Half of UK Internet Registry Operator Nominet's Board, Including CEO and Chairman, Has Been Ditched (theregister.com) 32
New submitter Grantbridge writes: On Monday, 740 members of .uk internet registry operator Nominet made the drastic decision to ditch five of its 11-strong board of directors, including the CEO and chairman, in a fierce rebuke of the company's efforts to move from a non-profit organisation to a commercial one. Today, Nominet has an interim chair -- one of the remaining non-executive directors -- and no CEO. Two of its senior management -- Eleanor Bradley and Ben Hill -- were also removed from the board, and remain in their jobs at Nominet for the moment. The fifth board member to get the boot is non-executive director Jane Tozer MBE, OBE. And while the remainder of the board have said they "will be working on a strategic change in direction," the reality is that they have all supported the CEO and chair's action over the past five years, all unanimously opposed the vote, and in some cases were highly critical of the reasoning behind it. The vote was close. The 740 members in favor faced 632 opposing, resulting in a narrow five per cent margin of victory. Of those opposed, many acted on the former chair and CEO's claims that a yes vote would be destabilizing for the organisation. That still might be the case.
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That depends on how badly he behaved I suppose...
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I believe that British English also use "sacked" which more Americans would likely interpret similarly. I've also heard "canned" used, but I'm not sure if that's common in British English. There's of course the more euphemistic "made redundant" that I think both share in common,
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I believe that British English also use "sacked" which more Americans would likely interpret similarly.
When I was much younger, I had initially mistaken "sacked" to mean "executed". We actually don't use the term all that often in the US, as "fired" or "laid off" are more common - or at least, that was certainly true when I was growing up. The first time I heard the term was from a WW2 documentary talking about how Hitler regularly sacked generals he became displeased with. Naturally, this being Hitler, and me being young and ignorant, I just assumed he simply killed subordinates who displeased him, in th
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"Laid off" is relatively new in the US and is itself a euphamism like all the terms for losing a job. I always found the British "made redundant" to be amusing; a lot of workers are indeed redundant while still getting paid.
Re:Ditched? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, and to be pedantic, in the UK it is the position that is made redundant. And the protections are different legally from being fired - firing someone is a disciplinary decision, redundancy is a business decision.
You fire someone for not performing the job properly or poor conduct, and you follow a proper disciplinary procedures (with documentation). Then can then let them go, and hire a new employee if you want. If you don't you could be fined.
If a position is no longer required, then you can make the position redundant and you don't have to follow the same disciplinary procedures. The employee may leave with statutory redundancy payment, or you may move them to another position, but essentially the issue is with the job position, not the employee. You can't then hire someone else to take over the job - the position is redundant and refilling it would be very bad news at an employment tribunal, e,g, a big fine.
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You fire someone for not performing the job properly or poor conduct, and you follow a proper disciplinary procedures (with documentation). Then can then let them go, and hire a new employee if you want. If you don't you could be fined.
Just to be clear- you could be fined for not following proper disciplinary procedures. Re-reading that it seemed a bit ambiguous.
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So if it's because the company is losing money, everyone needs to get rid of 10% of headcount, those jobs are now redundant (or in US "reduction in force"). Then if 6 months later they need to fill those jobs again, the income looks better and they realize they cut too deeply, then the jobs aren't redundant. Do you have to get the old workers back or just replace?
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Exactly - although, obviously it could be caused by reorganisation as well as losing money; outsourcing sales, hosting or cancelling a long term project.
You don't have to get the old workers back, but rehiring the position within 6 months would get you into trouble. These numbers are accepted norms/guidelines rather than firm laws which does make it more complicated, but the recourse for the ex-employee is an employment tribunal and they have been known to make big awards to the employees when companies pla
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Yes, ditched = ousted. (Score:5, Informative)
Ditched is rather colloquial usage but very clear to most British English speakers.
The controversies [wikipedia.org] at nominet go back years. You will find that most smaller British ISPs hold them in very poor regard. They have a reputation for allowing their insiders to abuse their position especially with egregious nepotism. The only surprising to me is how long it has taken to come to fruition.
Re:Yes, ditched = ousted. (Score:4, Insightful)
The only surprising to me is how long it has taken to come to fruition.
The only surprising to me is that they failed to rig the vote. I suspect that surprised them too.
Argh, nepotism should have been cronyism (Score:4, Informative)
Any way, a few choice examples:
Forced out its legal boss for doing her job too well [theregister.com]
Sacked director of legal policy, claimed it was protecting itself from domain hawkers, found guilty of disability discrimination and constructive dismissal [theregister.com]
Stripped of myspace.co.uk domain name, despite it being register years before myspace.com and used legitimately [theregister.com]
Abandons its own charitable foundation so it could retain profits, despite supposedly being non-profit itself. [theregister.com]
Charged £750 for people to get their domains back from hijackers. [theregister.com]
Cronyism at heart of Nominet's controversial unelected board members [theregister.com]
people
Those are just a few I remember put nominet into the search at the The Register [theregister.com] there are pages and pages of controversy.
Nonsense (Score:3)
If you had bothered to read the actually link you would have found out they were not domain squatters they were legitimately using the domain to host personal web pages and email addresses for years.
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Link also said that myspace.co.uk changed it's SEO to exploit the existence of the company myspace.
Pretty clear-cut case, really.
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There is more to the internet than a web presence on the base www. root. Just because there wasn't an active website doesn't mean that the domain is not being used for other purposes. Especially back in the early days where you were just as likely to have a telnet portal, FTP site or a Gopher server than a website. Or for that matter there could have been pages elsewhere and on sub-domains.
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Seems the US isn't the only one with such problems, recalling the almost comically corrupt plan to sell off .org domain management to a commercial enterprise.
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It means exactly the same thing in American English, slashdot is just full of basement shut-ins.
Re: Ditched? (Score:2)
I did actually write ousted but the editor changed it.
Ben Hill is on the board? (Score:2)
In the UK no less.
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I once had a dentist named Ben E. Hill
I was hoping (Score:1)
that they threw those board members into a literal ditch.
Top level and country domain registrars should never be for-profit.
Country domain registrars in particular are administering a public resource and profit is the wrong driving factor.
ICANN (Score:3, Interesting)
Now if only this same thing can be done at ICANN...
Re: ICANN (Score:2)
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Risky. "Your application for the domain name has been rejected because your face was detected in the photo of the crowd at Donald Trump's rally on May 17th Michigan.and as a policy we do not provide domains to Neo-Nazis.