Been To London

Sorry to those who have missed my blog for the last few days. I popped over to London for my annual Xmas Lunches and Dinners with old colleagues from both BT and IBM. I didn't have my PC with me and even if I did I'm not sure I would have pressed the right keys!

I had dinner with my old BT colleagues on Tuesday night. Great food, terrific service, great tales from days gone past and all organised by the very impressive Vanessa who really should be a top PA instead of a Probation Officer! Thanks V - a great night out.

Amazingly, I did find my way back to my hotel and fell asleep knowing that I had lunch the following day with my IBM pals. Problem was I had no idea what the meeting place was called, just that it was close by the IBM Basinghall Street office which closed about 30 years ago. Apparently, the pub was where the Basinghall St guys would go at lunchtime so using impeccable male logic I started off at the old office and wandered in the general direction I thought they might have gone all those years ago and incredibly, not more than about 3 minutes walk, I came across the 'Old Doctor Butler's Head'. A peek inside and I was convinced that this was the place. Pub of The Year in 2008, a wide range of real ales on tap and several Sky TV screens showing the cricket - it must be the meeting place and so it turned out to be.

The Old Doctor Butler's Head (pictured) was built in 1610, burned down during the Great Fire of London and was rebuilt in 1666 and apart from the ceiling fans, the odd games console and the Sky TV screens, I don't think it's changed that much over the centuries. It was owned in the 17th century by A Doctor Butler, who despite having no formal medical qualifications was widely consulted for all sorts of ailments and eventually became Court Physician to King James I. He developed a medical ale which was only available from his drinking establishments with the Old Doctor Butler's Head being the last one still standing.

From there we went to a fine old wine bar in the middle of the City which incredibly, is being compulsory purchased by the Government so that it can be torn down and become, of all things, an air vent for the new London Crossrail project. Nevertheless, the staff were in a great mood and served mountains of traditional Xmas food. With prices being reduced by 30% we probably overdid the Claret a bit and I have a hazy recollection of then getting in a cab and heading for our 3rd pub of the day - some place in Hackney or Shoreditch.

It might have been the bitter cold but more likely it was the WKD I ordered (Vodka and Irn Brew for the uninitiated) which convinced me that I should retire to my hotel and off I went, into the rain and sleet which was coming down quite hard by then. Astonishingly, I found Liverpool Street station and 20 minutes later was in my hotel room.

I think it was a great day!

Champagne For Breakfast !

The MP’s expenses scandal has resurfaced after the latest release of expense claim forms. I don’t so much detest the guy who claimed for the London Congestion Charge (I used to claim that when I travelled into London) but for somebody paid over £80,000 a year in salary and expenses (excluding the £40,000 they can also claim for employing the wife/son/daughter)to claim £2.99 for a corkscrew for their home is just unbelievable.

Of course, the previous Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, (paid over £160,000 a year plus £40k for her husband) claimed the grand total of 99p for a bath plug! What planet are these people on? And I see that now Jacqui Smith is likely to be dumped at the next election, she’s been on another spending spree, claiming a couple of grand to upgrade her home entertainment system.

Over at the BBC, who volunteered after a bit of external pressure to release their expenses, we find that staff paid over £300,000 a year have been spending taxpayers money like you would throw confetti, with claims of 18 taxi journeys costing over £200 each.

After the disclosures, the BBC was forced to defend their staff, claiming that taxis were more convenient and cost-effective than buses, trains or the Tube. By way of explanation, the BBC has an HQ which is at least a couple of blocks from a Tube station but if they’re afraid of a bit of rain why not get cab to the Tube station – too logical I suppose.

My working life was expense driven for over 30 years but my philosophy was that if I incurred an expense whilst doing my job, which I would not have incurred if I’d stayed at home, I felt justified in claiming that expense and, there was a huge organization of admin people checking what I spent and what I spent it on. MPs and BBC employees though, appear to have few checks and very loose rules.

I have the solution to all this though -my mate Bill whose second name is not printed to protect his reputation.

Years ago when Bill and I worked in an off-shoot of BT, expenses needed a sort of independent signature and for some obscure reason, Bill who was associated with the financial side of the business, was chosen as that signatory.

