RE: Distant Thunder in the UK
Not a technical thread: it's an off-topic discussion sparked by a Register article on IBM UK job cuts and a Hansard debate on IBM UK's changes to its final-salary pension scheme. Participants speculate about the effect on the Information Management/Informix side, argue over whether UK politicians have any leverage (e.g. via government IT contracts), and blame wider causes such as the recession and Gordon Brown's 1998 abolition of ACT tax credits. One poster notes IBM UK had already closed the final-salary plan to new hires before the Informix acquisition, so ex-Informix staff are likely unaffected. No technical problem or resolution is recorded.
Auto-generated by DrWatson from the posts below — may be imperfect; read the full thread.
Just want to add the following link: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmhansrd/cm100113/halltext/100113h0010.htm#10011364000002 A very interesting read. From: im_gumby@hotmail.com To: informix-list@iiug.org; obnoxio@serendipita.com Subject: Distant Thunder in the UK Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 20:50:28 +0000 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/11/ibm_job_cuts/ Wonder what's happening within the IM pillar. I guess those double digit days are over. If only they had the brains to listen to little ol me , Eric and others... ;-P Pretty soon there will be more IBMers in the UK showing IBM the bird. (Or actually their two fingers ...) Hotmail: Free, trusted and rich email service. Get it now. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Trusted email with Microsoft’s powerful SPAM protection. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/201469226/direct/01/
"Ian Michael Gumby" <im_gumby@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:mailman.575.1265923654.6236.informix-list@iiug.org... Just want to add the following link: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmhansrd/cm100113/halltext/100113h0010.htm#10011364000002 >> A very interesting read. Yes, it is quite interesting. A couple of salient points: - Pension trusteeship takes place in a very rarified and genteel world, a million miles away from the one we live in. For a Trustee to say ""The trustee feels that the Company has not lived up to the Trustee's expectations" is one step down from accusing them of being licensed bandits! - You can be absolutely 100% certain that IBM UK is scrupulously following the letter of the law and will have done nothing legally wrong. - These moves come in the context of a deep recession in the UK which, for all that our Prime Minister likes to claim at every sound bite that it "Began in America", is biting and will continue to bite much more deeply here because of our over-dependence on the finance sector and on our government's grossly irresponsible and wasteful public spending in the 7 years leading up to the credit crunch. Most people in the private sector are very fearful of their jobs, and even those in the public sector are coming to realise that the party is going to end soon, and how! As a result organised worker resitance, union-based or otherwise, is at a very low ebb, as it always is in times of high and/or uncertain unemployment. It is therefore the ideal time for a company to try this sort of thing on if it is so minded. Ultimately I like to believe that you reap what you sow, and within financial constraints I try to be a good and loyal employer myself. I've never worked for IBM but I spend a lot of time there and IBMdoesn't strike me at all as an uncaring employer, I have to say. But, again as I see it, IBM has quite a lot of people who've never worked anywhere else; perhaps it thinks its workforce will see that the grass is not necessarily greener (I've never been able even to get close to offering an IBMer I've admired the salary that they'd move for) and that this pension move will not generate much churn, just a bit of grumbling. And of course anyone under 40 thinks they're immortal and doesn't care about pensions, so it's only a proportion of the workforce who would even care much. - Politicians are utterly powerless to affect such things. It's good that they are debating it, but if a UK politician really thinks their opinion matters as much as a row of beans to the execs - usually not even UK based - making these decisions, they are deluded. Witness the patchetic spectacle of our pathetic Prime Minister "demanding" that UK jobs must not be lost following the takeover of Cadbury's by Kraft. As if anyone's going to listen to him ....
