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 Sean_OBrien wrote:


I have (now) good information that says the £4 million was just the website and a (pretty simple) inventory management package to go with it (that as I understand it - was part and parcel to the package used). I also have it on good information that come this July, we will see another approximately £2-3 million exceptional cost to cover a new manufacturing control system...because they can't seem to get the old one to work with the new retail system...

That seems to me to be a hallmark of terrible management. At some point a competent executive has to step in and decide to stop throwing money down a hole. There comes a time when cutting something off, even if it means a waste of time, money, and effort, is preferable to proceeding with it.

The GW v CHS case comes to mind as another example, but litigation is contentious and emotional. A new website...at some point you just have to stop throwing good money after bad. If you don't have the foresight to do that, it will cause problems.

GW can't very easily weather another 3M extraordinary expenditure with the way its revenue and costs are situated. The company doesn't have any debt, per say, but with the way things are going, GW needs that 3M, even if only to help pay dividends.

Kilkrazy wrote:I can't see why Kirby would want actively to crash GW.

If he is aiming to retire he would presumably rather his shares maintain their value and rate of dividend.

One thing Kirby has been able to do is get a pay out ratio for his dividends that is way higher than the amount of money he would have gotten had the board approved dividends anything close to industry averages or the pay out rates of the LOTR boom days. During the last few years GW has had both a higher earnings per share and a higher dividend pay out ratio than during their best year during the LOTR boom. He's already helped himself to more cash than he should have gotten by any sane metric.

He owns almost 7% of the company. If he ever decides to sell there is absolutely no way those shares are going on the open market. They would crash the share price and he'd get less for them than he would if he went about it another way. One thing that gets voted on at each annual meeting is the approval of a share buy back of more than sufficient size to buy him out. It hasn't been used yet, but right now the board of directors has the right to buy the shares if he wants to sell them. The other option he has is to personally call each of the investment funds that also owns a large amount of GW and explain he obviously doesn't want to dump 7% of the company on the open market and they don't want the share price pushed down either, so maybe they'll work out a share purchase, possibly to a single fund or perhaps broken up to a handful of buyers.

Kirby will get out with a good amount of cash and he's not going to intentionally crash the share price.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:

4 million is not actually an outrageous price, one has to remember that the site is only a forefront, and the project most likely was a comprehensive solution where they redid all their warehousing, logistics etc software and databases.

I have (now) good information that says the £4 million was just the website and a (pretty simple) inventory management package to go with it (that as I understand it - was part and parcel to the package used). I also have it on good information that come this July, we will see another approximately £2-3 million exceptional cost to cover a new manufacturing control system...because they can't seem to get the old one to work with the new retail system...

Ouch. I'd have quite happily accepted that a £4m site and back end was possible, if the back end was substantial and whoever negotiated the contract sucked at it, but that's an off the shelf webstore with almost no personalization, and should have cost something at least an order of magnitude less. I mean, these projects often work out significantly more than expected once you factor in changes (I bet GW are terrible to get decent specifications out of), staffing, licenses and overheads, but it's still a bread-and-butter off the shelf e-commerce site and stock management back-end. There shouldn't be that much work to it, even if you add in a few layers of bureaucracy.

weeble1000 wrote:
GW can't very easily weather another 3M extraordinary expenditure with the way its revenue and costs are situated. The company doesn't have any debt, per say, but with the way things are going, GW needs that 3M, even if only to help pay dividends.

