Banning haircuts and long hair is the only solution.
Number of barbershops in Britain increases by 500% in 10 years
- Thread starter altodevil
- Start date
Banning haircuts and long hair is the only solution.
It's not about standing out, it's about mass ability to be fluid and drown the data with overload.
100% agree.
I've not really understood your posts on this over the last page or two. Can you explain it like we're laymen here? What does the software do and what data are you looking at?
I can't unfortunately talk about the software. Nor can I talk about all the data sets but let's say companies house public data. Say there's a corner shop, that shop keeps shutting down as a business and reopening as another with a new name and new owner. Now imagine that same corner shop is also the over seeing office address for 20 more business in different industries that aren't a corner shop. The staff there keep changing every 2 weeks or so and every business owner to that address is a different alias. Yes the shop is dodgy as hell but who are the people behind it. You don't know because you need to survey it and start linking faces to aliases. Thing is your the poor data analyst who has to produce all this evidence find the links to get the survey to get the investigation and it takes you and many more of you 6 months to do it, because there's an over load of data, get it ratified and start the process. That shop though is now empty and derelict. Now the barber shops have staff who are barbers. They are kept away from the upper people who come on to conduct business there that's not cutting hair. They only allow for payments in cash so they can cook books and hide things like say someone paying 15-20k to have a family member smuggled over. The staff though are not involved. This allows the upper criminals an endless possibility of locations to travel to and conduct their business and there's not enough cops to watch then all. So your biggest task is to link the aliases to the real peoples names then match the business. To much data makes it an ever evolving process and hides the people in the nose. The software allows the data analysts to go through all that data and build the cases, make the links super quick. It still all has to be checked but they can hopefully get it done in a tighter window.
There's tons and tons more and I'm not covering it very well but hopefully it gives a bit of an idea
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Money laundering works best when there’s lots and lots of layers of people, companies, shell companies and addresses. The software allows investigating teams to quickly connect the dots between the layers of companies to help build the case against individuals/organised crime groups.
Thanks for the extra details. Interesting stuff.
Yeah F-Red explained far better than I.
If I were you I’d take the unders on the number of Betfreds still open by May
Sounds interesting but that was kinda my point about something needing to give. The areas would have to be affordable to attract buyers or downsizers. A lot of flat developments around my way seem to come at a premium.
Yeah, these will be the same because the compulsory purchase prices will necessitate that. And then they'll sell people the dream of living in a swanky new development, but it'll just be flats above shops that are a bit ropy at night time and loads of people will just be wandering through the town centres pissed up from the local bars that play music too loud, and arguing and fighting while you're trying to sleep.
At least that's my experience of city/town centre living. The people that don't live there treat it like a kind of theme park and never adjust their behaviour once it's become a neighborhood. And they're never designed to accommodate families, just single people and couples, which leads to problems too.
I don’t understand the people arguing against the majority of these new barbers being money laundering operations, if they’re not, can they explain where the supposed 500% increase in demand has come from?
Already covered in this thread.
Yeah same experience. I think it's all fancy marketing because I've never met anybody who lives near a city centre who didn't grow to hate it.
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I live about 10 minutes walk from one of the biggest and best known shopping streets in the region and have about eight malls within a 10-15 minute radius and I love it.
A friend used to live next to Hull Marina, adjacent to the city centre, and the houses round there would get people pissing in their doorways and sticking shit through their letterboxes etc though.
Think that's just a Hull in general thing tbf city centre or not
Yeah, we still haven't adjusted in the UK to city centres also being residential. People visit and act totally differently, like the whole place is there just for shopping and boozing.
Not directly aimed at you two but those points sums up UK planning, and even politics to a degree, that if a solution isn't 100% perfect for everyone then it's not worth pursuing or the right direction.
Everyone complains if greenbelt land is built on, usually focused on from a commercial and desirability aspect, but as soon as someone suggests brownfield or town centre density, the complaints switch to noise, parking, or prices being too high. We end up in total planning paralysis because no one wants to compromise. I’ve seen that same pattern play out across a number of towns looking back as far as 5 years ago when I was looking for retail leases.
The liveability issues people mention often sound like localised problems with specific bad areas, rather than an inherent flaw with urban living as a whole. My local town doesn't have that problem at all, so it really depends on where you are.
The hard reality is the traditional retail high street is never coming back to what it was, mainstream retail simply doesn't want these units anymore. To me it’s a pretty binary choice in either residential/mixed-use conversions or we leave them vacant to be snapped up by dodgy money laundering fronts, American candy stores, and vape shops. Mixed-use won't suit every cohort, but getting spades in the ground on brownfield sites is a hell of a lot better than letting town centres rot while waiting for a fairytale option.
