Monthly Archives: February 2010

RBS Loses £3.6bn

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Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has announced losses for 2009 of £3.6bn ($5.5bn), after struggling with billions of pounds of bad loans.

Despite the losses, the bank is set to announce it will pay bonuses totalling £1.3bn to its staff. BBC.

It’s nice to see RBS can lose £3.6bn and still pay its poor bankers a £1.6bn bonus whilst the rest of us are left to struggle with swinging government cut backs. The head of the bank Stephen Hester seems to think it would have made more money as the bank had lost its best staff by not paying bonuses – quite honestly I’ve seen enough of their best staff to last a lifetime – goodbye and good riddance.

Not the World’s Worst Tennis Pro!

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A young British man described as “the world’s worst tennis pro” appeared at the high court in London to sue the Daily Telegraph for ruining his professional reputation.

Robert Dee, 23, from Bexley in Kent, has already secured more than 30 apologies and tens of thousands of pounds in damages from media organisations that made similarly disparaging allegations about his sporting prowess.

But the Telegraph refused to back down over two articles on the front page and in the sports section on 23 April 2008 under the headlines “World’s worst ­tennis pro wins at last” and “A British sensation – the world’s worst”. The newspaper is ready to call high-profile ­witnesses, including Boris Becker and John Lloyd, the former British No 1 who is now captain of the Great Britain Davis Cup team.

The offending stories said Dee did not win a single match during his first three years on the professional circuit but finally ended this “dismal run” by beating an unranked 17-year-old in Spain in April 2008. One article, claiming Dee had lost 54 matches in a row, compared him to the ski jumper Eddie “the Eagle” Edwards and Eric the Eel, the Equatorial Guinea swimmer who struggled at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Helen Pidd, The Guardian.

Personally I don’t have the slightest interest in tennis and even less in the scummy rag that is the Daily Telegraph – what concerns me is that you can libel a player with such an appalling record by calling him the worlds worst tennis pro – which ever way you look at it Dee’s professional record isn’t something a young player aspires to – another example of our countries ridiculous libel laws.

Posted in Law

Oh I’d Give Up With the Tories

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Britain will face “savage and ­swingeing” public spending cuts and a loss of economic sovereignty unless a start to reducing the record £178bn fiscal deficit is made this year, George Osborne warned.

In an intensification of Tory warnings of the need for spending cuts – in the face of Labour claims that the party is diluting its plans – the shadow chancellor warned that financial markets will panic unless a “credible” plan to reduce the deficit is introduced this year.

Osborne pledged to make what the Tories are calling “in-year” public spending cuts by the summer if the party wins the election, in contrast to Labour, which plans to maintain real-term rises until 2011.

…

“We will not hesitate to take the difficult decisions to get Britain working,” the shadow chancellor said. Nicholas Watt, The Guardian.

Working for whom exactly? Not the majority of the electorate at best we’ll face swinging wage cuts and at worst we’ll lose our jobs – the only people smiling at this will be the very people that got us into the mess – bankers.

Osborne is fixated on the country maintaining its AAA credit rating – one I don’t understand why – these agencies hardly covered themselves in glory over the banking crisis they gave AAA ratings to debts that where anything but. Then you have to ask why pay the price of maintaining an AAA rating? The worst that will happen is interest rates will be slightly higher.

Right now the option of accepting a lower credit rating is treated as equivalent to suggesting we leave the UN Security Council and abandon the nuclear deterrent.

But when people understand the scale of the spending cuts that an incoming government will have to make to maintain AAA, it may not be so unthinkable after all. Paul Mason, BBC.

Not unthinkable at all!

Raz*War

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Fed up with the high cost of shaving and the need to continually buy blades? Then maybe Raz*War is for you – for as little as €27.50 you can get a year’s supply of razors delivered to your door – You can order a free discovery kit so you can try out their service – I’ve ordered mine and I’ll let you know how I get on.

Hat Tip: Springwise.

Bankers Greed Knows No Bounds

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Lloyds has been accused of “determined vandalism” after the banking group announced that it will sever its links with a charitable foundation that refused to accept a new funding deal.

The bank has told the Lloyds TSB Foundation for Scotland that it will terminate its legally binding covenant with the charity more than 25 years after it, and three other foundations, were set up around Britain when the TSB demutualised.

The decision follows a bitter dispute between the two organisations after Lloyds said it wanted to end the legal requirement to pay all four foundations 1% of its pre-tax profits, which has given them £370m since 1986. The foundations were set up instead of the TSB selling shares to its savers when it floated on the stock market. As a result, the Scottish foundation owns 15.7m limited voting shares that will become ordinary shares when the covenant ends. Severin Carrell, The Guardian.

