Jamiecon

I think that the tax break the article is talking about is the fact that in the UK, if your 'main residence' is elsewhere, you only pay income tax on your UK earnings. That's different to the US where (I believe) citizens are expected to pay tax even if they are non-resident. I'm not sure why it's mentioned to be honest as income taxes are not related to just buying a house in the UK - which anyone can do whether they are a citizen, resident, or whatever.

Council tax in the UK is payable by the building owner or tenant, and is much lower than, for example, the US property tax. Council tax is supposed to just pay for municipal services. IIRC, they even break it down into bits on your bill 'Police - £xx, Fire Brigade - £xx' etc etc

I suppose my points were firstly that it is unreasonable to compare UK council tax and US property tax, and secondly that a tax directly related to a home's value can impact people disproportionately due to the crazy rise in UK house prices over the last few decades.

All that said, the idea of a property tax level resetting when a building is sold is very interesting - I didn't realise that was the case in California and it certainly makes sense. However, there is still the issue of our system of government being different - local governments can't create new taxes (and it would need to be a local tax since the problem is restricted to one geographic area), and the economics are different - people just aren't set up to pay high property taxes. Not insurmountable problems, I accept.

And yeah, 99 year leases are weird, but not uncommon. It gets weirder. For example it's not that unusual in the UK for properties to be totally surrounded by land owned by others. Also, land ownership in the UK (London especially) often has crazy disputes just due to the age of the records.

It's a straightforward way to tax people who have homes that are worth a lot of money. Not entirely the same as being rich.

What if you live in one of the leafier parts of the east end, where only 30 years ago you could buy a house on a blue-collar wage. Now your house is worth more than £1m. But you're retired and on a basic state pension. You don't want to move to a cheaper area because your friends and family live close to you and are able to support you.

High property taxes based on the value of your assets would force you to move away or re-mortgage. Not ideal when it comes to maintaining a sense of community or caring for the elderly.

I assume by 'proper' property taxes you mean 'the way the US does things'. I'm not sure that it would work in the UK with our different economics, system of government and geography.

IMO, war is nowhere near as clinical as it would need to be for remote controlled tanks, helicopters and other vehicles to be effective.

I've just finished reading Generation Kill for the second time - I highly recommend it for an idea of what things are actually like.

This was my favourite Reader replacement. I suppose losing it serves me right for not donating earlier!

Problem with SNI is that you lose IE users on XP. In the UK at least, that means entire organisations with thousands of employees such as Lloyds bank and the NHS. According to our stats anyway.

To be perfectly frank it was a throwaway comment - I was being facetious.

I don't consider accusing someone of naivete to be particularly pejorative but if you are offended on his behalf, I suppose I would qualify the comment by saying he strikes me as the kind of bloke that would pay full price at a market stall rather than haggling. As do lots of Americans :-)

Scoble - enthusiastic about everything, always all-in, naive, friendly, innocent, perfect teeth, health obsessed self-publicist

Paxman - cynical, jaded, sarcastic, hates politicians for a living, lives on tea, coffee and cereal*

This is like the cross-Atlantic friendship society! Talk about wheeling out your national stereotypes. Well done BBC. Again.

* may not be true, but he looks like it

I actually remember first using this by dialling 2580 about 10 years ago. At the time it felt truly magical.

Not to defend the indefensible, but why not make a couple of discussion points...

If you have a huge application and a high staff turnover you want to minimise the amount of information in your developers' heads. Strictly architected code can do this to some extent, and can go some way to reducing need for that other 'enterprise bane' - documentation. This is less of a problem in a startup type environment were you can find out about a particular piece of code by walking over to the kid that wrote it and having a chat.

Code generation (mentioned elsewhere on the thread) is another example of something that is less necessary in a small environment. Matching an enum to the contents of a database table or whatever can be done by convention to begin with, but it's less practical if your development team is spread across three timezones. Better to invest the time in letting computers do the work.

> well, you've been fired from the company you worked for for 5 years, but hey, at least you have fresh drinking water

I'm not sure whether it's my brain, or 'me' that's saying it, but this is pretty much what I tell myself every time something 'bad' happens to me. Works like a charm.

I haven't downvoted you, but I would hazard a guess that the reason for the downvotes as at least partially due to the combative nature of your tone.

As to your point, I have no idea about the legalities, but it seems to me that if law enforcement officials are going to operate in a foreign country they might want to go through official channels before turning up.

Regarding the private plane, I would imagine that the article mentions it because it (accurately or otherwise) enables me to better visualise a group of brash Americans turning up via the most expensive mode of transport and expecting the little Icelanders to be so awed by the powerful FBI that they won't ask for little things like, you know, governmental authorisation.

I really want to like America. There are so many things to love about it, especially on paper. And then I read about stuff like this and wonder if it really is that much of a mystery why much of the world has such distaste for the country and the people.

Not that I'm claiming the UK is any better, mind. And our teeth are much worse.