I can't help but think that the annual extrordinary expenditures are done to mask the bad financials - "the numbers might look bad this year, but that's only because we spent £3m on a new inventory system", and so on. I'm surprised they didn't make a big deal about WHW in the last report.

weeble1000 wrote:

Backfire wrote:

Nepotist embezzlement would have been done in opposite fashion: they'd have announced that new website is designed by some hitherto unknown company which just happened to be headed by Mrs Kirby (or some other relative or acquaintance), which has shoe-string operation, no ready templates or solutions and then there would be gradual delays and cost-increases as the company is hugely under-resourced for such an operation, because only fraction of the invested money actually goes to design and programming work, most of it is being leeched of by the owners in messy & non-transparent billing. If some of the board or stockholders, frustrated to rising costs & lack of progress, wish to terminate to deal, it would be countered with variations of 'sunken costs fallacy' and promises that the new deadline is 'just around the corner'. And when the whole is operational, it's a horrible buggy mess and takes months/years to fix.

Disclaimer: I will strongly deny that the above is based on any real world example.

How do we know that's not what basically happened here? Lots of other folks have said that the 4M number is suspiciously high.

Well, usually in those cases they do not select OTS solution from large, estabilished company. Because that makes it very easy to compare costs and schedules with other projects where same software company has been involved. It's much more difficult to hide all kinds of consultations, billing etc. superfluous costs there. I don't say it's impossible, just that usually this sort of thing would come out differently.
Webstores for major companies tend to be expensive. Most expensive ones cost 100+ million. This costed 15 million euros and was a slow, horrible buggy mess upon introduction which took months and much money to rectify. Now granted, their back-end is probably at least order of magnitude more complicated than for GW, but it gives you an idea.

Backfire wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:

Backfire wrote:

Nepotist embezzlement would have been done in opposite fashion: they'd have announced that new website is designed by some hitherto unknown company which just happened to be headed by Mrs Kirby (or some other relative or acquaintance), which has shoe-string operation, no ready templates or solutions and then there would be gradual delays and cost-increases as the company is hugely under-resourced for such an operation, because only fraction of the invested money actually goes to design and programming work, most of it is being leeched of by the owners in messy & non-transparent billing. If some of the board or stockholders, frustrated to rising costs & lack of progress, wish to terminate to deal, it would be countered with variations of 'sunken costs fallacy' and promises that the new deadline is 'just around the corner'. And when the whole is operational, it's a horrible buggy mess and takes months/years to fix.

Disclaimer: I will strongly deny that the above is based on any real world example.

How do we know that's not what basically happened here? Lots of other folks have said that the 4M number is suspiciously high.

Well, usually in those cases they do not select OTS solution from large, estabilished company. Because that makes it very easy to compare costs and schedules with other projects where same software company has been involved. It's much more difficult to hide all kinds of consultations, billing etc. superfluous costs there. I don't say it's impossible, just that usually this sort of thing would come out differently.
Webstores for major companies tend to be expensive. Most expensive ones cost 100+ million. This costed 15 million euros and was a slow, horrible buggy mess upon introduction which took months and much money to rectify. Now granted, their back-end is probably at least order of magnitude more complicated than for GW, but it gives you an idea.

No.

5 million GBP is an impossible number for web store with the size and complexity of GW's. And trying to compare something with the complexity of a real-time ticket selling capacity to a web store is a bit ridiculous. And please stop throwing that 100+ million number round, that is simply not true for any web store.

Yeah that must be dealing with lots of train operators.

The GW system essentially lets you put items in a cart, pass it via some online payment system, and no doubt doesn't do anything more complicated than changing the stock level and sending an email to the warehouse packers.

I did that for a uni project back in 2004, admittedly on a much smaller scale, and without any considerations to internationalization, security or browser compatibility. But it's a long solved problem. Every mail order company in the world has something that does this.

Unless it's interfacing to the machinery or warehouse to get real-time updates on stock, I don't see where the money went.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

PhantomViper wrote:
5 million GBP is an impossible number for web store with the size and complexity of GW's. And trying to compare something with the complexity of a real-time ticket selling capacity to a web store is a bit ridiculous. And please stop throwing that 100+ million number round, that is simply not true for any web store.

I'm sure there will be webstores that cost 100million GBP, but they'd be several orders of magnitude bigger than GW's, like Amazon or eBay.

