Tag Archives: Gordon Brown

February 8, 2012

Fred the Shred – the tip of the Iceberg

By Tim GARRATT

I never really understood the hounding of Sir Fred Goodwin ex CEO of RBS – especially by Politicians. Maybe I do get it – maybe it was all about headlines – Fred the Shred was a cheap shot – referring to his actions post the ABM Ambro merger in culling jobs.

Back in the summer of 2004 he was elevated to that highest honour – being Knighted – to become Sir Frederick Anderson Goodwin. But this is no longer. After the attempts to get him to hand back some of the money he had negotiated as part of his severance pay (especially by the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown) he now gets zapped again by the Government machine. He has apparently brought the Country into disrepute and must revert to plain old Mr Goodwin.

It was apparently an ‘exceptional case’. I wonder why? He hasn’t been charged as far as I can see. Let alone convicted of a crime. The last people to lose their “Sir” titles were Robert Mugabe and Nicolae Ceausescu – blimey thats a big leap? Is he really in this category?

In the last few weeks we have started to see the trials of more Bankers in public. Their pay and bonuses, which was as far as I can see were agreed in advance of them joining or accepting new jobs, must now be slashed. The previous agreement doen’t suit us now. Not because they haven’t earned it, but because it grabs the attention of the ordinary man on the street and he is outraged at the money they earn. It’s called ‘gesture politics’.

I return to my previous view – we have started to live in a very polarised society where we seem to turn working folks – some of them very bright people – into villains. Does anyone really appreciate the pressure these people are under or what they actually do? I don’t think so. And stripping them of a Title won’t make any difference.

6 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Business, Grumpy Old Man!

January 9, 2012

Pay caps? – rules for one to apply to all?

By Tim GARRATT

It looks like Cameron is to try and cap executive pay in the Queens Speech in the spring. He is apparently fed up with some level of pay executives are now commanding for running multi-mational companies. There is in his view “market failure”.

It's OK Rooney - I won't mention your weekly wages...

We have seen this before. Gordon Brown famously intervened in the Fred the Shred pay off matter – he wanted Fred to pay back a very substantial part of his pension pay-off back. I was unimpressed with this apparent intervention – which looked more like political opportunism than a real attempt to have a sensible discussion. Fred did a deal and then everyone else picked over it, including Brown. That’s no different to going into a Supermarket, buying a loaf of bread and then when home, calling the supermarket to tell them you have paid too much? I can imagine Sainsbury’s response!

Have I missed something here. Surely “market failure” this isn’t? This is executives negotiating their packages. If they don’t like them, they can move.

But I had to smile when you look at this story alongside the two football stories that caught my eye. Firstly that Rooney was fined a weeks wages (estimated to be £200,000) for a lethargic display in training. Secondly rumours that Beckham has signed for Paris Saint-Germain for £700,000 a month. These figures are nothing short of obscene.

These days we don’t know what pop stars earn, but the lifestyle we see them in suggests that it is not far off that of the football stars. Beyonce reportedly ‘earned’ £53m last year!

I wonder what Cameron makes of these guys . Especially when most of the footballers pay so little in income tax (they use the image rights method of pay!) Once again it seems that the Politicians just pick on easy targets. It is policy making by headlines rather than substance.

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May 11, 2010

General Election – anyone any idea what’s going on?

By Tim GARRATT

Somewhere we have a tea towel with the quaint old rules of cricket on – you remember them? It went something like,

You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that’s in the side that’s in goes out, and when he’s out he comes in and the next man goes in until he’s out. When they are all out, the side that’s out comes in and the side thats been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out. When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game!

