The High Street

Apparently there are over 14,500 empty shops on the High Streets of Britain's Towns and Cities - that is not counting the charity shops either - who as everyone in business knows - get them rent free in exchange for saving the landlords the cost of paying business rates on empty premises. David Cameron is so concerned about the state of the Britain's High Street that he appointed a TV personality - Mary Portas - to advise him on what to do. Actually - being a bit of TV personality myself I think he would have been better off appointing me - and here is what I would have told him. The High Street - as we know it today - is finished and good riddance to bad rubbish, because that is what most of the chain shops sell - either overpriced or dirt cheap depending on the strategy of the Chains management. Councils have not helped the High street either by making their town centres anti car and thus, not only putting off people coming to shop, but actually driving businesses out of the town centres as well. The old post war idea that the centres of market and county towns would act as shopping hubs is over and government has to accept that the future is Internet shopping or out of town shopping centres where you can park your car and enjoy your day outwithout living in fear of neo fascists parking officials.

So my advice is accept the inevitable and reinvent the High Street. First take all councillors and planners to look at cities where the High Street concept works, somewhere like Bath in fact. Bath works because it is full of beautiful architecture and - now this is the real revolutionary thought - people like to live in beautiful houses and -even more revolutionary - not in ugly badly built modern developments. People also don't mind living in narrow streets in terrace housing providing it is beautiful. Because people like to live in the beautiful houses, which proliferate in Bath, they create a demand for restaurants, bars, boutique shops, delicatessens, decorating shops etc. So the AIM should be to get prosperous people to move back into the city centres from the suburbs. The way to achieve this is firstly to allow offices to be converted back into houses and then to allow new build houses on redundant fifth rate post World War development- oh and don't forget to throw away all the 21st century 'planning guidelines' and go back to 18th century building densities and town planning practices because - actually - that is what people like - and actually -while we are on the point of building what people like - they also like classical architecture.

So get young professionals and the like living in the towns and cities again and a virtuous circle will be formed. They will demand services and shops and new life will be restored to the High Street and, because some of those shops will be extremely high quality people from outside the town/city will be attracted into it to visit, browse and buy. It is not rocket science, it is common sense David Cameron - so next time you want a TV personality to advise please give me a call - the advice will be cheaper and - though say it myself - a hell of a lot better.

winter

Now I am thrilled that I installed a new central heating boiler. All winter to date I have begrudged the £12,000 which I had to spend on replacing my old faithful but now - hurray - it is finally earning its keep. Yesterday I turned it on for the first time this winter and as I write - in comparative warmth - I can hear it chugging away merrily next door - although - I hasten to say - that the warmth - welcome as it is - is really just a secondary benefit and not the primary  one, that is to ensure that the house is warm enough so that the pipes don't freeze and then burst - as happened last winter- which caused much grief.   Also I hope that this cold weather will persuade the flowers to go back to sleep for another month or so - only the other day I stumbled across a primrose which had unwisely decided that spring was here! I do not like my flowers to be out in February - let alone January.

Mr Heston's bonus

Finally Mr Heston got the message and generously gave up his bonus. Oddly there seems to be a school of thought in the City pages of the press that he has been subject to some form of witch hunt and journalists are saying that 'to get the best' it is necessary 'to pay the going rate.' Well hang on a moment, presumably all those bankers whose cretinous financial activities actually got us into this mess where - at the time - thought to be 'the best.' So on what basis is Mr. Heston judged to be the best? the same basis which gaves us our Fred ? or is it some other basis? I only ask because whatever his merits as a banker he seems to be a singularly stupid man not to have realised that his bonus was going to cause an almighty row especially as - to date - he doesn't appear to have achieved any real success at RBS which is still a sceptic tank bank full of underwater loans. The time for Mr. Heston to take a bonus is when he has actually turned the bank around - caused the share price to soar -thus enabling the us - the poor tax payer - to get back our £45.0 billion investment and - with luck -more besides. Do that and it would be mean to begrudge him not just a mighty bonus but a knighthood to boot. But till that time comes I would have thought he could rub along happily on his salary which is - after all - £1.3 million a year.

