's wearing a tshirt with a slogan on it, what does it say?

"didn't most of that HSBC scandal happen whilst Labour were in no10? "

Oh

In reply to Olaf Prot:

Isn't it fantastic how UKC are ok with the DM when it suits them?

Boggy

In reply to Chris the Tall:



Enjoy

youtube.com/watch?v=bBWrMQVsuak&

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:




Yes the fraud occurred pre 2010, as a means of getting around the ESD (2003). Now you could blame Gordon Brown for agreeing to the ESD, or blame those meddling Europeans for interfering, but most of us would say that the ESD is a good thing, and evading it is a bad thing.

The fact that HSBC Suisse were helping their clients to evade it didn't emerge until 2010 (and HMRC only got their hands on the data when the French handed it over). So HMRC's investigation was entirely under the remit of the current government, and a time when the HSBC chief from the period was a member of that government.

Sorry, the Tory claims that it's all Labour's fault are quite pathetic

In reply to Chris the Tall:

This story made me smile in the Guardians yards of copy in the "HSBC Files"

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/feb/11/hsbc-files-show-tories-rais...

5 sensational paragraphs before "Labour donors who held Swiss accounts with HSBC include the steel magnate Swraj Paul and restaurant owner and clothing entrepreneur Richard Caring"

"include" lol and what about the others?

I think the main people trying to aportion blame and gain political capital from this are Labour and the Guardian.

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:
So I take it you now accept that the last labour government is not at fault.
Therefore the question is whether HMRC's decision to treat these tax-evaders with kid gloves was down to this government, and had anything to do with the names on the list or Stephen Greens hope that it would damage his ministerial career.

Yep, both parties have dodgy donors and the fact that the tories received 10 times as much from theirs is no more than a minor detail. However the involvement of a Tory party treasurer is far more relevant.

Furthermore, no one is suggesting that the Tories told HMRC to go easy on their backers and hard on everyone else, but that they went easy on everyone because their backers were on the list. Subtle, but very important, difference.

In reply to Chris the Tall:

I don't think anyone is at fault, unlike the Guardian, although they are good enough to write this much further down one of their "files"

"Being a client of a Swiss bank is not illegal and does not prove tax avoidance or evasion. There is no suggestion that any of the individual donors did anything unlawful."

You brought the Tories into it, I just enjoyed bringing Labour into it and got a good reaction

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:

Well done, I hadn't realised you were merely trolling ...

In reply to Chris the Tall:

Sorry, I suppose it was trolling. But saying that the tory press are desperate to get a story of people doing completely legal activities off the front page with a story about a pink bus is tantamount to trolling as well.

Now I think I have been trolled

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:


I think the issue is more what was done about it once it became know to the tax authorities. That was on Cameron's watch.

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:


I can't tell if describing tax evasion on a industrial scale as "completely legal" is trolling or just plain stupid.

Admittedly I have a personal interest (ex employee, still own some shares) but I think this is a big story. I'm not convinced Labour would have handled it better, but it's their job as opposition to put the government on the rack for it.

In reply to Chris the Tall:
tax avoidance on an industrial scale is what I am describing as completely legal. Tax evasion on the otherhand would be a big story. Have you seen any proof of that?

I guess it's the hypocrisy of Ed Miliband's rhetoric, which sits oddly with him using a deed of variation to minimise inheritance tax on his parents' home, a form of tax avoidance that would be relevant only to the wealthy.
Then you have the thorough checks that the Labour party make on their own donors that are so much more thorough than the Tory party (LOL). I think it's ill thought through to try and make it a Tory bashing story...when, in fact it just demonstrates that EM has run out of ideas and is left to hide behind parliamentary priviledge to hurl stones from his greenhouse hoping that nobody will notice.

basically they are all as bad as each other.

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:


Are you being serious ? Trolling is one thing but you keep on making these statements that are just manifestly stupid

From the guardian:

So far, £135m has been recovered from HSBC clients in the UK. France has recovered £188m in taxes and fines from a list of 3,000 clients and Spain has recovered £220m, also from 3,000 clients.

