Tags: dog
The Daily Telegraph has received a letter from a collection of rich people complaining they don’t want to pay a higher rate of tax than anyone else.
One argument given reads:
“One per cent of taxpayers are already responsible for 24 per cent of income taxes”
Er, since one percent of tax payers get paid 24 percent of the wages in this country I’m not really surprised by this. The gap between rich and poor is bigger now than ever.
They go on:
“penalising high earners through an unfair, politically motivated tax puts populist politics before sound economics”
Not too sure which school this guy learnt his economics at. Here are some numbers. Say you get paid (notice I did not use the word “earn”!) £250000pa. At the current rate you pay about £100000 in PAYE. If they dropped the rate you’d “only” pay £90000, or £10000 less. Math’s wizzes will notice that’s a 4% difference in take home pay. Not to put too fine a point on it, £10000 for someone who gets paid £250000 isn’t significant.
It appears their argument centers around the premise that if highly paid people take home more of their pay, they will spend it in ways that benefit the economy. Er, that’s bullshit if I ever heard it. There are also the usual plethora of threats that all the wealthy people will just up and leave the country. I’m wondering what the actual economic consequences of the top 1% wage earners leaving the country would actually be. A sneaking suspicion is that they’d be pretty good actually.
Footnote. AFAIK not one single employee of the public sector should be paid £150000pa or more. A staggering number are though. The argument that you cannot attract talented people if you don’t pay exhorbitent wages is simply untrue. Remember the BBC trying to justify Jonathon Ross being paid £4m because otherwise he’d leave? Guess what, at ITV he earns £1.5m. And he’s still smiling.
For anyone who hasn’t played MW3 yet, here’s a screen grab of some of the action you can expect:
Yup. This is actually what the game looks like for a significant amount of the time I play it. On top of this pain, I’m constantly dropped into games that are already running. Usually of course the team I join is losing heavily and the enemies have 3-4 pieces of air support active. Sometimes I get the pleasue of joing a game when it has less than 1 second left to run. All this agony is caused by just one type of player. The Quitter. Here’s how I believe you can stop people from quitting:
1. Do not allow players to join games that are in progress.
2. If someone quits a game penalise them with a negative XP reward. I don’t care too much what it is, but I would imagine knowing you would lose 2000-3000 XP every time you quit would be about right. That on top of removing any XP they had earned in the match they just quit from.
3. If your team manages to get the entire enemy team to quit, get an XP reward of the 3000XP your quitting opponents jusy lost. Maybe a title & emblem too “Routed”.
4. And lastly, maybe if you’re the one guy on your team who refuses to quit in the face of overwhelming odds, you ought to get some recognition for that. Maybe a modest XP reward and a title “No Fear” or something similar.
I don’t see this as game breaking. Winners get rewarded. Quitters get penalised. The problem with the current set up is there is a bigger incentive to quit than to stay for a losing team player. He’ll protect his KDR by quitting but face no penalty. Infinity Ward is punishing dashboarders (great – thank-you) . I’d like to see this extended to quitters.
Reached the first Prestige in MW3. I had three Prestige tokens right off the bat from Prestiges attained in previous Call of Duty titles. I spent all three of them on gear unlocks (I plan to go through all 10 prestiges so I think it’s worth it). Here’s what those tokens went on, and why:
1. MP7 Sub Machine Gun. This gun is an absolute beast and by a long way my favourite. I used the token because it’s a level 74 weapon, and because the way MW3 plays a sub machine un is a good choice for my playstyle. It’s similar to the PP90 you see lots of people running around with but beats it by having a larger clip and (more importantly) a much quicker reload than the PP90. As standard it’s got a generous 40 round clip. My favourite setup for this weapon is a supressor and extended mags (takes you to a 60 round clip – enough to mow down three opponents without reloading easily). It does not appear to have any recoil whatsoever, and it’s not bad at longe range either. Because it’s a sub machine gun you run faster, and it pulls up quicker than an assault rifle.
