If the government is going to try and make shareholder votes on executive pay binding why for the last fuck knows how long have all these thinktanks, committees and what not been telling us that all that’s needed to reign in excessive pay is for the shareholders to take responsibility and vote the pay deals down?
I didn’t know those votes weren’t binding, but then I’m not a boardroom expert. These other cunts put themselves forward as such and so are either lying wankers, bullshitters or incompetent.
At a lunch in New York, Stemberg and Allison shared their disdain for Section 953(b) of the Dodd-Frank Act, which requires public companies to disclose the ratio between the compensation of their CEOs and employee medians, according to Allison. The rule, still being fine-tuned by the Securities and Exchange Commission, is “incredibly wasteful” because it takes up time and resources, he said. Stemberg called the rule “insane” in an e-mail to Bloomberg News.
“Instead of an attack on the 1 percent, let’s call it an attack on the very productive,” Allison said. “This attack is destructive.”
Circle Health took over a hospital recently. Basically a privatised NHS hospital. Everything is cool though, we’re told. It’ll be more efficient, nobody will lose out they said.
[Circle Holdings] had been in negotiations with the government for two years over the takeover of Hinchingbrooke hospital; as the preferred bidder, it expected to be successful. In its document [share prospectus], the company reveals its aspiration to take over further hospitals but also spells out the risks to patients. It says: “As well as the establishment of further independent hospitals, Circle intends to significantly expand its NHS business.
“Circle’s growth has placed, and its anticipated growth will continue to place, a strain on its managerial, administrative, operational, financial, information technology and other resources and could affect its ability to provide a consistent level of service to its patients.”
That second paragraph is just wonderful, isn’t it?
A private company, listed on the stock market, has been given the right to deliver a full range of hospital services for the first time in the history of the NHS, reigniting a debate about the use of business in the health sector.
Circle Healthcare, a John Lewis-style partnership valued at around £120m, will manage the debt-laden Hinchingbrooke hospital in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, from February after the government signed off on a decade-long contract on Wednesday.
For fucks sake, people. Calm down. It’s not a privatisation. Can’t you people see that?
The takeover is not considered a full privatisation as the buildings will remain in public hands and the employees retain their pay and pension on existing terms.
It’s not a privatisation because the NHS will still own the building. *rolls eyes*.
Seriously though, how can anyone claim this is not a privatisation? The building remains in the hands of the NHS, so the NHS becomes the landlord. *Everything* else is down to Circle.
The current staff stay on their existing pay and pension terms, but what about new staff taken on? Will they be on contracts the same as NHS staff? What about when Circle decide they don’t want existing staff on NHS terms? They’ll find a way of getting people to re-apply for their existing jobs on different contracts.
Former Tory Health team member Mark Simmonds MP is also a paid strategic advisor with Circle. Coincidence?
And then added:
Two of Circle’s major shareholders are Tory Party donors. Coincidence?
In fact, emails released to the Guardian (by SpinWatch) in July this year showed Circle was part of a lobby group that took the NHS regulator to expensive gala dinners.
Privaatisation started quietly with a little contract here and a little outsourcing there, this though, is the real deal.
Just Fuck the fuck off. It wasn’t funny the first time and it hasn’t been funny since.
When you live in a supposedly capitalist society you have to use that system to, ooh lets see? Earn money to buy food and heating and clothing, get to a place of employment (if you’re lucky), enjoy hobbies. You even have to use its’ ‘fruits’ to change the system itself.
A fucking bloke on a demo eating stuff made by a corporation doesn’t make him a hypocrite. He may not even be a fucking communist/anti-capitalist/socialist/whatever-the-fuck-you-think-he-is. He might think that capitalism would be ok if it worked a little different.
Not everyone can fuck off to a forest and live off the land. That doesn’t make them hypocrites and it doesn’t make that sort of quip funny or ironic or anything else. What it does do is makes you look a twat.
If you live within such an all-pervasive system as capitalism there is no choice but to use what it provides, and no shame in using the things it provides against it.
*The title of this post is shamelessly ripped from @robinboggs‘ reply to the above tweet.
Workers will not be able to claim for unfair dismissal unless they have been in a job for at least two years – not one, under government plans.
The extension is part of Chancellor George Osborne’s plans to help business by changing employment law.
Two years?! Two fucking years!
Within 12 months a company can fuck off an employee with nothing more than a weeks notice. No reason is needed to be given. Fair enough I think. I’d rather it was less than 12 months, but it’s a compromise. I’m told it costs to recruit people and you never really know if you’ve hired the right person till they’re actually doing the job, so a probation period, for both parties is a sensible thing.
But, if a company doesn’t know if they’ve hired the wrong chap within twelve months of the appointment, then they need to review their recruitment process.
Twelve months is more than long enough.
We talk a lot about trade union rights – but what about the right of the unemployed person to be given a shot at a job and a career?
And how is this longer probation period helping an unemployed person? All it’s doing is leaving them in uncertainty for longer.
What about the rights of people currently sitting at home with nothing to do, desperate to get work, but the business can’t afford to employ them because they fear they are going to be taken to the tribunal?