> From: neil.truby@ardenta.com > Subject: Re: Distant Thunder in the UK > Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:03:38 +0000 > To: informix-list@iiug.org > - Politicians are utterly powerless to affect such things. It's good that > they are debating it, but if a UK politician really thinks their opinion > matters as much as a row of beans to the execs - usually not even UK based - > making these decisions, they are deluded. Witness the patchetic spectacle > of our pathetic Prime Minister "demanding" that UK jobs must not be lost > following the takeover of Cadbury's by Kraft. As if anyone's going to > listen to him .... > Well, they aren't utterly without power. The UK contracts and purchases lots of IBM equipment and services. Shutting out IBM from new bids and tossing them off contracts sends a loud and clear message. Why do you think they let the Sun and Oracle deal go through. Oracle wants to be the IBM of the 1960's. The ironic thing is that it was the IBM of the 1960's that got nailed for being a monopoly and hit with the dreaded 'A' word... It just goes to show you that the rank and file of IBM are losing out so that Sam P et al can line their pockets with multi-million dollar bonuses and record reveues. When Sam retires, I feel sorry for his replacement. All of the revenue will be squeezed out and only a shriveled up company will be left. Thank God I left in 2005. -G _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Free, trusted and rich email service. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/201469228/direct/01/
IBM UK closed its final salary pension plan to new employees prior to the acquisition of Informix so I doubt that any of the Informix team that were acquired will eb affected by these particular pension changes. While unpleasant, the final salary pension "hole" affects just about every company in the UK, it is not unique to IBM UK. Many companies are having to move their employees off the plan. The deficit in final salary pension schemes in the UK private sector hit £52bn in January. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8505889.stm
"Ian Michael Gumby" <im_gumby@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:mailman.579.1265935548.6236.informix-list@iiug.org... > From: neil.truby@ardenta.com > Subject: Re: Distant Thunder in the UK > Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:03:38 +0000 > To: informix-list@iiug.org > - Politicians are utterly powerless to affect such things. It's good that > they are debating it, but if a UK politician really thinks their opinion > matters as much as a row of beans to the execs - usually not even UK > based - > making these decisions, they are deluded. Witness the patchetic spectacle > of our pathetic Prime Minister "demanding" that UK jobs must not be lost > following the takeover of Cadbury's by Kraft. As if anyone's going to > listen to him .... > >> Well, they aren't utterly without power. >> The UK contracts and purchases lots of IBM equipment and services. >> Shutting out IBM from new bids and tossing them off contracts sends a >> loud and clear message. It is true that this government, like the Conservative one before it but on a vastly larger scale due to its astonishing surge in pulic spending, is addicted to high-profile IT projects. It also, famously, has an equally pitiful record of abject failure and cost over-run on them. These projects are as a matter of policy constructed in an all-or-nothing basis, so that there are only a handful of companies even with the resources to apply in the first place, let alone execute the projects. So we have the never-ending spectacle of an Audit Commission or, for particularly abject cases, a public enquiry delivering a damning verdict on a project run by Siemens/CapGemeni/IBM/HP-EDS, and often for the government to take legal action against the supplier .... only for the next high-profile job to be given one of the exact same small coterie because there is no alternative! However the IBM pensions issue is unlikely to be one the government will press to far. Our Prime Minister was actually Chancellor of the Exchequer (ie Secretary to the Treasury) for thr first 10 years of this Labour government and thereby presided over the decay of what was when he took office an exceptionally good (by international standards) private pension industry, into the shambles it is today. He initiated the decline in his first major budget in 1998 with a measure so classically Brownian in its deceit and stealth that it remains the principal examplar of his redistributionist-but-too-cowardly-to-say-so nature: he absolished something called Advance Corporation Tax. Despite its name ACT was actually a tax *credit*, so the move was a vast tax rise. It had all the things a dishonest politician would love: it sounds like a cut; it's very arcane so few people understand it; it principally directly hurts only big pension funds so that the average Joe doesn't appreciate how hard it - indirectly - it smacks *him* in the bollocks. This measure alone is estimated to have wiped '110 billion off the value of private pensions in the intervening years. Of course other things have contributed to the parlous state of private pension division: a bloated private sector all of whom have "unfunded" (ie paid by future generations' taxes), index-linked, free pensions, making the public sector an attractive magnet for talent at the expense of the private; the fact that the FTSE index of leading shares stands today at about 5,100, compared to 5,850 in March 1998, and the licensed banditry around pension provision and commissions facilitated by the policies of the previous Conservative administration. So don't expect to hear any politician, but particularly not Gordon Brown, trying to make political capital out of Big Business's erosion of pension rights for employees ... they're implicated up to their throats in the causes!
