• REGISTER NOW!! Why? Because you can't do much without having been registered!

    At the moment you have limited access to view all discussions - and most importantly, you haven't joined our community. What are you waiting for? Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join Join Talking Horses here!

TV coverage

ITV4, 5.15pm-8.45pm: "Friday Night Live"
Megan Nicholls presents coverage of the first event of the series from Wolverhampton, plus a round-up of the latest news and a preview of the weekend's racing. With analysis from Adele Mulrennan and Leonna Mayor, and commentary by Stewart Machin.
Live races: 5.30, 6.00, 6.30, 7.00, 7.30, 8.00, 8.30.

What's not to like?
 
ITV4, 5.15pm-8.45pm: "Friday Night Live"
Megan Nicholls presents coverage of the first event of the series from Wolverhampton, plus a round-up of the latest news and a preview of the weekend's racing. With analysis from Adele Mulrennan and Leonna Mayor, and commentary by Stewart Machin.
Live races: 5.30, 6.00, 6.30, 7.00, 7.30, 8.00, 8.30.

What's not to like?

The sexism.
 
ITV4, 5.15pm-8.45pm: "Friday Night Live"
Megan Nicholls presents coverage of the first event of the series from Wolverhampton, plus a round-up of the latest news and a preview of the weekend's racing. With analysis from Adele Mulrennan and Leonna Mayor, and commentary by Stewart Machin.
Live races: 5.30, 6.00, 6.30, 7.00, 7.30, 8.00, 8.30.

What's not to like?
Various forumites have been DM-ing me, asking me for a link to the Invades website, I'm too lazy to reply to them all individually, so here it is with their marketing spiel.


Dust off your flat caps, don your dresses, for, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Midlands, we're off to the Races...LIVE ON ITV.

For the first time, INVADES will be working with ITV to deliver a big night of Races, Live interviews and tunes a plenty.

🐎 7 Races under the floodlights
💃🏽 Disc Jockeys on the decks
🥂 Exclusive Drinks Deals
🚌 Transport both ways (optional)

All wristband and transport information will be sent to the original email of purchase four days before the event.

Tickets to this event are non-refundable. In the event of cancellation, your tickets will be automatically transferred to a new date.
 
If you don't want her to see athletes rolling around on the turf in the throes of agony then I'd avoid going to a Forest game. Thankfully at the City Ground they quickly recover and play on.
She’s actually more interested in playing football than watching it. Having said I think both she and her brother support Forest.
 
Thankfully I am not a taxpayer in the UK and the fact that Matt Chapman has liquidated a company whilst owing £178k to the State is not annoying me.
Apparently Chapman has entered into an IVA so, unlike others in that position (Dettori?) he is at least making some attempt to pay some of the unpaid tax.

But that tiny mitigating aspect aside, if I didn't much like the brash, loud-mouthed, public schoolboy **** before this news, I like him even less now.

Yes, I know UK Limited Liability law allows people to do this, but that doesn't make it right.

And the HMRC don't just trouser tax receipts - tax funds the public sector, the NHS etc.
 
Last edited:
Apparently Chapman has entered into an IVA so, unlike others in that position (Dettori?) he is at least making some attempt to pay some of the unpaid tax.

But that tiny mitigating aspect aside, if I didn't much like the brash, loud-mouthed, public schoolboy **** before this news, I like him even less now.

Yes, I know UK Limited Liability law allows people to do this, but that doesn't make it right.

And the HMRC don't just trouser tax receipts - tax funds the public sector, the NHS etc.

Dunno what the other debts covered but I have zero sympathy for those , especially those who are in any way a public figure, crying for sympathy cos they owe the HMRC or VAT x thousands. I'm familiar with running a ltd company and to owe that means you've had the money and more, but instead putting the money aside they've spent it, so fk'm I'd like to see debtors prisons make a comeback.
The slight exception being no money coming in and still paying wages to staff and owing the hmrc income tax and ni on that.
 
