As it seems Boris delivers the service personally, so I wonder if he is ensuring he pays tax "like an employee" meaning giving up over half of his invoice to the tax man, or is that rule only for little people?

"or is that rule only for little people"

It's not a rule for the little people either. If you are paying the higher tax bands then you are not one of the little people.

The higher tax bands already catch little people, but that was not my point.

If he has set up a business as a vehicle for his speeches, I wonder if he declares himself in scope of IR35, as these speeches are personal service. Which means his company must be taxed on revenue, if he has one. That's what happens to little people and not giants like Infosys, for instance.

Hiring Boris the Liar to deliver a speech about blockchain seems about right. Has anyone came up with a legitimate use case for it besides "marketing" hyperbole yet?

Thought not.

Has anyone came up with a legitimate use case for Boris?

Blockhead talks about Blockchain.

Seems about right.

Too late, it is no longer worth 2 cents.

You need to hype a bit more to create a better valuation of your comment.

Define legitimate. Bojo has proven himself to be very useful. Just not to the people he's supposed to represent.

But he's an idiot. Blockchain is essential in our rush to digitise everything. So some secure (enough) method to handle security, authentication, audit/accountability, custody and non-repudiation. To my mind, the issue is standardisation, implementation, which transactions it should apply to, and the computational cost of doing so.

But then it's also nothing really new. I'm a fan of X.500 because it included this stuff. A long while ago, we implemented an X-based network that transacted with an IP-based partner. There was a disupute, but we could prove we'd delivered messages to the partner thanks to non-repudiation built into the protocol(s). For the partner, it just disappeared into their IP 'cloud'.

Maybe Boris is reckoning that if he boosts the Btc promotion then the price will fall since everyone (even the Tories) are saying that he's an idiot. So if the price falls and he buys a bunch under the table and shuts up, maybe the Btc price will jump again in a few months, resulting in Boris making a few million again.

Yes, I can say that he's an idiot, but clearly he's not totally stupid, he's just a politician that keeps getting richer, let's just watch this go on.

... a legitimate use case for Boris?

Hmm ...

He has proven, beyond doubt, that there is no such thing.

As for illegitimate uses (past and present), there's quite a bit that can be said about that ...

But Here's The Thing ® : just why does the buffoon still get any press at all?

O.

> why does the buffoon still get any press at all?

Ask that again when he's back in Nº 10 in 2 years time.

Klaus Schwab thought he has. But Boris was unable to deliver his Great Reset so WEF started a coup. You can't buy Conservative membership, so WEF had to short the pound and run the story that Truss crashed the economy and then they could finally ignore the members vote and put trusty Sunak on the throne.

It's a matter of time we will all own nothing and eat ze bugs.

> Has anyone came up with a legitimate use case for Boris?

Impregnating females who have had a lapse of reason?

Impregnating females who have had a lapse of reason?

I take personal exception to both the text and the tone in your post.

Impregnating a female who has had a lapse of reason is basically rape.

O.

[1]Here is a long list of the biggest successes. If you are not entirely convinced that some of them are successes that is because you are looking at it from the wrong direction. A report of someone coming second implies someone else came first.

[1] https://web3isgoinggreat.com/

Comedy?

Seriously, blockchain currencies bring very little to the table that new with currencies. They're not as anonymous as, say, hacksilver or gold is and they're not as convenient as paper fiat money or credit cards are. The administration consumes lots of power for no actual gain, and really the only use is in slowly and amusingly teaching a lot of highly intelligent people who really should know better that con-men still exist and are still extremely capable of fleecing the marks.

If the presence of blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies disrupt traditional banks enough that they start acting like it's not still the 19th century where international transfers take up to a week and cost a ridiculous amount of money, regular in-country transfers take hours, and nothing happens outside of office hours, then I'd call that a success.

I don't know where you are, but for years my international transfers have all been cheap and same/next day, and my domestic transfers have all been free and instant. That's nothing to do with blockchain or crypto, and all to do with migrants and small businesses pushing payments providers, and they in turn identified a use case that regulators allowed them to run with under a light touch regime.

Has anyone came up with a legitimate use case for it besides "marketing" hyperbole yet?

I rather think that was the point Boris was making.

The thing is third rate grifters and spivs like Johnson and Hancock don't really know anything about bitcoin, blockchain, cryptography, etc, and they very probably don't care much either. They are only there to read out a pre-prepared endorsement script in exchange for a large wad of cash.

Imagine actually paying to hear that guff - it was bad enough reading the soundbites. I wonder if his fee was in bitcoin?

Even if (for some reason) you actually liked Johnson, why on earth would anyone pay him money- quite likely a *lot* of money- to hear someone who isn't remotely associated with tech expertise deliver a talk on blockchain? Especially as the audience of "pros" can be assumed to have known a lot more than he did in the first place.

At best we can assume he'd simply be delivering a speech written by someone who *was* an expert in the area.

My thoughts entirely - is he there to inject a bit of glamour to the proceedings? Stardust? It's weird because an audience of blockchain shysters are surely the audience least susceptible to the pish he hawks.

Sometimes there's value in hearing the view from outside the bubble. I've wasted more days than I care to count listening to experts tell a specialist audience what they already know, and to great applause, but the real value I've taken away has often been the perspective of speakers one step removed from the industry.

"one step removed from the industry."

Yes we need no experts!

