u/plaguedbyfoibles

I'm trying to track down passages in the Bond books that reference how MI6 is funded.

I seem to recall reading in one of them once a reference to a parliamentary bill that affected MI6's finances.

This is what I have thus far:

>Bond assumed that this man would know the published facts of the Secret Service Vote. He said, “Under ten million pounds a year doesn’t go far when there is the whole world to cover.”

(From You Onlv Live Twice)

>‘It’s so like the old devil to think of the gold first,’ said Bond. ‘Suppose he thinks he can get away with it and somehow dodge a reduction in the Secret Fund when the next parliamentary estimates come round. I expect half his life is taken up with arguing with the Treasury. But still he’s been pretty quick off the mark.’

(From Live and Let Die)

I am pretty sure there was a reference to some bill or statutory instrument dating back to 1919, but I can't for the life of me track it down.

It is my understanding that analogue free-to-air TV in the UK was broadcast until 2012, when analogue was finally decommissioned.

How did you watch TV from the time it became commercially viable for households wanting a television set, and what did you do if you couldn't afford set-top boxes like Sky?

How many free-to-air channels did you get at best in the early days?

Am I right in thinking that, when the budgets are appropriated for each department for a given fiscal year in a large UK company for instance, the news of each department's budget is cascaded down so they can identify if they have any roles that either need to be created, backfilled or otherwise fulfilled.

Could this go some way to explaining the popularity of boxsets (at least before the advent of streaming)? Is this perhaps why people subscribed to cable or satellite TV packages back in the day?

Does anyone know what type of school this was?

If I look at https://www.gmlives.org.uk/results.html#imu[rid=ecatalogue.266822], it says as follows:

>From 17 August 1914 the senior departments became Ducie Street Central School, housed temporarily at Dover Street and Princess Road until 12 April 1920, while awaiting a new building. Evacuated to Cheadle Hulme 1 September 1939. From 7 September 1953 the senior departments became Ducie Technical High School for Boys and Ducie Technical High School for Girls. September 1967 the Ducie Technical High School for Boys amalgamated with the Girls School to form Ducie High School.

Does this mean that, when you had Ducie Technical High School for Boys and Ducie Technical High School for Girls, because of the tripartite system of state-funded secondary education created by the 1944 Education Act, these would have originally been classified as technical schools upon their creation in 1953?

It seems that comprehensive schools were rolled out much more extensively by the Wilson government in England and Wales from 1965 onwards, which I presume had some bearing on the decision to amalgamate the two aforementioned schools into a single school, Ducie High School, at which point it became a comprehensive school.

Were either Ducie High School or its two immediate predecessors, i.e. Ducie Technical High School for Boys and Ducie Technical High School for Girls, secondary moderns? I suppose I am unsure as to what the practical / meaningful distinction of a secondary modern and a comprehensive would have been at the time.

It is also my understanding that not many technical high schools were built as a result of the 1944 Education Act either, and thus you had a two-tier system of state-funded secondary education, so perhaps that also swayed their decision to establish a comprehensive via the merger of both schools.

Say I'm a company that sells widgets, called WidgetXYZ. Now I approach an investment bank in the sell-side that agrees to underwrite my IPO, let's call it Sell-Side A (or SSA).

Now SSA purchases my new shares and sells them to various buyers in the buy-side sector, such as mutual and hedge funds.

And it seems that, before my IPO launch, I need to go to the London Stock Exchange and ask to be listed on the exchange, assuming I meet their listing requirements.

So with that in mind, I have the following questions I would like to ask:

How do those shares eventually trickle down into the secondary market, i.e. how do they become available to those who want to purchase my company's shares on the London Stock Exchange, for instance?

Can a company list on, say, the LSE, but there is no trading activity there because all of its shares allocated to primary market investors continue to trade there? Are there trading requirements in addition to listing requirements?

When someone says their broker allocated them shares from an IPO, this means their broker purchased those shares for them in the primary market, or off-exchange, right?

How do those who were allocated shares from an IPO in the primary market, or off-exchange, decide how long they will hold onto these shares before they sell them on, say, the London Stock Exchange?

