A Rant and Changing Careers

[Nemesis]

Hi all, some of you may know I've worked in the Nuclear Industry for the past 20 years doing something called Health Physics, but alas Mr Sunak has seen fit to change the way the IR35 system works, no change to the rules just a shift in the liabilities, ie. 'if I screw up and am non compliant' then any tax liability I've incurred and don't pay now falls on the end user, not my limited company.

 

Most of the companies, agencies and government bodies didn't even bother doing an assessment on any of the consulting companies, they just issued a blanket 'No more limited companies / consultants'. The net result is that people who were happy to work away from home as a contractor (including a huge percentage of the 300+ Health Physics Tech's that I trained) have said no thanks to the deals being offered on PAYE terms and gone to work for Tesco & Such.

 

My personal experience is that my income has dropped by over 2k a month due to having to pay for Hotels and Fuel/Food in order to go to work and not get any tax breaks on the costs.

 

I'm sure you're all aware that it's not just the Nuclear Industry that's now short of qualified talent, have a think about places like oil refineries, bakeries, car manufacturing plants, food manufacturing facilities, offshore installations, dockyards, roads, airports and railways, all of the above to some degree or other rely on transient or seasonal contractor support to carry out routine and statutory maintenance, I know that Network Rail have been the first to 'crack' and announce that they'll do individual assessments for IR35 contractors but I don't see anyone else buckling yet. 

 

 I'm the lucky one, I'm mortgage free, don't owe a bean and I've got some money stashed away.

 

So I chucked my notice in last week and I've joined a company that are going to train me to drive a bl**** great big truck.

 

Stay off the roads people, it could get messy ! 

 

Nem.........      

[cast iron]

ive taken VR from 22 years engineering in the automotive industry and start working as an instructor in the car drive experience sector. Lots of changes for lots of people , were british we just get on with it

[Steve (sdh2903)]

Similar in aircraft maintenance. Heavily reliant on contractors for the winter maintenance peak. Can't employ more permanent staff as will be overmanned in the summer. If you do your cost base increases and then the work is taken out of the uk to Eastern Europe or further afield and more jobs are lost. All the good experienced contractors are jacking it in due ir35 or have moved onto other sectors during covid.

 

Catch 22.

[Stuart]

You told me about this Nem. Good luck with the great big truck. And get that Westfield back on the road 

[Nemesis]

It's just been announced to the remaining workforce that Radwise Limited will cease trading next April and do not intend to tender for framework contracts in the UK Nuclear sector.

 

The only remaining companies (and that's two) that could bid I would say are not fit to bid, good luck Mr Sunak in manning the new liabilities that the UK Government will inherit when the French just hand back the second generation of nuclear plants in the next five to seven years.    

[Blatman]

IR35 issues notwithstanding (and I am NOT making light of them having had several colleagues suffer similar fates) I note that EDF extended a contract with Radwise for 2 years in May 2019. Is this is a contributory factor in the decidion to close the company, assuming the contract has now expired? What are EDF doing instead of using Radwise? Presumably the need for Health Physics Monitoring is still required?

 

Quote

Radwise are delighted to announce that EDF Energy have elected to invoke the first of two potential 2-year extensions on our existing sole supplier Framework to provide Health Physics Monitoring Services across the entire EDF Energy fleet within the UK. This extension period shall come into effect from the 7th May 2019.

 

And then there is an agreement with the UK government and EDF to decommission (I assume) the second generation reactors. I'm always suspicious of these glossy front end anouncements but it seems EDF will be involved up to 2030. So what doesn't that anouncement tell us?

https://www.edfenergy.com/media-centre/news-releases/edf-welcomes-completion-agreement-government-agr-defueling-and-0

[MR.C]

As the old saying  goes "money is the root of all evil" and 

one day it will destroy mankind. Period.

[Blatman]

1 hour ago, MR.C said:

money is the root of all evil

 

Actually it's "for the love of money is the root of all evil...". The point being that money itself is not evil, but the relentless and thoughtless pursuit of money is likely to be damaging to the soul. It comes from 1 Timothy chapter 6 verse 9 which begins:

"Those who want to be rich, however, fall into temptation and become ensnared by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction." The verse ends with "... for the love of money..." etc

Not that I'm a God botherer but I do like to know the history and correct context of often used sayings and it is surprising how often they are misquoted, a crime for which I have in the past been just as guilty.

But I digress...

[MR.C]

I'm an atheist.

And a common saying is good enough for me.

[Steve (sdh2903)]

Always thought that saying coming from the bible was very ironic considering how much trouble religion has caused. People in glass houses and all that.