>>

Tax avoidance is legal and you have nothing to pay. Evasion is illegal and, as well as the money owed, you pay a fine (and ought to face imprisonment, but that's another issue)

How much of that is tax (evaded) and how much is fines I don't know - there has been criticism that HMRC only fined an average of 10% - but we are still talking about half a billion of evaded tax.

Is that really no more important that the colour of a van ?

In reply to Chris the Tall:
"Is that really no more important that the colour of a van ? "
Only you think the van story is the "Tory press" trying to get the HSBC story off the front page even though its in all the press. The stupidest comment on this thread IMO.

As for HSBCs activities being illegal? Possible, but expect that the tax laws they loopholed were so badly written that they will wriggle out of it.

Back on topic of the Torys and Labour though....do you not see any hypocrisy in trying to make it political? If your original post had been bankerbashing fair enough, but it wasn't.

In reply to Chris the Tall:

"Evasion is illegal and, as well as the money owed, you pay a fine (and ought to face imprisonment, but that's another issue)"

I wasn't sure about this so checked the CPS website on tax evasion and sentencing and it says this

"senior judges have made it clear that, when it comes to large scale tax evasion, even those without previous convictions can expect significant custodial sentences."

If the Guardian is right, we should see a lot of bankers and lots of (all) party donors getting long custodial sentences.

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:



Jeez! Haven't you realised that that the lack of prosecutions is part of the scandal, rather than an indication that no crimes were committed ?

In reply to Chris the Tall:

Or it's as the Tax office have said, more cost effective to not prosecute and have conversations to resolve tax bills rather than spend huge amounts on finding evidence of criminal intent only to receive the same tax revenue as if they'd just negotiated with the dodger.

In reply to Chris the Tall:

Oh, I get it. I'm just wondering if there really is a huge scandal, or just a politically driven story which you have swallowed hook line and sinker. *

Back to prison sentences for tax evasion, so why don't you think they face imprisonment? Is it just a conspiracy or is it that they realise they won't get a conviction so don't bother? And why is this "scandal" only a Tory issue? I only mention these things as you brought them up. You do get points for taking the thread away from the Pink bus though and back on your preferred topic, but I have deducted some as you are an HSBC share holder and clearly needed to rant

Incidentally, the CPS webpage on prosecuting tax evasion only refers to succesful convictions in VAT fraud cases. I thought that was quite telling. They should have plenty to update that page with once the Guardian files of people with Swiss bank accounts have worked their way through the criminal justice system though lol

* I am not saying that nothing criminal has happened, just don't believe there is anything like the criminality implied by the Guardian and EM and yourself

In reply to balmybaldwin:

Yep, cost effectiveness is a very valid point and not one that I'm really in a position to judge. And I would also say that once an agreement has been reached and payment made, you can't go back, under the weight of public pressure, and still prosecute.

On the other hand a few high profile prosecutions would have had a great deterrent effect. And it is very valid for a newspaper to question why so few prosecutions were made, and whether there any ministerial involvement in this issue. It's also right that the opposition should put the govt on the rack for this, obviously the commons stuff is just outdated showboating and the real stuff is done in committee. I'm not a fan of tribal politics, but this is one of those cases where opposition scrutiny plays an important role. And why it is far more important than a pink bus

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:


Cameron and Milliband think that they a winning political points by smearing each other and each others' donors etc.

I imagine that Joe Public, who watches 30 seconds of question time on the news and reads a paragraph of the story in a tabloid (if that) simply walks away thinking "So bankers are all crooks, rich people are all crooks, politicians are all crooks,bureaucrats are incompetent-so whats news?" and a few more people stop voting or vote for the raving looney greens/UKIP,Monster parties.

As usual I suspect that there is much more incompetence than crookery behind most of this.

In reply to Postmanpat:

Em is so incompetent he starts a witch hunt which is now coming to bite him on the arse. thinking he had Cameron and the Tories on the ropes but not thinking about the bigger picture...primarily his own tax affairs, and his own parties donors. Now the front page of the Ft has details about his inheritance as I mentioned earlier, and John Mills, Lakshmi Mittal, Ronald Cohen, Lord paul,Andrew Rosenfeld...all labour donors synonymous with Swiss bank accounts, British virgin Islands and clever tax accounting. Such a schoolboy error.i expect all the "Tory" press will be running with it tomorrow, look forward to seeing how the guardian report it.

