"SavetheUKCC" petition

[John Upham]

A poster appeared yesterday depicting Mike Basman dressed as St George ready to take on the Dragon of HMRC:
http://delanceyukschoolschesschallenge. ... Poster.pdf

When I took the photographs I did not foresee this eventual usage!

[John McKenna]

I think that Mr. Basman's business affairs are only a minor problem - despite being repeatedly reminded that £300,000 is a lot of money to fail to render to the public purse.

Whether he did it deliberately on principle - knowing that he would be brought to book at some point - or more clandestinely, on the make, hoping to get clean away with it is unclear, at least to me.

About the same time as Mr B's bankruptcy a former snooker star was also made bankrupt (for 6 years instead of the now customary one year) for debts - totalling about two or three times as much as Mr B's - owed to "friends & acquaintances". He gambled all the money away and had no assets to be seized. I wonder how he is faring on the snooker forums. and if depriving people close to him of money that he could never repay is a greater offence than short changing HMRC, and perhaps only temporarily?

By the way...

A number of leading insolvency practitioners are due to be interviewed under caution as part of a criminal investigation into an alleged multi-million professional fees fraud, The Times has revealed. (City AM, 5th Sept. 2016)

["Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum. And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on; While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on... "]

[Jonathan Bryant]

A poster appeared yesterday depicting Mike Basman dressed as St George ready to take on the Dragon of HMRC:
http://delanceyukschoolschesschallenge. ... Poster.pdf

This is starting to remind me of the Holy Grail’s Black Knight.

[Neil Graham]

A poster appeared yesterday depicting Mike Basman dressed as St George ready to take on the Dragon of HMRC:
http://delanceyukschoolschesschallenge. ... Poster.pdf

Can we return to the world of reality? The court case of 2015 well and truly put to bed any hope of chess (along with bridge) being classified as a sport and therefore not being subject to VAT. The link to Blackstones and the full court judgement are attached.

https://www.blackstonechambers.com/news ... sh_bridge/
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Adm ... /2875.html

Bearing in mind the EBU were refused permission to appeal against this, Basman's petition and cry of "Let battle commence" are utterly and completely pointless. If the sole strategy of "Can the Chess Challenge continue" is based on this, we already know the answer,

[Alan Kennedy]

I think that Mr. Basman's business affairs are only a minor problem

Last time I spoke to an insolvency practitioner the official receivers fees were 17% of realisatins so will be at least £45000 (assuming Mike has equity in his house). I do not know if the insolvency practitioners are added to those but given the Trustee is likely to charge between £200 -£550 per hour to deal with the matter i do not expect Mr Basman to see much change out of say £25,000 for insolvency practiitioner winding up the Estate. In the light of this he may wish to consider whether he can do an IVA out of bankruptcy or if he has sufficient equity in his house get the bankruptcy annulled. If there are any insolvency practitioners out there perhaps they could confirm the like position. For the reasons outlined above (all his assets now belong to the Trustee in Bankruptcy - including his house and the fluffy toys!) and the cost of the procedure I suggest the problem is anything but minor and he will need a lot more that a photo of him as St George if he is to escape the mess.

[Simon Brown]

Has the ECF distanced itself from all this? I'd be making it very clear that Mike (B) has no official capacity within the ECF and the UKCC is/was not run by Mike for the ECF. I'm assuming they don't support the petition as well, which is clearly an ill-advised no-hoper.

It's all rather embarrassing.

[Roger de Coverly]

Has the ECF distanced itself from all this?

Not as reported earlier in the thread.
http://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php ... 30#p186167

Against that there's the CEO's comments, also in this thread, and the lack of any reporting of ECF initiatives on the ECF's website.

[John Upham]

Has the ECF distanced itself from all this?

At the Terafinal the ECF DoJCaE made a speech emphasising her full support for UKCC and she mentioned that the ECF board also strongly supported UKCC.

The letter from Mike had been distributed to all and sundry at the beginning of the weekend.

She did agree with me that the Slavery & Forced Labour text was unhelpful and should be got rid of.

Of course, this was within the confines of Loughborough Grammar School.

Possibly this is an opportunity to "Ask the Director"?

See https://johnupham.smugmug.com/Chess/UKC ... -c7W2XmR/A

I'm not aware if the DoJCaE is one of the Directors that avoids this place.

[Simon Brown]

Thankfully there is one Mike who is displaying some common sense.

[John McKenna]

I think that Mr. Basman's business affairs are only a minor problem

Last time I spoke to an insolvency practitioner the official receivers fees were 17% of realisatins so will be at least £45000 (assuming Mike has equity in his house). I do not know if the insolvency practitioners are added to those but given the Trustee is likely to charge between £200 -£550 per hour to deal with the matter i do not expect Mr Basman to see much change out of say £25,000 for insolvency practiitioner winding up the Estate. In the light of this he may wish to consider whether he can do an IVA out of bankruptcy or if he has sufficient equity in his house get the bankruptcy annulled. If there are any insolvency practitioners out there perhaps they could confirm the like position. For the reasons outlined above (all his assets now belong to the Trustee in Bankruptcy - including his house and the fluffy toys!) and the cost of the procedure I suggest the problem is anything but minor and...

