Nominet sets the date for extraordinary meeting where members could fire CEO The .uk registry operator Nominet has opened voting on an extraordinary measure that would see its CEO fired and non-elected members booted off its board. “We will be a holding a virtual Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) at 15:00hrs (GMT) on Monday, 22 March 2021 to vote on a proposed resolution to remove five members of the …
“We would lose our most self serving leaders. The instability and damage they caused reduced our ability to retain or attract the highly-skilled staff we need to run the service our members rely on. There is a real risk that Government stakeholders will wake up and see Nominet’s governance model is fit for purpose: placing our future jobs at risk and ensuring the futer success of .UK.”
Breaking news. Zen, possibly the UK's most stable ISP nukes Nominet's instablity arguement by coming out in support of the EGM resolution.
If it's a rollout of what the UK internet industry has declared - the Directors should be already be packing their bags if they felt they should be representing our industry.
Not the mention resorting to the Putin/Lukashenko school of democratic engagement in their misleading EGM voting form. The vote is actually run by Civica Election Services formerly known as Electoral Reform Services. Don't they have an obligation to ensure the vote is fair and open?
A Nominet Member
"Government stakeholders will question whether Nominet’s governance model is fit for purpose: "
With any other government this would have already taken place and the leeches currently in office would have been tossed out.
As it is, our present overlords have no interest in upsetting the apple-cart of their friends and neighbours running Nominet. Nothing will be done from the regulatory side and the members will have to do this on their own.
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If you are going to assert something, why not actually quote your source:
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/46/section/12
"(a)in the case of a director, in the company's register of directors and register of directors' residential addresses (see sections 162 to 166);"
This leads to:
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/46/part/10/chapter/1/crossheading/register-of-directors-etc
"163 Particulars of directors to be registered: individuals
(1)A company's register of directors must contain the following particulars in the case of an individual—
(a)name and any former name;
(b)a service address;"
...
"(5) A person's service address may be stated to be “The company's registered office”."
"... prompting some members to ask what would the result would be if they selected the chair as a proxy and then expressly instructed him to vote to fire himself."
It's perfectly normal to appoint Chairpersons as proxy but they would have to follow the instructions of those who appointed them, or be in breach of their duty as proxy (a possible infringement of company legislation). However, according to Gateley "it becomes important for the company secretary to oversee the process to ensure the chair is voting in the way the shareholders have instructed."
I'd love to watch...
Without trying to sound antagonistic towards senior management, if you took the typical bus scenario considered in disaster planning (where members of staff get run over by a bus) then how many organisations with 150 staff would collapse if every board member was simultaneously run over by a bus?
At that scale and level of seniority then the job should be strategic planning and managing managers. If they all got run over at our place then should an event suddenly occur then we'd nominally lack people to write new plans to deal with the problem and we'd continue with the existing plans.
And this ignores the actual reality where (probably operationally more expedient) decisions would just be made by the next level of management down who are effectively the top level of business as usual management.
Since Nominet has a monopoly they don't really have to worry about somebody else undercutting their business plan and endangering the company so a lack of directors for an unspecified period would hardly be a disaster in any case.
He meant to say, in plain English:
"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know."
There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.
Aha. I spot the Donald Rumsfeld** theory of knowledge:
Known Knowns: things that we know we know.
Known unknowns: things that we would like to know but currently do not
Unknown unknowns: things that we are unaware we could know.
But that model is incomplete, there are also
Unknown knowns: things that we are unaware we know:
When Terry Pratchett was writing his Discworld* series he decided not to draw a map of the city Ankh-Morpork as otherwise he would be pestered by fans writing in telling ham that you couldn't get from the Broken Drum pub to Vetinari's Patrician Palace via short street because on the map ... So he didn't draw a map despite lots of people asking for one.
Then Terry Brookes (I think it was him) went through the books and drew one, and it was consistent. Despite never drawing a map, Sir Terry had a map in his head. He knew Ankh-Morpork's street plan even though he thought he didn't.
*Brilliant, you can start at pretty much any book except 'The Light Fantastic', which is basically the second half to 'The Colour Of Magic'.
**Former US Secretary of Defense.
...otherwise he would be pestered by fans writing in telling ham that you couldn't get from the Broken Drum pub to Vetinari's Patrician Palace via short street because on the map...
To which the obvious response would be that the University's magical field leaks out into the surrounding area (for example, the Unreal Estate) and it's therefore not unknown for streets or whole neighborhoods to reconfigure themselves overnight...
Presumably Sir Pterry thought such a pat, cop-out solution beneath his dignity though?
Commercial activity with it’s largest members should be scrutinised in the coming months. It is well known that contacts with large member are increased before important events such as elections. If Godaddy wants to have any real respect in the industry they would abstain & not use the same old BS that 123-Reg use to use ‘we are voting on behalf of our customers’.....
Purchasing the support from large members is one of the branches that is rotten & needs to be cut off.
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Instead of the Romans, it's -- What has the Nominet board ever done for us? And the answer, in a bizarro way, is provided in their own suggested concessions: "including
* a freeze in director pay
* and .uk domain prices for two years,
* doubling the amount of money it gives to public benefit causes,
* investing more in the .uk registry,
* launching a new effort to communicate with members, and
*providing more information about its offshoot commercial enterprises ..."
I just added bullets. Every thing they are offering to do now is simply the bizarro opposite version of the thing they did previously. Right, that's all okay then.
How desperate the Nominet Board now appear.
First an email from Civica Election Services and now 2 emails from Nominet on the 23rd and 24th pleading to for members to reject the EGM resolution.
None of the emails mention publicbenefit.uk its credible plan. Such bias is showing the true colours of the board and is probably firing up waivering members to vote FOR the resolution.
I spent 5 years at Nominet and during my tenure, saw Haworth arrive.
The company was already in a heap of poo before he arrived, in terms of controversy.
There was a hope that Haworth could sort things out.
Sadly, it turned out he was hired to do exactly what transpired - milk the cow.
To attempt to turn Nominet into a mini Verisign and unravel the shackles of a 'not-for-profit' company.
I witnessed the ridiculous attempt at diversification - as the core business continued to provide 99.9% of revenue, those workers responsible for "keeping the lights on", were sidelined by the "toys" - by the "new cool" - "We want AI in everything, cried the CTO at the time! - give me the AI!"
Fuck sakes, it was shit. Those workers who kept the damn company running, were barely noticed or acknowledged.
Such an awesome company in terms of the "lower order" - some seriously talented and genuinely nice people, but a bunch of arseholes running the show - hollow, shallow greedy fuckers.
Am I missing something other than the stupidity of Nominet in actively trying to sway voters on the voting page without providing a chance for others to have an equivalent video against the proposal ?
Who is going to believe the results are valid if the motion is defeated ? Who actually manages the voting, a third party ? If not, why not ?
Is it just a holding move to allow liquidation of relevant holdings and for people to scarper?
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