FMD, that is brilliant..no, really.

Looks like Bulls will win the Carvell case after all...

I am sure that if Carvell has broken his contract illegally, then Bulls will get an outcome in the courts.

Why are you so sure he wasn't entitled to refuse to be TUPEd?

I don't know by the way, just intrigued by your certainty.

Just surprised to see a Wakey fan backing the Bulls argument is all.

As to certainty...Edit: Birth, death and tax.

No they are not. No rule of law says that new company, buying a business out of insolvency, is either repsonsible for paying the debts of its previous owners, or for suffereing a financial or perforance penalty for so doing. It is only responsible for its own future actions.

They are the supposed rules of the RFL. Except they are not even that, since you will not find the 6-point sanction or any mitigation or any financial penalty set out anywhere in the RFL bye-laws or Operation Rules. It is totally down to the RFL discretion.

Bradford and the RFL aside I think the rules on this need looking at as it's seems far to easy to run up massive amounts of debt, walk away from it and just start again.

[i[size=200=#FF0000AMEN TO THAT!!!!![/size[/i

Precisely what I have been asserting. Need to be able to deter - and punish - those who DO that. Not those who try to clean up the mess they left.

btw...what I DO totally agree with, is that the same people should not be allowed to start up again having defaulted on their debt. And indeed, I think that is one thing the RFL will always ensure. If only because they'll likely lose any public sector funding otherwise. I always assumed that this was the reason the RFL took steps in Bulls last administration to that looked for all the world a marker to prevent any of the former shareholders buying the business.

TBH I was talking OUTSIDE RL or even sport but in general business.

And absolutely. It is a scandal when it (all too often) happens. And we all probably know people who have either done it or suffered from it.

There ARE various legal provisions to attempt to curb the wost abuses. But the law has to strike a balance between stifling rescues and genuine attempts to start over again on one hand, and phoenix bandits screwing their creditors on the other.

War story example: I remember going to a creditors meeting in London of an agricultural equipment dealer once. Owed us about £50k IIRC, a lot more to the bank and lots to a whole string of creditors. The insolvency practitioner spent ages telling us how he had a proposal to sell the business to a new company, for £x which would have meant a dividend of maybe 25p in the £ - if we were lucky. We were told this was the best deal available, and that otherwise it would be liquidation an we'd get nothing. It was a CVA being proposed, to take the business out of insolvency.

It all sounded like a best-efforts job. And it transpired the bank had already indicated their agreement. As had HMIT (as was, then) as it was then a preferential creditor enjoying Crown Preference. They needed 75% by value of the creditors to agree. They already had about 60%. There were about 30 creditors represented there. The two directors were telling bthe meeting how they had since both found jobs as repairmen for another company. They assumed agreement would be a formality.

They reckoned without me.

I spend about an hour firing questions at the insolvency practitioner and the two directors. Gradually dismantling their story about what they said had led to the downwall (all bad luck, of course...) and what the future intentions were. Seemed that the company these two bandits had "found jobs with" was the Newco, wanting to buy the business (cheaply). And, after a lot of evasion, I finally got them to admit that Newco was owned by their wives...

Oh what a tangled web we weave...

Anyway, the proposal was voted down. I got the plaudits from the meeting (although we still got paid sod all in the end...) and the eternal hatred of those who had convened it.

But nothing much has happened since to stop that sort of banditry. The nearest thing has been the abolition of Crown Preference, which has made HMRC far more activist and challenging now (and rightly so) as well as some widening the scope of when you become personally liable. We have seen the impact of the former in sport generally and certainly in RL. And I'm really not sure what you CAN do, if you want to retain an environment for people to take risks and be able to make mistakes, and learn from them and start over. Alhough makinging the directors automatically personally liable for any taxes collected (PAYE, VAT etc - money that was never theirs in the first place) if they are not paid within 7 days of the tax being collected from employees or customers, might concentrate minds?

But I wish you could. Because, when it happens, id does my chuffing head in.

Derision again? The last refuge of the incompetant.

You really do come across as a rather sad and pathetic creature, you know. I have long thought you must have mental health issues.

The example I quoted (there are many I could have used) was to provide information on the sort of things that go on, to anyone who might have found it helpful. But also to show people that, unlike you, clearly, I might just know what the hell I am talking about.