Local small high street near me. They had 1 barber with 2 chairs and to be honest he was never that busy. Within 5 shops either side 2 Turkish barbers opened, each with 7 chairs. The original has not really lost any trade to them. Has to be money laundering
I wasn't complaining about the change of use, just the fact that it's always incredibly expensive and never well thought out enough.
Like, yes, mixed usage is an improvement on what is there, but if you fail to provide services for the people that move in, such as schools, nurseries and doctors surgeries, you put strain on the existing resources and doom it to failure. Which is what happens in 99% of these things because they are done by private companies while councils basically cross their fingers that they're going to do what they say in the planning stage and know they aren't going to build anything other than the units they make their profits from.
They basically have them over a barrel, promise the council the moon on a stick and then under deliver. And then in 30 years, it's all knocked down and they do the same thing again.
The services element or 'infrastructure' how it's phrased comes up very often in any social media discussion around planning application on housing. The reality is that doctors surgeries and nurseries are private businesses, councils can’t just force a GP practice or nursery to open. They need an operator willing to set up shop and a commercial case, impossible until the housing is built.
Schools are down to the councils and they need to be enforcing section 106 contributions better but as they're cash strapped they're accepting reduced contributions just to get hold of funding. I live on a 1500 new build site (10 year old now) and the same arguments of over subscribed schools came up then, the reality here is that the three nearest primary schools all had spare capacity in this years intake of pupils. Falling birth rates suggest that it's not going to be an issue in the coming years.
According to reddit everyone cuts their own hair and it looks just as good.in reality a lot of men go once a week/fortnight now and obviously there's a load of "Turkish" barbershops everywhere. It's impacting the quality of takeaways as well. Good popular places close down due to expenses, these pop ups serve rubbish food but can afford the expenses. There need to be a clampdown on the criminal enterprises while also looking at business rates, rents and energy costs. It's impossible for even good businesses to survive
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Probably wants all pubs shut down as well
They are localised issues but I'd say that's a pretty big conundrum. A sleepy market town transformed into urban living that ends up being bakeries and delis and coffee shops (i.e. daytime spaces) would be great because the space can be mixed-use but crucially allows residents to enjoy peace in terms of living there. However, if you take a busy city centre with bars/pubs open late, then that's going to be a nuisance for people who can't adjust their lifestyles around that sort of thing.
I've seen this touted in something like Nottingham's attempt to put flats in the old Broadmarsh area, which currently acts as the main thoroughfare from the station to the city centre. Lovely idea but I just don't see how it works.
Still, despite my reservations, I largely agree with you that it's worth a shot.
Anecdotally there are 6 within walking distance of my house
Small world. I looked at Broadmarsh when Intu had it for one of the stores I was opening in Nottingham. Ended up in the Victoria Centre as footfall and adjacencies were better and later realised Intu dropped and left the council to pick up the remains.
Not seen the plans for this, but it looks interesting. I agree on I'm not clear how it works with the thoroughfare however I'll reserve judgement until I see the completed works in person.
I know that bit of Nottingham and it looks like it'd be an awful place to live if you enjoy sleeping.
Possibly money laundering, but there's more simple explanations as well. I feel like everyone is overcomplicating it by thinking it's money laundering. It's actually very easy to cheat the system, in broad day light, in public, on the high street.
Rents can be relatively cheap - as low as maybe just £25-40 a day in some areas. Other business expenses very low, could be as low as £25-40 a day. Say a store has 15 customers a day paying £12 on average, and just the business owner working, £180 a day revenue. 5 days a week, roughly £3,900 revenue per month. Profit could be £1,500 to £2,000 per month. That's roughly on par with minimum wage, for a pretty chill, no stress job. They'd be unlikely to pay a single penny in tax. Well under the VAT threshold. Cash income, so untraceable and easy to report that their profits are under the personal allowance. Maybe a small amount of NICs if they even choose to report enough income. Almost impossible for HMRC to prove otherwise, and the amounts of £ involved doesn't even make it cost-effective for HMRC to pursue. HMRC, like most public services, is also incredibly ineffective, poorly structured and poorly managed, with out of date systems, clunky processes and an increasingly poorly trained workforce. HMRC and DWP are also not connected, so it's easy for someone to simultaneously underreport their earnings for tax, and claim unemployment benefits.
