Is this true?

[Alun]

I've just been sent this by a mate of mine - if it is true I'm joining up right now, looks like a great blast.

Can you imagine working for a Company that has a little more than 600 employees and has the following employee statistics?



29 have been accused of spouse abuse
7 have been arrested for fraud
9 have been accused of writing bad cheque's
17 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses
3 have done time for assault
71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit
14 have been arrested on drug-related charges
8 have been arrested for shoplifting
21 are currently defendants in lawsuits
84 have been arrested for drink driving in the last year

Which organisation is this ???????

It's the 635 members of the House of Commons, the same group that cranks out hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep the rest of us inline.
What a bunch of b*****ds we have running our country - it says it all. And just to top all that they probably have the best 'corporate' pension scheme in the country!!

[Wee Jack]

On the subject of pension schemes, here's one I prepared earlier ---------

Ageism is alive and well and you thought it was illegal ??


I work for one of the most profitable businesses on the planet – a large American based , global, blue chip, in the computer / IT solutions sector. Last year , we generated revenue of – wait for it -$117 BILLION !!! and on that made clear profit
of $16 Billion !! stunning numbers.

However the company has just announced to us that, not content with all that profit, they would like to come a steal some of our life savings and have announced changes to our pension plan meaning less for me and my fellow drones for our respective futures.

In theory at 50 years old I could retire now , or up to April 5th next year, when UK legislation changes, and the minimum retirement age becomes 55. But that was not my plan.

However, co-incidentally !! yeah right !!!, the changes to our pension plan are being planned to kick in on 6th April 2010 , meaning if I stay with the company, I get robbed , and can’t then retire till Nov 2013, when I turn 55 and then on a very much smaller pension.

I and all my workmates who are around the same age are feeling like this is deliberately designed to force older hands to leave before April next year. We feel that this is a redundancy plan to get shot of older hands with no need to pay redundancy compensation. I have worked for this company for almost 25 years and feel that they have just booted me in the nads as reward for years of loyalty , hard work , and disrupted weekends.

So maybe it’s time for me to think about a new phase in life , maybe a new career , doing something I enjoy, probably paying less, but offset by a very small pension ??

Maybe the big overland trip while I’m still young enough to enjoy it might be on the cards after all ??.

[Alun]

Jack that's one of the reasons I got out of working for big business 15 years ago. There is no moral vision or compassion when it comes to the top layer of corporate culture and given the timings of what you've just posted above I'd apply the old test...if it walks like a duck etc. That truly is appalling.

As you said maybe now is the time to look elsewhere and get as far out of the hamster wheel as possible whilst retaining the ability to live a reasonable lifestyle.

We had a few conversations about this on our Euro Tour (yes, the romance of travel always leads there) and we all in our own way have made moves in the direction of more personal freedom and less slaving away in the system.

I tend to think like this...no one has ever gone to the grave wishing they'd spent more time working and less time doing the things they loved'.

[Wee Jack]

I hear what you are saying , and my head is already round the answer.

See you on the piste !!!

I'm finished selling my arse for the yankee dollar, you'll be seeing a lot more posts than usual during the working day , between now and my enforced retirement date !!!

[Alun]

Just had this in from Reuters.

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - Britons who have lost their jobs in the recession are choosing to travel, creating a generation of "grown-up gappers," a survey showed on Tuesday.

Foreign exchange group Travelex interviewed 4,000 people about post-redundancy plans and found 78 percent were planning to use the time to travel, on a grown-up version of the traditional gap year between school and college.

Those aged 30-55 were more than twice as likely as 18-24 year-olds to take time out to travel.