Last edited:
Agreed, anyone fiddling the tax man is harming us all.
There is a difference between avoidance and evasion (as per current law), you are under no obligation to organise your affairs to pay the highest possible amount to the tax man , I believe there is case law on that. Anyone who thinks they should can quite simply go f themselves a thousand times over and are not really in touch with reality.
Nothing wrong with knowing the rules, or paying someone who does, and playing within them to your own benefit, but outright evasion and not paying tax is a different thing.
But those who haven't spent their lives as only a paye serf will be more aware there are grey areas, and that's where problems arise.
I don't believe someone should be able to set up a ltd , run up debt , go belly up to avoid paying debts cos they've basically spent the money, then just be able to set another one up and start again doing the same thing.
I'm generally more concerned about the small businesses they tend to leave in lurch doing that than the hmrc, cos those businesses can easy go belly up cos of other people being cnts refusing to pay for goods and services provided.
 
Last edited:
I'm somewhere in the middle.

Whether legal tax avoidance should even be possible - ie change the tax laws and close all currently available ways of achieving this - is a political argument and those never end well so I avoid them here nowadays.

But as it stands there are legal ways of minimising due tax via avoidance and that is completely different to the criminal act of tax evasion.

I personally don't much like people being able to set up companies and later fold them and walk away from debt, because not only is the public sector deprived of funding but businesses that go under with debt can drag their creditors down with them.
 
'fair share' is an entirely subjective term

It is and where I might disagree with walsworth is that I think the 'paye refs', like most of us are, actually pay more than their fair share.

I don't have any problems with people legally minimising how much they actually pay but too many people are getting away with illegal measures.

Maybe it's the legal measures that need redefining and tightening.
 
There is a difference between avoidance and evasion (as per current law), you are under no obligation to organise your affairs to pay the highest possible amount to the tax man , I believe there is case law on that. Anyone who thinks they should can quite simply go f themselves a thousand times over and are not really in touch with reality.
Nothing wrong with knowing the rules, or paying someone who does, and playing within them to your own benefit, but outright evasion and not paying tax is a different thing.
But those who haven't spent their lives as only a paye serf will be more aware there are grey areas, and that's where problems arise.
I don't believe someone should be able to set up a ltd , run up debt , go belly up to avoid paying debts cos they've basically spent the money, then just be able to set another one up and start again doing the same thing.
I'm generally more concerned about the small businesses they tend to leave in lurch doing that than the hmrc, cos those businesses can easy go belly up cos of other people being cnts refusing to pay for goods and services provided.
Several trainers are currently doing this. I remember being up at the BHA and there was a trainer there who was pleading for his licence (part of the terms then were that you were a "fit and proper" person and not a bankrupt. Anyway said trainer was interviewed with his main owner who set up a ltd company so he could continue to train and all his debts were struck off. He owed thousands to vets, farriers, feed companies etc. He's still training - and laughing about it.
 
Several trainers are currently doing this. I remember being up at the BHA and there was a trainer there who was pleading for his licence (part of the terms then were that you were a "fit and proper" person and not a bankrupt. Anyway said trainer was interviewed with his main owner who set up a ltd company so he could continue to train and all his debts were struck off. He owed thousands to vets, farriers, feed companies etc. He's still training - and laughing about it.
That type of thing f's me off.
What happened to stigma of being a bankrupt debtor?
Those that have being part of an ltd that's gone belly owing people money should be barred from being a company director for at least a year or operating any kind of business.
 
Last edited:
Llike them or lump them, both Michael O'Leary and Denise Coates have remained tax domiciled in their home countries even though 184 nights in Monaco or Barbados each year would have saved them each tens of millions (plus) over the years. Their tax goes into the general goverment ledger and is allocated as per the elected administration wishes, in their policy terms, to the people and society as a whole.

Contrast with James Dyson or JP McManus.

JP pays the bare minimum of tax in Ireland, when he absolutely has to, mainly CAT or CGT. He then, at his discretion, grants monies to causes, clubs and initiatives in his home town of Limerick and GAA clubs nationwide when he feels like it. For this he is lauded as a man of great generoisty and a national treasure.

Personally I'd prefer if he paid his taxes here, like the 99% of us without choice, and they were allocated to the Minister for Health so he could choose between a new MRI scanner for a childrens hospital or to fund the latest drug treatmenst for Cystic Fibrosis sufferers.
 
