Posts Tagged ‘Credit Crunch’
Hannan vs. Brown KO
Posted by: Gav in Gavin Ayling's blog on March 24th, 2009
If you watch one Youtube video this year, watch this:
Should we be excited about the RBS pension debacle?
Posted by: Gav in Gavin Ayling's blog on March 4th, 2009
There is currently an annoying amount of debate about the £650,000 pension of Sir Fred Goodwin following the effective collapse of RBS. Should we be excited, animated or angry? Well, no.
He signed a contract which was offered to him. The ire should be directed against whoever offered such a generous contract. His incompetence, or otherwise, is not what is at issue here — it is whether he should receive money that he has a legal right to.
Second consideration, in all of this, is the amount of money in question. Let’s remember it’s taxpayers’ money because it is effectively a nationalised bank — is this really the most important £20m in the government’s control? Wouldn’t it be better to worry about the £250bn of debt that the government is now underwriting with our money? In £250bn what is £20m? In fact it is less than a third of what we spend on EU membership per day: Source (I have removed £26bn from the annual cost as it is more debateable)).
If it’s principle that is your problem, how about the principle that if you promise in a contract to do something then the contract should be honoured. If you had signed a contract and then someone decided to add a new clause, you would feel wronged.
I would also question whether or not a CEO can be held entirely responsible for every minor or major decision that his subordinates make — maybe not a popular opinion, but that’s the animal that those who defend large corporations have created. Political parties are a similarly horrendous monster — how much better would it be if we had none of those either?
Those tangents sneak up on you.
What they need to do (now)
Posted by: Gav in Gavin Ayling's blog on October 29th, 2008
Why should I say anything when others do a better job. See what Money Marketing have to say about the yacht.
Icelandic banks a forewarning
Posted by: Gav in Gavin Ayling's blog on October 17th, 2008
Guthrum has a post which mentions a warning all the way back in March 2008. Watch the Channel 4 warning:
Icelandic banks and Adur Council
Posted by: Gav in Gavin Ayling's blog on October 10th, 2008
I was reminded last night that I was on the committee that approved the continued use of advisers for our Council investments. Obviously with responsibility the Council must retain some money for use in emergencies and for day-to-day expenses and overnight this money is invested in special markets.
I am advised that our advisers told us “several months ago” it would be an idea not to invest in Icelandic banks. I understand, from the grapevine, that neighbouring Brighton & Hove received similar guidance.
It is for this reason that Adur do not have exposure to Landsbanki or its subsidiaries.
The BBC’s Golden Age
Posted by: Gav in Gavin Ayling's blog on October 7th, 2008
It was not that long ago that the BBC appeared to be heading for trouble. For the first time since the BBC was created the renewal of its right to levy the license fee appeared to be under threat. With the Andrew Gilligan affair in 2003 the BBC appeared to have reached an all-time low. And even with the relatively recent issues surrounding fairness of phone-in competitions, the BBC is having a renaissance.
I recently checked my Virgin Media’s hard drive to see which channels I had recorded television from. There was one programme not from the BBC — and that was a football match on Setanta. The hard disk shines a light on the quality of the BBC’s programming at the moment and shows, actually, that its content is great while that of its competitors is apalling.
To be fair, my opinion is not enough to justify the tone of what I have said. But a completely unscientific straw-poll shows that the only non-BBC viewing of anyone I know has been of football — Sky Sports during the weekend and on Thursday last week for domestic and European football and Setanta Sports.
The BBC has excellent programmes including Eggheads, The Tudors, Only Connect, The Story of Mathematics, Bruce Parry’s Amazon, Harry and Paul, Mock the Week, Live at the Apollo, Heroes. And that’s to ignore the improving output of BBC Radio 4. This with BBC HD (the only HD channel on Virgin at the moment) and, most importantly, BBC iPlayer (which I am now smugly using on my Nokia N96) make the BBC a force to be reckoned with.
In 2003/2004 when the BBC was preparing for the renewal, things needed to change and many people questioned the value for money of the license fee. In fact, I carried a link on this blog to a campaign to remove the privileged position of the BBC. But it’s done good. It is now amazing value for money.
The reviews have worked and the BBC deserves praise. I still hate the bias of the BBC’s news and reporting, but the bias appears to be in favour of the party I support now, rather than in favour of the party I do not, so it’s difficult to summon quite so much concern… how terrible of me to think that!
One final thought for Robert Peston: Tonight’s BBC Four programme, The Greed Game was an excellent piece of work. It explained, clearly, how and why the credit crunch came about. It was, if you’ll excuse the gushing, the sort of programme that the BBC was made to make. Robert Peston’s name has become synonymous with the Credit Crunch as his excellent reporting has clarified the whole issue for the masses; this programme made sense of an extraordinarily complex subject. My only question is why, with his clearly great grasp of finance, he works as a relatively low-paid journalist!
