CBI Director General Richard Lambert has a hissy fit in the Financial Times today complaining that Sir David Hare’s theatrical summary of business is unfair, stupid and just plain wrong. All Hare said was that the aim of business was to make money, which seems pretty uncontentious. But Lambert takes umbrage – in a thinly veiled alternative to the recent and widely lampooned “doing God’s work” remark, he complains that business just isn’t that simple (because it’s difficult to make money, see? Read more »

   Filed under: They Just Don't Get It | 1 Comment »

Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman has written a just fabulous assault on the bankers formerly known as ‘Masters of the Universe’ for the New York Times. Considering the testimony of Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase and Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission this week, he concluded, right on the money, that politicians engaged in deciding how to regulate the financial sector should ignore its leading proponents. Not just because they’re bound to be greedy, rapacious, morally incontinent partisans. But because they don’t actually know what they’re doing.

Are they still ‘Masters of the Universe’? No. But what they are rhymes with bankers.

   Filed under: Financial crisis, They Just Don't Get It | 2 Comments »

The Financial Times says Lord Mandelson’s manufacturing strategy is failing to convince manufacturing employers. But they use journalistic sleight of hand to make the evidence fit the story better, suggesting that the FT editorial line of support for tax cutting Tories rather than Labour investors has bled into the news pages.  Read more »

   Filed under: Manufacturing, Recession, They Just Don't Get It | 2 Comments »

The usually rational Howard Davies suggests in today’s FT that EU Commissioners should be chosen the same way major businesses choose their leaders. So, that means no women, an emphasis on management guff rather than results, and ever increasing salaries in the hope that mutual back scratching will result in the winners rewarding the people who picked them. When will the corporate world realise that it’s not much of a role model?

   Filed under: Europe, They Just Don't Get It | Comments Off

The Times Diary reports a new City fad:

“An organisation is trying to organise “flash sushi” parties, at which you get to eat raw fish off naked women’s bodies. You pay your fee and only 24 hours beforehand do you learn where the party is taking place. This is the done thing among very rich Japanese, and I suppose three years or so ago it would not have turned a hair in the City.

But it is surely inconceivable that anyone today, however overpaid and stupid, could sign up for such a degrading charade. Isn’t it? Oh. I see the first four events are sold out.”

They just don’t get it, do they?

   Filed under: They Just Don't Get It | 1 Comment »

The TUC made the headlines with our analysis of the cost of higher rate tax relief on pensions.

Now insurance company Aviva have called for the abolition of higher rate tax relief with the money saved to provide tax relief of 30% for all pensions savings. Read more »

   Filed under: Pensions, They Just Don't Get It | 6 Comments »

With TUC Congress only weeks away we are all too busy to do much blogging at the moment, but this is too good to miss.

There is of course much comment on Adair Turner’s splendid remarks on finance, including serious arguments on both sides. But then there is this:

Howard Wheeldon, of the stockbroking firm BGC Partners, said Turner had moved beyond his brief in making those comments and it would be “time to turn the lights out in the UK” if the tax were imposed. “Quite honestly I am appalled, disgusted, ashamed and hugely embarrassed that I should have lived to see someone … who already commands a senior and crucially important position as effective head of the UK regulatory regime, making such damaging and damning remarks.”

They don’t like it up ‘em, do they?

   Filed under: Financial crisis, They Just Don't Get It | 1 Comment »

Luke Johnson, the Pizza Express owner-turned private equity millionaire, has written in the Financial Times today about how ’socialism’ is threatening to strangle heroic capitalist entrepreneurs (like himself). Some of the signs of this ’socialism’ that he points to are the 50p tax rate (of course – funny how that has really got under greedy rich people’s skin), subsidies to GM and Chrysler to pay for their “massively over-rewarded” (sic) workers, and strangling laws like (oh yes, here it comes) health and safety. You’ll note that no one ever specifies which industrial accidents or diseases they would be happy to inflict on their workers. Read more »

   Filed under: Tax, They Just Don't Get It | 1 Comment »

I am in Australia visiting my sister and her family, and the effect of climate change is evident all around. In Bendigo, Victoria, where she lives, there has been a full-on drought for over a decade. When I first visited over 20 years ago, Victoria was as green as South East England. Now, it is mostly yellow, and some bits of the countryside are beginning to fade to greyness. And yet Australian employers are still holding out against firm action on climate change. Read more »

   Filed under: Environment, They Just Don't Get It | Comments Off

The CBI has entered the G20 fight by publicly opposing a crackdown on tax havens and bank bonuses. They are calling for corporate greed to be ignored so world leaders can concentrate on sorting out the mess that corporate greed caused.So now we know where the battle lines over the G20 will be drawn – do we put profits first, or people? If you want to put people first, come on the March for Jobs, Justice, Climate on 28 March.

Martin Broughton, CBI President and chairman of British Airways, told the Financial Times today that the London Summit on 2 April should focus on a global stimulus and opposing protectionism. But it needs to do more. Tackling tax havens and bank bonuses, as well as global poverty and climate change, would be a crucial signal that the G20 is serious about going beyond mere sticking plaster, business as usual measures.

   Filed under: Recession, Tax, They Just Don't Get It | 1 Comment »