Here's one of his earlier grand entrances

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/16/stuck-zip-wire-boris-johnson-london-2012-olympics

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/16/stuck-zip-wire-boris-johnson-london-2012-olympics

Yeah, I've heard that incident (i.e. getting stuck on the zip wire) was deliberately set up and I can quite believe that.

Johnson was someone whose "bumbling posh man with rumpled hair" persona was a deliberately contrived put-on to make him less threatening and more "likeable", and he exploited that English like of upperclass eccentrics to the full.

Don't believe me? Broadcaster Jeremy Vine once told the story of how [1]he happened to see Johnson deliver the same lecture twice .... complete with the exact same "funny" gaffes at the exact same points the second time round .

Ha ha, funny Boris.

[1] https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/my-boris-johnson-story/

Don't believe me? Broadcaster Jeremy Vine once told the story of how he happened to see Johnson deliver the same lecture twice.... complete with the exact same "funny" gaffes at the exact same points the second time round.

You appear in some way surprised.

When I was 16 and involved in running an event I was given a pack that contained a copy of the announcers script, including all of the scripted jokes. The same script was used both days of the event. Since then, i've come to realise that many people tend to reuse the same speeches etc to different audiences.

I'm surprised that anybody is surprised that scripts exist and that people giving reheased speeches tend to reuse them whereever they think that the audiences won't overlap.

You've missed the point. It wasn't the fact he gave a repeat of the same speech on two different occasions or even that the clearly-intended jokes were scripted.

It was the fact that even the *apparent* bumbling "gaffes" and "mistakes" in the delivery of that speech (including the messing-up of a punchline that got a bigger laugh than the otherwise overused joke would likely have received anyway)- the kind of things that define the "Bumbling Boris" persona- were *also* the same .

In other words, "Bumbling Boris" is, and always was, a put-on.

Of course, have you only just realised that now?

Even the hairdo is part of it, he'll be impeccably dressed in a business meeting, but on his way out to meet the press he will ruffle his hair and rumple his shirt to keep the persona intact.

He's a clever man pretending to be stupid, which is much more dangerous than the reverse.

> Of course, have you only just realised that now?

No, it was obvious long before even before the Jeremy Vine story as far as I was concerned.

> Even the hairdo is part of it

I'm aware of that too; I'm the one who- every time someone says "why doesn't he do something with his hair"- mentions that *is* the point, that it's part of the "Boris" persona, and that if you watch cases where he genuinely needs to be serious (e.g. times of tragedy when *no-one* would tolerate "funny" Boris) he's quite capable of having it look neat and respectable.

Also, while he's neither as stupid as some people assume, he's not the 4D-Chess genius some people who spotted *that* seem to overcompensate in assuming either.

He has a lot of- what many people take as- signifiers for (privately) "educated", i.e. school Latin, use of historical references et al, but his main skill lies in promoting himself and his own self-interest.

It's probably not a great idea to tell a room full of people working in an industry that their industry needs a reason to exist, but I think in a way, he is right.

To my technical, but admittedly not really that knowledgeable about blockchain, mind I think he is right. I know that blockchain uses the same technologies used for virtual currencies, and I know it is used for data storage, but beyond Virtual Currencies and NFTs (both things I think will need regulation long term to at least minimise scams), I'm not really sure what advantage it offers over other technologies, and what it is used for.

I thought I read an article stating NFTs were dead already? Dead in the sense that nobody is buying any? Or maybe it was a comment here in a forum? And therefore needs to be substantiated.

N ow F utile T rash?

Basically anyone who completely understands it thinks it's a useless moneypit.

People who partially understand it usually try to make money out of it.

People who don't understand it provide the money.

Block chain is a distributed ledger which relies on majority consensus to validate entries.

Cryptocurrencies claim the calculation required to validate the entries has monetary value.

Doing that gets harder as the "chain" of entries gets longer.

If someone (or a small group of someones) manage to "own" 51% of the blocks storing those entries they can manipulate their value.

"I will do my best to tiptoe through the minefield this afternoon, with the tact for which I am famous"

I heard a rumble but just thought they were testing the diesel gen!

and to paraphrase a cracker joke...

How do you tell if Boris has been in your fridge (his favourite hiding hole)? Footprints in the butter!

"How do you tell if Boris has been in your fridge"

The entire contents has been replaced by a suitcase-sized amount of wine bottles?

Works for me!

He's eaten all your cheese. He's easily distracted by cheese. That's why he said we shouldn't work from home while he was Prime Minister. And living in the flat at No 10 directly above his "office".

That's... A... Disgrace!!

Fresh off the back of a lorry, sweet, tender and oven ready. I'll do you a deal... 1 bitcoin each or 2 for a half. You won't get better blockchains on the market. Look at the gold one I have round my neck.. BELLLOCKCHEEAAIIINS!!

Honest Boris Enterprises.

"they're not stolen, they just haven't been paid for yet"

Bacon (Jason Statham), Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

Cut-Me-Own-Throat Johnson?

I think you mean "Bloody Stupid" Johnson.

Didn't he volunteer-promise himself to be "dead in a ditch" Johnson?

For Heathrow's 3rd runway, as the local MP, he was going to be "laying in front of the bulldozers" Johnson

If you're selling worthless nonsense to fools, what could be more appropriate than to waste a ton of money to pay a worthless fool to sell it for you.

is backing blockchain.

Wheres the £350 million a week for the NHS Boris ?

I guess the end of the universe would be a blockchain app about the benefits of Brexit.

'Kangeroo Scrotum' Hancock's doing the app