Was that because Finland specifically petitioned the League of Nations / LON? As soon as they invaded eastern Poland, the government in Warsaw fled to Romania, and thus Poland ceased being a sovereign state as it had no government of its own?

Did the Allies write off Poland as a lost cause, given they had already gone to war with Nazi Germany over it?

My understanding is that the likes of the UK and France supported Finland during the Winter War with the Soviet Union, by providing them with weapons and preparing to send troops.

Were they concerned that, when the Soviet Union was invading Poland, that they didn't want to make too big an enemy of them? Or could it be that, because Nazi Germany had already violated the Munich Agreement, of which the USSR was not party, the Allies felt pretty much powerless?

Also, in terms of Finland, they petitioned the League of Nations, which expelled the Soviet Union from its ranks, however when the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland, the Polish government fled to Romania in response, and thus couldn't petition the League of Nations as there was effectively no government in Poland.

Furthermore, if you refer to Article 1 of the Anglo-Polish Agreement of Mutual Assistance of 25.08.1939, it specifically states that Britain would only come to Poland's aid if the invading aggressor was Germany.

Was Neville Chamberlain, therefore, seen as quite weak? Certainly, he resigned as PM in 1940, paving the way for his successor, Winston Churchill.

And FDR seemed as though he was much more trusting of Stalin, as opposed to Churchill. It appeared as though he got most of his information on the Soviet Union from the New York Times, which is why he had such a distorted view of the Soviet Union, because the NYT's Moscow correspondent, Walter Duranty, was on the Kremlin's payroll.

Having looked through CAB-65-1-19.pdf from the UK's National Archives, War Cabinet 19 (39), minute 8, Soviet Invasion of Poland, it states as follows:

>The Prime Minister said that he thought it desirable that a statement should be issued to-day declaring that His Majesty's Government had learned with indignation and horror of the action taken by the Government of the U.S.S.R in invading Polish territory, that this action neither altered in any way the position in this country in relation to Poland nor weakened the obligations which we had solemnly undertaken towards Poland. Although the Soviet aggression had added a further tragedy to the history of Poland, His Majesty's Government still retained complete confidence that, on the conclusion of the war, Poland would be restored.

Am I right in thinking that FDR didn't invoke the Neutrality Act against the USSR because he saw them as an effective deterrent against Nazi Germany, and it was only after FDR died that America introduced the Truman Doctrine to attempt to combat further Soviet expansionism, such as with the Suez crisis, French Indochina etc?

Was it merely to coordinate monetary policy, to contribute meaningfully to ECB monetary policy even when it wasn't a Eurozone member state etc?

So for instance, if the ONS is tracking long-term unemployment, do they make the distinction themselves between what is considered long-term unemployment and what is economic inactivity (i.e. how do they determine those actively seeking work even when long-term unemployed versus those who are not interested in participating in the labour force)?

(Sidenote: I know there is structural unemployment too, but unsure as to how it relates to long-term unemployment, economic inactivity / full employment etc)

Is the definition and methodology coming from government, perhaps from advisors they employ to work with the ONS, or can say ONS statisticians, even, query the methods used?

Do they seek to benchmark their definitions and measures against international standards, like IMF, World Bank, OECD etc?

Also, government commissions independent economic research outside of the ONS. So for instance, Alan Milburn's recent report on young NEETs (not in employment, education or training).

I believe it was David Cameron's government who changed the definition of what constituted a NEET. Would such changes in definitions cascade through to the ONS, or is that within Westminster / Downing Street circles only?

By that, I mean, if you look at the research the government commissions, which is uploaded to https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/, for instance, is that using different methodology and scopes of definitions of terms than what the ONS would use, or do they try and harmonise their research methodologies and standardisation of terms across government, public sector bodies etc?

And if there are changes to definitions or scopes of definitions, how does that propagate or disseminate across the landscape?

I guess what I'm partly asking is if ONS statisticians are civil servants in the sense that they implement the definitions set by government, including ministers, even if they don't agree with them?