Looks like an own goal to me

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:
Careful Gordon, shades of pink are not so clearly defined. The colour of the bus is pretty close to a slightly desaturated magenta. A lot of people would describe a true magenta hue as pink. I think a pink bus is a silly mistake so I have no axe to grind (but I do teach aspects of colour theory).

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magenta

In reply to Offwidth:

Magenta is half Red, half Blue and with no green on the RGB scale (255, 0, 255). Good choice for the Labour Party then...

In reply to Timmd:

Perhaps living in Sheffield since I was a kid has finally got me responding bluntly at times?
Hmmn...I didn't mean to be.

I think not Timmd, you're too nice to be blunt

In reply to FactorXXX:
Magenta can be regarded as a much wider family of colours than that if you think in terms of the HSL colour model: as long as the hue is an equal mix of red and blue primaries you can alter brightness or saturation at will. Being very picky, different screen technologies or settings will result in slightly different hues for the red and blue primaries you mix. Hence the labour party can be magenta and a bit jealous as well.

In reply to Offwidth:


Well, saturation is a different issue. It's true that a very desaturated magenta would wind up looking roughly like the pink bus, but in industries that use colour very precisely (e.g. film and photographic) the colours/hues are very well defined, and magenta means simply 255,0,255 RGB, as FactorXXX says. In ordinary language, pink implies the addition of a lot of white (desaturation on additive system/ or a lot of white pigment mixed with something like 'cadmium red' on a subtractive system e.g oil paints). In very old language, pink never meant red - though 'pinko' in US English did mean communist

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Not forgetting the huge difference between the Maglia Rosa and the Maglia Rossa

In reply to Chris the Tall:

No, never forgetting that. Well, never remembering it, coz I haven't a clue what it means

In reply to Timmd:


Agreed. It's as if they're too timid to show their traditional party colours - that they're trying to look like a 'safer/watered down' form of socialism … apparently forgetting that 'pinko' always used to be a derogatory term for a communist, or very left-wing socialist. It's equivalent to the Tories suddenly deciding the best way they can win votes is by adopting a pale sky blue as their party colour.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

So what does 255 mean in your definition?... its the value of maximum output level for the primary on a particular screen (which will vary slightly from one screen technology to another in hue) with a particular maximum brightness (which varies a lot in screen types so 255 on one screen may be equivalent to 55 on another) so that definition cannot be true in terms of perception. I would describe the bus as a slightly red magenta slightly desaturated as I watch it on my TV (in real life its a subtractive paint system, that absorbs green, that will also vary in perceived colour with illumination). If you look at the wikipedia page I linked above it's very similar to one of the variants of the colour on display (as it is subtlely distorted by our individual screen characteristics and settings). If explaining to a layman, given the variations in perception from screen to screen or in real life illumination I'd say it's close to magenta (as a pink), so am I colour blind like Harriet? What she was actually doing was attempting to distract from a dumb decision: you seemingly are following a similar path following your decision to accuse her of colour blindness in your original post !?

In reply to Offwidth:


Well, it's not my definition. It's exactly as you define it. And how one defines 'red' is difficult, agreed. I'd probably cop out and say 'half way between magenta and yellow on the colour wheel' !

http://printingcode.runemadsen.com/assets/color/circle_rgb_small-0bb5fb4944...

>I would describe the bus as a slightly red magenta slightly desaturated as I watch it on my TV (in real life its a subtractive paint system, that absorbs green, that will also vary in perceived colour with illumination).

I'd describe it as very highly desaturated. Probably roughly 50 per cent (in effect something like 255, 125, 125 RGB)


Agreed, she's trying to distract from the original dumb decision and all the connotations that 'pink' carries with it. If someone were to ask me to describe the colour of the bus I would say 'pink', not 'desaturated red', nor 'magenta', 'nor desaturated magenta'. Nor 'cerise' (that was funny I thought because it immediately made me think of Cherie Blair … )

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:
Your linked colour wheel just adds to my point... magenta on that wheel looks pink. Pink can be used to describe a very wide range of colours and hence is pretty inprecise as a descriptor for one accusing others of colour blindness. Very highly desaturated red or magenta would be close to white or grey: so a shade of very pale pink or slightly pinky grey...its certainly not that.