So they can’t even give 1% of their profits to charity – what they want to give is half-a-percent – the others involved have capitulated – I guess they’ve to many bankers on their boards of trustees.

The foundations for England and Wales, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands agreed the new deal, which will cut their long-term funding by half to 0.5% of pre-tax profits and will also see Lloyds take greater control of their spending and policies. Lloyds will direct the foundations on where they should spend a “proportion” of their funds, but has refused to say how much that will be. Severin Carrell, The Guardian.

And what’s their reason for doing this?

Lloyds said the economic climate made the 1% agreement difficult to afford, while the expanded size of the bank, which now includes HBOS, meant that in future the foundations would receive far more income than was intended. Severin Carrell, The Guardian.

So it’s acceptable for bankers to get paid vast amounts of money when their gambles pay off – come to that they get paid whether their gambles pay off or not – but when a charity benefits from a gamble then that’s not acceptable – as I said at the top greed knows no bounds.

Nicaraguan Abortion Rules Killing Mother

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Nicaraguan authorities have withheld life-saving treatment from a pregnant cancer patient because it could harm the foetus and violate a total ban on abortion.

A state-run hospital has monitored the cancer spreading in the body of the 27-year-old named only as Amalia since her admission on February 12 but has not offered chemotherapy, radiotherapy or a therapeutic abortion, citing the law. Rory Carroll, The Guardian.

As is all too often women pay with their lives for the decisions of others.

National Bullying Helpline is a Scam

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The National Bullying Helpline (NBH) which is at the centre of the accusations that Gordon Brown is a bully is nothing more than a scam – why the BBC should give credence to NBH founder Christine Pratt that several Downing Street staff had called its helpline is beyond me – a cursory investigation by BBC journalists should have sent alarm bells ringing.

Adam Bienkov at Tory Troll has all the evidence you need – firstly the NBH has close links with the Tories, secondly the NBH doesn’t appear to be a functioning charity and thirdly the NBH is a front for farming business to HR & Diversity Management.

Still if that’s not disconcerting enough then a look at the Bullying Help Line a website with the tag the last thing you need if you’re being bullied will surely convince you Christine Pratt is at best misguided and probably a con artist.

If you call the National Bullying Helpline for advice because you think you are being bullied at work, you may be told that you need to write out your grievance and give it to your employer, and that the fairest way to have your grievance dealt with is for HR & Diversity Management to conduct an independent investigation. If you’re lucky, you’ll be advised by the CEO and founder, Christine Pratt. You will likely be sent some printable material including a “what to do guide” and a “step by step guide”.

The “What To Do Guide” says:

“If your employer does not agree to an Independent Investigation it is likely they have something to hide. As a final resort you should consider the recommendations contained in the FREE Step By Step Guide issued by the National Bullying Helpline (HR & Diversity Management Ltd). Your statutory rights are explained fully in this document.”

The step by step guide includes this advice:

“If you still need help, before invoking a Tribunal claim or instructing a solicitor, consider using us as a Third Party Dispute Resolution Service. The DTI recommend this approach (See Page 20: Michael Gibbons Review). We have helped resolve many situations through an employee going to their Executive Management and asking for an independent investigation into their dispute/grievance. Most of our work is done in this area and we have proved extremely successful in ‘taking the heat out of a situation’ and persuading both the employer and employee to settle out of Court. Talk to someone you trust at work, at a senior level, and recommend this as a ‘way forward’. Generally, employers will welcome a positive approach to a problem and by recommending this service you will acquire a real feel for whether your employer is a ‘caring’ employer, or not.”

Bearing in mind that you probably rang the helpline because you were out of ideas, you might be persuaded that this is a good idea. If you are, you’ll be sent a template letter complete and send to your employer. In 2007 the letter included these words:

“Following my letter / grievance letter submitted on …… (provide some details), I have been feeling increasingly unwell and have now been signed off work for Work Related Stress by my GP for a period of ….. The treatment I am enduring presently is making me feel unwell”.

“I would therefore like to formally request that you authorise/ instigate an independent investigation or mediation in respect of concerns I have regarding my employment situation. This approach is less confrontational than a formal process as both parties may be able to reach an amicable solution”.

“I have identified a Company, HR & Diversity Management Limited (HR&DM) who specialise in providing a complete Dispute Resolution service (both independent investigations and/or a mediation service). I ask that you now authorise this company to assist in this case…”

The letter goes on to set out the virtues of HR&DM, whose portfolio was provided to complete the introduction. This is not the same as you being referred to one of the charity’s “sources of help” of which it says HR & Diversity Management is just one. In fact it is the opposite. By sending this letter to your employer you are in fact referring HR & Diversity Management Ltd to your employer.