So for instance, if the ONS is tracking long-term unemployment, do they make the distinction themselves between what is considered long-term unemployment and what is economic inactivity (i.e. how do they determine those actively seeking work even when long-term unemployed versus those who are not interested in participating in the labour force)?

(Sidenote: I know there is structural unemployment too, but unsure as to how it relates to long-term unemployment, economic inactivity / full employment etc)

Is the definition and methodology coming from government, perhaps from advisors they employ to work with the ONS, or can say ONS statisticians, even, query the methods used?

Do they seek to benchmark their definitions and measures against international standards, like IMF, World Bank, OECD etc?

Also, government commissions independent economic research outside of the ONS. So for instance, Alan Milburn's recent report on young NEETs (not in employment, education or training).

I believe it was David Cameron's government who changed the definition of what constituted a NEET. Would such changes in definitions cascade through to the ONS, or is that within Westminster / Downing Street circles only?

By that, I mean, if you look at the research the government commissions, which is uploaded to https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/, for instance, is that using different methodology and scopes of definitions of terms than what the ONS would use, or do they try and harmonise their research methodologies and standardisation of terms across government, public sector bodies etc?

And if there are changes to definitions or scopes of definitions, how does that propagate or disseminate across the landscape?

I guess what I'm partly asking is if ONS statisticians are civil servants in the sense that they implement the definitions set by government, including ministers, even if they don't agree with them?

So for instance, if the ONS is tracking long-term unemployment, do they make the distinction themselves between what is considered long-term unemployment and what is economic inactivity (i.e. how do they determine those actively seeking work even when long-term unemployed versus those who are not interested in participating in the labour force)?

(Sidenote: I know there is structural unemployment too, but unsure as to how it relates to long-term unemployment, economic inactivity / full employment etc)

Is the definition and methodology coming from government, perhaps from advisors they employ to work with the ONS, or can say ONS statisticians, even, query the methods used?

Do they seek to benchmark their definitions and measures against international standards, like IMF, World Bank, OECD etc?

Also, government commissions independent economic research outside of the ONS. So for instance, Alan Milburn's recent report on young NEETs (not in employment, education or training).

I believe it was David Cameron's government who changed the definition of what constituted a NEET. Would such changes in definitions cascade through to the ONS, or is that within Westminster / Downing Street circles only?

By that, I mean, if you look at the research the government commissions, which is uploaded to https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/, for instance, is that using different methodology and scopes of definitions of terms than what the ONS would use, or do they try and harmonise their research methodologies and standardisation of terms across government, public sector bodies etc?

And if there are changes to definitions or scopes of definitions, how does that propagate or disseminate across the landscape?

I guess what I'm partly asking is if ONS statisticians are civil servants in the sense that they implement the definitions set by government, including ministers, even if they don't agree with them?

As an ND POC, I'm very much a non confrontational type, I live in the UK, and grew up in a Tory supporting household (except for when they voted New Labour).

I don't really care about politics all that much (at least not in the sense of the culture wars, as I find no new ground is broken and instead we devolve into reductionist arguments and thinking, and I feel like a lot of people chase the noise rather than the signal these days, especially when we lurch from one scandal or crisis to the next, and there is such plurality of reporting on every new breaking news item that when you're trying to find the original report or press release or whatever, they've already moved on to the next item in their agenda), but that being said, I like to understand other people's arguments, even if I don't agree with them.

If you had asked me five years ago, I would have told you I was a moderate. If you asked me now, I would say non-partisan, partly because I've met many moderates who are right wing bigots in disguise, and I don't care to associate with them.

That being said, I've associated with a lot of real leftists (so not liberals) on online spaces, including Discord and IRC.

When the next general election comes, I'm probably going to vote for either Labour, Liberal Democrats or Green, so rest assured, I am voting for one of the ostensibly left leaning parties.

That also being said, however, I do find that when I've interacted with the above (particularly on IRC), they often willfully misrepresent what I say when I a asking them questions and use that to insult me. My parents do the same to me when I highlight some of the paradoxical political statements they make. It's very insulting, disingenuous and made in bad faith.