Incidently, another factor is that colour perception can be a complete invention of the brain based on various factors or indeed a result of adaption to constant cone stimulae. Some colour optic illustions show this pretty clearly. Beau Lotto did a lot of good popularist work on this, including a horizon programme: 'Is Seeing Believing'. The adaption point is nicely illustrated if you stare for a minute at an image similar to the union jack but made of the opposite colours on your colour wheel, then shift your gaze to a white background.

A favorite illusion I discovered is when measuring RGB colour bars with a chromaticity meter on a projector image in a room with slightly dimmed lights. The red bar looks red as you see it in the room but if you measure it, its true colour is a mid saturation red (which should look pink). If you then remove the context of the field of view (make a viewing hole with a fist, or use a smartie tube, so you just see part of the red colour bar) it changes from red to its true measured colour of pink.

Having studied all this I'm now pretty careful about how I talk about other people's colour perception which is why I think your accusation of colour blindness is pretty unfair.

Beau on TED... http://www.ted.com/talks/beau_lotto_optical_illusions_show_how_we_see?langu...

In reply to Offwidth:

My accusation of colour blindness was simply sloppy. As a matter of fact I think it's a slightly bluish pink (or, put another way, a very desaturated reddish magenta)

Sticking the photo of the bus on Photoshop, analysing it with the 'dropper' it seems to be approx (just took a matter of seconds):

Hue 336 º (i.e. a slightly bluish red)
Saturation 52%
Brightness 100

R G B 255, 123, 176 (which is quite a long way from magenta = 255, 0, 255)

Hexadecimal #ff7bb0

But I think it's simpler, when discussing it, just to call it what it is, 'pink' )

[Anyhow, enough of this .. back to work]

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:
Magenta is the hue on a calibrated colour wheel at 300 degrees... I measured the bus at approximately 320 from a TV still yesterday when the pink storm broke.

255, 0 , 255 is not a correct definition of magenta, its a definition of the maximum brightness maximum saturated colour the additive RGB technology can acheive in trying to match magenta, for calibrated screen settings, in a dark room.

Sloppy is the sort of thing a politician says.

In reply to Offwidth:

Have emailed you.

In reply to

Sorry to drag this up again, but it was discussed at length further up...it now seems that the HSBC leak was told to HMRC seven years ago...2008, not 2010 according to French newspaper LeMonde.

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/hmrc-faces-humiliation-as-hsbc-whistleblo...

That's got to be a bit awkward (if true) for the Guardians HSBC Files dossier. Maybe they should file it under "Dog we wished we had left sleeping"

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:

why on earth would it bother the guardian that it happened on labours watch?
A scenario where labour and the tories get hit is ideal for the lib dem supporting guardian.
Thats leaving aside the disassocation with new labour that the current lot are randomly trying for. Oh and that the HMRC was offered an email doesnt mean the government knew about it. Unlike in 2010.

Apart from that though I would agree its a superb reason to brush it under the carpet.

In reply to dissonance:

My view is their reporting of "the scandal" is so partisan that they started out thinking they had a rich Tory bashing scoop. I'm enjoying the fact that as it unravels, no party is left unscathed, and I like to think that this bothers some inside the Guardian. That is all

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:

Your desperation to pin the blame on Labour is making you blind to the details. It's you that's being partisan and tribal, not the Guardian.

Yes it seems the hacker emailed HMRC whilst labour was in power, but what difference does that make ? HMRC have no record of this, so we don't know who decided to ignore the email, but we can be pretty sure it won't have been on ministerial instructions, and probably not by someone anywhere close to ministerial contact.

There is a huge difference between an email from a hacker to the hand over of a vast dossier of data from the French authorities.

In reply to Chris the Tall:

LOL, I don't think its a labour vs tory story at all...thats been my point all along.

I have just been poking fun at people (like you) who brought the Torys into it. Especially as the story has morphed from rich tory donors (the guardians original spin) to what it is now...a big f*cking mess of multi party donor swiss tax avoidance/evasion clusterfck. It's been the most amusing political story of 2015 as far as I am concerned.

Anyway, it's 5 to 5. Weekend is here. Have a good one..cheers