The GW site at the front end looks like a re-skin of Warlord Games site, which I'm sure didn't cost them anything like that much. It doesn't do anything differently do Dark Sphere, Wayland, or any other webstore in the world.

Herzlos wrote:

I'm sure there will be webstores that cost 100million GBP, but they'd be several orders of magnitude bigger than GW's, like Amazon or eBay.

Neither Amazon or eBay are what usually would be called web stores. Both of them have unique requirements and capabilities that no ordinary web store has.

I don't know if Backfire works in IT or not, but what he is doing is the equivalent of pointing at the Space Shuttle mentioning that it costs several billion and using that as the reason why that small RC plane that he bought at Toys R' Us can be pretty reasonably bought for 1 million.

I agree with you; you need to be doing something pretty special (or be getting totally ripped off) for your basic webstore to cost £1,000,000+.

Of course, if the head of IT was trained as a gym instructor, she may not have been the best one to be negotiating a contract like this.

Backfire wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:

Backfire wrote:

Nepotist embezzlement would have been done in opposite fashion: they'd have announced that new website is designed by some hitherto unknown company which just happened to be headed by Mrs Kirby (or some other relative or acquaintance), which has shoe-string operation, no ready templates or solutions and then there would be gradual delays and cost-increases as the company is hugely under-resourced for such an operation, because only fraction of the invested money actually goes to design and programming work, most of it is being leeched of by the owners in messy & non-transparent billing. If some of the board or stockholders, frustrated to rising costs & lack of progress, wish to terminate to deal, it would be countered with variations of 'sunken costs fallacy' and promises that the new deadline is 'just around the corner'. And when the whole is operational, it's a horrible buggy mess and takes months/years to fix.

Disclaimer: I will strongly deny that the above is based on any real world example.

How do we know that's not what basically happened here? Lots of other folks have said that the 4M number is suspiciously high.

Well, usually in those cases they do not select OTS solution from large, estabilished company. Because that makes it very easy to compare costs and schedules with other projects where same software company has been involved. It's much more difficult to hide all kinds of consultations, billing etc. superfluous costs there. I don't say it's impossible, just that usually this sort of thing would come out differently.
Webstores for major companies tend to be expensive. Most expensive ones cost 100+ million. This costed 15 million euros and was a slow, horrible buggy mess upon introduction which took months and much money to rectify. Now granted, their back-end is probably at least order of magnitude more complicated than for GW, but it gives you an idea.

GW are not a "major" company.

I worked as a management accountant for a UK high street retailer with similar turnover to GW with a website shipping internationally. £1.5m including "aftercare" and forums (that was 5 years ago and in London so inflation should be a wash on the comparison).

Backfire wrote:

 agnosto wrote:

Backfire wrote:
For 2014, their gaming division has reported slight reduction of revenue. It is harder for big companies to post large relative growth.

Actually, Hasbro is reporting 2% growth over the same period last year in their games division for the third quarter which has reversed the losses from earlier in the year. The net result is the games division was still down 4% year-on-year in the 3rd quarter BUT considering they were down 12% in the 2nd quarter, I would say that's a very strong rally for the division.

I was talking about first 9 months (fourth quarter is yet to be released). Single quarters really don't tell much IMO, "crash" on 2nd quarter may have well been because they had some big release in 2013 Q2 which boosted numbers.

As someone who does a fair bit of investing, I generally don't make long-term decisions based on quarters or even 9 month reports but in hard data and long-term trends. I just quoted the short-term data because that's all that I could find that was negative for Hasbro in the Games division and since you were saying that were having a tough time, I tried to see things your way. If you look at the long-term outlook, they were up 2% in Games from 2011 to 2012 and another 10% from 2012 to 2013. So, Games division of a very large firm growing substantially during the same periods that a smaller, should be more agile firm such as GW is declining.
Source: http://investor.hasbro.com/financials.cfm

Herzlos wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:
5 million GBP is an impossible number for web store with the size and complexity of GW's. And trying to compare something with the complexity of a real-time ticket selling capacity to a web store is a bit ridiculous. And please stop throwing that 100+ million number round, that is simply not true for any web store.

