Latest news with #Taxpayers
Times
19-05-2025
- Business
- Times
Civil servants using work laptops to watch porn and place bets
Civil servants working from home have used their official laptops to visit pornography and gambling sites. In the past six months at least 16 attempts were made to view pornography or visit bookmakers online using devices funded by Scottish taxpayers, records show. The figures were obtained by the Scottish Conservatives under freedom of information law and first reported by the Scottish Mail on Sunday. Since November, there have been six attempts to access Pornhub, six for Betfair and four for Paddy Power on Scottish government devices. Officials said Netflix use was so prolific that discovering how many times it had been viewed would not be cost-effective. The revelations come after Michael Matheson, then an SNP minister, chalked up an £11,000 bill on his
Fox News
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Otterbein's Cookies celebrates National Chocolate Chip Day
All times eastern Making Money with Charles Payne FOX News Radio Live Channel Coverage WATCH LIVE: Tomi Lahren says Dem leaders are asleep while taxpayers pay the price
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Perth team confirmed to join NRL in $65m deal funded by Western Australia taxpayers
Rugby league fans at Optus Stadium in Perth in 2022. Western Australia will get its own NRL team after a deal was announcement by the state government. Rugby league fans at Optus Stadium in Perth in 2022. Western Australia will get its own NRL team after a deal was announcement by the state government. Photograph: James Worsfold/AAP Western Australia premier Roger Cook has revealed the details of the heavily-anticipated NRL expansion team based in Perth, although it is not yet certain whether the new franchise will join the competition in 2027 or 2028. Cook said the deal will cost WA taxpayers $60m over seven years in 'direct financial support' and another $5.6m in matchday and marketing assistance. Advertisement Related: Ghost field goal triggers Raiders' Magic Round win to leave Storm rueing ill discipline 'We've worked hard to secure this deal, and we took a strong negotiating position,' he said in a video posted to social media. According to Cook, the club will be a membership-based, not-for-profit entity chaired by a Western Australian and the government funding will not be funnelled to other NRL clubs. 'Every dollar of direct financial support provided by the WA government will be spent in Western Australia,' he said. 'The NRL will not charge the club a licence fee.' The federal government committed $600m to the PNG franchise, including a $60m fee provided to the NRL that the governing body pledged to share with the clubs. Advertisement Cook said the Perth team would deliver a 'return for taxpayers'. 'Not only will this be great news for sports fans, it's great news for our economy and great news for jobs,' he said. The premier's message raised questions over when the team will join the competition however, with previous speculation focused on entry in the 2027 season. Cook said the new club will compete in the NRL 'for the first time in 2027 or 2028'. The NRL's existing broadcast deal expires at the end of the 2027 season. The side is expected to be linked to the former first grade club North Sydney, but Cook made no mention of the Bears. Advertisement North Sydney Bears board member and former player Billy Moore said the team would definitely be known as the Bears and it would be 'bicoastal' with 'the Perth DNA and the Bears DNA'. He promised more information would be released in coming days. 'It's going to be the Perth Bears, so I'm happy for them to get excited, because they've been waiting since 1997 when the [Western] Reds got removed, because the lights will move to the east coast tomorrow,' he said. 'They're putting forward a lot of money, and Roger Cook, I applaud his passion for making it happen.' Melbourne Storm fullback Ryan Papenhuyzen – who will be out of contract by the time the Perth side enters the competition – said travel would be 'tough' for players, but the WA team will become a draw. 'There's also an appeal that it's a foundation club, you don't get many opportunities to do that, so I don't think it'd be too big of an issue to attract players,' he said.
