They are hosting a series of roadshows and mounting a publicity campaign, under the direction of their PR firm Media Strategy (perversely enough paid for by us, the membership), designed to swing the vote of the membership in their favour.
Unfortunately, those of us who oppose the merger do not have the resources to be able to afford to hire Media Strategy; even though we will, via our subscriptions, be paying for Media Strategy's involvement.
Therefore I ask you to help me out in the last few weeks of the campaign, by emailing this post to as many members of the ICAEW and of the media that you know.
Please can you ask them to
-Visit this site
-Forward this post to their friends and colleagues in the ICAEW
-And, most importantly of all, vote against the merger
Reasons To Vote No
- The merger will dilute the brand
- Merging CIPFA and the ICAEW is not a merger of equals, we should be merging "like with like"
- The merger will increase the size of Council, from its current unwieldy and inefficient size of 90, to 115 members
- A two tier membership, as promised by Council, will be confusing to the membership, the outside world and impractical to administer
- Council will renege on its promise to run a dual qualification system
- To hand over control of the governing council of the ICAEW, to a new body, will denude the current membership of its right to veto who can become an accountant
- We should be talking to ICAS about merging, not CIPFA and CIMA
- The ICAEW have mismanaged the merger proposal from day one, by talking to the wrong bodies and by antagonising ICAS over the choice of name
- The Audit Commission has noted that 25% of submitted local council accounts have to be resubmitted, because of significant errors and "significant" departures from UK GAAP
- The mixture of qualifications that the merged body would embrace, would mean that it could not accurately claim to be called The Institute of Chartered Accountants
- The proposal to takeover CIPFA will add only another 13500 members to our numbers, that represents a mere 11% of our current membership. This will not alter the status quo, or increase our standing within the financial community
- If the merger were truly "revenue enhancing", as the ICAEW would have us believe, why did they raise subscriptions by 9% for 2006?
- The ICAEW is meant to represent the interests of its members, yet it is ignoring the membership and wasting our money on trying to convince us of the need to merge with CIPFA
Ken Frost FCA
www.stopthemerger.org
ICAS, with some 16,000 members, of which some 20% are retired, nether want nor need to merge with any other body.
ReplyDeleteThe educational standards of ICAS are second to no other accountancy body.
Eric Anstee's views, as expressed in the ICAEW webcast, do not even demonstrate a basic knowlegde of English, logic or arithmetic.
So, you are an ICAEW member in practice, commerce or industry and you are looking to employ another qualified accountant.
ReplyDeleteYou are not going to be the exception and invite applications from CIPFA members - are you? So, if CIPFA members are not generally up to most jobs - why support a merger?
EDM 581 (Early Day Motion)
ReplyDelete13.07.2005
Flynn, Paul
That this House notes with profound concern that the public affairs consultancy Media Strategy, which represents a wide range of public sector and commercial organisations, has been forced to resign its membership of the Association of Professional Political Consultants after a flagrant breach of the Association's Code of Practice; further notes that the breach involved a contravention of Clause 8 of the Code, which prevents the employment of any honourable Member or Peer, or the payment of money or other awards to such honourable Members; is shocked that Media Strategy's response to the investigation of this complaint was to resign from the Association to prevent a formal inquiry rather than to put its house in order; is appalled at the flippant comment of the Media Strategy Director, Charles Lewington, that although Lord O'Neill was indeed to be paid for services to the agency `he won't be doing much given the money'; welcomes the statement by the Association that the appointment compromised the profession's integrity; urges all Right honourable and honourable Members to have no contact with the clients of Media Strategy until this matter is resolved; and believes that it is inappropriate for public sector organisations such as the Audit Commission, the Police Federation, Southwark Council, Westminster City Council, The Royal Parks, The Environment Agency and others to retain the services of a company that behaves in this manner.
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