I'm sure there will be webstores that cost 100million GBP, but they'd be several orders of magnitude bigger than GW's, like Amazon or eBay.

Marks & Spencer webstore costed £150 million.

I don't work in IT, but I have seen comments from people who do, and have said that GW price tag is not really exceptional.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 agnosto wrote:

As someone who does a fair bit of investing, I generally don't make long-term decisions based on quarters or even 9 month reports but in hard data and long-term trends. I just quoted the short-term data because that's all that I could find that was negative for Hasbro in the Games division and since you were saying that were having a tough time, I tried to see things your way. If you look at the long-term outlook, they were up 2% in Games from 2011 to 2012 and another 10% from 2012 to 2013. So, Games division of a very large firm growing substantially during the same periods that a smaller, should be more agile firm such as GW is declining.
Source: http://investor.hasbro.com/financials.cfm

Well, if you want even longer terms, it could be pointed out that Hasbro's gaming division shrank from 2008 to 2010. Post-2010 growth has taken it back to 2008 level.
Don't think I ever said they had 'tough times', I believe their gaming division is quite profitable. However, in terms of revenue, it has not really grown over the last 5-6 years, and since they represent much larger slice of the gaming industry than company like FFG or even GW, probably gives better idea of how the industry is doing as a whole.

Backfire wrote:

Herzlos wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:
5 million GBP is an impossible number for web store with the size and complexity of GW's. And trying to compare something with the complexity of a real-time ticket selling capacity to a web store is a bit ridiculous. And please stop throwing that 100+ million number round, that is simply not true for any web store.

I'm sure there will be webstores that cost 100million GBP, but they'd be several orders of magnitude bigger than GW's, like Amazon or eBay.

Marks & Spencer webstore costed £150 million.

Marks & Spencer also run a bank. It's far more than a simple webstore.

And even if X cost £150m, that doesn't mean Y can't be overpriced at £4m.

Herzlos wrote:

Marks & Spencer also run a bank. It's far more than a simple webstore.

Sure. Which is why it costed £150 million and not £4 million. I just brought it up as an example of a more extreme end of the scale.
Of course M&S is much bigger than GW, but similarly, GW is bigger and their needs more complicated than someone like Warlord Games or Wayland. It's delusional to claim that "oh, I could do that as my university project".

Backfire wrote:

Herzlos wrote:

Marks & Spencer also run a bank. It's far more than a simple webstore.

Sure. Which is why it costed £150 million and not £4 million. I just brought it up as an example of a more extreme end of the scale.
Of course M&S is much bigger than GW, but similarly, GW is bigger and their needs more complicated than someone like Warlord Games or Wayland. It's delusional to claim that "oh, I could do that as my university project".

How are GW's needs more complicated than the average web store?

If anything I would say that they are less complicated since they only need to deal with one fixed supplier instead of multiple ones in several different countries.

Also, no it is not delusional that someone can make a web store with the same functionalities as GW's has as a university project. It would have less polish, certainly, but the functionalities would all be there.

Backfire wrote:

Herzlos wrote:

Marks & Spencer also run a bank. It's far more than a simple webstore.

Sure. Which is why it costed £150 million and not £4 million. I just brought it up as an example of a more extreme end of the scale.
Of course M&S is much bigger than GW, but similarly, GW is bigger and their needs more complicated than someone like Warlord Games or Wayland. It's delusional to claim that "oh, I could do that as my university project".

The Warlord store is more complicated; it even has a newsletter and articles (that you can search). It won't get as much traffic, but bandwidth is cheap. It doesn't do anything mechanically different.