Neil Truby wrote: > "Ian Michael Gumby" <im_gumby@hotmail.com> wrote in message > news:mailman.579.1265935548.6236.informix-list@iiug.org... > > >> From: neil.truby@ardenta.com >> Subject: Re: Distant Thunder in the UK >> Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:03:38 +0000 >> To: informix-list@iiug.org > >> - Politicians are utterly powerless to affect such things. It's good that >> they are debating it, but if a UK politician really thinks their opinion >> matters as much as a row of beans to the execs - usually not even UK >> based - >> making these decisions, they are deluded. Witness the patchetic spectacle >> of our pathetic Prime Minister "demanding" that UK jobs must not be lost >> following the takeover of Cadbury's by Kraft. As if anyone's going to >> listen to him .... >> > >>> Well, they aren't utterly without power. >>> The UK contracts and purchases lots of IBM equipment and services. >>> Shutting out IBM from new bids and tossing them off contracts sends a >>> loud and clear message. > > It is true that this government, like the Conservative one before it but on > a vastly larger scale due to its astonishing surge in pulic spending, is > addicted to high-profile IT projects. It also, famously, has an equally > pitiful record of abject failure and cost over-run on them. These projects > are as a matter of policy constructed in an all-or-nothing basis, so that > there are only a handful of companies even with the resources to apply in > the first place, let alone execute the projects. So we have the > never-ending spectacle of an Audit Commission or, for particularly abject > cases, a public enquiry delivering a damning verdict on a project run by > Siemens/CapGemeni/IBM/HP-EDS, and often for the government to take legal > action against the supplier .... only for the next high-profile job to be > given one of the exact same small coterie because there is no alternative! > > However the IBM pensions issue is unlikely to be one the government will > press to far. Our Prime Minister was actually Chancellor of the Exchequer > (ie Secretary to the Treasury) for thr first 10 years of this Labour > government and thereby presided over the decay of what was when he took > office an exceptionally good (by international standards) private pension > industry, into the shambles it is today. He initiated the decline in his > first major budget in 1998 with a measure so classically Brownian in its > deceit and stealth that it remains the principal examplar of his > redistributionist-but-too-cowardly-to-say-so nature: he absolished something > called Advance Corporation Tax. Despite its name ACT was actually a tax > *credit*, so the move was a vast tax rise. It had all the things a > dishonest politician would love: it sounds like a cut; it's very arcane so > few people understand it; it principally directly hurts only big pension > funds so that the average Joe doesn't appreciate how hard it - indirectly - > it smacks *him* in the bollocks. This measure alone is estimated to have > wiped £110 billion off the value of private pensions in the intervening > years. > > Of course other things have contributed to the parlous state of private > pension division: a bloated private sector all of whom have "unfunded" (ie > paid by future generations' taxes), index-linked, free pensions, making the > public sector an attractive magnet for talent at the expense of the private; > the fact that the FTSE index of leading shares stands today at about 5,100, > compared to 5,850 in March 1998, and the licensed banditry around pension > provision and commissions facilitated by the policies of the previous > Conservative administration. > > So don't expect to hear any politician, but particularly not Gordon Brown, > trying to make political capital out of Big Business's erosion of pension > rights for employees ... they're implicated up to their throats in the > causes! Ah, but Colostomy Brown is so mendacious that I can easily see him going for it and bluffing (or, more likely, ignoring) his way to blaming business for this. -- Cheers, Obnoxio The Clown http://obotheclown.blogspot.com I will now proceed to pleasure myself with this fish. -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by OpenProtect(http://www.openprotect.com), and is believed to be clean.