I can’t help thinking that this just about explains our political situation. To recap:

1. The bloke who was Prime Minister still is, despite losing. He’s sort of squatting. Nice squat.
2. The bloke who won, didn’t really. Although he got the most votes he doesn’t win. It’s not that easy.
3. The bloke who was tipped to win came last, but looks like he could win.
4. If the bloke who came last joins up with the winner, they can rule – but they don’t really like each other. Or each others parties. Or policies.
5. The bloke who came last could cuddle up to the bloke who came second (but has not lost) but they don’t have enough votes to defeat the bloke who came first.
6. Realising all this the bloke who came second said he is going to stand down – soon. Not yet though.
7. So the successor to the bloke who came second (who we don’t know yet) will also have lost, but may have won. We don’t know and nor does he.
8. The bloke who won is trying to do a deal with the bloke who came last by offering a new voting system which would virtually guarantee that he would never win again.
9. There are some ‘others’ (not like on Lost), but they might only need to be called upon if the 2nd place and third place blokes join forces and start trying vote for stuff. Which the winner (now loser) will oppose – because he will be in Opposition.

Simple really.

The Queen needs to sort this out – by tossing a coin maybe.

I am going on my holidays in June – I hope they hurry up. To be honest the plot of the aforementioned Lost is easier to follow…..

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April 29, 2010

Off the fence Gordon

By Tim GARRATT

Yesterdays gaffe was a real cringe moment for the general election; and Gordon Brown in particular.

it was all her fault - the one on his right

His description of Gillian Duffy as a ‘bigoted woman‘ was a priceless moment in TV history and I think may seal his fate next week. It is difficult to imagine how he must feel, but the video of him on Jeremy Vine’s radio show, gives a clue!

Sky TV last night were asking whether the voters really care. I think they do. This was a blatant two-faced moment.

He had just said “Very nice to meet you, very nice to meet you.”

Then, “That was a disaster – they should never have put me with that woman. Whose idea was that? It’s just ridiculous … She’s just a sort of bigoted woman that said she used to be Labour. I mean it’s just ridiculous. I don’t know why Sue brought her up towards me.”

As his wife said back in February, “Gordon’s the man that I know and the man that I love. People have heard me talk about him and they probably know everything that I would have to say about him, I know him as a strong, hard-working decent man and he isn’t anything else. What you see is what you get with him.”

This was after Immigration Minister Phil Woolas had suggested National Bullying Helpline boss, Christine Pratt was one (a prat).

It seems that these Politicians have rather lost touch with the electorate?

But you can’t accuse him of being on the fence… A little less truth serum today perhaps?

Taxi for Mr Brown?

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March 11, 2010

Robin Hood – taxing the rich (Banks) to help the poor

By Tim GARRATT

I normally have a lot to shout about Robin Hood. But my evangelism is to promote Nottingham with the City’s best loved (?) son.

Robin Hood taxman to the Bank


Yesterday our local MP Graham Allen tabled a motion in the Houses of Parliament promoting a new Robin Hood tax, I quote in part:

As someone born and bred in Nottingham and one of the City’s Parliamentary representatives it gives me a special pleasure to introduce this short debate on the idea of a “Robin Hood” tax . Remarkably the proposal to debate this issue is so convincing that it has the active support of the current Sheriff of Nottingham.

The social contract between banks and society needs to be re-written, so that banks give something back to the societies they serve and ensure we can live up to our commitments to tackle poverty and climate change, at home and abroad.

A Robin Hood Tax is a timely solution that can tackle, head-on, the major financing challenges we face while renewing the social contract between banks and society. Continuing public anger at the institutions that caused the crisis makes the introduction of the tax not just possible but popular. Reputationally helpful for bankers and politicians

It would be quick to implement and would raise significant funds. The UK could unilaterally introduce a levy on wholesale trades of sterling, no matter where in the world they take place, with the proceeds being captured automatically at the point of settlement. This would raise at least £3 billion a year and would not adversely affect UK trade, as a 0.005% FTT would be comfortably absorbed in the current margins.

So Robin is now being turned into a tax man – something he must surely would have him turning in his grave.

It all sounds very compelling – a tiny tax. With no impact on consumers. £3bn a year for doing nothing. Reputationally helpful for Bankers and Politicians. It also seems to have widespread support judging by the website set up.

On the face of it, it’s probably a good idea. But, we are a nation obsessed with taxation. I do have a concern about this; top rates of income tax for the highest earners are now 50%. National Insurance creeps ever higher – and is nothing short of a stealth tax. VAT has slipped back up to 17.5%. We are told it’s not going to get better. Of course some people just avoid the UK tax system!