Yes, it is a serious problem for Mr B, but what is the scale of his problem for others?

Many of the activities and operations of governments and financial institutions (including insolvency practitioners - see my previous post) are the source of incomparably greater problems for most than those of any individual, apart from the odd plutocrat.

Conversely there are those for whom -

Everyman's debt diminishes me,
As long as it's owed to HMRC...

Who has been happy with the government handing out billions to the very banks who engineered the 2008 crash so that they can lower interest rates to savers in order to push them to spend their savings to keep the economy turning over while borrowers have never had it so good? It's a policy of pure profligacy.

There's something rotten in the state, and I'm not talking about Denmark. (Even though an investigation is under way into tax amounting to several billions of euros on share dividends - at the rate of 27% - evaded by Danish citizens claiming to be living abroad.)

[Richard Bates]

A poster appeared yesterday depicting Mike Basman dressed as St George ready to take on the Dragon of HMRC:
http://delanceyukschoolschesschallenge. ... Poster.pdf

Can we return to the world of reality? The court case of 2015 well and truly put to bed any hope of chess (along with bridge) being classified as a sport and therefore not being subject to VAT. The link to Blackstones and the full court judgement are attached.

https://www.blackstonechambers.com/news ... sh_bridge/
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Adm ... /2875.html

Bearing in mind the EBU were refused permission to appeal against this, Basman's petition and cry of "Let battle commence" are utterly and completely pointless. If the sole strategy of "Can the Chess Challenge continue" is based on this, we already know the answer,

To be fair, on this narrow point alone, the court case judgement is a bit of a red herring, isn't it? What the court case determined was that HMRC were applying the law correctly. The petition, for what it's worth is aimed at producing a change in the law. Were Parliament to legislate for chess to be subject to the same exemptions as the physical sports, then it would be.

That said, the whole petition "strategy" is obviously doomed to failure not least because, even if Parliament was minded to act in principle, they would be unlikely to do so on the back of this case. That, if for no other reason, is why the ECF should steer clear of it, even if working behind the scenes to support the principle of the UKCC continuing in some guise.

The final point about the petition is that it makes much of the exemption to "sports" denied to chess. The point that seems to be being missed is that it is far from clear that the UKCC as presently constituted, would even be able to take advantage of such an exemption anyway! (The relevant guidance on eligible bodies being found here https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... 0145-sport
Oh and I wonder if Delancey/UK land paid VAT on the sponsorship which wouldn't have been exempt under any circumstance I think.

[Roger de Coverly]

Oh and I wonder if Delancey/UK land paid VAT on the sponsorship which wouldn't have been exempt under any circumstance I think.

Wouldn't UKCC be the one liable for the VAT? This came up as part of the analysis of the accounting for Sheffield 2011 I forget the exact amounts, but if sponsorship to the ECF was £ 10,000, the sponsor, if VAT registered, would pay £ 12,000 and receive a VAT Invoice from the ECF. The ECF, in turn, would only conditionally pay this to HMRC. If, hypothetically, it spent the lot on accommodation for players and arbiters, it could offset the cost of the VAT included in Sheffield hotel bills against its own VAT Return.

Equally if UKCC spent the entire Delancey sponsorship on fluffy mascots, there would be no net VAT payable if, and that's a big if for UKCC, they filled in the forms correctly and the supplier of fluffy mascots was VAT registered.

[John Upham]

and the supplier of fluffy mascots was VAT registered.

You might be confusing mascots with fluffy pencils.

Most of the mascots are non-fluffy. I've collected them for years!

The best giveaways in the box are the Killer Moves booklets. These are useful.

[Stephen Noonan]

This is so sad. Sad because UKCC is a great tournament, sad because MB has done so much for junior chess nationally and for my son in particular, and sad because of the way MB has gone about this.
Ignore the problem until it's too late, then have someone start a petition about trying to retrospectively change the law, start the petition on a slacktivism site rather than on the government site that actually would trigger a response, all the crap about slavery, the poster...

Does anyone else think he'd be better off starting a crowd-funding thing saying "Hey, i messed up, I forgot to collect all the VAT. I'd like to keep the UKCC going so throw us a fiver" and send the link to his mailing list.

It could be like Its a Wonderful Life.

[John Upham]

Does anyone else think he'd be better off starting a crowd-funding thing saying "Hey, i messed up, I forgot to collect all the VAT. I'd like to keep the UKCC going so throw us a fiver" and send the link to his mailing list.

The same occurred to me. For this to happen and for good people to support it then there need to be changes.

The slavery/forced labour rubbish needs to be dumped: I can't see anyone (apart from Mike) disagreeing.

An accountant for UKCC needs to be appointed.

A limited liablity company needs to be created.

Mike and Pat need to be retained via either salaries or honorarium (I'm not sure which).

The IPR of UKCC clearly rests with Mike and the 20 years he has invested in developing it.

Does this future have any traction?