2. Scavenger. I never liked Scavenger much in BLOPS, but in MW3 it’s fantastic. 2nd only to Sleight of Hand in Tier 1. It’s a level 39 unlock and I just can’t wait that long. Sleight of hand is unlocked right away at level one.
3. Portable Radar. This one unlocks at level 74. I love it because it has two features the BLOPS motion sensor didn’t. Number one, you can throw it (instead of just setting it down on the ground). This means you can toss it high up on obstacles where enemy players can’t reach it. Number two, it doesn’t only help you – your entire team get’s the benefit of it . I only run the Specialist Strike Package so I’m not calling in any UAVs. The Portable Radar is there as long as I stay alive and running Specialist is all about staying alive. I’m sacrificing my tactical grenades, but since Scavenger doesn’t replenish them I think the trade off is good. If anyone think this means I’m a camper forget it – I’m not.
I have to say this is without doubt the best Call of Duty yet. In particular the Kill Confirmed game mode & Specialist Package really add something to the game – by greatly reducing camping. I’ve seen lots of YouTubers complaining the game is too soft on weaker players. What I take that to mean is they are having difficulty getting games like they did in BLOPS running the 8-9-11 Killstreaks (Blackbird, Chopper Gunner & Dogs) so they could post 75 Kill games. I don’t miss that – most times I saw that in Black Ops it was some 15th Prestiger who’d basically camp their start flag in Domination off the bat to get their Kill Streaks. It just made the game frustrating for me as a below average player. The Specialist Packge is simply awesome. I never liked calling in killstreaks anyway, so now I get to run and gun full time without feeling like I’m playing with a disadvantge. Maybe I’ll call in my MOABs though.
Since most people always like to hear complaints about Call of Duty for some reason, as a footnote here are the aspects of MW3 I don’t like:
Scoreboards: Number of captures not displayed for Domination. This is insance – they should be there as tye are the objective – not kills.
Elite: BLOPS gave us all the stats we could want in game. MW3 seems to think I will pay more money for stats. I won’t.
Spawns: They really are crazy, but for every time an enemy spawns with me in their sight and kills me, I get one back. It doesn’t bother me too much. they’ve said it’ll improve in January.
Lag: I’ve heard people complain, but I used the option to switch off theatre mode and I don’t have any problems. I’ll be brutally frank here – when I read that the lag in Black Ops was attributable to theatre mode, an option for the small percentage of players who are also YouTubers my blood boiled. These people should just put up with running their PVR’s all the time if the alternative is a reduced enjoyment for everyone.
My favoutrite class setup:
- MP7 – dual attachments – supressor & extended mags.
- Skorpions – akimbo (thanks xcal)
- Frag Grenade
- Portable Radar
- Tier 1: Scavenger
- Tier 2: Hardline
- Tier3 : Steady Aim
- Specialist Package: Sleight of Hand, Stalker, Assasin
Note: if there was an option to have no death streak I would take it. I use Juiced as it seems the least lame.
I now have just the one spare Prestige Token – I’ll end up with 10 if I prestige all the way. I’ll spend 5 on extra custom classes, and 5 on double XP (when it’s double XP weekend – apparently that’ll mean quad XP).
This post is a retraction and clarification of some of the points made in my earlier post. After reading the multitude of comments (most it would seem made by Channel Islands residents) I thought I’d better strike through the inaccuracies in the original post, and set some clarification here.
The Channel Islands are NOT part of the UK.
The Channel Islands are NOT members of the EU.
And finally…the original post was not intended to be some kind of criticism of the Channel Islands or it’s fine people. It is intended as a criticism of outdated UK import duty law which has been manipulated by large corporations to gain a commercial advantage via tax avoidance.
I’m very sorry if this was not clear to readers of the original post.
Hey Treyarch/Infinity Ward.
I love it, but can’t help thinking it could be greater still if:
Ghost: needs weakening. If you don’t think it’s overpowered, check out how many players use it.