I wouldn’t mind all of this if I thought the Government were any good at spending the money they collect. In reality, and in my opinion, they’re not… You don’t have to look far for examples.

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March 1, 2010

Cyber bullies

By Tim GARRATT

With the high profile story last week that No.10 Downing Street is the alleged epicentre of political bullying, I wanted to share my experiences of bullying!

My loyalty is being rewarded for nearly ordering something


A few weeks ago, I tried to buy some business cards from VistaPrint – these were primarily for me to you use for publicising my blog. I have business cards for work – but they don’t have details of my ‘personal’ blog on, obviously. I thought I would be clever and get some cards just with my name, blog address (here) and my mobile. Very minimalistic. I went through a whole process of design with VistaPrint and then got to the check-out. They wanted to charge me nearly £8 to post the cards. As I had only ordered 250 I felt as though I had been duped. So I didn’t bother completing the order.

Ever since then, they have been ‘bullying’ me. I get an email everyday. It either tells me that I seem to have forgotten to press the ‘yes please rip me off’ button, or offering me great new deals of the century. Yesterdays was rewarding my loyaty (above). What loyalty – I haven’t bought anything!

I got fed up a week ago and tried to stop them, but they needed me to jump through a number of hoops which I don’t have time for. So I continue to get the emails every day and just delete them. But I consider their constant pestering nothing short of bullying! And a violation of my private inbox.

They must think their ‘marketing’ works – or they wouldn’t do it. It doesn’t work – it turns me off. To me their emails are spam. Unwanted and irritating.

I was then reminded by our firms spam filter consultants (Syntax) about just how much spam the firm gets. There are around 60 of us on email and over three years we have received 15,900,000 emails. Of which 93.7% were spam! and 58,000 were malicious viruses! Thats a whopping 14.95m emails that are just junk that we have to pay to filter. More bullying!

There have been some high profile cases of catching the spammers – but the war is just relentless. And we are often offered by email ‘lists’ of valid email addresses – by the million – if we want to buy them for a marketing campaign.

Email is brilliant – and has revolutionised business mail traffic. It is incredibly flexible, fast and relatively (?) secure. But it has some significant downsides too. Spam costs money to filter out – and wastes an incredible amount of money / energy.

My warning to you – think carefully before you sign up and give your email address to anyone! Especially VistaPrint.

UPDATE 5 March 2010

I had an email from VistaPrint – see below. Fair play to Jim for picking the blog up and taking the trouble to write. I will change from angry to indifferent (although I’m not sure I was angry – just fed up). Waiting 21 days isn’t really an option – but as they have to come from a different Country there is an explanation! I have now opted out of the email marketing. As I said before this sort of mailing (daily) must work – or they wouldn’t do it. It drove me to distraction!

Good morning Mr Garratt,

I found your blog post this AM and wanted to respond.

Firstly, I regret that you found our shipping prices too high or to have been trying to “dupe” you. I’m in our US operations, and £8 does seem like a lot to me, so I went onto our UK site and designed a premium BC, quantity 250 and checked the shipping price to send them to 10 Downing (the easiest place I could think of where I could find a valid post code and I was trying to ensure that we didn’t have a shipping price calculation bug or something). I found 21 day shipping to be £3.77. From time to time, we offer various discounts on shipping or product, and obviously slow shipping is cheaper than fast shipping. Our European-destination products are manufactured in our facility in The Netherlands, and shipped from there to their final destination.

Secondly, and more importantly, the emails you are receiving are because you are signed up for and are receiving our “retention” marketing emails, which are generally intended to retain/entice past customers. I wouldn’t read too much into the graphics thanking you for your loyalty, which do apply the majority of the recipients of those emails.

I don’t agree with your characterization of those emails as cyber-bullying, which is a far more serious concern than receiving opt-in marketing emails for business cards and marketing products. However, if you no longer wish to receive those emails, you may opt out by clicking the opt-out link on any one of those emails, or by going to our account update page and unchecking the box labeled “Yes, I want to receive regular emails about products, services and promotional offers from Vistaprint.”