I'm also not saying I could do that as my university project. I literally did. I can even show you it when I dig it out. Again it's not as refined, but it does all the same stuff. The basic web store system has existed for well over a decade. GW's is a particularly poor example of it and there's no way it should cost £4m unless it's got a lot of stuff in the back end, is used to hide some other costs (like a huge legal bill) or they got ripped off (because they hire for attitude).

If anything it'd delusional to think that that store was worth the money.

PhantomViper wrote:

Backfire wrote:

Herzlos wrote:

Marks & Spencer also run a bank. It's far more than a simple webstore.

Sure. Which is why it costed £150 million and not £4 million. I just brought it up as an example of a more extreme end of the scale.
Of course M&S is much bigger than GW, but similarly, GW is bigger and their needs more complicated than someone like Warlord Games or Wayland. It's delusional to claim that "oh, I could do that as my university project".

How are GW's needs more complicated than the average web store?

If anything I would say that they are less complicated since they only need to deal with one fixed supplier instead of multiple ones in several different countries.

Also, no it is not delusional that someone can make a web store with the same functionalities as GW's has as a university project. It would have less polish, certainly, but the functionalities would all be there.

Hell, GW's old website had more functionality.

What they have right now looks off the shelf - little to no customization, not a whole lot of bells and whistles. Just a vanilla shopping cart.

I would not even expect the university project to have less by way of polish - as a project it would be intended to showcase the student's ability, while this... looks like a purely off the shelf product. Nothing special - and certainly not 4 Million worth of special.

My question is - did Mrs. Kirby get a percentage of that 4 Million?

The Auld Grump

Speaking as a web developer, their site is pretty basic on the front end. It's literally just a glorified catalog. The old site at least was a HOBBY site that also had a store, this is literally an online catalog.

WayneTheGame wrote:
Speaking as a web developer, their site is pretty basic on the front end. It's literally just a glorified catalog. The old site at least was a HOBBY site that also had a store, this is literally an online catalog.

Obligatory reminder that GW see's buying GW product as the core of the hobby.

Backfire wrote:

 agnosto wrote:

As someone who does a fair bit of investing, I generally don't make long-term decisions based on quarters or even 9 month reports but in hard data and long-term trends. I just quoted the short-term data because that's all that I could find that was negative for Hasbro in the Games division and since you were saying that were having a tough time, I tried to see things your way. If you look at the long-term outlook, they were up 2% in Games from 2011 to 2012 and another 10% from 2012 to 2013. So, Games division of a very large firm growing substantially during the same periods that a smaller, should be more agile firm such as GW is declining.
Source: http://investor.hasbro.com/financials.cfm

Well, if you want even longer terms, it could be pointed out that Hasbro's gaming division shrank from 2008 to 2010. Post-2010 growth has taken it back to 2008 level.
Don't think I ever said they had 'tough times', I believe their gaming division is quite profitable. However, in terms of revenue, it has not really grown over the last 5-6 years, and since they represent much larger slice of the gaming industry than company like FFG or even GW, probably gives better idea of how the industry is doing as a whole.

As to your verbiage used, "crash" usually connotes a sharp decline in profitability... I guess that I don't know what to say to that. Normally, a dip followed by several years of growth constitutes, well growth to most people but you appear to hold a different definition. The point being that Hasbro is growing in their games Division while GW is shrinking in the same period. More than 12% growth over 2 years is usually something to cheer about even if it does return you to pre-Great Recession levels.

I agree that Hasbro's more than 12% growth over last several years is indicative of the overall health of the industry as evidenced by numerous, more anecdotal, sources. ICv2 I think quoted average growth in the industry of around 15% in 2013 and all of the non-public companies reporting growth. Mainly anecdotal but in line with Hasbro's earnings and other non-verifiable offerings from other, non-public game companies who all report similar growth while GW is in decline during the same period.

 agnosto wrote:
Mainly anecdotal but in line with Hasbro's earnings and other non-verifiable offerings from other, non-public game companies who all report similar growth while GW is in decline during the same period.

