Head.SmackOnTable();

After to-ing and fro-ing with my old employer, regarding 15 days of unpaid holiday (thats 3 weeks!) because they are claiming the Http module I wrote is thier property, because "any work you do outside of work is our (intellectual) property" and "everything you learn here is our intellectual property, anything you use it for is our intellectual property" (thier quotes, not mine), so they have decided to ILLEGALLY withhold my money.

They are claiming that to recreate my Http module, it would "take us considerable time" and "its not an easy task" - which i find hilarious. It took me 2 days after work to create it (its 195 lines in total, 7kb of source code), working from 8pm till 11pm, so thats 6 hours of time - the working day at my old employer is 8.5 hours (ok, 7.5 with an hour lunch break) so they should be easily able to create it, but it turns out they arnt such good programmers as I am...

To be honest, I just wanted to leave the company on a good note - I decided to let thier ageism slide (I was told, to my face, by the Managing Director that "If you were older, I would have made you a senior developer" and "He was picked over you because he is older"), being slandered infront of other developers as I was leaving - "You are a pain in the arse" and "You can take your crap and get out of here", but I guess they are just sore loosers...

Anyway, I have applied for a few positions, and am waiting to hear from them...one of them looks promising though. In the mean time, I have some interesting ideas for one of my domains.

If when you leave your current employer, they refuse to pay you your holiday pay, there are certain steps you can take with them, as it is your legal right to receive holiday pay after leaving the company, under the Working Time Regulations 1998:

Section 14, Subsection 2:

(2) Where the proportion of leave taken by the worker is less than the proportion of the leave year which has expired, his employer shall make him a payment in lieu of leave in accordance with paragraph (3).
    (3) The payment due under paragraph (2) shall be - 

(a) such sum as may be provided for for the purposes of this regulation in a relevant agreement, or
(b) where there are no provisions of a relevant agreement which apply, a sum equal to the amount that would be due to the worker under regulation 16 in respect of a period of leave determined according to the formula - 

If the company fails to pay you, you will need to take certain steps to ensure that you have the right to appeal, starting off with addressing a letter to the Human Resources manager, titling the letter Formal Grievance, and alowing them 28 days to meet with you, and pay you.

If they fail to pay you, or meet with you (as is laid out from the Statutory Dispute Resolution (also known as the law)), then you can proceed directly to an Employment Tribunal (or call them on 08457 959 775), which will not only be costly for the company (it is a free service for employees to use), but it is also public (bad press tends to be one thing companys dont particularly want).

If you need more information, I suggest contacting ACAS, or an employment solicitor.

Well as of now, im currently unemployed, after leaving my last job at Snow Valley in December, and going on an amazing pilgrimage (my first, and hopefully, many more to come, pictures coming soon!)

Im basically looking for a Senior Development position, using c#.net in / around London. Iv been working with c#.net commercially for about 3 years now, and have been learning it since .net beta 1 was released on MSDN. I have been heavily experimenting with ASP.NET 2, and have created a few sites commercially with the technology, and sofar I am very impressed by it.

More information about me can be found on my site.

- M