Irony

Isn't it ironic that we have people calling for the head of Eurostar to resign because snow-shields failed on his companies trains, and an unusually cold snap which caused the failure of trains due to condensation. Yet at the same time we seem to be being asked by business and government to have sympathy for greedy bankers that don't want to be weened of their drug of choice (money)?

Am I the only person in the world that follows the arguments about climate change and rising sea levels, and then sighs as the TV reports cut to reports about the future of Dubai World, an artificial Palm Leaf like sandbar constructed almost at sea level?

Bad advice from Agencies when working abroard

I am currently living and working in Amsterdam and over the past few months I have been approached by several contractors who appear to be have been deliberately mislead by their agencies and payroll companies. I created this article in order to highlight some of these problems.
Many UK agencies are pushing people toward certain payroll companies/solutions citing that this as the only choice. This is patently untrue and you should be able to arrange this for yourself, so long as your chosen company is completely legal and compliant with Dutch tax laws.
This is not as onerous as it first sounds and the Dutch Tax authorities can be very helpful and a great source of free information if you contact them via telephone, or the web.
http://www.belastingdienst.nl/english/
Your agency should also be able to ask the right questions regarding compliance, as under the "chain laws", they are as liable as you are in the event of a problem.
The next thing to realise is that your contract is with the PAYROLL PROVIDER and NOT directly with the agent, thus it is the PAYROLL PROVIDER that is going to be paying you, not the agent. It is VITAL that you understand this as in the event of problems you need to talk to the right people. The agency will bill the client gross; including their markup, and then transfer the money to the payroll provider who deduct their costs, calculate the taxes, and pay you net of tax.
Most skilled contractors are eligible for 30% tax relief, and it is the PAYROLL PROVIDER that is responsible for applying for this. This can take a couple of weeks and whilst being processed you will be paid without the this relief (like week-1 emergency codes in UK). The provider will hold this money and then give it you back as soon as the application is approved.
If you change payroll company they will try to tell you that you will lose your 30% and can never get it back. This is not true, you only lose it until your new company completes the re-application process.
At the end of each (tax) year the payroll company should provide a Jaaropgraaf (P60) which details what you have earned and the tax paid. Tax is calculated on the assumption that you have worked from Jan-Dec, and therefore if you have entered the country in March, then you could get 2/12's of your tax back.
Some payroll providers will attempt to withhold your Jaaropgraaf and charge huge amounts of money to calculate your year-end tax liability. If this happens demand your paperwork and take it to an independent NL tax adviser .
The final think to look very carefully at is the wording of your contract, DEMAND it in English, and read it thoroughly. Make sure that you understand their payslips and that they explain ALL the charges and deductions.

Health and Safety

I hope this may make someone smile on a Monday morning:


Born in the 30's - 70's?
CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL MY FRIENDS AND FAMILY WHO WERE BORN IN THE 1930's, 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's & 80's


First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos..
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, raw egg products, loads of bacon and processed meat, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.
Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.
As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.
We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.
Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops, McDonalds, KFC, Subway or Nandos.
Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and didn't open on the weekends, somehow we didn't starve to death!
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.
We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner store and buy Toffees, Gobstoppers, Bubble Gum and some bangers to blow up frogs with.
We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soft drinks with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because......
WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of old prams and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and dens and played in river beds with matchbox cars.
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo Wii, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 999 channels on SKY,
no video/dvd films,
no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........
WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!
We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.
Only girls had pierced ears!
We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.
You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns at Easter time...
We were given air guns and catapults for our 10th birthdays,
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!
Mum didn't have to go to work to help dad make ends meet!
RUGBY and CRICKET had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! Getting into the team was based on
MERIT
Our teachers used to hit us with canes and gym shoes and bully's always ruled the playground at school.
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of.

They actually sided with the law!
Our parents didn't invent stupid names for their kids like 'Kiora' and 'Blade' and 'Ridge' and 'Vanilla'


We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!
And YOU are one of them!


CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.

And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

QPROPS - Pension portability

I learned recently that since April 2006 it has been possible to move your UK pension rights offshore under a scheme known as QPROPS (Qualifying Recognised Overseas Pension Scheme) so long as this scheme is approved by HMRC and you are either an expat, or can resonably prove that you intend to emigrate:


 I will publish more details as soon as I have them.

