On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 01:22:36 -0000, "Paul King"
wrote:

Andy Hall wrote:

My parents had this installed in a house in the sixties. It consisted
of an earth rod and then copper strip run into the wall and looped all
the way through at intervals. There was no electronics - just a
direct connection.

IIRC, it was installed by Rentokil, so not a fly by night operation,
20 year guarantee and so on.


ROFL 20 year guarantee!

I completely agree, but was 40 years ago and wasn't my purchasing
decision. I didn't say that I thought it worked either - more than
likely the improvements came from clearing the soild around the house.

It is worth mentioning that Rentokil is still around and in the
property care business. and part of a multinational employing 90,000
people.



Coldseal windows gave 10/15/20 year g/tees and where
are they? Re-incarnated as Warmseal! Formally Stormseal, and before that (if
my memory serves well - Guardian Fenster). There should be legislation
against such practices.


I'm not saying that where such guarantees are necessary they shouldn't be
provided - but where a company blatantly builds up such a consumer base
based on such guarantees (and then "goes to the wall" because the
liabilities might overburden them) are allowed to re-incarnate themselves by
changing name with the same directors in charge!

This is a different issue and I don't think applied in the scenario I
described.

What you're describing happens daily on a smaller or larger scale.
The notion of limited companies is to create a separate legal entity
to the individual directors and to separate their finances.

It is very common for companies to overcommit themselves in all sorts
of ways, whether it be guarantees to customers or promises to
suppliers to pay them for goods and services. There's really no
difference - it;'s a commitment made and not kept.

If they exceed their resources and their financial facilities won't
back them, they go broke - simple as that.

If it is then determined that the directors have acted outside the
various Companies Acts, then they may forfeit their immunity from
liability and may also be disqualified from being a director. I know
of an instance where this has happened to somebody for ten years.

It's very easy to talk about legislating this and legislating that,
but hard to make work. There is an ever increasing volume .of
legislation for companies to deal with it as it is and those
determined to be dishonest or sail close to the wind will always be
able to do so.

Sometimes a business can fail for any number of legitimate issues
relating to trading conditions, where the directors are simply unable
to do anything apart from call in the receiver at the point that the
company would become insolvent.

If the reasons are genuine, the law complied with and no misfeasance,
is it reasonable to prevent the directors running a new business?

The difficulty comes with differentiating between something that
follows the letter of the law but is morally questionnable and
something that is less morally questionnable. It becomes a value
judgment.





Sorry for stealing the thread!

I'm not quite sure what guarantees and company legislation had to do
with the original question.




--

..andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl