Archive for the ‘Business’ Category
World’s Worst Banker
http://www.worldsworstbanker.com/
I urge you to go to this site and sign the two petitions listed there.
The first is about the reduction of his pension. Personally, I think he should lose it all. I would have no objection to the introduction of the Fred Goodwin Pension Confiscation Act 2009. As the Prime Minister endlessly repeats: “These are extraordinary times…”
The second is on the Number 10 website and calls for the removal of his knighthood “for services to banking”… cough, cough, choke, gag, choke, cough…
Pundits talk about whether the future of democracy is in online participation. There’s no doubt that it is worth making the effort and signing these two petitions.
Criminal Deception
In a cold hearted, clinical and utterly callous way, we must bring “Sir” Fred Goodwin to heel, to the gutter, to grovel and to ignominy as he richly and deeply deserves.
There are many ways that the government can do this. I suggest that the most effective is simply not to pay him and let him sue. This is a 
pragmatic and commercial approach but, irrespective of its outcome, simultaneously we must prosecute this fundamentally evil individual with all the vigour that honourable and decent society can muster.
If we force him to sue for the rewards of failure then he will have to make his case and I do not believe he wil be able to under the overriding doctrine of “reasonableness”.
However, in the interests of justice, denying him money is insufficient. Nothing less than criminal punishment will suffice. Surely, if our tradition of common law has any relevance, it must be able to sanction his behaviour.
Lawyers must consider whether there is a case for criminal negligence, for conspiracy, for perjury or for any derivative of theft. Our Judges must package his offences in a way that can produce serious and effective penalties.
Without doubt though this “man”, this “Sir” has deceived. He lied to the Select Committee saying that he had received no compensation for loss of office. He has cheated us all. Whether he retains his obscene pension or not he must be jailed. Only then will justice be done.
A Conspiracy Of Shabby, Venal Thieves
It is truly pathetic isn’t it to see these pathetic, small men grubbing around in the gutter to try and save themselves?
“Sir” James Crosby runs HBOS into the ground then bails out at the last minute to become vice-chairman of the FSA. You really couldn’t make these things up unless you were writing a Mafia or organised crime novel.
He becomes one of the Prime Minister’s cronies and overpaid advisors but then is caught out by the whistleblower who he sacked.
They are tumbling like nine pins now but who is still getting away with it? Who has been in post for longer than any of these bank robbers? Who was responsible for settiong up the regulatory system that has proved to be corrupt and incompetent? Gordon Brown, the worst, most corrupt, most incompetent, most myopic, most venal of them all.
There is no more time. This tyrant must be overthrown now. All these knighthoods must be withdrawn. Criminal investigations and personal bankruptcies must follow.
Out Of Touch With Reality
When “Sir” Fred Goodwin lost the plot this morning and started wandering off in his hallucinatory world about how he could legitimately re-package sub-prime mortgages as a AAA security, well then we saw the truth.
The man is stark, raving mad. He continues in his delusion that the world he helped to create makes some sense. He should be sectioned immediately.
Tiscali Dumps Homechoice
In this competitive internet world, what happens when your ISP (and your long-established email address) gets taken over or merged into another organisation?
In a market where there are no prizes for customer service at all, what can you expect from a provider who already has a reputation as the blackest of the black sheep?
When Tiscali took over Homechoice about a year ago, the Homechoice website continued up until early this month. Last year there was a downtime of far too many days on the Homechoice POP servers and all sorts of problems with trying to administer email accounts. There was no explanation at all, let alone any apology.
Early this month everything went down again for several days. When the POP server came back up the website had disappeared leaving just a re-direct to the Tiscali homepage.
Then last week everything stopped again. Emails to Homechoice support were returned as undeliverable and those to Tiscali went unanswered. I went to Tiscali’s PR agency and then direct to the Tiscali’s Chief of PR and my own email address started working again.
I discovered today that Tiscali has dumped Homechoice. Apparently “legacy” Homechoice email addresses have been ported over to Tiscali’s own servers but it’s quite clear that there will be noi more support for creating or deleting email accounts or changing passwords.
The Tiscali insider I spoke to said himself “You’d think they could have sent out a letter or an email or something”.
Unfortunately, of course, this is just par for the course for this industry and Tiscali’s reputation is such that it seems to set the standards for abysmal and irresponsible customer service.
No explanation. No communication. No apology.
WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE – Bankers On The Run
It is infuriating to see them now scurrying and rushing to reduce their interest rates after the outcry at their dilatory and greedy response to the Bank Of England’s massive rate cut.
We are going to to have to drag the w**ker bankers every greasy step of the way to a place where they start behaving responsibly and fulfilling their obligations to us as major shareholders. We are going to have to watch their dishonest and deceitful efforts to snaffle huge bonuses, in shares if not cash, and we are going to have to treat them as the completely untrustworthy spivs that they are.