Call me crazy, but you usually need to see some change to "cause" for the "effect" to change.
GW has not changed anything that they have been doing for years including a decided lack of advertising.
They are content with a steady decline in gross sales.
Their strategy going forward is to continue to hire motivated store managers (as underperforming ones get shunted out...).
Exciting stuff.
Stay the course, steady as she goes.

How long till the next BRB?
Is probably the only exciting question to ask for another profit spike.
Problem is: if 7th to 8th edition would be like 6th to 7th: who would really care about buying it anytime soon?
Definitely not pre-order or collector edition.
Oddly, due to the ho-hum changes lately, a big shake-up in rules could be exciting enough to create buzz.

I think this is the year where GW is painted into a corner where all the typical money grabs have been done, time to pull a rabbit out of the hat or the next financial report will show an accelerated negative trend.

Backfire wrote:

Herzlos wrote:

Marks & Spencer also run a bank. It's far more than a simple webstore.

Sure. Which is why it costed £150 million and not £4 million. I just brought it up as an example of a more extreme end of the scale.
Of course M&S is much bigger than GW, but similarly, GW is bigger and their needs more complicated than someone like Warlord Games or Wayland. It's delusional to claim that "oh, I could do that as my university project".

Not really. Size of the company is a pretty small component of the cost to develop (or deploy) the IT related tools. The big factor is scope and complexity. GW's scope is pretty limited - inventory for two distribution centers (...maybe 3, I forget if Australia still has one in country), single option SKUs, minimal security.

Banks - large or small - require regulatory compliance, real time data tracking, a significant expenditure on security.

Travel have complex links to the real world (arrivals, departures, delays), real time tracking, regulatory compliance, government oversight and generally an API to allow for third party integration.

When comparing a site like Warlord (or even smaller than that...like Hasslefree) the complexity of both the small job and GWs are about the same. You may have more people receiving the order invoices to pull stock - but the end result is the same. Size (and traffic) would be dealt with whatever load balancing and persistence of databases and servers (costs a bit - but pretty basic stuff, that wheel has been invented long ago). It is also something that is generally worked out on most off the shelf software packages already.

Cost over runs like what happened with GW generally are the result of incompetent management and shifting targets. I am pretty sure that a reasonably competent university student could replicate the whole of it - both form and function - without much difficulty.

With regards to all the discussion of whether £4M is a fair price for what GW got, please bear in mind that they already had a web site with e-commerce functions, a POS system and some kind of a stock control or operations management system that all was developed in the 2000s and can hardly be considered paleolithic technology.

It isn't really a fair argument but considering their obvious incompetence in rules writing, proof-reading, recruitment, marketing and legal matters, is it too far a stretch to think they would be incompetent at IT as well?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
With regards to all the discussion of whether £4M is a fair price for what GW got, please bear in mind that they already had a web site with e-commerce functions, a POS system and some kind of a stock control or operations management system that all was developed in the 2000s and can hardly be considered paleolithic technology.

It isn't really a fair argument but considering their obvious incompetence in rules writing, proof-reading, recruitment, marketing and legal matters, is it too far a stretch to think they would be incompetent at IT as well?

Also developed by the team which Oracle bought to become Oracle Commerce (ATG was purchased by Oracle - and most the code translated directly into Oracle Commerce)...so, basically...they bought a £4 million style sheet.

With all this talk of Kirby is doing this and Kirby is doing that, why is he not under investigation? These are all illegal allegations being made. If true he could be in prison. If not true, people can be sued for slander.

If true there should be an investigation and then he should answer for his actions. Seeing this is not happening and the shareholders are not asking questions I don't think this is the case.

If not true, a slander case can happen agiasnt some members of Dakka now. A line has been crossed when you start making fun of a persons wife.

Don't like Kirby fine. Don't be low enough to take it on his wife now. That is just low.