A slightly bigger store, pay staff cash in hand, the staff don't pay tax, the business doesn't pay employer NICs. And that's before even taking into consideration if the trader sets up a limited company, benefits from additional tax breaks, and can simply fold the company and start another if HMRC do ever come knocking. Simply look up some local takeaways and barber shops on companies house, and can easily see frequent changes of ownership, phoenix companies, directors bouncing frequently from one business to another, with lots of connections with former directors at different businesses.
I think loads of people are annoyed. Low earners may be paying £200-300 a month or so in tax, but it's something, and that £200-£300 makes a huge difference to their quality of life. But a small cash business who earns roughly the same, or less even, could easily end up with a higher tax home pay by simply not reporting the income, or underreporting it. I pay I think roughly £700 a month total income tax and NICs, and I'm sure there are plenty of small business owners who earn the same gross as me but pay nothing in tax, or next to nothing.
Also lots of legitimate small business who can also feel aggrieved because they pay their taxes correctly, because they have to, because their income and payroll is properly accounted for and can be audited, who are then also burdened with high employer NICs, various duties, levies, business rates, pension contributions, maternity pay, sick pay etc
Obviously these are rough figures and I may be a bit off, but it can't be that far off IMO.
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Not quite, HMRC will have a good grasp of a ratio of earnings to energy costs. It's actually one of the key metrics they use on establishing if a business is worth investigating if they're primarily posing a cash business. Typical or high energy usage for a barbers but only reporting on the books say 4-5 cuts then it'll flag pretty quickly. The making tax digital process will hopefully eliminate a lot of this in the future.
For decent sized businesses. They don't pursue very small businesses in this way. The resource cost purely on staff hours to take up the case would not make it worthwhile, and the small business compliance department is especially shit (source: friends and family who work or worked at HMRC)
Maybe 10 years ago. My wife's cousin is a tax inspector and the AI tools they now have through their connect system means investigating is pretty straight forward now. Whether they choose to pursue or not is a different question entirely based on the return but the view from HMRC, is that MTD will allow them to close that gap quicker.
AI is a big step forwards and lots of public services are banking on it being a success. The results are yet to be seen. The most recent figures show small businesses account for a large part of the tax gap: https://www.gov.uk/government/stati.../1-tax-gaps-summary#tax-gap-by-customer-group
For very small businesses with revenues of about 40-80k a year, profits of 20-40k, it is still very easy to avoid tax. Those who get a bit too greedy get caught, those who stay under the radar go undetected (or not confronted). And then you have the added problem of actually collecting the tax, which itself comes with huge administrative costs. Individuals and sole traders declare bankruptcy, often after egregious registered companies dissolve, more devious and educated evaders attempt phoenixism, others simply leave the country.
More drastic legislation changes are needed. My solutions aren't popular at the moment, but I suspect in a decade or two they will be mainstream political policies.
Ok so why aren’t they coming down like a ton of bricks over all the dodgy barbers shops?
most I’ve been to (with my son I am a cueball) take cash only.
I wonder why that is?
Probably because the money laundering ones pay tax
There have been some recent pieces on the TV about this. The main issue is they don’t have enough enforcement officers, often 1-2 to cover huge geographical areas. They would go after more businesses but they don’t have the resources to do so. Not necessarily all for laundering as most people think of it, but general financial and tax malpractices.
Can tell I’ve been at my parents working from home, daytime tv is full of stuff like this to make the pensioners even more paranoid about fraud and scams
Are you talking about turkish/kurdish barber shops or barber shops in general?
If it's the former, then last year the NCA targeted hundreds of barbershops and cash setups and uncovered drug trafficking, illegal immigration, human trafficking and people working as modern slaves. Dealing with that takes multiple of government agencies. The reality is that it's not just a quick tax audit and there are far more serious crimes happening than just money laundering/tax evasion which is why it takes longer as the organisations are complex by design.
If it's the latter then it's difficult to say for you personal circumstances. If you feel a barber shop is dodgy then why are you giving them business?
The amount of energy a barbers shop uses will be miniscule. The lighting and heating will account for most of it. There's no way you could accurately analyse a bill and extrapolate from it the number of times a set of clippers has been used.
The Turkish barber near me has about 8 chairs and c. 4 or 5 people there at any given time working, but there is always steady traffic going in and out. I don't think I've ever seen it empty. Most of the wannabe road men near us use it and they seem to be getting their haircut every week. Whether it's purely for those purposes or not is up to you to decide.
There’s two different things money laundering, then there’s the cash element.
Speak to builders, how much do a lot of them earn each year? £12.5k! There’s never been a cash business in the history of society that declared all their earnings.
The machine is broken pal.