Posts by Spike of Bayswater

Infosys noncompete clause sparks complaint from labor rights org

Re: "an illegal noncompete clause"

The Indian legal system is very slow, sometimes corrupt at the lowest level of courts and a case in unlikely to be resolved sooner the restriction period expires.

Infosys has the resources and incentive to sue but companies recruiting staff will want an employee not a lawsuit so the threat of legal action may suffice to prevent poaching. The competitors named may have the resources but their appetite for taking on InfoSys will depend on how many Infosys staff they require.

More likely than an individual employee or new entrant to the market challenging the practice would be for a regulatory body taking this on as anti-competitive.

Most likely is that, like most employee rights, the employee is simply not able to challenge the illegality.

Here the labour rights organisation may do the job if it has enough resources to fight it through the legal system.

Re: "an illegal noncompete clause"

The Indian legal system is very slow, sometimes corrupt at the lowest level of courts and a case in unlikely to be resolved sooner the restriction period expires.

Infosys has the resources and incentive to sue but companies recruiting staff will want an employee not a lawsuit so the threat of legal action may suffice to prevent poaching. The competitors named may have the resources but their appetite for taking on InfoSys will depend on how many Infosys staff they require.

More likely than an individual employee or new entrant to the market challenging the practice would be for a regulatory body taking this on as anti-competitive.

Most likely is that, like most employee rights, the employee is simply not able to challenge the illegality.

Honeymoons last a couple of weeks – the same goes for any love for the IT department

Re: Status? What status.

The failure of NHS Test and Trace was not an IT failure. It was a procurement failure caused by ideology (public sector, bad; private sector, good) and greed (one requires a middleman to divert public funds to favoured companies as is being recorded by the series of lawsuits being run by the Good Law folks and the various investigations and the reports emanating from them). Once, in desperation, proper expertise was harnessed from the public health and local authorities, things improved - too late, of course but it did give Winston Churchill’s grandson the cover to claim justification for his multi million pound bonus.

RAF chief: Our Reaper drones (sorry, SkyGuardians) stand ready to help British councils

Re: Time to get tough

Actually not. But don’t waste Daily Mail narrative.

ICANN suffers split-personality disorder as deadline for .org sale decision draws close

Re: You bet?

It is naive to assume that there will be any "facts" in relation to corrupt practices. However, the transaction structure provides a series of facts, each of which constitute a red flag from an anti-bribery perspective: sale of a global monopoly to a private entity which refuses to divulge who controls it, with no control over pricing of the monopoly and no transparency of what profits will be made nor how they will be applied. The staff of ICANN are in favour of the sale whilst those who will be forced to provide the revenues are against it.

That series of red flags leads to the initial conclusion that it appears likely that there is corruption involved in this transaction.

Normally, red flags can be explained if the deal is free form corrupt practices. So............. are there any "facts" to counter the assumptions above?

Royal Bank of Scotland IT contractor ban sparks murmurs of legal action

Re: Just the start

If you were in the UK and not NZ then you are exactly the sort of person Boris George, Tony, Gordon and their cronies want here so that they can impose tax hikes significant pay cuts and living standard cuts whilst retaining a work force. It's not that hard to change countries. I have done it many times. But most people (including me) only move if their current situation changes for the worse. Obviously you think we should lie back and think of England.

Re: Just the start

They are just getting on their bikes as advised many years ago by that tosspot Norman Tebbit.

These days one has to go further than London to earn a living wage.

Speaking personally, I am currently enduring deductions at 50-60% of my day rate. This includes Employee and employer NICs, pension* deduction (simply a form of tax), umbrella company fee (£75 or a 5% deduction in day rate), and agency fees. The HR has outsourced the hiring to an agency which sources staff through another agency both of which get paid out of my day rate. I have to pay for a completely unecessary DBS check at a fee which includes a 50% "uplift". I now have five of these all current and for different jobs.

I have worked for these guys for 3 months. They have offered me a permanent job at a rate appropriate for someone who is newly qualified or unqualified and which does not pay my mortgage (which is in its last 8 years so it's fairly modest). Curiously, they can't get anyone to apply who can actually do the job. Sure I'll get some of the tax over-deduction back in about 15 months time but I will never get the pension deduction, agency fees, agency costs or payroll taxes back.

Pretending I can get a suitable permanent job is cloud cuckoo land. I started contracting because I was made "redundant" and asked to reapply for job but through a limited company. So I sued, got a pay-off and have been contracting ever since.

I was overseas when Brown was chancellor but it was George Osbourne who chose to change the IR35 rules with the idea that salary payments should be the same for emplyees and contractors with no recognition of the benefits.Hammond then tried to do the same for chippies, sparkies, etc in breach of an election promise and was forced to rescind. So they will be next in line.

The rule changes are simply a means of hiking the tax rate on people with no political clout and who will continuing to vote Conservative blindly with the sort of arguments seen in this comment string. Not that Labour are likely to be any better. If you wish to permit large corporates to export their profits to Dublin, Luxembourg or the Cayman Islands then you have to bleed someone dry. That would be you and me, mate.