Llike them or lump them, both Michael O'Leary and Denise Coates have remained tax domiciled in their home countries
I've always felt I ought to detest O'Leary so finding him frequently witty and certainly direct and to the point was something I wasn't comfortable with.

I feel better reading this - the fella pays his taxes.
 
That type of thing f's me off.
What happened to stigma of being a bankrupt debtor?
Those that have being part of an ltd that's gone belly owing people money showed be barred from being a company director for at least a year or operating any kind of business.
I agree and this trainer just found it amusing. As he trains in Newmarket, there are several firms of vets, farriers etc who take them on when their competitors refuse. This guy is now "employed" by his owner who is the company director and theoretically pays the bills. It sucks especially as the BHA could do something about it.

I remember talking to my vet (a family friend) who was based in Lambourn about the late John Hills (who I liked a lot) and he told me that he was incredulous as John was hosting a 40th for his wife with a huge marquee and about 150 guests to which he had been invited. John owed him £60k in vets bills at the time.

But you only have to look at the huge debt that forced Alice Haynes to hand her licence in. I was staggered she had let it get so bad.
 
I agree and this trainer just found it amusing. As he trains in Newmarket, there are several firms of vets, farriers etc who take them on when their competitors refuse. This guy is now "employed" by his owner who is the company director and theoretically pays the bills. It sucks especially as the BHA could do something about it.

I remember talking to my vet (a family friend) who was based in Lambourn about the late John Hills (who I liked a lot) and he told me that he was incredulous as John was hosting a 40th for his wife with a huge marquee and about 150 guests to which he had been invited. John owed him £60k in vets bills at the time.

But you only have to look at the huge debt that forced Alice Haynes to hand her licence in. I was staggered she had let it get so bad.
I have a rule of never let anyone owe any amount that would cause me problems not to get back. Words mean nothing when it comes to the crunch with money.
I'm like various guys who have done work on my house i.e. they wanted 1/3 up front , a 1/3 half way thru & last 1/3 on completion.

Trouble is there too many people who are fundamentally dishonest robbing c's simple as that.
 
I'm like various guys who have done work on my house i.e. they wanted 1/3 up front , a 1/3 half way thru & last 1/3 on completion.

Depends on the project, I suppose. Our big house was funded by a staged mortgage: nothing up front but x when the groundworks/foundations were done, another x when the shell was up, another x when it was win/watertight, another x when most of the internal work was done and the final x, bar a percentage retention for problem issues, upon receipt of the keys.

The extension we added was done on similar lines.

However, I'm with Which? and their advice is always to pay nothing until the job is finished to your satisfaction. Their view is that any reputable trades company will have credit lines with all the reputable suppliers with 30-60 days' grace and to give short shrift to any tradesperson/company who asks for money up front. I've had to disappoint a few tradespeople on that score but I've never shirked on paying. Then again, I do have a very critical eye for the work of tradespeople and if I'm not happy I will insist that it is right before paying. I'm more than happy to put money into escroc pending an independent review, if necessary, but I have never ultimately not made sure the trader got their money.

Some tradespeople have been unnecessarily difficult and I reckon some would say the same thing about me but the good ones know that I am more than happy to recommend them when they do a good job.
 
This is the first time I’ve watched Ruby Walsh and not wanted to punch him in the face. And where’s Alice? I don’t mind Leonna ( and I loved her coat and hat !!) but I thought she was for the flat and they kept Alice and her interesting leather skirt for jump racing?
 
Chapman's broadcasting normally washes over me. This is show business after all and he is employed to be a show pony, payed to neigh and sh!t as the occasion demands it.

But today I really wanted to see no more of him. His faux emotion and empathetic posing made me want to barf.
 
His faux emotion and empathetic posing made me want to barf.

I feel that way with all of them.

Same when politicians come out and say 'our thoughts and prayers are with...' They probably haven't been in a church for 20 years apart from being seen at a high-profile funeral or wedding.
 

Recent Blog Posts

Back
Top