Cerberus is My Guide Dog

Reconsidering

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 19:00:00 +0200

I'll still be around. And if you don't mind the tirades, then.... Thanks

Considering

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 20:28:54 +0200

... I have been considering stopping blogging. It's not that I don't enjoy it, I do and I like the friends here, but I feel all I have done recently is moan about my job and I don't want to bring everyone down. I have been finding it quite hard lately

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For anyone who knows anything about cameras?

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 20:37:13 +0100

Does anyone know anything about the Olympus 410SE? Is it a good camera? Worth the money?

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And now, the end is near......

Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:59:24 +0200

We have agreed to draw the thing to a close. We should be getting our letters on friday (or just after).
There may be a chance that someone will re-open it but they have until tomorrow morning to do so.

So it is over.............. maybe

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Thursday the 6th, part 2

Mon, 10 Jul 2006 11:16:06 +0200

(continued)
The reply said.
"Thank you for your reply, this obviously means that you don't want the consultation to end so we can now re-open it- next meeting Thursday"
This in itself got a lot of peoples backs up. The staff are now divided (Which you can imagine is what they want) We all want our notices so we can go and find work. I myself have officially not got a job yet! But some staff are needing their letters by the end of the week so they can start jobs immediatley. (Otherwise they any rights to the statutory offered)
So the consultation is back on.
It is now Thursday and the only matter to discuss is the request we brought up- can the governers ask that the ex gratia payment be added to pat of the debt bought up by the receiving organisation.
The official response from the governors is.....NO. They will not even consider it. This made no sense seeing as they agreed the principle of ex gratia last meeting, unless of course there was already an offer on the table where the zero cash transfer was going to happen so it didnt matter if they agreed the principle or not- there was going to be no cash for it anyway.
The reason given for the no was that if they added it to the debt it would make the deal harder to sell to someone, should they want to go down that route. And the only other option would be to go for a sale which could be a very long process.
And should there be no immediate sale, they would not be able to pay our salaries in August, September, October, November or December(Notice Period). This was the first time in the last few meetings that they have brought up the fact that the PILON may not occur and there are many staff who are needing that payment to get them through til Christmas- especially those that dont have a job in September.
Then came the issue of closing the meeting. If we agree to close the meeting we agree to the statements made- i.e. that the Governers were NOT going to ask for the ex gratia payment to be added to the debt. Or if we weren't happy to close the meeting, then the consultation will continue and Notice letters won't be sent. This is Thursday. The School was closing on Friday and a lot of staff need their letters of redundancy.

And here is where the implied Blackmail occurred....
If we agree to close the meeting notices would be issued, and the deal which is on the table will go through. And then we can get paid for the notice period. However, we will lose any rights to anything more than minimum, which we have been fighting for.
If we dont close the meeting, and continue to ask for more than minimum, than the offer on the table could fall through, they will have to fins a buyer which could take a long time and there will be no money in the pot to pay us our notice period.

And thats what made me mad on Thursday. I hate being forced to give up on something. To me that is blackmail!

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Thursday the 6th, part 1

Mon, 10 Jul 2006 10:35:54 +0200

I wanted to make a record of the meeting from last Thursday that really annoyed me. I wanted to post this at the time but I ran out of time. I hope that I can remember exactly all the details that got me mad.
Leading up to the meeting this is what had happened. The week before we had asked for an ex gratia payment on behalf of all staff. The governers would have to be willing to ask for it on our behalf. Last Monday we had received the following reply. "The governers are not against the idea of asking for an ex gratia payment in principle and this should be made from the excess funds released from sale of assets" This was good. the first sign that the governers were thinking about the staff. Then came the following "The sale could go two ways, Either a straight forward sale where there will be funds available for the ex gratia payment to come out of or a zero cash transfer of assets from one organisation to another. If the latter occurs obviously there will be no cash made for the ex gratia payment to be made from."
At the end of this meeting, we agreed to end the consultation process so that our redundancy notices could be issued. They wont issue the notices until the process is closed and we cant resign until the notices are issued(unless we want to lose all rights to any minimum redundancy payout)
When we left the meeting, we all agreed that the only reason the governers were willing to agree the princilpe of the ex gratia payment was because they had already had an offer for a zero cash transfer of assets leaving no cash available for the payment to be made.
This annoyed us. Talk about giving with one hand and taking away with another.
So we sought some legal advice and we penned a letter.
We asked that should a zero cash transfer occur we would like the ex gratia payments to be added to part of the debt that the new organisation was taking on.
then we got a reply.......

(to be continued)

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Spiral?

Mon, 08 May 2006 20:38:11 +0200

Whats happened to spiral? She's turned into efffffall and disappeared. Does anyone know?

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Whats happening?

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 17:55:05 +0200

Whats happening to the blogs? The writing is all big and making the posts appear right down at the bottom of the page

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