Tuesday 23 October 2012

What Did Homer Say?



In the first week of October loyal readers may recall that I wrote about Lin Homer's "Breakfast Briefing" on 18 October at the Whitehall and Industry Group (WIG), where:
"Homer will talk about the department’s challenges around efficiency and building trust whilst ensuring their activities are as transparent as possible. Lin will further provide an update on HMRC's transformation and their agenda for the coming years."
WIG asked that people who wished to attend should register with them.

Step forward one loyal reader (a professional accountant) who wrote to me that he did just that, and received a confirmation of registration on 5 October:
"From: WIG Response [mailto:wigresponse@wig.co.uk]
Sent: 05 October 2012 16:36
To:
Subject: Re: Breakfast Briefing: Lin Homer CB, Chief Executive and Permanent Secretary, HM Revenue & Customs - The Whitehall & Industry Group
Thank you for your application which is now being processed by the WIG team.
Please make any replies to workshops@wig.co.uk as this mailbox is un-attended.
80 Petty France London  SW1H 9EX Tel:     020 7222 1166 Fax:    020 7222 1167 Web:  www.wig.co.uk"
Unfortunately things then went rather quiet, and my loyal reader heard nothing. He duly wrote back to them on 17 October, and asked if the event was still going ahead. Here is the reply he received, on the same day, from the events co-ordinator:
"Many thanks for your email, I have just taken over this event from a colleague. I am sorry to say we are fully booked for the event, and cannot accommodate you this time.

I hope you can appreciate this event was very popular, and spaces limited"
Does it not seem strange, to say the least, that he received no advice until then that his booking could not be accommodated?

A cynic might wonder if the attendees were vetted, in order to ensure there were no embarrassing questions.

Anyhoo, be that as it may, did anyone actually manage to attend this and if so what was said?

It goes without saying that if there are minutes of the meeting floating around, I would be more than delighted to post them on this site.

A list of attendees would also be rather interesting too!

Thanks.

Tax does have to be taxing.



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4 comments:

  1. Daily Mail, today, p.4 & comment p.14.

    It does not matter what Homer has said or will say, the wreck that is HMRC is dismasted and drifting towards the rocks.

    What can the crew do to save the vessel, promote the remainder of the lower decks, get another whiteboard out, count the lifeboats, too late, most of the afterguard jumped ship at the last anchorage, there are no boats left.

    This is yet another almighty clusterfeck in the making.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Of course your 'loyal reader' was vetted. HMRC have lots of time to weed out accountants who were probably going to bill attendance at this jamboree to some tax dodging dope of a client.

    Or the event was oversubscribed. No, that can't be right...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Can someone cut the prevarification and inform us whether the event actually went ahead, brcause if it didn't then we dont need to worry about what if anything was said,
    SEEMPLES!

    ReplyDelete