Lobbys: Can’t some level of skill based matchmaking come into it – based on KD?
Quitters: If a host quits, block them from joining a new lobby for 30 minutes. If a non-host quits, block them for 5 minutes. People should be encouraged to complete their games and it seems match bonus isn’t doing it (you’re not going to get much if you lose after all).
Knife: Two button action – switch then use. It’s not realistic to switch instantly from firing a weapon to stabbing and it’s annoying as hell.
Campers: How about some camper free game modes. Just have the game execute players who don’t move for long periods.
Noob tubes: nuff said.
Kill streaks: Can’t we have these in our classes? When I run into an entire team wearing Ghost, my spy plane loses it’s appeal.
Spawning: Not in someones’ sights please!
Options: In classes? Sometimes I switch and let someone else play on my account – it’s a big hassle to sign out, sign in & restart the game after all
Mute: Can I please just mute everyone by default. I’d prefer to specify who I want to hear, not who I don’t because most of the people playing are 8.
Ta.
My heartfelt thanks to Angela Jackman for her successful appeal against Head Teachers’ rights to impose a uniform policy.
As I’m sure everyone agrees, our schoolchildrens’ shocking performance when compared to other countries can, and will only ever improve if we successfully undermine the authority of the education system.
Social media sites such as FaceBook & Twitter are buzzing with speculation as to just who Manchester United’s “The CTB” mystery player actually is.
Manager Alex Ferguson broke his usual disdain for speaking to the media to say:
“I can’t reveal the identity of the CTB. All I can tell you is that Some Say he likes things shoved up his arse”.
“His identity needs to remain the closely guarded secret that it is.”
Think you know who the CTB is? Leave a comment. All comments will be published, apart from any that are correct of course.
Damn, still no Playstation Network. And the Internet awash with speculation and rants. Sony could, I would have though at the barest level Tweeted a little more than they have.
Since I can’t bring myself to comment on the (frankly) worthless news articles out there, here’s what I think to some of the common stuff I’m reading
1 “It’s Sony’s fault” or “Sony should’ve known better”
Rubbish really. Sony probably thought to themselves “we’re running a gaming network” and mot a bank. I wouldn’t expect this kind of attack either.
2 “The Playstation Network will/won’t be restored on X date”
I’m getting horribly fed up of all the total speculation on news sites regarding when exactly PSN services will resume. What is clear is no-one know, so news sources posting conjecture as fact is just a waste of everyones time.
3 “[Expletive deleted] you Sony, I’m buying an XBox”
For heavens sake, go ahead. While I’m on this, why on earth do so many sites allow profanity in comments? Or put that another way, why are standards so low on what are meant to be quality sites? And lastly…..
4 “Please login or register to leave a comment”
This is starting to drive me nuts. Take a look at your calendar, it’s 2011. I am NOT going through a big sign up process during which I provide your website with all my personal data. Let me sign in with Twitter, FaceBook or OpenID. I want to leave a comment, not begin some lifelong relationship with your website. So does everyone else.
I really would love to know when services wil be resumed as I’m itching to play, but I can wait. Presumably the problem is they have to marry all the old data (trophys, statistics, purchases etc etc) into the new one. Having said that, it can’t be THAT hard surely?
So we’re getting a referendum on a new voting system. I’d like to personally record my complete disgust that this is even happening. Have our politicians really not thought of anything more important than this? I’m going to be voting (against) because I have no desire to live in a country run by the Liberal Party, and as far as I’m able to determine that’s what this is all about – they’ve been harping on about it for about as long as they’ve been losing elections.
Here’s a thought. If the government want to have referendums, why not have some on topics people are actually interested in, such as:
- Should our soldiers be sent to die defending other countries?
- Can we get out of the mess that is the European Union?
- Should we even have signed Kyoto?
- Did we really even want the Olympics during a recession?
In all honesty, the voting system is so far down my list of priorities I would place more importance on whether a dancing dog wins Britains’ Got Talent. I’m mad as hornets!
