Closing 124 Theobalds Road.
In many ways the closing of Red Lion Square which held more people and realer people was worse but closing 124 really is the end of an era.
When I joined Cable & Wireless in 1998 we had 65,000 employees, two big offices in WC1 and big interests in Hong Kong, Australia and the US. Now we have 20,000 employees, are based in Bracknell, and have none of those interests. We have even yoyo-ed in and out of the FTSE-100. Admittedly we still have stuff going on in the Caribbean, the Cayman Islands, Panama and so on (although our activity around VoIP in Panama seems on the surface to be despicable).
It's a real shame more redundancies have been announced because it gives the sense that the company is still in decline. And I think that feeling had been just about stamped out. And for just 600 jobs seems like more will be cost in bad feeling than will be saved in costs. Still it will probably work with in the City which is the whole point anyway.