And how the fuck is this going to bring down the cost of employing someone? It’s not suddenly going to drop the HR departments bills by half or whatever, is it? The cost saving is going to come from the drop in unfair dismissal tribunals, and that cost could quite easily be reduced by companies following a simple set of rules:
Do not be a cunt of an employer
Granted, some companies might find it hard to follow that piece of guidance, but then they’ll deserve to spend money on a tribunal.
…by reducing the risk of tribunals for unfair dismissals the government hopes bosses will feel more confident about hiring people.
If you don’t have any confience in the recruitment process, fucking change it! People will litterally jump through any hoop that is set before them to get a fucking job, especially in this climate. The one thing that shouldn’t happen is for rulles to be relaxed so companies feel enobled to behave like wankers, which they will do.
What these cunts like Osborne forget (well maybe not forget but try hide or deny) is that the companies already have enough power over us. Without them, where the fuck are we? Where is our wage going to come from? Not everyone, for a whole variety of reasons can be self employed or start their own business.
All we want is a little bit of protection from being exploited too much.
[Anders Behring Breivik] insists on wearing a red Lacoste sweater with the distinctive crocodile logo on trips out of prison.
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The 32-year-old gunman who killed 77 people on July 22 even wrote in his online manifesto that “refined people like him should wear brands like Lacoste”.
But his choice of clothes has been described as a “nightmare” for the French company’s exclusive image.
Norwegian daily Dagbladet said bosses had now written to Oslo police demanding 32-year-old Breivik be stopped from wearing their garments.
It just makes the vulnerable even more vulnerable by enabling unscrupulous employers to put pressure on an employee to waiver the’re right to it.
You can say there will be sanctions for employers that will do this, just as there are employers that don’t play by the rules already. This just gives them something else to fuck people with and, realisticaly, if people are getting fucked over now when everyone has to be paid a certain amount this is not going to make the system more robust, is it?
Donald Trump is gonna run for president of the USA, as far as I can tell. He may not do and just be fucking with our minds. If he does though, Iraq had better watch out…
Trump: George, let me explain something to you. We go into Iraq. We have spent thus far, $1.5 trillion. We could have rebuilt half of the United States. $1.5 trillion. And we’re going to then leave. So, in the old days, you know when you had a war, to the victor belong the spoils. You go in. You win the war and you take it.
…
Stephanopoulos: It would take hundreds of thousands of troops to secure the oil fields.
Trump: Excuse me. No, it wouldn’t at all.
…
Stephanopoulos: So, we steal an oil field?
Trump: Excuse me. You’re not stealing. Excuse me. You’re not stealing anything. You’re taking– we’re reimbursing ourselves– at least, at a minimum, and I say more. We’re taking back $1.5 trillion to reimburse ourselves.
In the old days, you went to war because someone invaded you. If you won the war, you got reparations. In otherwords, the losing aggressor paid the winner compensation for the inconvenience, damage and effort needed to stave off the invasion. OK, it is a little more complicated than that and the victor usually took the piss, but basically, that’s it.
If the aggressor won, then the loser was occupied, taken control of and general fucked over even more.
What happened in Iraq was the aggressor won but, being generous, hasn’t tried to occupy the Iraq and has tried to get Iraq up and running again, albeit in a cack-handed, bloody way. The US doesn’t deserve any reparations. The people of Iraq didn’t ask the US to go in a fuck them over. Saddam was no direct threat to the US and had no connection to the big bogieman of Al Qaeda (however you want to spell it).
You don’t get reimbursed for expense paid to fuck over another country that a) didn’t ask for shit and b) was going to fuck you over.
This reimbursement Trump is on about is theft. Pure and simple. Just because the people of the US don’t want to give up their 4 litre engined cars and pick-ups.
Donald Trump even puts our own MPs to shame when it comes to claiming expenses.
I’m not the only one that feels a little uneasy (it’s not quite the right word, but can’t seem to get the right one) about this, am I?
“[Prince Andrew] wants to raise the profile of the all-party group and wants us to make the case in parliament and to the business secretary of the business opportunities out in Azerbaijan. He feels it is a Cinderella country that has tremendous opportunities.
“One of the things he talked about was his feeling that a place like Azerbaijan is somewhere of great opportunity, and the more British politicians and businesses engage themselves with their counterparts in Azerbaijan, there will be material benefits.”
I know Prince Andrew is envoy for trade and not something touchy-feely like morals and ethics, but it’s a bit crass to say the least, isn’t it? Nevermind that ‘we’ would be doing business with a torturer and his regime, eh? Just show me the money!
Maybe I’m being a little unfair. Business, especially big business has never been about that, and if Andrew started bleating on about human rights everyone would wonder what had gotten into him. After all, he is the Trade Envoy, not the Amabassador For Not Being Beastly To People. That role is somebody elses. Probably.
I can’t be easy for Andrew, having to visit these places, be entertained by horribe characters and in turn entertain them when they visit UK. At least he only visits Azerbaijan in his proffessional capacity. If he visited there in his personal capacity, that might really cast doubt over whether he gives a toss or not.
Andrew has been to the former Soviet republic three times since 2008 in a private capacity
Oh. Well, it’s only three times in just over three years. It could be worse. The media there could give him pet name. Now that would be disatrous for ones’ reputation.
He is often described as “the dear guest” by local media