 

Bit of a thread drift. Ir35 tax rules to religious quotes.

[Nemesis]

23 hours ago, Blatman said:

IR35 issues notwithstanding (and I am NOT making light of them having had several colleagues suffer similar fates) I note that EDF extended a contract with Radwise for 2 years in May 2019. Is this is a contributory factor in the decidion to close the company, assuming the contract has now expired? What are EDF doing instead of using Radwise? Presumably the need for Health Physics Monitoring is still required?

 

 

And then there is an agreement with the UK government and EDF to decommission (I assume) the second generation reactors. I'm always suspicious of these glossy front end anouncements but it seems EDF will be involved up to 2030. So what doesn't that anouncement tell us?

https://www.edfenergy.com/media-centre/news-releases/edf-welcomes-completion-agreement-government-agr-defueling-and-0

"The agreement"..... this enraged me as a tax payer, I'll elaborate later.

 

EDF purchased British energy when the share price was pennies, the price being driven down by a perfect storm of events that meant the majority of the generating units were shut down for metallurgy checks on the gas circulator 'fan' blades.

 

This was triggered following a catastrophic failure of a blade at Torness, the gas circulator was all but destroyed by the cascade effect of both debris and unbalanced rotational forces, I met the Shift Charge Engineer at Torness (I was working there at the time on a waste project) and I asked him about the failure, he said the reactor "physically bounced around on it's seismic mounts", and he said for the control room tape "what the devil was that?". An understatement I'm sure.  

 

The failure was attributed to the wrong type/grade of welding wire being used to 'make up' weight during the balancing of the rotor assembly following overhaul of the gas circulator at BE's offsite engineering facility.

 

There was no QA process for material control and because BE had spare gas circulators and they could be overhauled between outages and put back into service on any of the fleets reactor sites they had no idea what was where, hence the fleetwide shutdowns.

 

Now on to the stich up for us tax payers.

 

Under UK.GOV ownership each reactor site was required to set aside a percentage of income from generating into a decommissioning fund, and they did, vast sums of real money were put away for the end of life plans, when EDF first made an approach they walked away because UK.GOV said they couldn't have the end of life funds as part of the deal, I assumed wrongly that this had been resolved when EDF eventually got the deal through.

 

When I found out that they didn't get the end of life funds I again wrongly assumed that they would follow the European model, that is to carry out a de-fuel and post operational clean out using funds from their 'set aside' then hand it over for final decommissioning to the NDA, but no, they were not required to set aside a single penny for decommissioning and all they will do at final shutdown is de-fuel and exit left.

 

The de-fuel can be done in very short order with only a few alterations to the safety case, so the end of life funds that have been retained by UK.GOV have been eroded by inflation (and no doubt plundered for other .gov pet projects) will be nowhere near what is needed to bring these plant's to a long term safe and secure state, we the tax payer, the very same that paid to build the plants will have to pay and pay over and over again to take these plant's back, whilst EDF have completely creamed the profits, yet another UK.GOV kick in the teeth for us all.

 

As for Radwise having their framework contract extended by EDF, there were no surprises there, it was just a great way to avoid re-tendering and the inevitable costs increases, MAGNOX (another branch of UK.GOV) did exactly the same.

 

I'll end by sharing with you what a recently retired resource manger for one of the big 3 in Rad Protection said to me when I told him I'd had enough and was off, he said "I've had concerns for the past 15 years that the rates for Rad Monitors hasn't realistically moved upwards, and there has been a concerted effort from all of the ""players"" that it should stay that way, and when compared to the pay rates in every other country that have nuclear plants the UK players have been getting the contract expertise very very much on the cheap"

 

I think the NDA, a division of UK.GOV are in for a rude awakening, and I hope it bites them squarely in the ARRSSE.

 

Nem.........            

[Rob Hunter - Club Secretary]

It's interesting you are choosing that as a new career, I've been in the logistics and supply chain industry for 30 years.

 

While the press have been blaming Brexit for the driver shortage in the UK, those of us at the sharp end know it was in fact the IR35 change that has had the single biggest adverse impact on the driver market. The industry has lost huge numbers of self employed drivers, which has in turn created the highest wage inflation I have ever seen!

 

Personally, I was lucky a few years ago, as I moved from being a self employed consultant to becoming what I jokingly call a "wage slave" at the right time, but have many friends who are professional contractors, consultants and interim specialists currently having to reassess their futures.

 

Hope you enjoy the career change mate, you certainly won't be short of work!!