For your convenience, that page is at http://www.vistaprint.co.uk/

The entire process should take you less than 2 minutes to accomplish using either of the means above, and entails no “hoops” to jump through.

Naturally, I’d encourage you to try Vistaprint, at a product/shipping price with which you are comfortable, but if that’s not in the cards I at least want you to be indifferent towards rather than angry at us…

I’m not writing to you in any official customer service capacity; instead I run the IT Operations at Vistaprint and as a result monitor and ensure our compliance with regards to any/all email compliance activities at Vistaprint and as a result monitor a variety of feeds that mention Vistaprint. While this doesn’t directly fall into an email compliance concern, when I see blog posts of unhappy customers (or near-customers), I naturally want to help them be happy with Vistaprint, even if that means having nothing further to do with us.

Respectfully and sincerely,
Jim Sokoloff
Vice President, Technology Operations, Vistaprint.

2 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Business, Grumpy Old Man!, Nottingham

February 19, 2010

Boom and bust – again?

By Tim GARRATT

They say history repeats itself… Inevitably?

Watch my lips- no more boom and bust - as your old man would say...


Should we return to 1997 and the CBI conference that year we would hear Gordon Brown set out the wise words,

“The British economy of the future must be built not on the shifting sands of boom and bust, but on the bedrock of prudent and wise economic management.”

I wonder where the bedrock is now. Perhaps under the massive debt mountain we have? For an explanation of the numbers see my blog post here.

And at the 1999 conference of his own party, Brown suggested:

“…it is because we rejected not just the Tory policy but the flawed Tory values behind it – their short-termist, take-what-you-can, selfish irresponsibility – and it is because we put in their place Labour values of economic responsibility, planning for the long term, building stability from solid foundations – that we now in our country have mortgage rates around their lowest levels for twenty years, inflation at its lowest level in over thirty years, long term interest rates at their lowest levels in nearly 40 years”

Selfish irresponsibility, planning for the long-term, building stability?

Did Labour not notice the booming house (and property prices generally) in 2006? Did it not occur to them that the market was overheated?

The ‘boom and bust’ speech will be the legacy of Brown – just like the 1988 ‘watch my lips no more taxes‘ speech of George Bush Snr. Within four years he broke the promise – and lost the election to Clinton. Brown seems to have forgotten what he said – it was quite some time ago.

The reality is that the property market has always been cyclical – and I venture to say, always will be. What we need to do is try to limit the gap between the peaks and troughs. It has also always struck me that people move house (other than for relocation purposes) and in general terms end up ‘buying’ a bigger mortgage. This is in addition to the extra bedroom!

It does concern me that the first rung on the housing ladder is so high. Our kids will find it difficult to gain a foothold – unless they have a legacy from parents. Average house prices are up again – it stands at £170,000. The problem there is that we parents are living longer. We also have some serious issues concerning our pensions. When our kids leave work I doubt there will be a state pension. In fact, when I retire I’m not relying on it!

And all of this on the back of a report this week that there has been renewed interest in the Buy to Let market. I didn’t think the last one had finished crashing yet!

As I said last week, we really do need to have a reality check. And we need a bucketful of salt ready for the tirade of sound-bites from Politicians – especially in the run up to the election.

It is said that Politicians are like nappies – you should change them often and for the same reasons…

2 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Business, Grumpy Old Man!

January 19, 2010

Unhappy with the Government?

By Tim GARRATT

There’s news this week that Surveyors have been asked about their view on the state of play with the Government. Results were published in the Bible of the Surveyors week – Estates Gazette.


Only 3.3% of Surveyors said that “Gordon Brown was doing a good job”;
27.5% thought “the Election was an unwelcome distraction”, and;
69.2% didn’t think the election could come soon enough.

Looking back though there is evidence that as a Nation there is a familiar pattern! A survey by BBC/Ipsos Mori asked – “which of these statements best describes your opinion on the system of governing Britain”. You then have five choices – one is “needs a great deal of improvement”. And the percentages…

1973 – 14%
1995 – 35%
2003 – 18%
2009 – 37%

Labour swept to power in 1997 – after a sleaze campaign about the Tories. Expensegate is the 2009 phenomena?