Whilst it was great that my mate signed off my expenses (the primary requirement was to get them signed off and paid quickly), being a signatory also caused Bill a bit of a problem from time to time and one situation comes to mind.

One day Bill came up to me and showed me an expense claim. It was obviously a bill for a meal at a rather fancy new London hotel and was for quite a few thousand pounds. ‘What’s the problem’, I asked. ‘Look’, Bill said, ‘they had champagne – half a bottle each’. ‘Who submitted the claim’, I asked. ‘The Chief Executive’, he said. ‘I’m not authorizing it’.

‘Bill – think about this. You cannot seriously think about not authorizing the Chief Exec’s expenses’, I advised. ‘I bloody well will – they shouldn’t have been having champagne for breakfast’. And off he stormed indignant that not even the Chief Exec should be having champagne for breakfast – on expenses!

Now if Bill can do this with his own Chief Exec I reckon he should be the ‘Expenses Czar’ for all MP’s and BBC employee’s expenses. It would save the public purse a fortune.

African Corruption

Years and years ago, my grandfather advised me not to have anything to do with Africa. Whether this was advice about investments, holiday visits or even moving there I know not, I was too young to pose any reasonable questions back to him but somehow I retained his advice in the back of my mind. And strangely, although I have travelled widely with my sales jobs in IBM and BT, I never visited Africa except for personal visits to Morocco and Tunisia, but never further south.

But it’s not the social problems which put me off the country, it's that Africa is just one big pot of corruption and lawlessness. Some people might regard that as a bit of a generalization but think of Nigeria where the oil companies have to attach bodyguards to their employees and their families just to allow them to work there in safety. Think of Somalia where the country appears to be run by pirates with no one seemingly doing anything about it.

Think of the various African scams which regularly turn up in your e-mail in-box encouraging you to help launder a couple of million dollars ‘if you only pay £10,000 up-front to help with the admin’.

Think of the African dictators running their countries where the vast majority of the population have little food and water, have no education or health system and yet who live in magnificent palaces with fleets of limousines lining the drive to the gold front gates. Were these guys rich before they came to power? Absolutely not – they’ve skimmed it off all the international aid which the developed world sends to them. And what do we do? We send them more!

I have a friend who was so taken by the plight of children in Kenya that she founded a school and orphanage for ‘street children’ only to find that most of the money she was sending there was being siphoned off by the very guy who was running the orphanage on her behalf.

I’m sorry to say corruption and lawlessness out there is just absolutely rife, but just as I think I’m being a bit of a ‘Victor Meldrew’, something else happens which reinforces my view that I’m well clear of that vast continent.

Trafigura – ever heard of them? No ? I hadn’t either. Trafigura is a company, probably run by a few ‘Del boys’ who buy oil on the world oil market and then ship it to someone who wants to buy it. They are oil traders. The problem is that Trafigura buys nasty, smelly oil which needs to be ‘cleaned’ before it is useful and once cleaned the toxic waste by-products need to be ‘disposed of’. Given that the normal routes for disposing of this waste is expensive and would reduce their profits, Trafigura paid some fly-by-night Ivorians to get rid of it – no questions asked. Anyway, the toxic waste was dumped inland near several villages and towns and before long, the population were all ill.

To cut a long story short, Trafigura who were being sued, paid a sum of $30m for an out-of-court settlement and this money was to be distributed to the 30,000 or so Ivorian nationals who had been affected by the waste dumping. No sooner had the $30m hit the Ivory Coast bank than a series of rather senior figures in the Ivorian government started claiming that they were ‘the de facto representatives’ of the people to whom the money was to go to. A scam if ever there was one. You can just see the $30m disappearing into their pockets faster than the Range Rovers the money will no doubt be spent on! Then the Ivorian Treasury Minister approached the bank and said he’d block any distribution of the money unless the daily interest it was earning was paid into his personal account. No attempt to hide his identity or justify what he was doing – it’s just normal business out there.

I’m sorry for the individuals in Africa living in poverty but I do object to 99p in the pound I give being skimmed off by some tin-pot politicians.

Rant over.