Nominate Elaine Clark For The ICAEW Council

 

My Twitter chum, and fellow member of the ICAEW, Elaine Clark is standing for election to the ICAEW Council in the North West. 

I wish her all the best, and would ask any members in the North West to sign her nomination papers; as she will be a force for good.

I've decided to stand for @icaew council for The North Westhttps://t.co/oIxG0F6tX4

The way to make change happen is from within

— CheapAccounting.co.uk expert - Elaine Clark (@cheapaccounting) November 12, 2020

Elaine has correctly called out the absurdity of the ICAEW's regional (and indeed international) council structure that not only prevents members from one region nominating members from another, but also does not have space for a "cyberspace" council member.

I think I'd be better suited to:

Strategic Interest Group Representatives

Co-opted members for strategic areas/sectorshttps://t.co/RF0vBFF8kJ

Do you think the @icaew should have a:

"Social Media & Online Digital Practice Member"

on their Council? https://t.co/ro0zMcEMG4

— CheapAccounting.co.uk expert - Elaine Clark (@cheapaccounting) November 12, 2020

 

In 2007 I noted the following:

"Why does the ICAEW claim to be international, yet council elections are decided on a local basis?

Why does the ICAEW insist on prospective candidates for council needing 10 signatures from the local area, before they are even allowed to stand?

Why does the ICAEW need 90, or more, council members?

Operating a Victorian trading association model simply will not do for the 21st century.

Until the ICAEW gets that point it will go nowhere."

In fact in 2007 I tried to stand for council, but couldn't get the nominations because the ICAEW wouldn't tell anyone in Croydon (where I was living at the time) that I was standing. 

Therefore please nominate Elaine, as she might actually achieve what I failed to achieve!

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Update on The ICAEW Investment in Engine B

In October I noted that the ICAEW had invested in Engine B, and that Michael Izza is on the Board.

AccountingWeb have now run with the story:

"The ICAEW’s recent additional investment into tech start-up Engine B was perhaps largely unnoticed by many members. Taking a 10% stake and Michael Izza joining the board seems an unusual step for an institute to take. 

Aside from the potential conflict of interest, historically, accounting institutes and major tech initiatives have largely been a failure. How will this investment stack up?

Getting to grips with Engine B and what it aims to do isn’t easy. The website is quite opaque and subsequent press releases unhelpful, especially as it describes itself as an “intelligent data access platform” using “dynamic knowledge graphs”.

Put more simply, Engine B seems to be two things:

• A set of rules (or data models) that help to standardise structured data (like financial accounts) and unstructured data (such as PDFs). 
• A technology platform, that allows this data to be interrogated and for other software to be linked to it...

While at some point there could be a commercial conflict with other software providers, Lyford-Smith is keen to stress that their interest is at the ‘foundational layer’. He stresses there is no conflict with the audit itself as “this isn’t the standards of the audit, we regulate the professional behaviour, in the same way we don’t regulate Excel formula creation.” 

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• Appeal to the First-tier Tribunal or Upper Tribunal
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• Premiums are inclusive of 12% IPT. 
• Premiums and IPT are due in full in advance / at commencement of scheme.
• There is a NIL excess on all policies.

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