Windows-7

I have now installed it on several computers and the only failures I have had so far are Zonealarm which I cannot get to run at all, and AVGFree 9, which runs but has some but has some integration issues. I think it is early days for these kind of products and expect both companies to come out with more W7 friendly versions soon.

One interesting new feature is W7's ability to install some intelligent device drivers such as network printing, and I think that this really sets it apart from Vista.

Windows-7

As a Microsoft Action Partner I received my full copy of Windows-7 and can say that I am very impressed overall. There are a few niggles, but otherwise it is at least 100 times better than Vista.

Strange bug in AIX shell

Found a really interesting bug in the AIX shell today. If you run "ls -lrt /mydir/myfiles" from the shell prompt, you get the correct answer, however if you run it as part of a Korn/Posix shell script, you get a random answer?

Any ideas on why this happens would be gratefully received.

AIX NMon

AIX 5.3 TL10 now includes Nmon (Nigel's monitor), which when used in conjunction with the data collector Excel Spreadsheet, can provide detailed performance statistics.

And we complain about the NHS!

Last week I received a message from my health insurance provider saying that as my contract had finished and I had changed payroll provider, I was no longer insured. Genius as both the old and the new company both use the same insurance company!

I am now waiting for my payroll provider to get them to send me a new policy. Lord alone knows what happens if I had an accident whilst waiting for these idiots at the insurance company to sort this out?

Curiously they are still taking my money.

Another resource for Dutch Health Insurance

http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/healthcarenetherlands/Pages/healthcarenetherlands.aspx

Dutch Health Insurance

If anyone is interested in the Dutch Health Insurance rules take a look at: http://www.minvws.nl/en/themes/health-insurance-system/default.asp

Interesting AIX Problem - Cannot start llbd

The llbd daemon is required to generate some hardware alerts yet it abends on some machines as soon as you try to start it and an errpt entry is created. The messages suggests that the srchevn.c is at fault, but I think that this is only the detecting mode.

There is plenty of free disk space and memory, and all the partitions are built from the same mksysb?

Any suggestions are welcome.

Windows woes

Yesterday I was daft enough to upgrade my Zonalarm-Pro to their latest version; Extreme Security. Brilliant I can no longer save my Firefox windows between sessions. Brilliant I now spent half my day going back through the history to recover my sessions.

Why did I ever stop using Explorer 5?

For all the all the AIX anoraks out their

Today I was asked an obscure question. Is it possible to run out of Semaphores?

The limits are posted here: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/pseries/v5r3/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.aix.genprogc/doc/genprogc/ipc_limits.htm

I doubt you'll need this for a pub quiz but it could impress your boss?

Contract Status

This week I reached he stage of the contract that I like the least.

The go-live has passed now and the chaos and panic has been replaced by what seems like endless calm. It's great to be able to catch-up on that administration, but it soon becomes tedious. There are still things left to be done, however I can't help wondering how long it will be before I need to search for a new challenge?

Single European conundrum

I am currently working in The Netherlands, am in the Dutch tax, pay Dutch social taxes, and yet my NI contributions are not credited, and thus I am forced to pay multiple times for something I can never benefit from:

1. I can never draw a Dutch pension yet I am forced to contribute to it
2. Even if I am living out of a suitcase, and going home every other weekend I still have to pay full Dutch health insurance! This is a complete Joke when you consider that as a contractor, if I was taken ill or unable to work, my contract would be terminated and I would end-up back in the UK anyway.

Why can't I use my EHIC card just to access emergency medical treatment and pay voluntary NI contributions (AVC), thus protecting my pension rights, and contributing to the UK medical system?

Working in The Netherlands

Today I posted an Article on Shout-99 describing my experiences with the Dutch system, and it is interesting to read people opinions:

http://www.shout99.com/contractors/showarticle.pl?id=64088

When I arrived here in February I was struck by how much more complicated things had become and how the Government seemed to be seeking-out out each little opportunity to get money from foreign workers. Surely this must be counter-productive and will bight them back when the market receovers?

Welcome to my blog

I am currently living and working in Amsterdam for EDS/HP on the ABN-Amro/RBS demerger.