The Sun
06-05-2025
- Politics
- The Sun
Migrants are cynically gaming our visa system and leaving YOU with the bill – here's how we can stamp it out
IT'S the backdoor method of getting a UK passport without risking your neck on a cross-Channel dinghy. First, convince the Home Office to issue you with a student or work visa, then jump on a plane and when you land here, make a claim for asylum. 2 2 Back in March, I wrote on these very pages demanding a crackdown on these 'regular arrivals', some of whom are gaming the system. Well, two months on and the Government seems to have listened. The Home Office is pledging to restrict work and study visas for people from countries including Pakistan, Nigeria and Sri Lanka, who are most likely to overstay and claim asylum. A tougher regime can't be implemented soon enough, and it must be watertight so immigration lawyers aren't able to wreck it. Unlike returning migrants to France, this is a policy very much in Britain's own hands. Although the media and political focus is on the small boats, more asylum claims come from legitimate visa holders. Last year 40,000 asylum claims were made by people with a UK visa — 37 per cent of the total — while just over 35,000 asylum applications came from migrants who crossed from France on dinghies. Taxpayers may be surprised to learn that 10,000 people who arrived with Home Office-stamped UK visas were being housed in hotels or similar accommodation last year, after claiming asylum. Foreign students, to get a visa, need to prove they have enough money of their own to support and accommodate themselves. They also need to show that they intend to return home afterwards. Dinghy migrants filmed boasting about life in hotels YOU pay for as bills rocket for millions of Brits So something is clearly going badly wrong — and the British public is footing the bill. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper now wants to bar visa holders from being housed in hotels. During my 40 years at the Home Office — retiring as Director General of the UK Border Force in 2013 — I witnessed the visa application process first hand. Acting as a visa officer in Bangladesh, I had to weed out the bogus claims from those who wanted to better themselves with a qualification at a British college. Sometimes, it wasn't easy. There are those who appear legitimate — with their paperwork in order — but are in fact gaming the system. Someone would come in with a bank statement showing they had £30,000 in their account. Our people could phone their bank and they would say it's true. Then you'd hear the applicant had turned up at a soup kitchen in the UK with no money, saying they were destitute. The would-be 'students' — or organised criminals — pass the £30,000 from one applicant to another. Some crooked colleges in the UK are also in on the scam, providing proof of enrolment for bogus students. 'GENUINE FROM BOGUS' The UK visa-vetting process needs to be tougher, so that we don't fall for any of these tricks. When I became Head of the Immigration Service (Ports) Directorate under the Tony Blair government, I was charged with reducing asylum intake. This meant putting real pressure on UK visa posts to make sure they were doing their jobs properly, and refusing visas where necessary. Visa applicants are fingerprinted and photographed when they make their applications. So, when they then apply for asylum the Home Office knows who they are, what country they are from and why they came to Britain. Now, some people will say, 'Getting a student visa was the only way I could get to the UK, to then claim asylum for the persecution that I'm suffering in my homeland'. The visa rules aren't, however, there to facilitate asylum claims but to sift genuine applicants from bogus ones. In my day, visa applicants were interviewed and had their documents thoroughly assessed by experts with local knowledge gained by living abroad. But nowadays, applications are often assessed remotely, online, by an assortment of lower-grade staff, led by managers with limited experience of immigration fraud. 'FAIR BUT TOUGH' A weak visa system is easily gamed by bogus asylum seekers looking for an easy route into Britain. And once someone is in the asylum system, it's very difficult to deport them. Lawyers can launch seemingly endless appeals and weaponise the European Convention on Human Rights. Recent cases include an Albanian criminal who avoided deportation after claiming his son doesn't like foreign chicken nuggets. Then there was the Pakistani paedophile who was jailed for child sex offences but wasn't booted out of Britain because it would be 'unduly harsh' on his own kids. Last year 108,000 people claimed asylum in Britain — the highest since records began in 1979. Of those, more than 10,500 came from Pakistan, one of the countries that will be targeted in the proposed crackdown. Despite cancelling the Rwanda scheme, Sir Keir Starmer says he wants to reduce both legal and illegal immigration. Well, returning to a thorough, fair but tough visa regime will help on both counts.
CBC
06-05-2025
- Business
- CBC
Windsor buys $285K worth of U.S. furniture for ice rink amid trade war
City staff approved spending hundreds of thousands on American-made outdoor furniture as part of the $15.4 million outdoor ice rink downtown days after being asked to prioritize Canadian-made goods during an ongoing trade war. The furniture will cost taxpayers up to $285,957.21 for 28 seasonal outdoor metal tables, 18 table-mounted metal umbrellas and 10 garbage receptacles.