Rant over. I am now being offered work overseas at 5 times the net. Cheerio Blighty.

*(new pension for every job with a theoretical right to change which is a complete pain in the arse to achieve and all for a pensin I do not want and do not need and will nver receive any meaningful return particularly compared to my own pension plan which I set up years ago) ) holiday pay

Helen Fospero makes yet another Brit telly presenter to win IR35 case against taxman

Re: Beyond their grasp

I think you are underestimating the HMRC. The intention of this legislation is to make people who can't afford to fight the HMRC pay more tax. This is much more efficient than taxing large corporations who can provide politicians and senior HMRC civil servants lucrative private sector jobs.

Brit spending watchdog questions where savings will come from in court digitisation reforms

Re: Judicial Efficiencies

Whilst a fascinating insight into your political prejudices and complete ignorance of criminology, you should remove your ideological blinkers and absorb the fact that civil courts are involved - so, to cite one instance involving a mate of mine, a utility can sue you in a court 100 miles away from you and county court closures mean delay for 16 months before the case can be heard at a court a mere 50 miles away. Then it loses.

Remember the millions of fake net neutrality comments? They weren't as kosher as the FCC made out

Re: why is it always

Jeremy - is that you?

In the living room, can Google Home hear you SCREAM? Well, that's what you'll need to do

Re: Do ray me

Actually, you are inferring; she may be implying..

Sincerely,

A. Pedant

Who cracked El Chapo's encrypted chats and brought down the Mexican drug kingpin? Er, his IT manager

Re: Collateral damage

I really don't think Christmas will have appreciated it

LG's beer-making bot singlehandedly sucks all fun, boffinry from home brewing

Re: Does it despense vast amounts of bog rool??

I would respectfully disagree. In the sense used by the author (described movement not joining threads to make cloth), is perfectly correct on either side of the pond.

Language does change: my mum (an English teacher) was taught as a child that the correct spelling of the word "show" is "shew". Not any more.

Collins English Dictionary

The form weaved is used for the past tense and past participle for meaning e.g.

if you weave your way somewhere, you move between and around things as you go there.

The cars then weaved in and out of traffic at top speed. [VERB preposition]

He weaved around the tables to where she sat with Bob. [VERB preposition]

Here’s what the Yanks say:

“Weaved, wove, woven

The verb weave is usually inflected wove in the past tense and woven in the perfect-tense and past-participial forms. But weaved is more common where weave means to move in and out or sway from side to side. This is the case in all the main varieties of English, though British writers are particularly wont to use weaved for all senses of the word—a growing phenomenon.”

Old codgers today, eh?

Amazon probes alleged bribery of staffers for data on e-tail platform

Tone from the top

Hilarious to see Amazon getting its knickers in a twist about unethical behaviour.

Presumably the miscreants will be offered a senior management position once identified since they have evidently embraced the corporate ethos so whole-heartedly

FCC sets a record breaking $120m fine for rude robocalls

Just because upstanding citizens such as banks and insurance companies cloak the origin of their calls for not make it legitimate. I doubt that calls to Bangalore would cost more if a Bangalore number were displayed - do they charge now?

Facebook supremo Mark Zuckerberg has flunky tell UK MPs: Nope, he's sending someone else

Zuckerburg - Won't pay tax and won't visit

This all seem perfectly in line with the Facebook approach to the UK - if he and his company won't pay taxes here, then why would he take advantage of our public services by visiting a bunch of public sector drones seeking to gain favourable publicity whilst filling their otherwise dreary days? After all, this what empires do: suck out money whilst contributing little.

UK.gov told: Scrap immigration exemption from Data Protection Bill or we'll see you in court

A Clarification (or three)

Ahem - according to a clarification issued by one Mr. Gove (admittedly post-referendum) this was clearly "an option". An option, equally clearly, is not a lie. Since it is an option, equally clearly, those wise souls guiding the battered Good Ship Britannia may opt one or more of the other options.

I trust that that is clear.

IBM's chief diversity officer knows too much and must be stopped!

Re: This isn't that unusual in the U.S.

Historically, the UK has opted out of the EU laws which protect employees. I don't know whether there are any EU directives or regulations which would protect an employee from a clause on their contract which operates as stated.

I do know that a clause which prohibits an employee from joining a competitor is enforceable under English law. The general philosophy is that it should not be a "restraint of trade". A period of a year would usually be enforceable, particularly where a senior employee intends to join a direct competitor.

I would guess that this approach is one which the US imported from England.

80-year-old cyclist killed in prang with Tesla Model S

Actually, they also display a map from a satnav as well as reverse angle when reversing. But I've only been in one the once. Cool gadgets but this looks like the usual road user makes a minor error (cyclist or driver) on a country road and cyclist pays the price. A minor error by a cyclist deserves the death penalty. The point is that an 80-year old cycling on a public road died in a road accident. Whatever the "data" shows to satisfy those who think its a question of pointing the finger, it's not acceptable.