Unsurprisingly BSkyB and Carphone Warehouse don’t want to pay to fill BT’s pension hole. The reality is that they only know what BT is going to spend the money on because BT is heavily regulated. Carphone’s customer do not get the luxury of not paying for their purchase of Tiscali or for their development of an on demand TV service. The move to new headquarters or the CEO’s bonus.
I have some sympathy that BT has made some crap decisions on investment, products to support and technologies to ditch.
Investing in technologies and selling them off just on the cusp of them generating revenue and returning the investment. Selling off large revenue low margin business because no one wants to take it by the balls and strip out the costs. Idiots!
It is that mismanagement that the inability to distinguish talent from style to ignore detail and the people that manage because it is boring and not as entertaining as the “high level” PowerPoint slides.
Having worked for BT for 38 years, in April they decided to change the pension scheme. This is a formal contract changed unilaterally by one party. Yet my divorce (last post) was only 30 years but I am not allowed to change (what I perceive) as a far woollier contract of marriage.
BT can’t afford it – they are not really that interested in it – when privatised ever member of the board was in the BT pension scheme – today not one. “I’m all right jack” I’ve negotiated a separate pension package which is far more beneficial than yours.
Life is not fair, and then you die!
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
Getting Divorce - claim on future income
I’m starting to go through a divorce after 30-years of marriage. As far as I know there is no one else involved, certainly not from my part?
We have gradually grown apart over the years not least when the kids where young and I worked 7 days a week both overtime and moonlighting. My wife didn’t go to work but provided the family home and stability something we both wanted and thought important.
Eventually we got comfortable for money, when the kids were about 11 and my wife had got a part time job. I dropped to 5 working days and got stuck into the DIY. I then started to go to night school for several management courses eventually obtaining an MBA. During this period I was studying, a largely solo task.
My wife mean time had taken the kids out for days and to swimming lessons, piano lessons etc. We didn’t have much of a social life often both falling asleep in front of the telly at night.
My MBA got me several rounds of promotion and my working world was different changing me and my outlook. The time with the kids had changed my wife. Later she discovered that her dead mother had been married before and had three boys and a girl that had been in orphanages. This shattered her view of her mother and there was no one to rebuild it. She grew closer to them. I suspect as a result of a bit of guilt that she had a fairly privileged life while her half brothers and sister had been split among several orphanages with varying experiences.
In the nearly five years since she found her other family we have grown remote from each other even though we live in the same house. She has grown extravagant and as I earn most of the money working full time while she was only working part time I decided to separate our finances. At which point she asked for a divorce and I jumped at it.
I discover from my solicitor that everything that we have accumulated – including my salary and pension forms part of the “marriage assets” and that it all has to be split 50:50. I have no problem with splitting the assets like house, car and savings 50:50 but on my future income I find it too much to accept.
My logic is I’m 54 and have been married for 30 and unmarried for 24. The sum of who and what I am, is not just the past 30 years. Some might argue that the first 24 years where more formative.
Looking at it this way my wife has contributed to who and what I am for 56% of my life and splitting that 50:50 would give 18% call on my income, assuming she earned nothing.
We have gradually grown apart over the years not least when the kids where young and I worked 7 days a week both overtime and moonlighting. My wife didn’t go to work but provided the family home and stability something we both wanted and thought important.
Eventually we got comfortable for money, when the kids were about 11 and my wife had got a part time job. I dropped to 5 working days and got stuck into the DIY. I then started to go to night school for several management courses eventually obtaining an MBA. During this period I was studying, a largely solo task.
My wife mean time had taken the kids out for days and to swimming lessons, piano lessons etc. We didn’t have much of a social life often both falling asleep in front of the telly at night.
My MBA got me several rounds of promotion and my working world was different changing me and my outlook. The time with the kids had changed my wife. Later she discovered that her dead mother had been married before and had three boys and a girl that had been in orphanages. This shattered her view of her mother and there was no one to rebuild it. She grew closer to them. I suspect as a result of a bit of guilt that she had a fairly privileged life while her half brothers and sister had been split among several orphanages with varying experiences.
In the nearly five years since she found her other family we have grown remote from each other even though we live in the same house. She has grown extravagant and as I earn most of the money working full time while she was only working part time I decided to separate our finances. At which point she asked for a divorce and I jumped at it.
I discover from my solicitor that everything that we have accumulated – including my salary and pension forms part of the “marriage assets” and that it all has to be split 50:50. I have no problem with splitting the assets like house, car and savings 50:50 but on my future income I find it too much to accept.
My logic is I’m 54 and have been married for 30 and unmarried for 24. The sum of who and what I am, is not just the past 30 years. Some might argue that the first 24 years where more formative.
Looking at it this way my wife has contributed to who and what I am for 56% of my life and splitting that 50:50 would give 18% call on my income, assuming she earned nothing.
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