The news that HM Revenue & Customs plans a swath of redundancies and the closure of about 130 of its offices has inspired predictable fury. I think I can see why. The news was quietly posted on the staff intranet by Lesley Strathie, the chief executive, but has for some reason yet to make it on to the official website.
However, an insider has retyped and sent out the message, which I think could have been more tactfully worded. The offices house about 3,150 people, and about 1,450 of them will move to a new location or “where appropriate” remain at the inquiry centre. The other 1,700 “will be declared surplus” — lovely phrase, that — and will be given the chance “where appropriate” to move to another office or accept redundancy.
A recent staff survey buried on the website suggests morale at HMRC, never good, is still falling. “Let’s hope that also means getting rid of the management bullies and their utterly useless spreadsheets that waste everyone’s time,” says one posting, from, one assumes, an employee. “Following the closures announced yesterday, we will retain 235 offices across the UK,” confirms HMRC.
? The man behind the Ring of Steel, aka the Ring of Plastic, that surrounds the City and supposedly protects it from terrorism is off to Rwanda to advise on the country’s own transport and infrastructure problems. Joe Weiss, transportation and projects director at the City of London Corporation, will spend 12 days in Kigali, the capital. He joined the City almost 20 years ago, before that working on the Mass Transit Railway in Hong Kong. At least in Rwanda he won’t have to worry about disruption because of snow.
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? You really don’t like First Capital Connect, do you? A reader complains that the rail company, which won this paper’s Scrooge of the Year award for 2009, is blaming “the impact of extreme weather related disruption” for its inability to respond to customers’ e-mails. And an e-petition has appeared on the No 10 website asking the PM “to end the franchise agreement with First Capital Connect ... and offer it to a more capable organisation”. Seven hundred and forty signatories so far.
Damn bursts for Canada’s most venerable Beaver
The internet has a lot to answer for. The venerable Canadian magazine The Beaver, founded in 1920 to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Hudson’s Bay Company and devoted to events on that country’s northwest frontier and the fur trade, has had to change its name to Canada’s History. The online version kept getting stuck in spam filters. In the same week it is reported that the Wisconsin Tourism Federation had to change its name to the Tourism Federation of Wisconsin, tired of being the butt of jokes about its initials. The World Taekwondo Federation soldiers on regardless.
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And the band plays on
In the blue corner: The Halfmoon
Some confusion over the fate of the Halfmoon pub in Putney, one of London’s most venerable, if compact, music venues.
Any number of bands have played in its back room, including the Rolling Stones, U2, Elvis Costello and, er, South London cajun combo the Balham Alligators. (Hi, Geraint!) There were reports before Christmas that Young’s, the owner, was planning on turning it into a poncey gastropub, there being virtually no poncey gastropubs anywhere else in southwest London. (Irony alert.) There was a protest started by aggrieved locals, the council put its oar in, and it became a huge issue in the local paper.
The latest report is that the Halfmoon has been reprieved and will continue to house live music.
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Not entirely true, says Young’s. The company had been in dispute with the tenant landlord over money, but negotiations have now been satisfactorily concluded. “Young’s has never said that the Halfmoon was going to be turned into a gastropub and we have never suggested that the Halfmoon was going to close,” a spokesman insists.
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