You think Kirby is breaking the law? Contact the powers that be in England and let them know what exactly he is doing that is wrong.

Davor wrote:

If not true, a slander case can happen agiasnt some members of Dakka now. A line has been crossed when you start making fun of a persons wife.

Nobody is making fun of anyone's wife. They're making fun of GW's former interim head of IT, who's previous qualifications were something along the lines of a gym coordinator (all of which is public record), and who was in charge during a period when GW spent what many here believe was a ridiculously large amount of money on a new webstore that generated very little return on investment... and then speculating as to why and how that situation developed.

It just so happens that this person is also Kirby's wife.

Davor wrote:
With all this talk of Kirby is doing this and Kirby is doing that, why is he not under investigation? These are all illegal allegations being made. If true he could be in prison. If not true, people can be sued for slander.

If true there should be an investigation and then he should answer for his actions. Seeing this is not happening and the shareholders are not asking questions I don't think this is the case.

If not true, a slander case can happen agiasnt some members of Dakka now. A line has been crossed when you start making fun of a persons wife.

Don't like Kirby fine. Don't be low enough to take it on his wife now. That is just low.

You think Kirby is breaking the law? Contact the powers that be in England and let them know what exactly he is doing that is wrong.

Because, mostly, people are saying that what Kirby is doing is stupid, not illegal.

Nepotism on a corporate level isn't illegal - just lacking in wisdom. *EDIT* Clarified, since nepotism on a government level may be illegal. But GW is a corporation, not a government.

It can be demonstrated that what he is doing can reasonably argued as lacking in wisdom. So GW trying to take that to court would be as likely to succeed as GW trying to claim a trademark and copyright on grenade launchers and skulls....

If people were claiming that he is breaking the law then libel becomes a possibility.

But claiming that an over priced web site is over priced?

Even GW would pause before trying to push that one, at least after what happened against Chapterhouse....

The Auld Grump

 Xca|iber wrote:

Davor wrote:

If not true, a slander case can happen agiasnt some members of Dakka now. A line has been crossed when you start making fun of a persons wife.

Nobody is making fun of anyone's wife. They're making fun of GW's former interim head of IT, who's previous qualifications were something along the lines of a gym coordinator (all of which is public record), and who was in charge during a period when GW spent what many here believe was a ridiculously large amount of money on a new webstore that generated very little return on investment... and then speculating as to why and how that situation developed.

It just so happens that this person is also Kirby's wife.

No, I was absolutely making fun of the fact that the acting CEO hired his wife (identified by the lovely, completely respectful moniker 'Mrs. Tom Kirby' in the interim report) to be the interim IT manager. I even made a joke that played on the idea that married people have likely engaged in regular sexual relations.

And that's totally fine! Even if Tom Kirby were not a "public figure" within the oh so tiny table top wargaming community, it would still be okay. But in fact Tom Kirby is arguably very much a public figure, by the mere fact that he is the public representative of a public company. And then there's the fact that he has given interviews and that his preambles are so expressive and personally worded.

If you are going to sling around the law, try understanding it first. Here's something to get you started.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 TheAuldGrump wrote:

Davor wrote:
With all this talk of Kirby is doing this and Kirby is doing that, why is he not under investigation? These are all illegal allegations being made. If true he could be in prison. If not true, people can be sued for slander.

If true there should be an investigation and then he should answer for his actions. Seeing this is not happening and the shareholders are not asking questions I don't think this is the case.

If not true, a slander case can happen agiasnt some members of Dakka now. A line has been crossed when you start making fun of a persons wife.

Don't like Kirby fine. Don't be low enough to take it on his wife now. That is just low.

You think Kirby is breaking the law? Contact the powers that be in England and let them know what exactly he is doing that is wrong.

Because, mostly, people are saying that what Kirby is doing is stupid, not illegal.

Nepotism on a corporate level isn't illegal - just lacking in wisdom. *EDIT* Clarified, since nepotism on a government level may be illegal. But GW is a corporation, not a government.