As the Lord Acton saying goes – “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost alway bad men”

It is clear that whichever party wins the election the biggest challenge with be the reduction of Public Sector Borrowing. The Billions talked about don’t really mean anything. But today on the radio someone tried to put it in simplistic terms – “The Government borrows £20million every hour of every day each week..”. Wow!

I believe that the Election will be a distraction we enter the period of Purdue. So to that end, the sooner we get an election – the better! Post election, I don’t think there will be great news. We have been here before and we will survive!

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December 25, 2009

Looking forward to 2010…

By Tim GARRATT

Although everyone (me included) be looking back on 2009 with their blogs I also wondered what 2010 might bring.

Will commercial property values hold up in 2010


In simple terms I am not sure that much is going to change; indeed most of my fellow competitor surveyors have suggested that their budgets remain as 2009.

Certainly the banking situation seems to be fairly static. The known fact is that most people with commercial property loans are probably in technical breach of their banking covenants – usually the ‘loan to value’ test (“LTV”). This is principally because the value of the property has dropped – even when the loan remains the same. But the Banks have been turning a blind eye to this – provided interest is being paid. Of course the situation may change as business and cashflow gets tougher. If interest payments are missed there may be a different view taken and we could have repossession taking place – to date this has been limited.

In 2007 there were estimated to be 400 loans defaulted (worth £758m) – in 2008 this had increased to 3000 loans (£3.1bn). But at the end of 2008 it was estimated that there was between £38-50bn of property in negative equity! Total debt is around £225bn.

But the big unknown for 2010 is the General Election – likely to be in early May. I think the Tories will win; but I am not so sure that it will be easy. But when they get into Downing Street I suspect the cupboard may well be somewhat bare. If this is the case, they may as well get all of the bad news out quickly, so that they can blame Brown and have a chance of recovery before the next election? If this is the case, it could be the Public sector that gets hit quite hard. The other effect may be that people will sit on their hands – waiting to see what happens.

I was in Leeds in November and there was a glimmer of good news at the Granary Wharf development by ISIS. They were selling properties – and quite number. This really was a sign that the tends were being bucked. And looking at the lack of shops ‘in sale’ over the least few weeks (and the state of car parks in towns) perhaps the retailers will have a better Christmas… November sales figures were 3.1% higher than the previous November. Interestingly the retailers will start their online sales earlier this year apparently!

I guess it will be the usual tale – we won’t really know until this time next year! But – fingers crossed!

Happy Christmas!

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December 6, 2009

When the little green men arrive what shall we do?

By Tim GARRATT

Bad news this week that the MOD have closed down the UFO reporting hotline! After 50 years it seems that the MOD have got bored of taking meticulous notes of ‘sightings’ and are no longer answering the phone. And it saves the UK £44,000 pa. But the log of sightings is amazing – see here for 2008. There’s hundreds of them! But worryingly 5 lights in Calverton on 12 February – and that’s not that far from my house!

The flying saucer I think I saw In Seattle!


So what do you do now if you are the lucky (?) one who sees a flying saucer. Rather unhelpfully the MOD just says ‘It’s not us who you ring’. So who do we call? I think it quite important if you do see a UFO landing (or just whizzing by), so suggest Downing Street. Ask for Gordon. Unfortunately, like the MOD you can’t actually ring them, but you can fax…. I include a link here for you.

And worryingly, there is a service which sends messages into space here. The Aussie folks have been sending texts to Gliese 581d, a planet outside our Solar System, which at a distance of 20 light years, or 194 trillion kilometres, away is the closest Earth-like planet that could support life. If there are aliens there, they will need a dish to receive the message, which will not arrive before 2029. So if they reply we will hear in around 2049? Perhaps the MOD should plan to open up the hotline just in case?

And I am sure the little Green Glieseys will be thrilled to get this text from PS Linsay in Brisbane – “Hi. Can you take me away from this God awful place. Thanks in advance!”

So we are sending messages out, but have no service to make sure the red (flying) carpet gets put out if they pop over for tea in their flying saucers. Am worried now. We need to take this more seriously.

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