Philip Nicosia

Our Government may think they are big on Human Rights but like anything in life there is one rule for one and one rule for another.

When dealing with government departments such as the Inland Revenue your rights go out of the window. Supposedly there our safeguards put in place to stop the Inland Revenue from over exerting their powers and indeed if they request information from you that they are not entitled to under their Code of Practice they have to go to an independent Commissioner for approval of their request.

This is where the whole situation becomes laughable. You are not allowed to represent yourself to the Commissioner but can send in a letter that has to go to the Inland Revenue for them to pass on. Basically any defence you have is landed in the hands of the very people that are out to get you. This wouldn’t be so bad apart from the fact it is one sided. In fact the Inland Revenue are not obliged to let you know what they are going to say and what they actually said. Where is the fairness?

Conceivably it is possible for the Inland Revenue to make accusations against you that are completed unfounded and untrue and generally just make things up as they go alone. You’ll never know so what’s to stop them?

If someone accuses you of something and decides to take you to court if you are found not guilty then it is up to the prosecutors to pay your defence costs. Not so with the Inland Revenue. Their charter allows them to waste as much or your time and money as they wish. In their eyes, you are guilty until you can prove yourself innocent and its up to you to pay any of your own costs. Essentially you are already contributing to their costs out of the tax that you pay anyway. This allows them to be incompetent, inefficient and answerable to nobody.

How is that fair?

Search engine optimization is a very complex science, but at its heart is the simple rule: to format your website in such a way that spiders can immediately recognize and index its content. If they can’t “see” you, you might as well not exist—and if they can’t understand your code, no amount of keywords can get you in the Golden Top 20.

The problem that many website developers used to encounter was that search engines worked differently; so you could end up with a high ranking in Lycos but languish at the bottom of Google. How exactly should you optimize your site so you perform well in all search engines?

Enter ROR (short for Resources for a Resource), an independent XML format that translates your content in a way that all search engines can understand.

Think of it as a web spider’s Cliff’s Notes. it describes all the objects, services, discounts, images, podcasts, etc. If it’s on the site, it’s on the ROR feed, but in a format that’s easy to process and removes all risks of skipping or ignoring a link.

ROR calls its “magic file” structured feeds, which guide search engines as they scan the text. Unlike Google Sitemaps, it’s universally understood—and very easy to process. It’s also more detailed. It doesn’t just give a map or “table of contents”, it actually summarizes what’s inside. It’s also been in existence far longer than Google, so its reliability has been proven by time.

Though it’s been around for a long time, ROR is by no means outdated. The majority of the file formats are already available in ROR, although it is currently being updated to keep up with the growing number of website innovations. But to avoid being too unwieldy, the ROR system tries to re-use existing data structures. It boasts of being very streamlined, a strength that makes it one of the more efficient ways of indexing a site.

Usually the ROR feed is located in the directory, and is named by default ror.xml. It is possible to rename the file, and the search engines will still find it. The only thing it needs to have is a tag in your main page (between the and tags). Another alternative is to create a smaller ror.xml file which will direct the search engines to the ROR feed. You can create this file in the ROR sitemap generator.

Over the years I’ve had more mobile phones than I care to remember. Most of them I’ve either sold on or given away to friends and family but I still have a pretty large collection. Hey, who knows, they might be worth some money one day.

The first mobile phone I had was bigger than a brick, probably heavier as well and with a battery life of a whopping 4 hours! Thankfully things have changed a lot and improvements unimaginable before are now a reality.

One of my most favourite phones was the Siemens SL55.

A triband phone with colour screen and polyphonic ringtones and a really tactile feel to it. It was so small you could lose it in your pocket and I used this phone for many months before continuing on my quest to find “The perfect mobile phone“.

The trouble with mobile phones is the technology moves on at a tremendous pace that within weeks of you getting your brand new phone it no longer cuts in anymore. This is what I found with the Siemens SL55. Great when I got it but lacking in a camera and bluetooth it just had to go.

I’m currently using a Motorola V3i that I’ve had for a while which I’m pretty much happy with but want to change soon. The only problem is looking around there isn’t much on offer that appeals to me. It seems we have gone past the days of miniaturization and phones seem to be getting bigger all the time.

It seems the Inland Revenue are constantly in the press nowadays highlighting their errors and mistakes and how the tax payer is soaking up the burden for their own mistakes.

For 2 years in a row they have got their Tax Credits wrong overpaying countless numbers of people and have written off millions of pounds as they have been unable to collect the overpayments from everybody.

Who pays for this? We do. As tax payers we are now paying for their mistakes which leads me to the question, are they trying to raise extra taxes by other means?

This year I received a fine of £100 for supposedly not filing my tax return by the 31st January 2006 deadline. Now I know this wasn’t true as it was hand delivered to the tax office and when I queried this they confirmed they had received it on the 31st January 2006. “So why was I fined” I asked, “don’t know” was the reply and the fine was duly written off.

My girlfriend was also fined for not paying over stamp duty to the Inland Revenue in time when she purchased a house. She was fuming as this is all dealt with by the solicitors. She had to take the time to get proof that the cheque was sent in time and indeed cashed before they would write off the charge which they did.

Now how many people would bother to query these instances and simply pay up because they have been told to. Is this a ploy for them to generate more revenue or just another case of their incompetence?

I don’t know how unusual my surname is but I’ve never personally met anyone apart from family with the surname “Nicosia“.

I remember years ago going on a trip to Cyprus and when I got to passport control, the official checking my passport commented on my surname and asked me “Did I know that my surname was the same as their capital city?”.

Like I’m not going to know that! The embarrassing thing was there were at least 150 people who had just got off the plane queuing behind me and he called his 3 colleagues from the other queues to come and have a look at my passport. Quite why they were all so excited about this I don’t know. Maybe it’s an uncommon name over there?

My father originates from Sicily so I doubt there is any connection between that and Cyprus. Who knows, maybe I’ll look it up one day?