Home Office Hiring EU Staff to Register EU Citizens. Trump's Ultra-Rich Tax Bonanza. Fly-tipping

On the Cam - from today's walk

No unemployed in Britain, Hurrah! Well according to Philip Hammond for a short while when interviewed by the BBC. More seriously, The Home Office is struggling to find more staff to deal with to register EU nationals and deal with the existing backlog. As we are still within the EU, they are accepting EU nationals to fill the posts("The Home Office recruits on merit, not nationality"). Whilst some have blamed the location of the Home Office departments dealing with registration in Sheffield, the real issue is the immensity of the task. Even if the full complement of 500 additional staff, added to the newly recruited 700, is achieved, each case worker would have to deal with 1,500 applicants each. Current applications, including visas, are already beginning to experience unacceptable delays.

I've only just caught up with the planned Tax Reform in the US, with two different proposed versions, according to the Guardian. The beneficiaries because of tax cuts are the rich, with "the Trump family (saving) $1.15bn when he dies". The losers include with the latest version of the Senate tax bill, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation,  would be lower-income Americans, experiencing increased taxes by 2021.

Major news items today focus on the expected and undelivered resignation by Robert Mugabe, currently still President of Zimbabwe. This in the face of a very restrained military takeover, Mugabe's dismissal as leader of his party, ZANU-PF, and the massed demonstrations on the streets.

An interesting morning trying to provide remote family assistance in computing and designing a text document, before walking over to Horningsea and back on a sunny Sunday afternoon. The walk was marred by fly-tipping on Fen Road, beyond the rail crossing. Red paint and liquid chlorine canisters were among the rubbish strewn on either side of the road, with a potential for contaminating the water in the field drains leading to the River Cam.

Fly-tipping has increased again for the third year in a row by 4%. In the last recorded 2016/17 year data, there were a million incidents, costing local councils at least £57 million to clear away. Most of the waste is domestic (67%), with just over half being either a small van or car-boot load. Data from the ONS, see https://goo.gl/6jgCV9. Fly-tipping is senseless, selfish, damages the environment and adds to all our council tax bills