Wealth Managers

Will someone please explain what a 'Wealth Manager' actually does -other - of course - than help himself to a reasonable percentage of your wealth every year for his questionable services. Twice in the last week I have asked people what they do - to receive the answer ; 'Oh I'm in Wealth Management.'  Now I have a sneaking suspicion that a Wealth Manager is what used to be called a Financial Adviser which in itself was a euphemism for what was once a Life Insurance Salesman, who, if my memory serves me right was the lowest of the low in the financial pecking order and usually the refuge for the seriously thick and unemployable.

Now I admit that this is quite a clever move by the Financial Rip Off industry. After all there was no kudos in having a Life Insurance adviser and not much in having a Financial Adviser either but just imagine how impressed the neighbours must be when you casually let drop that; ' You have an important meeting with your Wealth Manager'        

Sir Fred Goodwin

I think virtually everyone, with the presumed exception of Sir Fred himself, is agreed that he should be stripped of his knighthood what though is a little sad is that now this process is carried out by some dull and boring committee. Not so in days of old. In 1621 two knights (businessmen coincidentally) were found guilty of exercising harsh monopolies over the licensing of inns and suffered the punishment of being publicly degraded.

'Sir Francis Mitchells sword and gilt spurs, being ornaments of knighthood were broken and defaced.......one of the Knight Marshals men...cut the belt whereby the culprits sword hung, so let it fall to the ground. Next the spurs were hewn off his heels and thrown, one one way the other the other. After that the Marshaks attendant drew Mitchell's sword from his scabbard and broke it over his head...'  Great stuff and done in Westminster Hall it would be standing room only with tickets probably changing hands for well over a hundred pounds.

Jeffery john, dean of st. Albans

Poor Jeffrey John is apparently throwing a bit of a wobbly over the fact that no one wants to make him a bishop because he is gay.  According to the Sunday Times he has hired a leading Discrimination lawyer and is threatening to sue the poor old church of England under the Equality Act unless they make him a bishop smartish. Well hang on a second. Just how many of the seven deadly sins is the good Dean guilty of here. So he is very cross at not being made a bishop so he is guilty of WRATH,  He is also envious of others who are bishops so he is guilty of ENVY not to mention PRIDE that's three so far though we must absolve him of LUST as he is apparently in a celibate civil partnership with his long term boy friend.  Still to be guilty of three of the seven deadly sins is surely a bit over doing it for someone who hankers after a bishops mitre, not to mention all those lovely embroidered vestments which you get to wear when you are made up.    

bankers bonuses

We will soon be entering bankers bonus territory and newspapers will already be preparing the headlines castigating the greed of the bankers.  They are of course right to do so but the banker bonus culture is just part of the excessive pay scandal not just in the City, or in Industry at Board level, but in football as well.  The difference in football is that the fans, who through excessive seat prices actually pay the wages, get to boo and insult any non performing player, and do so with vim and vigour.

Not so the long suffering shareholders of the banks ( that's us in the form of the taxpayer in the case of RBS) who are unlikely to receive any dividend payments for many years while the miscreants who largely caused the grief go on awarding themselves fat pay packets and fatter bonuses.  We are told that they need to be paid so generously because without their special skills the banks would be in even great poo than they are now. Well I wonder about that. I have met quite a number of these bankers over the years and, with the odd rare exception, have been singularly unimpressed by either their intelligence or their ability.  Years ago I found myself, for lack of any other candidate who was prepared to take the risk, running a beaten up Lloyd's reinsurance broker.  I very soon worked out that what, on the surface seemed to be extremely complex was, actually, extremely simple and once one had formulated a plan and got some good people in to do the work there was  very little for me, as Chief Executive, to do except to go out and have a good  lunch.   I mentioned to someone that I felt a bit guilty about this and they told me not to be so stupid as the role of a Chief Executive was to do himself out a job by ensuring he had good people working for him.  After that there was nothing to do but act as the Chief Salesman for the company and make a few decisions and if that meant having lots of good liquid lunches so be it. He was right of course, which means those Chief Executives who are paying themselves millions are ripping the arse out of the system as- if they really are working so hard - they have obviously failed in their primary task of ensuring that they have good people to do all the work - while if they do have good people to do all the work - getting paid millions for just having a lot of good lunches does seem exceedingly  greedy.