Do you not think the real leftist (I am not sure if progressives would even be seen as real leftists) community has somewhat of an intellectual superiority complex?

You are nice to them, read the books they recommend etc, but they still see themselves as superior to you, and are constantly passive aggressive, as if they assume you're engaging them in bad faith, then when you stand your ground, they act as though you're the bad guy.

Someone I do like, who has always been patient and willing to help others, is Unlearning Economics, a British YouTuber and heterodoxical economist from the post-Keynesian economic tradition (left leaning), who has none of these airs and graces, who isn't a haughty intellectual, and doesn't strawman you, nor engage in any of these other passive aggressive logical fallacies.

We all are trying to learn the correct blueprint in life to follow, and we all start from zero knowledge, but when the real left expects you to read tomes and tomes just so you can deign to converse with them, and then they keep insulting you and assuming you're acting in bad faith when you're just trying to understand from their perspective, why do I even bother at times?

Say you're Harrow Boys' School, or Eton College for Boys, and you officially start admitting female students.

For prospective female boarders (Harrow and Eton seem to be an exclusively boarding rather than a day school), can they just subdivide their male only dorms into both boys and girls, or do they need planning consent / permission to do so, or to build new residential halls for girls?

So my background is in web development, IT systems administration (including email, DNS etc), software development, and data analysis / engineering.

I am considering pursuing a career as an accountant. I am 31, and was made redundant from my last role (Data Analyst / Engineer) in April of last year.

Since then, I have been claiming ESA and UC. Interested in perhaps seeing if there are any AAT courses I can take either locally or remotely that are funded via Adult Skills Fund (ASF) or where there are full fee waivers due to limited income (not sure if such courses would also entitle me to a full reduction in exam fees).

I live in a part of the West Midlands which doesn't have Adult Skills Fund (ASF) devolution powers, and thus such ASF-eligible courses would be directly funded by the Department for Education (DfE). My region does not fall within the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA), and so I cannot receive funding for any of their courses either.

Providing I can find such funded courses, either locally or remotely, what sort of course should I start with? I know about the three financial statements (i.e. statement of financial position / balance sheet, income statement / P&L and statement of cash flows), the distinction between management and financial accounting, a decent understanding of credits and debits, understand the Other Comprehensive Basis of Accounting (OCBOA), know difference between FRS, IFRS, US GAAP etc, know what an HMRC tax agent is, etc.

So in other words, I have all the theory, I just don't necessarily have the practice. With that in mind, would say an AAT bookkeeping course, such as at Level 2, be an ideal starting point?

If I can find a decent apprenticeship scheme nearby, maybe those are worth considering too? I know the National Audit Office (NAO) offers them, I could look into firms engaged in public practice, etc.

I am playing around with QuickBooks Online, is it worth looking into getting demos for other tools, like Dext or https://www.concur.co.uk/ etc? Is it still worth learning Sage, worth looking into https://uk.adp.com/ etc?

My Excel skills are pretty strong, but I guess brushing up on the scripting languages, like Power Query / DAX or VBA, also strongly recommended.

I don't drive and public transport in my region is pretty spotty at best, although some good train routes into Birmingham, Coventry etc. No university education, but not opposed to pursuing higher education at some future point.

I've always struggled to understand how marginal tax rates work. The simplest explanation I can quickly find is https://ukpersonal.finance/income-tax/, which states as follows:

>The UK operates what is known as a marginal tax system. Put simply, for every £1 you earn over a threshold, you only pay that tax rate on that income, not the whole lot.

Can you help me work out the logistics of this? Say, for instance, I am a UK salaried employee and that is my only source of income.

If I look at https://www.gov.uk/income-tax-rates, it states this:

>Band Taxable income Tax rate Personal Allowance Up to £12,570 0% Basic rate £12,571 to £50,270 20% Higher rate £50,271 to £125,140 40% Additional rate over £125,140 45%

If I earn a salary that falls within the Additional rate for income tax, and I do monthly PAYE (so speaking purely hypothetical, I'm directly remunerated by my employer rather than through a limited company), how do those monthly PAYE deductions factor in marginal rate of tax?