It can be demonstrated that what he is doing can reasonably argued as lacking in wisdom. So GW trying to take that to court would be as likely to succeed as GW trying to claim a trademark and copyright on grenade launchers and skulls....

If people were claiming that he is breaking the law then libel becomes a possibility.

But claiming that an over priced web site is over priced?

Even GW would pause before trying to push that one, at least after what happened against Chapterhouse....

The Auld Grump

In America, the First Amendment gets you really, really far. Free Speech is pretty darn sacred, and people being able to criticize the behavior of a public figure is rather sacrosanct.

weeble1000 wrote:

 Xca|iber wrote:

Davor wrote:

If not true, a slander case can happen agiasnt some members of Dakka now. A line has been crossed when you start making fun of a persons wife.

Nobody is making fun of anyone's wife. They're making fun of GW's former interim head of IT, who's previous qualifications were something along the lines of a gym coordinator (all of which is public record), and who was in charge during a period when GW spent what many here believe was a ridiculously large amount of money on a new webstore that generated very little return on investment... and then speculating as to why and how that situation developed.

It just so happens that this person is also Kirby's wife.

No, I was absolutely making fun of the fact that the acting CEO hired his wife (identified by the lovely, completely respectful moniker 'Mrs. Tom Kirby' in the interim report) to be the interim IT manager. I even made a joke that played on the idea that married people have likely engaged in regular sexual relations.

And that's totally fine! Even if Tom Kirby were not a "public figure" within the oh so tiny table top wargaming community, it would still be okay. But in fact Tom Kirby is arguably very much a public figure, by the mere fact that he is the public representative of a public company. And then there's the fact that he has given interviews and that his preambles are so expressive and personally worded.

If you are going to sling around the law, try understanding it first. Here's something to get you started.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 TheAuldGrump wrote:

Davor wrote:
With all this talk of Kirby is doing this and Kirby is doing that, why is he not under investigation? These are all illegal allegations being made. If true he could be in prison. If not true, people can be sued for slander.

If true there should be an investigation and then he should answer for his actions. Seeing this is not happening and the shareholders are not asking questions I don't think this is the case.

If not true, a slander case can happen agiasnt some members of Dakka now. A line has been crossed when you start making fun of a persons wife.

Don't like Kirby fine. Don't be low enough to take it on his wife now. That is just low.

You think Kirby is breaking the law? Contact the powers that be in England and let them know what exactly he is doing that is wrong.

Because, mostly, people are saying that what Kirby is doing is stupid, not illegal.

Nepotism on a corporate level isn't illegal - just lacking in wisdom. *EDIT* Clarified, since nepotism on a government level may be illegal. But GW is a corporation, not a government.

It can be demonstrated that what he is doing can reasonably argued as lacking in wisdom. So GW trying to take that to court would be as likely to succeed as GW trying to claim a trademark and copyright on grenade launchers and skulls....

If people were claiming that he is breaking the law then libel becomes a possibility.

But claiming that an over priced web site is over priced?

Even GW would pause before trying to push that one, at least after what happened against Chapterhouse....

The Auld Grump

In America, the First Amendment gets you really, really far. Free Speech is pretty darn sacred, and people being able to criticize the behavior of a public figure is rather sacrosanct.

Except that we are talking about GW here - a company that has sent C&D orders to fan sites because they were saying nice things about GW products, with pictures....

The Auld Grump

Understand the law and the topic of conversation? Pshaw! It's much easier to jump to extreme conclusions, make wild accusations, blindly throw legal threats around and exit stage right. All done on an anonymous discussion board of course.

 agnosto wrote:
Understand the law and the topic of conversation? Pshaw! It's much easier to jump to extreme conclusions, make wild accusations, blindly throw legal threats around and exit stage right. All done on an anonymous discussion board of course.

Because the lawyers were chosen for attitude, not experience!

The Auld Grump