So I noticed Jahan Mahmood was on twitter. I had some stuff I wanted to know so I thought I’d ask him and find out. @yorksranter Of course, I parted with Afzal on the direction he wanted 2 pursue. I was always interestd in grassroots work & nothing else — Jahan Mahmood (@jahanmahmood) March 29,…
Read More A bit more #biryaniproject.In DEFRA’s Q1 2013 lobbying disclosure, I see that DEFRA PUSS Lord de Mauley (yes! really) had the following meeting: February: Private individual. To discuss the private keeping of primates. Who is it that’s lobbying government for the right to keep monkeys? Not just that, who is this nameless private citizen who gets access to…
Read More Demand your right to own a monkeyWould it amaze anyone if this piece of shit turned out to be registered to the same no-name provider and hosted on the same server at 195.26.90.15 as the Curzon Institute? Also, all the image filenames are of the form Alamin_Img_[0-9].jpg, implying they’re basically his holiday snaps dumped onto the web. Some are clearly in…
Read More portfolios combine to deliver world-class services. and biryanisSo USS. It strikes me that this was, in the end, a total and avoidable mess and the UCU should take a lot of responsibility. The only way to find out what was going on was to check a friend of a friend’s facebook page. The only campaign resources were, well, whatever you came up…
Read More Looking ahead to the #defenduss 60-day consultationSo yer #defenduss. The UCU delegation came back with a new offer, the same stuff but with a slightly higher accrual rate, some more money from the other side, a higher cap, and promises to use any improvement in the scheme finances to put back the cuts and also to review the valuation methodology. And…
Read More #defenduss arrives at an unsatisfactory compromiseA bit of #SimplePlan in action. Enfield set up a wholly owned private company called Housing Gateway this year. Officials have viewed 122 properties, made offers on 77 and had 48 accepted. The company currently owns 22 homes and has tenants in five of them. Oykener said he ensured tenants in those homes would not…
Read More #simpleplan begins to scale upThe USS trustees have, it seems, agreed to defer a decision about valuation, says the UCU after the technical-level negotiations began. Why not sign the petition demanding no changes at the 15th January meeting? What kind of fools do you think we are?
Read More #defenduss: something to sign in the meantimeFrom Cambridge, a collection of charts from USS annual reports. This one is my favourite. Watch the retiree/contributor ratio just rocket upwards! To be honest, you’re losing me here…
Read More quick #defenduss chart: retirees per contributorThanks, as always to Mike Otsuka, we have some insight into how the USS Trustees arrived at their valuation. Really briefly, they seem to have chosen a methodology appropriate for valuing a defined-benefit fund for closure, as opposed to one that will run on, and bish bosh, it becomes absolutely necessary to demand immediate closure.…
Read More #defenduss: so now we know.I want a web standard for password creation/revocation. So does Larry Seltzer. Now the Cambridge Computer Lab security blog is starting to make one.
Read More Passwords again