What is clear that some of them are already getting away with it because the government has been so weak in stipulating the conditions and “mechanisms”, as Gordon Brown put it, that will control their greed and thievery.
It is time to start naming names and for the work to be done that will uncover and expose those who have manipulated the system for their own ends.
The first candidate for the WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE poster is Bob Diamond of Barclays.
Bob Diamond, Barclays
It is generally agreed that he has spurned the government’s rescue package in favour of the Arabs so that he can hang on to his outrageous, undeserved multimillion pound bonus. I will be researching his record in more detail.
Please submit your nominations for WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE bankers with as much evidence as you can.
Where Have All The Poppies Gone?
I had the misfortune to have to visit London briefly last week. I was thoroughly disheartened to see how few people in Hammersmith were wearing poppies.
They should be ashamed of themselves. More worrying though was just how difficult it was to buy one. Hardly any of the shops had them available. Even those that we should be able to rely on to show a responsible lead like Tescos and Sainsburys are letting down our heroes. None of the staff are wearing them. What is going on? Weymouth and Dorchester are doing much better and the BBC appears to make it a compulsory requirement – and that’s no bad thing.
London is a miserable place full of miserable, selfish people and it reminds me again how I have no enthusiasm for ever returning there. Tired of London? Yes, tired of death.
“Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.”
— Samuel Johnson, 1777
Samuel Johnson
To someone living in 18th century Britain this famous quotation may have had some relevance After all, you could walk from the heart of the city into open countryside in little more than an hour.
Today, any man, with any intelligence, will spend only as little time in London as he has to, for today London is all about death.
The death of our children as they run wild, out of control, knifing, abusing and assaulting each other.
The death of liberty as we are watched and spied on relentlessly without proper cause by jobsworths and parasites.
The death of our culture as we have allowed minorities to create ghettoes that now overwhelm our indigenous communities.
The death of integrity as those who run our government and financial systems become ever more venal and corrupt.
Perhaps the only cause for hope in London is the bright light that is Boris Johnson. This apparent disinterest in the Poppy Appeal, this insult to our heroes really is the final straw for me. London has become a vile, oppressive hot bed of greed, violence and selfishness. I shall fiddle with delight while it burns.
The Heart And Soul Of London
Behaving Like Mad Geordie Crackheads
So is this to be pattern that our rescue of the w**ker bankers will follow?
Northern Rock is now owned by you and me. Not by Gordon, Alistair and their cronies but by British taxpayers. Do we want them throwing people out of their homes onto the streets so that we then have to pick up the bill for re-housing and supporting them?
Now that the “new” management has got its greedy hands back on the tiller they’re heading straight for deep water where they can pillage, plunder and overfish yet again.
I say get rid of all the w**ker bankers and put some real business people in charge. We don’t want the “experience” of those that have mismanaged banks already. We want new blood, fresh ideas, people who know the reality of business, not the fantasy world of banking.
I hope and pray that our rescue of these organisations will prove successful based on root and branch reform of the way they do business. We don’t want a few token sacrifices. We want all the dead and rotten wood cut out.
Let’s remember that these scoundrels still owe most of us many thousands of pounds in illegal bank charges they have stolen from us. Perhaps as much as £50 billion over the last six years. The sooner the OFT gets its finger out and resolves this outstanding matter the better.
Now Is The Time For Recrimination – Before They Get Away!
I am delighted to see that The Times and now, this morning, Andrew Marr, are joining me in calling for bankers to be brought to account. The “Thunderer” even said that “heads must roll”. Roll they must, many of them, until the baskets are full and the streets of the City are running with blood. The executions should take place in public so that the greedy thieves and scoundrels who have pillaged our economy can be subject to public humiliation and villification as they meet their doom.
I will carry the metaphor no further but the dread and fear that should now be ruining the weekends of the chief executives and chairmen of the banks should be little different from that of the French aristocrats awaiting the guillotine.
We must insist that those individuals who have taken multi million pound bonuses from banks, funds and all forms of financial institutions that are now insolvent must be able to justify the payments in the same way that a director of a small business that had gone bust might have to explain his drawings to a liquidator. In many instances money will have to be recovered.
Whether guilty of personal wrongdoing or not, the chairmen, chief executives and non-executive directors who have presided over this catastrophe must take responsibility and go! The same sanction must fall on the heads of the regulators.
Lord Adair Turner, Chairman, and Jon Pain, Managing Director Retail Markets, who both accepted poisoned chalices at the FSA only last month may have some excuse but the rest of the board should be summarily dismissed, not even allowed to resign.
Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have been extraordinarily unequivocal in many of their statements this week. We want to know much, much more detail about the “mechanisms” that will put in place to restrain the banks in future. If the taxpayer has saved your business then in future you will not be gambling on ludicrously complex financial products that only you understand and for which you set the rules. We prefer that you lend £100,000 to a small business rather than £10 million to a virtual roulette wheel.
“There a million stories in the Naked City”. Now is the time for “le dénouement”.
Peter Reynolds 