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The US constitution actually has a clause barring anyone from standing for election as President if they are insane. You have to be mad to want to be President!

Is this a recent change? I've bought a number of coins from abroad, and VAT has never yet been applied by e bay - only by Royal Mail or Parcel force if they happen to intercept it on it's way from arrival in the UK, to my letter box. I know that USPS & Canada Post don't apply it either. Although Fed Ex apparently do and it's an administrative nightmare to get the refund of 15%. What we seriously want to avoid is a situation where 20% VAT is applied twice, once by e bay and then by the courier.

I suspect it operates under the same system as for shipping to certain states in the US whereby sales tax is payable by the purchaser and is automatically added to their invoice, though as a seller, the money doesn't actually land in the vendor's account. As a seller, they won't charge the VAT personally, and let's face it, most sellers of coins are private individuals, many of whom don't believe VAT is due on any transaction, nor that HMRC should be in any way involved. Ebay are therefore acting as a tax collector at the point of import to get around this issue. What's happened here is likely to be a half baked operating method, whereby ebay only apply 20% VAT and call it quits because the number of 5% items is minimal in the context of imports. I suspect the only way around it is to get payments out of ebay's control working again in whatever way is possible. You will lose buyer's protection (if it means anything), but given most people on both sides are honest, it should work for much of the time if the will is there. Making a separate Paypal payment outside eBay and ensuring the seller puts the right description on the customs label will work, but for low cost things, say up to about 75 quid, a 20% payment to ebay will be cheaper than the Royal Mail or courier admin fee plus the import vat which will become due if not already paid. Alternative is to veto it, because they are unlikely to listen to reasoned argument having already agreed terms with HM Gov. Ebay applying the right tax would be the cleanest and most equitable way forward, but don't hold your breath. I'm also wondering how the Royal Mail will know that import tax has been paid? Their default position has to be charging tax unless there is proof of prior payment. I don't know if the code that seems to be included in the address of every purchase is connected to this? Anybody? Edit to add that if you are going to get 5% VAT applied on coins, then the vendor will somehow have to communicate the eligibility of the item for treatment to ebay. As we know, not all coins are equal, so differing rates apply and this will almost certainly be beyond the ken of a foreign vendor who is likely to be as au fait with tax codes and the finer points of the VAT regime as the man on the street is here. There is also another potential issue in that people may start describing items as those in lower tax bands and claim ignorance, which I'm sure HMRC have considered. Taxing at the top rate for imports and the buyer reclaiming excess tax is therefore likely to be the best option, as you will have both parties with the required knowledge and it protects all interests.

From the Guardian website today: The Met Office has issued an amber weather warning for heavy snow across eastern England, with people told to expect travel delays, power cuts and a chance that rural communities could be cut off. The big picture: the right kind of snow, London 2009 People in East Anglia woke up on Saturday to a thick layer of snow that had settled overnight, with the conditions expected to continue until the afternoon. Most of the rest of England and Scotland have a yellow snow alert in place, which will last until Saturday evening. Oh great.... You know what Frank Zappa told us about yellow snow, well, it looks like we are going to get some......:(

All good stuff, but just to even things up a bit:-

That's "Priti" Patel!!! Why does Gove still look like a slapped fish even as a woman? The words "bargepole" "foot" "wouldn't" "ten" "touch" "I" "it" "with" "a" come to mind.

Who said 'Things can only get better'? Schoolgirls were much nicer when I was there. Anyway, the one on the left in the middle row still looks too masculine.

Here's the original picture with a greater choice of "beauties". The only one that looks half decent is Gavin Williamson and I can't make up my mind about Dominic Raab.

Ian was very lucky with this coin in that there was a remarkably good surface preserved under the verdigris (green areas) and under the oxide (brown areas). Held to the light, the field almost prooflike, and had I stripped the whole coin to a reactive surface and then evenly toned , this sheen would have been lost so I decided to tone through the existing, which could be taken further over time. When I first saw the coin the verd looked almost waxy, and I wondered whether there was an organic element, so I tried a couple of organic solvents - acetone, DMSO, petrol- which had no effect on the verd but did at least remove any contaminants that might have blocked the verdicare. Under the microscope it was clear that all the discoloured areas of the coin has experienced corrosion, being both very hard and adherent. Working each side sequentially, reverse first, it took about a day of Verdicare to start to soften the corrosion and enable a gentle picking off with the needle, in tiny plaques; I had to take this very slowly in sessions of an hour or so, microscope work is hard on the eyes and neck. I suspect it took 15 to 20 hours of microscope time. The fields were mostly done with the polished tip steel needle, he detail particularly the denticles with an orange needle on insulin syringe (courtesy of our late diabetic cat). I was always working through a thin layer of Verdicare. A very steady hand is needed, and pressure on the verd rather than the coin. There was a good cleavage plane of reddish oxide on the surface of the coin, which helped a lot. My feeling is that the coin, while not perfect of course, has come out better than I expected Jerry