It is implicit that if you call a charity that calls itself the “National Bullying Helpline”, you will be helped. It is implicit that the worst they could do is say “sorry, we cannot help you”. The very last thing you would expect is that the helpline operator would team up with the person or organisation you feel is bullying you. So, if you are sure you have been bullied, and when the registered charity has advised you that this investigation is in your best interests, you would only recommend them in the belief that your grievance will be upheld. You would never recommend them if they told you that YOU might turn out to be the bully – would you?

The selling point that the National Bullying Helpline makes to you is probably quite different from the selling point they make to your employer. HR & Diversity Management’s web site says:

“At HR&DM we have designed a model which ascertains, very early on, whether an employee grievance is vexatious or not. This model also assists employers with their line of defence as it identifies where policies need reviewing and where training or diversity initiatives are required to ensure problems do not occur again.”

“Use a Third Party to Investigate cases of Grievance where you suspect Bullying or Harassment has taken place. An acceptance of a third party decision by an employee, is far less expensive than an internal decision which is not accepted by the employee who takes the case to an Employment Tribunal.” [HR&DM's emphasis]


HR & DM’s “bullying business” investigations page also tells employers is this:

“During 2006 25% of cases found that the instigator, the alleged victim, was in fact, the bully.”

The same firm’s “bullying business” statistics page says:

“During 2006 32% of the complaints investigated by HR&DM were found to be vexatious.”

Source: Neo, The Bullying Help Line.

Don’t journalists do any investigative work these days?

Hat Tip: Lenin’s Tomb.

CD Buyers Helping Put Shops Out of Business

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When you buy a CD from websites such as Amazon, HMV, Play and most other online retailer ever wondered why they’re often shipped from the Channel Islands? The answer is so you can avoid paying the VAT – which goes someway to explaining why the few high street retailers of CDs just can’t compete with the Internet – online stores have the advantage of scale and the need for far fewer staff without being handed a 17.5% advantage. The Guardian reports

VAT-free CDs exploded at the end of last year, driving one in three purchases by British music-lovers on to the web. The surge in sales casts doubt over Treasury claims to be tackling the tax dodge, already thought to be costing the exchequer £110m a year and rising. Simon Bowers.

Much as I’ve appreciated purchasing CD’s cheaply it’s about time the Treasury put a stop to this loop hole – although the declining sales of CD’s will probably put paid to all but a few CD shops long before the treasury get’s its act together.

Where Did The Money Go?

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Acromas Holdings, the merged AA and Saga group, has become the latest ­private equity-owned business to abandon plans to float on the stock market this year, reflecting a new militancy among institutions refusing to back businesses with huge debts.

The decision comes amid growing concerns about the future of swaths of British companies that are shouldering debts raised by the private equity ­industry during the boom years, and warnings that tens of thousands of jobs could be at risk.

Acromas has £6bn of borrowings and was widely tipped as a prime candidate for listing, but senior managers have now taken the unusual step for a private equity-financed vehicle of ruling out a float for at least 12 months.

In the past two weeks, three private equity-owned firms have pulled float plans: the retailer New Look, Madame Tussauds owner Merlin Entertainments and hotel bookings business Travelport. Ian Griffiths and Nick Mathiason, The Guardian.

So the question I have is who’s got the money? Into the pockets of bankers, bosses and shareholders and certainly not the workers who are about to pay for the greed of others with their livelihoods.

Wolves Punished for Team Selection

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Wolverhampton Wanderers have been given a £25,000 suspended fine for fielding a below-strength side in their match against Manchester United at Old Trafford in December.

The manager Mick McCarthy made 10 changes from the side that had won 1-0 at Tottenham Hotspur three days earlier. Wolves then responded by recalling nine of the players that had been in action at White Hart Lane for the next league game, at home to fellow strugglers Burnley – and won 2-0. The under-strength Wolves side lost at Old Trafford, on 15 December, 3-0. John Curtis, The Guardian.

I’m no fan of Mick McCarthy or Wolves – I’m a Chelsea fan – but surely a manger is entitled to select any of the players he has on his books – unlike Manchester United who are out to win the premiership – Wolves aim is to avoid relegation – so I can see why he wanted to avoid injury to his best players for the game against Bolton – which he won – who’s next to be fined? What a ridiculous attitude taken by the Premier League. What happens if my team have won the Premiership with three games to go and the only game we’ve left is the Champions league final will we be fined for fielding a weakened team, our last three games are Stoke, Liverpool and Wigan – two of these games could be important for the relegation and the other for qualification in next year’s European competitions.